Here in Illinois, the coronavirus has me in my eighth week of working from home and we’re all in our seventh week of sheltering-in-place orders. We’re worshipping at home via screens and all the familiar church activities are cancelled. We’reRead more…
A Caregiver’s Education for Life-Long Serving
Sunday, June 29, 2010, at age 89, my mother-in-law moved in with my husband and I, at our invitation. Monday, Dec. 2, 2019, at age 99, God called her to the home she longed for. In the intervening 9 years,Read more…
Serving God and Others Through Entrepreneurship
I generally think of entrepreneurs as people aiming to make a living. But this post is by a man who is an entrepreneur in order to serve his city and his Lord . . . and to change the culture.Read more…
Add a Little Jesus to Your Serving
“I never thought of that as serving Jesus!” I hear this a lot. We all tend to equate ‘serving Jesus’ with volunteering that is at church or that is specifically religious. But St. Paul says, “. . . whatever youRead more…
Simplify Your Serving
Some of us don’t need to be encouraged to serve. We’re serving at church and elsewhere so much so that we’re running nonstop. If you’re overwhelmed by obligations, if a relaxed family dinner is a rarity, if you say ‘yes’Read more…
Get Off the Couch!
Is it time to get up and get moving? To start giving back? To spend a little more time helping others? We all need time to rest and refresh, and to care for ourselves and immediate family. But it’s easyRead more…
What’s Your Joy Level?
Have you measured your joy level lately? We count the miles we jog or the steps we walk and we track our bank accounts. What if we quantified our daily joy? Our joy goes up when we’re praised at work,Read more…
On Your Feet
Note: This is the fourth in a series of five reflections. The series begins here. If God’s calling us to specific tasks (see Eph. 2:10), how do we know what they are? It sounds like a high-stake guessing game. What jobRead more…
He’s Calling You
Bartimaeus was blind. And noisy. He heard Jesus was nearby and, to get his attention, he started hollering. People nearby told him to hold down the noise. But he just got louder! And when Jesus noticed and asked for Bartimaeus,Read more…
God Himself Milks the Cows
This fall we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, a time in history when Martin Luther shook up the church as he proclaimed the Biblical truth of salvation by grace alone. He also shook up the church, and theRead more…
The Best Job Ever
I’m the volunteerism person at our church and I love my job. I love hearing people talk about their interests, the causes and needs dear to their hearts, and the tasks they absolutely love doing. Even more, I loveRead more…
Good Stuff: Do We Overspiritualize Calling?
In “Stop Overspiritualizing Calling,” Bethany Jenkins uses her own experience as a pianist to question some aspects of the way we talk about calling. It’s a great starter for helpful and important discussions on calling. Here are some quotes andRead more…