A Bondservant's Musings

Social media is a part of the fabric of society. This week marks 15 years since the full version of Twitter has been available to the public. September will mark the same milestone for Facebook being available to the public. The topic of social media brings lots of strong opinions. What is the purpose of social media? Are these platforms good or bad? I have my thoughts on both of those questions. You might be able to guess what those thoughts are given that I am posting this on social media. But I want to narrow in on a specific question: Should Christ followers process pain on social media platforms? Just this week, a pastor started a Twitter conversation about whether Christ followers should process their pain on Twitter. His take is that we should not. I disagree. That might be mildly interesting to you. This is not a from-the-sidelines opinion.  My experience over the last 2-1/2 years -- both with processing pain from church hurt on social media and with seeing how others are d...

Six brave people wrote letters to the Harvest Bible Chapel elders in early 2019 bringing charges against James MacDonald per 1 Timothy 5:19-21.  19 Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 20 As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear. 21 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. All six letters have since been published online. [NOTE: This post is not about the value of the letters being available online. We can tackle that another time.] When the letters were written and submitted, none of the six people wanted their letters to be public. We can readily assume then that none of them released their letter to be published. That means someone -- or multiple people -- leaked the letters. Some people have said that I leaked the letters. That is a lie. Before I address...

Harvest Bible Chapel Naples was the eighth campus of Harvest Bible Chapel in the Chicago area. (Yes, I know Naples, Florida is in no way in the Chicago area. March weather alone would tell you that.) What was a 2-year-old church in the old Harvest Bible Fellowship network became a campus in September 2018. Then in January 2019, everything changed with Harvest Naples. In a January 17 email to the Harvest elders and pastoral leaders -- an email that the elder Executive Committee chairman did not forward to the full elder board -- Harvest Naples pastor, John Secrest, asked that the ministry agreement between Harvest Chicago and Harvest Naples be revoked. In that same letter, Secrest requested that James MacDonald, who had been placed on "indefinite sabbatical" just two days before, not be allowed to preach at Harvest Naples that next weekend or on subsequent weekends while on sabbatical. Secrest's request about MacDonald was very reasonable given that MacDonald's sabbati...

In February 2021, I was interviewed by Jackson Elliott for The Roys Report for Part Two of "On Leading Well," a series on leading well in the church. I shared several lessons learned from my time serving as an elder at Harvest Bible Chapel. You can listen to that interview here:  On Leading Well: Part Two  or on The Roys Report podcast.

Just when you thought 2020 was something, the first full week of 2021 brought things we have never seen before and never want to see again. The reaction has been very strong outrage. What the authors of The Coddling of the American Mind  call the polarization spiral is spinning faster and winding tighter. Liberals are screaming at conservatives for whatever evils they attribute to President Trump. Conservatives are screaming that the election was stolen. Sadly it isn't any better in the church, among Jesus' followers in America. Just read Twitter. The demands for apologies and acknowledging being wrong for voting for President Trump are everywhere. The "other side" cannot believe a Christ follower would vote for anyone who backs abortion, etc. Instead of looking for who to blame for ________, Christians in America -- ALL who call on the name of Jesus -- need to repent. (The people who breached the US Capitol January 6 need to be identified and held to account through...