Kristy Howard 4 Minute Read Dear Young Pastor’s Wife, I started out young, too. Twenty-three. I remember the cold winter day when our brand new congregation helped my husband unload our U-Haul and move all of our worldly possessions (we didn’t even own a couch) into the parsonage of our first church. I guess I was too silly to feel…
Shannon Coe 3 Minute Read I’ve wasted a lot of time waiting for “perfect moments” that never come. A perfect worship scenario to me would be my family in the pew, together. My husband, then me and the children lined up like stair steps, perhaps the baby in my arms. No one would drop a hymn book or fall or…
Guest Author 5 Minute Read by Rachel Zupke I got kicked out of church at age 17. Our new youth pastor wanted to talk to me about what was coming up for the fall after I’d spent the summer traveling around the country playing basketball for college scouts. I had missed most Sundays and Wednesdays due to tournaments and practices,…
Danielle Carey 6 Minute Read My parents became Christians when I was four years old, so I can’t remember a time when church was not a part of my life vocabulary. The first church was a tiny Assemblies of God congregation which originally met at the showground of our small coal mining town. Optional Sunday extras included a sparrow or…
Callie Mitchell 5 Minute Read There was a valley, parched and dry. Even more unusual, this valley was filled with bones. Dry dead bones. A man named Ezekiel spoke to them. They attached first with sinews, formed with flesh, and then covered with skin. The man Ezekiel spoke again, and the breath of God filled them with life. They arose,…
Elisabeth Allen 3 Minute Read Beloved Friends, give yourselves, first, to God and afterwards to His Church … cheerfully and promptly, without pressure or excitement. (Charles Haddon Spurgeon) At one time, I was one of those twenty-somethings who “loved Jesus, but not His church”. I was raised to go to church on Sunday as a matter of course.When I was…
Emily C. Gardner 3 Minute Read When I heard we were focusing on the church this month, my mind immediately started compiling a list of all the ways the church wasn’t meeting my needs. I thought those might make an interesting post, coming from a pastor’s wife, in an “everyone has issues with the church” kind of way. With a little one around, I’m…
Elisabeth Adams 4 Minute Read Just before my senior year of high school, my family moved to Canada. It was a big adjustment, to go from lush green farmland to windswept wood; from a busy church family, to a tiny congregation, most of them elderly. We lived about twenty minutes from town, in either direction — so remote that the…
Elisabeth Allen 3 Minute Read What if devotions are intended to be less of a chore and more of a gift…like a walk in a garden? I love the verse in Genesis 3 that says, They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day… (Genesis 3:8) In this verse “they” are…
Gretchen Louise 8 Minute Read I first caught the vision when I heard someone share during a funeral at our church. The man’s grandson reflected on many memories, but said that the one impression that would never fade was what he saw each morning during visits to their home. He’d awake to find his grandparents sitting at the kitchen table reading the Bible…
Guest Author 5 Minute Read by Jennifer M. Lucas It’s 5:45 on a typical Monday morning. I’m behind on my Bible study. Three days behind actually, but who’s counting. The baby woke up early the first morning and I didn’t even have a chance to get started. Then, the next morning I hit the snooze button a few too many…
Natasha Metzler 2 Minute Read Our family is not so much for mornings. In fact, though I love to get up early, I do not like to speak for the first 45 minutes, at least. My husband would rather snooze until the last possible second and my daughter thinks waking up is for the birds. But when our family came…
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