Vulnerability is powerful, but it also comes with many pitfalls, one of which is how we approach online vulnerability versus local vulnerability. How does vulnerability look different online than when we’re in our local communities?

Discernment is often a battlefield—we throw grenades of insults, snide remarks, and sarcastic comments. When dealing with true false teachers, we should separate ourselves. But what about a fellow believer who perhaps misspoke or is still learning how to teach and share about their faith?

Branding is what helps us recognize our favorite brands—it helps us buy the smooth and creamy almond milk instead of the stuff that tastes like water and chalk. It sounds harmless, right? Perhaps even helpful. As a believer, you may even strive to choose your church based on its branding—or lack of branding for that matter. But what if branding shouldn’t be a part of the church at all?

Living in a small community, it can be hard to find a church that matches our theological preferences. How do we learn to be content with the church God has given us when we feel like a theological nomad?

Should we disregard an entire denomination or stream of theology because abusive, unkind, or angry people are within it?

Church isn’t merely one of the steps towards maturity as a Christian—it’s foundation and the scaffolding every believer needs for the rest of their lives.

Is love always welcoming to everyone? What if sometimes loving those most precious to us means driving away those who seek to harm them?

An open letter to all the godly nursery workers at church: Your work is important to the kingdom, and you are following in Jesus' footsteps.

It’s hard to think sensibly of ourselves. We often look at our gifts one of two ways: Either with too much pride and entitlement or with a degrading view and lack of self-esteem. How do we learn to look at our gifts in a way that benefits the church and keeps us humble?

As your emotions rise and fall like the tides, do you feel as if God goes out with them? Be assured: God never leaves His beloved children. The Spirit remains within us as a constant, unchanging Person of the Trinity, despite our heart’s dullness at times.

We’re exhorted to seek solitude, journal towards holiness, go on nature walks to connect with God, and take extended periods of silence to listen and clear our minds. Do all these practices and more, they say, to grow closer to God and be holy. Dear reader, do all these checklist items miss the theological and even practical mark that the Bible lays out for us?

I say my husband and I found healing in an unexpected place to us—because in our pride, we assumed real healing could only come from those who agreed with us.

Have you ever sat across from a friend and felt your theological disagreements strike up between you like a jagged fence? Perhaps it felt like a crack in the foundation of your friendship, and your heart ached a little—from wonder at how she disagreed with you to fears of losing your friend. How do we move forward?

Church can feel like an add-on to our weeks. We’ve already invested so much time in going to small groups and other activities. Is church even important? We have the music, the teaching, the Word, and the fellowship all contained in our pockets. Is it really worth waking everyone up early and piling into the car to drive to church each Sunday to do what we’ve already been doing all week?

Our acts of faithfulness can at times seem so personal and pertinent to only ourselves, that over time our eyes slowly turn inward. Our self-centered hearts have a habit of turning us inward, even when something is meant to drive us outward to our neighbour and upward to God. How do we keep our gaze where it’s supposed to be in this daily plodding along?

Rich theology with it’s complex history has been abridged to memes, social media captions, and slogans. What was once discussed and believed from thorough exegesis and study can be summed up in pithy sentences on graphics. What took some years of study, question-asking, and many books from a variety of libraries to understand, others today can learn in thirty minutes listening to a podcast or two minutes scanning an article. While there are good things to be taken from these, I wonder if we’ve forsaken anything for them.

It hurts when someone we love is hurting. We love them, and we wish we could simply dust away their pain and chuck it out the door. But we are meant to be a part of the body. As a fellow part of the body, I am not meant to fix another. I can’t take away that pain, and to believe I can minimizes their suffering. 

Dear Seasoned Woman, the truth is I actually don’t know it all. I can gain some knowledge through Bible study and reading solid books, but there is a special kind of wisdom that comes with experience that I can never fake.

In the universal church and the local church we are going to come across fellow believers that we clash with. People will annoy us, hurt us, and make us angry. Can we love them and not like them? We are called to not only love some of our fellow brothers and sisters, but to love each and every one.