Thriving is usually traced to nurture. Whether it’s through healthy parenting, husbandry, or guardianship, things well-cared-for tend to flourish. This is especially true of spiritual development. Since it is personal, less tangible, and takes greater determination to cultivate, spiritual well-being can’t be homogenized or mass-produced. People need to be personally invested in. Which sets up […]
Category: church
Attending a hundred churches
I’ve attended over a hundred churches. Most were visits while searching for “home.” Some were on trips spanning a weekend. And a few were simply to see what goes on in there. Of the “home” churches, there were Christian Reformed, Brethren, Baptist, nondenominational, and Evangelical Free. The circle of “visited” churches stretches to include Anglican, […]
Sunday in Rochester
Fresh from a hearty dousing at Niagara Falls, we rolled into downtown Rochester for the weekend. On Sunday we walked to a nearby church — and came away even more refreshed than from the Falls. Their service featured a greeting, two songs, teaching from Romans, and two more songs. That was it. Gather our attention, […]
The quandary of shepherding groups
We recently visited a church of twenty people. They invited us to stay for lunch, and by the end we knew names. A week earlier we’d attended a much larger gathering. Two or three people greeted us, but mostly it was like sitting in a movie theater — hundreds of people watching the stage. There’s […]
Training in reality
What Christians believe can be viewed as quaint. Eugene Peterson refers to this in his book, The Contemplative Pastor, and he doesn’t like it. When some business person shakes his hand after church and says, “This was wonderful, Pastor, but now we have to get back to the real world,” Peterson bristles. He isn’t taking […]
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