Featured
Dec, 01, 2009 0
As a child, I remember having a night light. Many years later, when I became a dad, my children had night lights in their rooms. Though small, these nightlights gave a soft, warm glow to their rooms and gave them comfort as they settled in for the evening. That small light was a source of guidance…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
Solomon would have loved the Internet. If he could have asked a computer's search engine to find everything in print beginning with the words, "What I have learned," he would have discovered millions of references in English alone. He didn't have the Internet. But based on his own experience, he…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
Everything I know about humor, I learned as a child growing up in a small parsonage with seven siblings. Life wasn't easy, but it was usually fun, probably because both of our parents had delightful senses of humor. Their use of humor often diffused anger and eased tensions, whether caused by…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
Hans Deventer returning home to the Netherlands following the 2001 General Assembly in Indianapolis.
As I reflect on my first visit to a general assembly, the word that describes it is "huge." When you come from a small district of 11 churches and 1,600 Nazarenes, a general assembly is like…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
It was a contentious meeting, the likes of which the Palo Alto zoning board had not seen in a long time. Things were getting out of hand as opponents of the addition of a liquor store to a local strip mall near the high school shouted out their objections and proponents defended their right to open…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
On an ordinary Monday in November, three others and I headed from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to the country's southern area to prepare for a Work and Witness team. However, when we stopped in Saint-Michel along the way, what we saw at the Saint-Michel Church of the Nazarene wasn't ordinary. On the…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
As I sat down at the computer to write what was on my heart, the phone rang. On the line was a district superintendent who told me the sad news that one of his pastors had just surrendered their credential. "Conduct unbecoming a minister" was the reason given. The superintendent told me of the…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
My life is an answer to prayer. I grew up in the Los Angeles area as an at-risk child with a single mother. My mother worked constantly, my father was half a continent away, and my older sister, Susie, became my parental figure. I was not taken to church or taught about the Heavenly Father whom I…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
The Nazarene founders might have chosen October 1907 as the church's official anniversary date, for that's when a new denomination was created at the First General Assembly in Chicago. However, the Second General Assembly, in October 1908, expanded the infant denomination's numbers and made the…
Dec, 01, 2009 0
The faithful and busy lay people of Saint Clair Avenue Church of the Nazarene in Toronto, Ontario, taught me—then a neighborhood teenager—how to fish for perch and pickerel and to dream about muskies in Canadian lakes and rivers. Among these people was my unforgettable fishing mentor, Mr. Paddle.…