Blog
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I am reminded this Thanksgiving week of Christine Pohl’s words on gratitude. She writes, “Our capacity for gratitude is not connected with an abundance of resources but rather with a capacity to notice what it is that we do have.”[i] Our capacity for gratitude is connected to our capacity to notice… We […]
“The Journey has changed the way I think about my role as pastor. I have a greater boldness about my mission and calling.” In a recent coaching call with our Sioux Falls The Journey Facilitator Retreat crew, we heard great testimonies of the impact already being felt and seen within Journey groups across South […]
About 30 followers of Jesus gathered together last weekend. We went to a beautiful place (Banff, Alberta) to discuss a difficult topic, “Walking with God and Others through Pain and Suffering.” We quickly realized that most everyone in the room was experiencing pain of some kind – from the loss of a loved one […]
One of the highlights of my fall so far has been leading an adult Sunday School class on Jeff Manion’s book The Land Between: Finding God in Difficult Transitions (Zondervan, 2010). The book is about those hard seasons of disorientation in our lives, those times that have a before-and-after character. Like, before mom had cancer, after […]
I had the privilege of attending and leading a workshop at the Apprentice National Conference 2014 last week in Wichita, Kansas. The theme of this year’s conference was “Formation for Mission: Becoming the Change our World Needs”. It was a great couple of days spent with around 250 others with the same shared vision of […]
The word kairos means a moment in time. It holds a different meaning than chronos, which is how we typically think of time in terms of a sequence of seconds, minutes and hours ticking along. Kairos has more to do with a right opportunity, or a ripe season, or the progression of something toward a […]
I absolutely love learning. Sign-me-up-Sally for the next opportunity! So over the years, as I’ve accumulated a degree or two, it’s been a humbling thing to frame the diploma only to recognize that God has shifted my career trajectory and I don’t have the ideal credentials. This humbling wave rolled up to my […]
The other night we were out for a walk in our neighborhood and noticed the early signs of the fall season. The grass felt stiffer with a few more rusted leaves to kick around, the air was cooler and smelled fresher, the horses in the pasture across the road seemed a bit more mischievous, and […]
There is a Joyce Rupp quote that litters many of my old journals and files, and over the past decade or so it has been a consistent source of encouragement and challenge to the way I look at my everyday life. When I was attempting to re-organize my office last week, after a summer of much […]
For all who seek to walk with Jesus over the long haul, much time will be spent in what the Psalms calls “the depths.” Suffering is simply part of what it means to be human. Whether we ourselves are going through difficult times or we are walking with others through difficult times, we will find ourselves […]
Do you remember the Peanut cartoons? The old TV versions had a scene that played out rather often. Lucy would have a football. She would encourage Charlie Brown to attempt to kick the ball while she held it for him. Lucy assured Charlie she would not move the ball. Charlie would buy in and back […]
At one of our team meetings a few months ago, Emily presented a quote from Henri Nouwen’s Making All Things New as part of her devotional “Focusing Thought”. To be honest, I don’t remember what quote she read, but I do remember thinking, “I need to read the rest of that book.” Now, a few […]