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As I sit here on this cold, icy day in northeast Kansas and think about the topic of hospitality in the pastor’s home, my mind is blank. And then . . . after a nap on a cold winter’s afternoon, I wake up with a brilliant, beyond brilliant idea! Well, I hope so anyway! You’ve […]
Every pastor’s wife has one. It’s on a shelf, tucked away in a den somewhere. It’s tacked on a hallway wall space where not too many guests walk by, or it’s folded away in a drawer ready to come out once a year for the Christmas season.
“Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.” – Romans 12:13 “I promise to love you with hospitality, offering myself to you and those we minister to with service and an open heart and home.” This was a line from our wedding vows, based on Romans 12, something we wanted […]
One of my favorite pastimes is visiting and laughing with friends over food. Once the whirlwind of cleaning, coordinating, preparing, and cooking subsides I notice the satisfaction I have from hosting people. I like to hear stories about their lives. Sometimes deep conversations arise when we talk about God and our Christian walks. Other times […]
The snowfall in interior Alaska can reach six feet in the winter. It builds up quickly and packs down hard with inch upon inch of dry snow. The roads are trampled down by snowmobile, feet, and sled. By the time the snow is done flying, the main roads are snow packed, as hard as asphalt, […]
My husband and I both graduated from Bible college. We knew why we needed to counsel from God’s Word. We agreed wholeheartedly with the theories of biblical counseling. We could even give you a great list of books to read.
Small-towns and rural communities are in crisis. They are rarely the wholesome communities portrayed to us on old television shows or travel magazines. Divorce, drug-addiction, suicide, depression, family turmoil, and many more intense situations face us as we attempt to minister to our people. Add to it the fact that a strong gospel presence is […]
But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with […]
The house we lived in outside of our first small-town ministry was “backwards.” The back wall of our chalet style house was patterned with many large windows placed to view the tree-covered ravine below. The main room had ceilings that were over eighteen feet high. (I know this because we actually cut down a Christmas […]
A new job in pastoral ministry often means moving to a new town—a community to learn to know, love, and call home. A change in location also involves the important task of loving our new ministry and church family. Perhaps more so than members of the broader community, there is a particular vulnerability that comes […]
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