The greatest showman created a ‘Church’ for those on the sideline, those on the fringe. Those with a stigma came to a safe place where they found strength in their shared struggle. How you serve the sideshow is how you serve the saviour. ‘Who do we serve first’? was the […]
Spiritual Formation
227 posts
When stressful situations come we have a choice to either fight, take flight, or freeze. But underneath there is an invite to grow and drop the mask of the false self. If he were a politician he would have had the slogan ‘Make Israel Great Again’, and he was doing a […]
‘Am I doing ok?’ was the question I was most frequently asked when I was a pastor/chaplain. ‘Is this Church safe’ was another. Keeping pace were other limping souls … ‘Am I welcome here’ ‘Does God really love me?’ ‘I can’t seem to get it right’ ‘… keeps telling me […]
Do you think mental illness is God’s way of forcing us to slow down and change our behavior or is it the Devil messing with our minds? I recently received this question from one of the readers It’s an interesting question and one that I think has many questions under the question. […]
She walked into my office in a long, flowing skirt. She always had loved long, flowing skirts. But she blamed them and herself for both of her rapes. “Maybe if I hadn’t worn a skirt,” she thought. And she hated herself. The man read from his journal. Almost 20 pages […]
If you were to open my mother’s Bible the first thing you would notice would be the handwritten verses and quotes that helped her mental health. Bible verses that can truly bring help. Dig a little further and you would come across underlined verses, cut out sections from the church […]
When I was on a 6-hour road trip back to university I picked up a hitchhiker. It was cold and wintery as I turned a corner on the Desert road and I saw a young man with his thumb stuck out. Thin, short hair and poorly clothed for the winter, […]
When God has left the building, turning up the volume won’t help. At the school where I grow vegetables, it can be very noisy. I have a group of children that love to help and to get my attention they will often speak louder, and wave hands like windmills. It can […]
Life has a tragic way of repeating itself. It seems at times that we just go round an endless loop of repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Then someone says ‘forget what lies behind.’ One of my favorite classic movies is Groundhog day with a very young Bill […]
It’s always dangerous when we subconsciously create a ‘saviour’ out of a sinner. If you stand too close to the pedestal, of a venerated statue, you’ll get damaged by the cracks. I always cringed when someone would call me ‘Pastor Barry’. If possible I would always ask them to never do […]