Some time ago, a professional London actor ran into some trouble onstage. He was supposed to pick up a telephone and respond to what he heard, but when he put the phone to his ear and listened, he forgot his line. There he was, on stage for a moment that felt like an hour, with absolutely nothing to say to an audience waiting for him to speak. He did what you or I might do if we thought of it. He gave the phone to one of the other actors and said, “It’s for you.” A clever trick to save a performance is not at all a proper way to receive the Word of God. But isn’t that sometimes how we treat what God has said? Forgetting our part, we say, “It’s for you.” We have a friend, a child, a spouse, who needs this message. But as for us? Not so

When a person is preparing himself for hard work, we may describe him as “rolling up his sleeves.” Church planters, it would seem, never roll their sleeves back down. At the beginning of 2019, Brad Peppo started his labors as the organizing pastor of a mission work in Dayton, Ohio. Around the same time, the denomination, along with the Presbytery of Ohio, welcomed a new area home missions coordinator, Mike Diercks. Their words and example may encourage us to keep our sleeves rolled up, too.  First Street Reformed Fellowship in Dayton held their first evening worship service on Sunday, August 5, with ten households making up the core group. Soon after this, Peppo began a weekly home group. “We have a good degree of diversity from

Several years ago, my family moved from small-town New Hampshire to a suburban community near Philadelphia. One of the first discoveries we made is that just because an area is full of people does not mean those people know one another.  In northern New England, we figured that weather, geography, and local culture had much to do with some of the isolation between neighbors. But we quickly discovered that crowded suburbs four hundred miles to the south were not much different. Our family could play outside in full view of all the neighbors and yet have remarkably  little social contact with others on our street. Sometimes we might venture a tentative wave as a car drove home, but the neighbor invariably navigated his or her SUV into

Did you know that irritation is an impor­tant dynamic in helping us to be better servants of the Lord Jesus Christ? In Hebrews 10:24, the writer urges us to think carefully about how to—literally—irritateone another to love and good works.  Irritation is our natural response to suggestions for improvement in our personal life or in our church’s life. But the Word of God tells us that such ir­ritation can actually stir us up to love and to do good works, things that are both pleasing to God and beneficial to those around us.  In my work as regional home mis­sionary, I find it very helpful to be ir­ritated by those who have different insights and experiences of church life than my own. If their irritating sug­gestions help me

While working as a coffee house barista, I gradually learned an important lesson: a barista is more than just a barista. Often, you are the individual that people look forward to seeing every day. Besides arriving for their daily dose of caffeine, customers come to the café to be recognized and acknowledged.  Doing just that became one of my favorite parts of the job. I tried to remember everyone’s names and drink orders in order to show them  that they were noticed and appreciated. In doing so, I soon realized what an incredible opportunity I had at my job to witness for Christ and demonstrate his love through my work.  A pivotal way to witness in the workplace is by reacting well when people treat us poorly. I experienced