In our small city of 65,000+, there are multiple places to get food assistance if you’re hungry. From the giant non-profit to the small neighborhood church, resources seem abundant. Even with all that, there are still those struggling to get by. The pandemic and the economic crisis have driven many people to food pantries and …
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Ugly Church Stories: Hope in a Church Basement
Church basements can be places of transformation. Just think about all the AA/NA meetings, community meals, clothing closets, food pantries, and support groups–not to mention Bible studies and Sunday Schools–that meet in church basements. Both my own youth group as a teenager and the first youth group I pastored had our rooms in a corner …
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Of Water and Wifi
Poor communities face a lack of internet connectivity, which is of particular concern when it seems that every kind of interaction has gone online. Work, church, and schools have been virtual for months and even with the return of some in-person gatherings, we are still heavily reliant on our internet connections. But what if you …
Listening, Learning, Lifting Up, and Laying Down
When I took over management of a homeless shelter, I had never stayed in a homeless shelter. I had never slept on the street. As a young man I had experienced homelessness, sleeping in my car and surfing couches, but my life was not impacted by addiction, mental illness, or the myriad other contributing factors …
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Preserving the Mission
In the wake of coronavirus/COVID-19, there has been a lot of contemplation, concentration, and consternation around preserving our churches in the pandemic. Anything that could be reproduced digitally has been, regardless of the size or expertise of churches. Services are streaming from empty sanctuaries, living rooms, and outside spaces. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Zoom, Google and …
Staying Ugly in a Pandemic
In the ugly church we talk a lot about physical presence in messy lives, situations, and circumstances, modeling our ministry after that of Jesus. We want to be about the business of touching “lepers” and breaking bread with “sinners.” With the coronavirus pandemic, our usual modes of connection have been cut off. Visits to the …
The Funnel of Love (Not a Typo)
I’m naturally a visual person, which means I tend to think in pictures. As I was thinking about the way the Church typically approaches outreach and evangelism, it struck me as, well, backward. And the picture of a funnel came to mind. Based on what I understand about Jesus’ ministry and the way the modern …
Prayer for a New Year
“What do you want for Christmas,” my wife asks me before Christmas. My mind goes blank. What do I need? What do I want? I need to lose (quite) a few pounds. I need to call my parents and my brother more often. I want to slow down and be more present. These aren’t things …
Lifestyle, interrupted…
“Giving isn’t really giving until it interrupts your lifestyle.” – unknown person wiser than me I have a history of gaining and losing weight. Clothes are bought and then donated as they become too large or (usually) too small. It feels good to bag them up and give them to a local concern or ministry …
Haunting Questions
Two questions haunt me, and they’ve been haunting me for a long time. I read them early on in my ministry preparation, and despite the incredible volume of reading and studying in the years since, these two questions have never faded. One was posed by Matt Casper in Jim and Casper Go to Church, and …
Ugly Church 