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There’s nothing very remarkable about Sigsbee Street. It runs for just seven blocks through the near southeast side of Grand Rapids, Mich. Sigsbee School, an elementary school in the Grand Rapids Public School system, is its most notable feature. 

We live in a spiritual warfare that has become intricately complicated and multi-layered. But the essence of this warfare, the main battlefield, is still about truth versus falsehood.

My evangelistic challenges don’t end with casual friends and strangers. I’m better at sharing the reasons for my hope with people close to me. Still, some of the people I care most about care hardly at all about Jesus. They’re good people. They often love their neighbors in ways I fail to. They just don’t engage with Jesus or his church.

On the heels of the California food festival mass shooting in Gilroy, two more senseless shootings occurred within roughly twelve hours of each other over the weekend in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.

Attending synod is an exciting opportunity, especially as a young adult representative. But synod can also be intimidating. Here are some tips to get you through.

It hurts to be unknown while being singled out only for my disabilities. And it is this feeling of being unknown that I want to use as a catalyst for change and personal growth.

Stories of a previous generation help the next to see the flesh and blood of humanity.

This summer you might enjoy swimming in your neighborhood pool or in a lake. But it’s not a good idea to go swimming in a swamp! The dark, muddy waters of a swamp are not be the best place for people to swim. But it is home for hundreds of creatures who love swimming in swamps.

How do we curb the ability of individuals to take the Bible and seem to use it to advance any and every idea and agenda?

What if, in the dance that is our life, God performs an aerial? In that moment, all we have is his hands holding us up while we go flying and the room spins around us. 

As we grab hold of old toys, games, and photos, we reminisce about stories that have shaped us over the past decade. We’ve found ourselves echoing Marie Kondo’s phrase about only keeping that which “sparks joy.”

Praying for the president has gotten an unusual amount of press lately.

This is a theology not learned on the hill in the white-steepled church, but caught on the streets of the trailer park and inside the teen center while living in the shadow of the Chugach Mountains, a theology carried to me—taught to me—by those who walk on other city streets.

Rachel articulated with grace and beauty so many things I had felt and experienced in my faith journey and continuous struggles with doubt. Her words empowered me and other women in ministry.

Years ago, during a canoe trip on a Michigan river, I stepped into what appeared to be shallow water to pull the canoe to shore. But the water was over my head. Instantly I was disoriented, grasping for anything to provide stability.

As I walked into church that morning, George, our resident artist, was busy painting a scene of children at play on one of the doors in our Kid Zone. He had a whole tray full of small bottles, each with a different color of paint. Each shape, each area, each color he applied was different. 

There is a reason that the most beautiful thing, the visual aesthetic referenced so often in Scripture to evoke loveliness beyond the ordinary or even the physical, is the bride arrayed. For what could be more glorious than someone beloved?