These essays are slow reflections for real life—written from the conviction that faith is not about having all the answers, but about learning to trust God in the middle of ordinary days, honest doubts, and unfinished stories. You’ll find Scripture, personal experience, and gentle theological reflection woven together in a voice that’s more neighborly than preachy.
If you’re curious, weary, hopeful, or somewhere in between, pull up a chair. There’s no pressure to arrive—just an invitation to think, pray, and keep going.
In this week’s installment of #LoveWell Dan discusses the discipline of reconciliation. He’s riffing off David Fitch’s text, “A Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape The Church For Mission.”
Continue the conversation with Dan on Twitter: @danielmrose or Telegram: t.me/danielmrose
Every so often there is what I call, “The Pastor’s Lament.” This is when pastors take to the social media and explain how hard it is to be a pastor. They share memes of how pastoral ministry is so hard that they age like the President of the United States. They complain about the people they serve (not in public, but in private forums).
Basically, they whine.
I too am a pastor. Are there difficult things that go with being a pastor? Absolutely.
However, let us not lament, whine, or complain for we get to be cared for by the people of God to pray, serve, study, write, preach, and lead.
When we started the Antioch Movement, what is now becoming the Acts 13 Network, we made a decision about families. We decided that we wanted families to be together in all that we did. Our hope was that families would not be separated during their times of worship.
We believe that for children to grow and see what it means to be God worshipers, they need to be with their parents. Not only that, we think that they need to see other adults worshiping God too. Also, they need to be witnesses to the worship of their peers.
Do you ever wonder about God’s promises? You know, the ones that seem to be huge and wide sweeping. The ones that seem to go on forever.
Yet, never really seem to happen.
I do.
Often.
How is your soul?
>Is it filled with anxiety? Is it filled with stress? Is it scattered? Is it weary? Is it joyous? Is it happy? Is it content?
How is your soul?
Dan explores the significance of the Lord’s Supper in being the church on mission as he riffs on ideas from David Fitch’s text, Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines That Shape The Church For Mission.
Continue the conversation with Dan on twitter: @danielmrose or on Telegram t.me/danielmrose
It was late fall and the leaves were almost completely off the trees but hadn’t been raked. At the end of our street was a 90 degree turn because we lived on a horseshoe. One morning, shortly after receiving my driver’s license, I was fiddling with music in my car and wasn’t paying attention. As I looked up the turn was coming at me. I slammed on the brakes and slid into a bank of mailboxes. Thinking nobody saw me, I continued on to school.
Later that day, I was home watching TV when the phone rang and my mom answered it. Something in me knew I was done for.
“Dan, were you involved in a hit and run today?” my mom asked.
“Me? No I didn’t hit anyone. Come on.” I replied.
“Well that was the police and they said someone reported that you hit the mailboxes at the end of the street this morning and fled the scene.”
“Oh. Yeah. That was me.”
“Why do bad things happen to good people?”
That’s a question that is on the tip of many tongues. Too often too many people feel as though they are experiencing injustices.
We get going proper into our discussion of “Faithful Presence - Seven Disciplines That Shape the Church for Mission” by David Fitch. Dan gives a general overview of where we are headed over the next few weeks. We hope you will join us in the conversation!
Connect with Dan on Twitter: @danielmrose
Connect with Dan on Telegram: danielmrose or love well.
There is a great picture floating around on social media. It’s a photo of two kids on a medal platform. The kid in first place has a sour look on his face. The kid in third place is rejoicing! The caption typically reads something like this, “Happiness is all about your perspective.”
I dig that sentiment.
Are you a parent? I am and I struggle daily with being a parent. It’s really hard and scary work. Parenting is not for the faint of heart.
In America we organize everything around our kids. Over the last few years there have been helicopter parents and now lawn mower parents (I’ll let you hit the Duck Duck Go Machine if you don’t know what those are).
A conversation…
“I could never be a pastor. I don’t know how you do it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You have to walk through all the terrible stuff in people’s lives. You’re face to face with all the bad stuff all the time. I guess, I don’t understand how a pastor could ever stay a Christian. It seems like it would be really hard to keep the faith when you see all the times that God doesn’t do what you want.”
Where do you find your roots? Is your identity rooted somewhere? How do you know who you are?
As we walk through this life I think that this might be one of the most important questions that we face. The world comes at us pretty fast and more times than not the knowledge of who we are helps us to know what to do.
There are times when we feel like nobody cares about us. Sometimes, we feel all alone. That sense of being alone in the world is brutal. It lays us bare. It can feel like a million pounds is weighing us down.
This sense of being alone in the world and that nobody cares is not something new. It is common to the human experience.
Some Bible passages make us super uncomfortable in the modern era. It’s often because we don’t take time to think about what they’re saying and what they’re not saying.
The Scriptures were not written in a vacuum, culturally or otherwise. Neither should we interpret them that way. Nor are all passages written in the same genre and so we must take the time to understand what is happening in a particular passage.
Psalm 122 is one of those kinds of passages.
