The Gift Isn’t The Point – Blog Series Part 4 There’s something I’ve learned about God over the years… He often reveals gifts in unexpected places. Not on our strongest days.Not when we feel the most confident.Not when everything finally feels “put together.” Very often…He reveals them in the dark. Just one week before I…
The Gift Isn’t The Point – Blog Series Part 3 If salvation isn’t a shelf decoration… and if there is more inside what God has already given us… then why do we stop opening it? Most of us didn’t stop out of rebellion.We stopped out of weariness. Life got heavy.And when life gets heavy, we…
The Gift Isn’t The Point – Blog Series Part 2 If the gift isn’t the point…and the Giver is…then we have to ask an honest question: What happens after salvation? For many of us, salvation became a moment…not a lifestyle. We remember the day.The prayer.The altar, the camp, the conference, the conversation. And then life…
The Gift Isn’t The Point – Blog Series Part 1 It’s Christmas time, so naturally I’ve been thinking a lot about gifts.The ones we give… the ones we receive… and the ones God places inside of us. When we hear the word gift, our minds usually go to something tangible. Something wrapped. Something exciting. Something we…
“Did your church mention Charlie Kirk on Sunday? If not, you need to find a new church.” Wow. That’s a potentially destructive statement on so many levels. It’s not nearly as simple as it might seem. I keep seeing it posed by friends, media outlets, and others. And every time, my stomach turns a little….
Originally written in 2013. Revisited in 2025. It’s been over a decade since I wrote this. I still remember sitting in church on a Sunday morning in 2013, hearing a man stand before our congregation and give his testimony. His story wasn’t polished. It wasn’t tied up with a bow. But it was real. He…
In Acts 4, Peter and John were arrested for doing the very thing God called them to do: healing and preaching in the name of Jesus. And their response? They didn’t shrink back. They didn’t play small. They prayed for more boldness. Let me say that again. After being arrested, they didn’t pray for safety….
It was Thanksgiving weekend. The house was full of family, but I wasn’t the same Janelle who had walked out the door just a week earlier to head back to college. The week before, as I was loading my laundry into my car, my mom and I had a short but candid conversation. I can…
Ten years ago, I sat in an audience filled with gratitude, pride, and bittersweet joy as my dad gave his final address as Superintendent to the Iowa Yearly Meeting. It was the closing chapter of 36 years in ministry—twelve of which he spent traveling from church to church, supporting pastors and congregations across the region,…
Pregnant. Nineteen. Pastor’s Kid. Unprepared. It was the week of Thanksgiving, 1997. I was a student living on campus at a small junior college in Iowa. I’d graduated high school less than six months earlier, and truthfully, I had no plan for what came next. I hadn’t dreamed of going to college. I hadn’t applied…