by steve | Feb 25, 2025 | Featured News, News
Ugh. That’s the sense I get these days when I think of social media. It wasn’t always like this. I worked directly in the “social media industry” for over 10 years and have been an avid user of these tools for ~10 years prior to that. At one time I thought social media was a pretty solid tool – you could get your message out there into the world and people could engage with you on it. It served as a sort of town square for virtual communities. Social media was largely responsible for alerting the world of real-time events that led to the Arab Spring, leading to the overthrow of several authoritarian governments and widespread political and social unrest. During the pandemic, social media was our main medium for getting important public health messaging out to the world. And it worked wonderfully. Honestly, it had such incredible potential.
But then something happened.
by steve | Feb 5, 2025 | Featured News, News
Another week. Another wild ride. I appreciated all the feedback and thoughtful comments on last week’s post. I confess my weekly meanderings in this space oftentimes end up being for my own catharsis and processing and on those occasions where there’s resonance with you, I count it a beautiful bonus. So, thanks 🙂
Speaking of my own catharsis and processing, I thought for this week’s meanderings, I’d share a bit from a recent journal entry.
by steve | Jan 29, 2025 | Featured News, News
Let me say off the top: I am hesitant to get political, recognizing, particularly in this role as pastor, how politics so often leads to division. As such, I will never tell you how to vote and I firmly believe church and state should remain separate. That said, as a pastor, I cannot ignore how the political landscape of the US is affecting the mental and spiritual well-being of our own community—let alone those directly impacted by these policies. Over the past two weeks, many of you have shared your unease with me, and I sense a growing heaviness. Every headline seems to bring fresh reasons for concern, uncertainty, and even despair. To simply turn away from it all because “pastors shouldn’t do politics” would be an abdication of the call to engage with the world as it is.
by steve | Jan 22, 2025 | Featured News, News
This series we’ve been doing on the Bible has not only been challenging–at least for me–but somewhat unexpectedly, it’s been a major eye-opener for me. My study has led me to learn all sorts of new things about the Bible and if I were to summarize it in a sentence it would be simply: Objectively, the Bible is the most unique book in history.
by steve | Jan 7, 2025 | Featured News, News
It’s New Year’s resolution season which, in our home at least, has brought up the discussion of becoming a more generous person. If you’ve got kids, this is probably something you want to instill in them but the challenge is, how do you teach being generous? I know the best way to teach anything to your kids is to model it in your own lives so, yes, we’ve sought to do that, but when it comes to generosity, the whole “Don’t let your left hand know what the right hand is up to” (Matt. 6:3) teaching makes this somewhat tricky.
by steve | Dec 29, 2024 | Featured News, News
Check out what our community has undertaken, through God’s grace,over the past 12 months…
Recent Comments