The Bible Overflows With Praise to the Almighty The word praise occurs in more than 360 verses in the Bible. Most of these refer to praising God. They tell of people who praise God and their need to do so. Consider the short, six-verse Psalm 150. It’s filled with praise. The word occurs thirteen times. […]
Discussing Church 4 This church’s Facebook page—they have no website—says their “services are informal with a blend of hymns and contemporary music.” I expect service melding contemporary and traditional aspect of worship. Consider these four discussion questions about Church #4: 1. I suspect the service will match what I see in the facility, a merging […]
Expressions of Grief Abound in the Psalms but We’ve Forgotten How to Lament In the churches I have attended throughout my life and visited in the past few years (nearly one hundred) I don’t remember singing songs of lament. We laud God the Father, we express love to Jesus and give thanks for his gift […]
Have a Visitor-Worthy Church With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #48. This church did many things right, especially the warm way they welcomed my wife and me into their community. Several of their practices were personally inviting […]
There are Different Ways to Worship God With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #47. The people at this church are considerate of visitors. Their embrace of us, in a casual, open way, encourages me. This, however, belies […]
We are All Priests Through Jesus With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #36. We arrived at church only to learn they cancelled the service because their pastor had an emergency. Despite this, we hung around and talked […]
Peter DeHaan’s haiku, “Why I Write,” was selected as a finalist for the literary publication Imagine This! An ArtPrize Anthology. But you don’t need to buy the book to read it. Here is Peter’s award-winning poem: Why I Write Linking letters andwielding words to create artfor God, my patron The anthology adds the written word as […]
Physical Worship from a Pure Heart With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #27. I thoroughly enjoyed the worship time at this church. The worship of the song leaders was pure and ushered me into the presence of […]
Embrace Active Worship With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #26. Beyond their worship of God and approach to him, two other things stood out about this minority congregation. First, the kids were an active presence during the […]
A Lesson for Today from Zephaniah A too-common practice in the United States (and perhaps around the world) is to take parts from different religions and philosophies, mashing them together to form a personal belief system. Doing so is a consumer-centric mindset. People keep the parts they like, and they ditch the rest. They grab […]