Dear Friends, For the past few days I’ve had the privilege of visiting my oldest son, who is attending seminary on the east coast. It’s been fun to be with him and his wife, and to have the opportunity to go to class with him and experience a little bit of what he’s learning. As I’ve done so, I’ve been reminded of how diverse the Body of Christ is - and that’s because there are students from multiple denominations and faith traditions, as well as from multiple states and countries, and ethnic groups. So it truly is a diverse gathering of believers. The experience has reminded me of something I’ve learned from our own congregation at The Harvest - and that is, diversity can be a strength f
Dear Friends, I recently had the chance to get caught up with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. Because it had been a few months since we had talked, one of my first questions to him was, “How are you doing?” His response was, “I’ve been better” - which of course led to me asking more questions about what specially was going on in his life. After giving updates on his work, and his family, he summarized his situation by saying, “I guess I’ve just been in neutral in my walk with God for the past few months, and so now I feel far from God - and I hate being a backslider.” I told my friend I was sorry he was feeling far from God, and then encouraged him to spend time talking to God and lett
Dear Friends, This morning I did a very unwise thing. I turned the radio on, and listened to the news. And I say it was unwise because listening to the news almost always gets me either frustrated, or discouraged - or more often than not, both of those things. This morning was no different, as I listened to stories about how our broken world continues to function as something that’s truly broken. The news stories were mostly about things happening in our nation’s capital, with one of the main stories being about the impending presidential election. As the newscaster talked about the different people who have declared their candidacy, one of the phrases he kept using to evaluate the perso
