Book Review: The Practicing Congregation The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church By Diana Butler Bass (reviewed by Peter DeHaan) If you follow the media at all, you have likely heard of the demise of interest and attendance at...
What Time is Church? When my wife and I started our journey of visiting fifty-two churches in a year, one variable seemed trivial at first but had wide ramifications. That item was service times. With church starting times as early as 8 a.m. and...
Serving God, College, and Student Loans I once met a guy who wanted to work in broadcasting. So he went to college. In his four-year degree, taking some forty classes, guess how many applied to broadcasting? Just three. While having secondary...
Book Review: The Great Emergence The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why By Phyllis Tickle (reviewed by Peter DeHaan)The subtitle to The Great Emergence provides a concise summary of this book’s content: “How Christianity...
Praying for Church One of the practices my wife and I followed when we visited 52 churches was to pray before we headed out the door. This seems simple enough and something we should have always done, but praying prior to church was a practice we...
Do We Read the Bible with Preconceived Notions? Last Sunday I challenged us to examine our faith practices, using the Bible as a foundation to confirm or refute the things we do in church (and in life). This way, we can consider our traditions...
Book Review: A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 By Phillip Keller (reviewed by Peter DeHaan)The idea of a shepherd overseeing his flock is a powerful metaphor of the relationship between God and his people. Unfortunately...
Women in the Bible I spent a season with my Bible reading focused on notable women in the Bible. Some are famous, many are obscure, and a few are infamous. It’s been an interesting study, and I’ll share some of what I’m discovering. What I’ve...
Why Do We Do What We Do in Our Faith Practices? I have a compulsion that irritates people, especially in religious circles. I ask, “Why?” I need to know why we do the things we do. What reason is behind them? Is there a biblical justification? Or...
Movie Review: A Time for Burning Reviewed by Peter DeHaan Shot documentary style in the 1960s, A Time for Burning captures honest, balanced, poignant, and candid insights into race issues and segregation from a different era. In the decades...
