© 2018 Cosmic Timetraveler. All Rights Reserved. Unsplash. Used by permission.

Beautiful Gardens Just to the north of where Alean and I live is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful sites you can ever hope to visit. One hundred and six years in the making, the Butchart Gardens inspire awe from everyone who sees them. If you have not seen them, a trip to Victoria, British…

Read More
© 2018 Saketh Garuda. All Rights Reserved. Unsplash. Used by permission.

The Concern Last week we began a discussion of the church’s tendency to conform to culture rather than to conform to Christ, and to do so in the belief that the inherently offensive nature of the cross and the call to discipleship may be off-putting to those who need to hear the gospel message. In…

Read More
© 2018 Saketh Garuda. All Rights Reserved. Unsplash. Used by permission.

I have attended and worked with enormous churches, and also with very small ones. I have worked with churches that delivered impressively polished, theater-worthy presentations, where event timing was measured in the seconds, all of it driven by headset-adorned technicians working feverishly behind the scenes to keep the flow of the service as smooth and…

Read More
© 2017 Jon Tyson. All Rights Reserved. Unsplash. Used by permission.

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.” – 1 Corinthians 15:1-2, ESV The word “gospel” is an English tweak of an…

Read More
© 2017 FlashBuddy. All Rights Reserved. Pixabay. Used by permission.

Years ago, I came to the conclusion that I have only two types of relationships with other people. There are those who are in the body of Christ, and I fellowship with them on that basis, encouraging and exhorting as appropriate. Then there are those who are not in the body of Christ, and I…

Read More
© 2017 Bjorgvin Gudmundsson. All Rights Reserved. stockvault. Used by permission.

“This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained.” (2nd Timothy 2:8b-9, NIV-1984) Six months after the fact, I can still recall a tremendously impactful time of worship with my home church wherein we observed the International Day of…

Read More
© 2014 MORGUEFILE. All Rights Reserved. electedstudios. Used by permission.

We recently celebrated Easter, a time for some to put adorable dresses on little girls and suits on little boys – a time for hunting or rolling eggs, and for children to overdose on chocolate. For those in the body of Christ, however, Easter is so much more than dresses, new hats, eggs, and candy.…

Read More
Photo by Damon J. Gray

Last evening, I attended an excellent concert at Mount Baker Theater with my daughter and her fiancée. It was a wonderfully entertaining evening of energized and beautiful music put on by Flamenco guitarist Jesse Cook and his highly gifted band. The performance was of such quality that it drove the audience to call for four…

Read More