A Bondservant's Musings

Friday afternoon I sat on an exam table at my pain management doctor's office as he gave me 31 Botox injections in key spots in my head (including between my eyes which was fun), my neck and my shoulders. It was the latest step to combat chronic headaches that I have now been battling for fifteen months. I should know later today or tomorrow if the shots are helpful for me. The Botox shots follow a rule of three - three days to take effect, three weeks for full efficacy, and the effect typically lasts three months.  For some reason I am more anxious about the results of the Botox shots than other steps we have taken to try to combat these headaches. I say we because my wife, Kim, is right beside me in this whole trial. She is affected as I have had a headache on average more than two out of every three days for the last year and a quarter. Often those headaches are severe enough that I need to take rescue meds and sleep a few hours. When I was at thirteen months I calculated that I...

Today marks exactly thirteen months since an episode I still do not fully understand landed me in the ER. Since then, I have suffered nearly daily headaches. More accurately, I have battled a headache severe enough to require me to take some sort of abortive action somewhere around 60% of the days over the last thirteen months. The majority of the time that means taking a rescue medication often accompanied by an anti-nausea medication, putting an ice pack on my neck, another ice pack over my eyes and head, and sleeping for 2-3 hours in a dark room. Some days I go back to sleep again later the same day. By my rough approximation, I have slept the equivalent of nearly a full month of days of extra time over the last year trying to fight off these headaches. This journey has already taken me places I had never been and places I did not know existed. Of course there is a complicated physical aspect to these headaches. I have worked with my primary care provider, a neurologist, pain manage...

It was a mid May Saturday morning in Madison, Wisconsin in 1980-something as Adam Goldberg would say at the beginning of an episode of "The Goldbergs." While that works well for storytelling on television and basing an episode loosely on real events, I remember exactly what day it was. This was Saturday, May 12, 1984. My girlfriend, Kim - now my wife of nearly 38 years, and I were figuring out what we might do that day. Whatever we were going to do, it would start with going out for breakfast, perhaps to Mickey's Dairy Bar, and eventually move to studying. Finals would start the next day. It was my second semester senior year, her second semester sophomore year. My younger brother, Tom, nineteen months younger than me, two years behind me in school and the youngest of five children, was also a sophomore, all of us at the University of Wisconsin (UW to its alumni) in Madison. A few days of tests were between them and summer. A few days were between me and college graduatio...

If you have been following my journey since late October (you can catch up on the early days here:  A Journey to I Don't Know Where ), you know I have been battling severe headaches daily since then. I say battling, because it makes me feel better. For the most part, the headaches are winning.  For nearly eight weeks, I have not been able to read without triggering a headache. My quiet times have been listening to the Bible. I have not been able to concentrate without triggering a headache. I have had to slow down my coaching business. I have had to stop almost all ministry with FCA. I am blessed that the Lee County FCA Director and the Southwest Florida FCA Director have allowed me to focus on my health. Anyone who knows me knows how social I am. For these past 7-1/2 weeks, being around a group of people for even fifteen minutes triggers a headache. Kim can see it in me. She just looks at me and says so no one else can hear, "You don't feel good. Do you?" She and I h...

Over the last year, I have dealt with morning headaches on a periodic basis. These headaches come up my neck and wrap around my head. They made me feel nauseous and were often bad enough that once I felt them coming on, I would look at my wife and tell her I was going back to bed. Twenty to thirty minutes of sleep later, the headache typically had dulled enough that I could function. I worked with my nurse practitioner to try to find a cause. I even kept a sleep journal for a while. But we have to date been unable to find a likely cause. You might ask, "So, what? Why are you writing about this?" Because everything ramped up late last week. The ramp has been steep and fast. I was at an appointment Thursday morning with my nurse practitioner, who is our primary care provider. She is wonderful. She truly cares about her patients. You never feel hurried in an appointment with Elizabeth. It was a follow-up on sleep issues I have dealt with for decades - restless legs, periodic lim...

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...

In late November 2020, I conducted my second interview on what really happened in late January and February 2019 in James MacDonald's last days at Harvest Bible Chapel. I talked with host Julie Roys on The Roys Report. You can listen here: https://julieroys.com/podcast/harvest-insider-tells-what-really-happened-with-james-macdonald/ 

On Saturday, October 17, 2020, I conducted my first interview on the Harvest Bible Chapel and James MacDonald saga and my story. I talked with host Linda Penn on Today's Living Hope. Our interview is the second hour of the show. You can listen at TLH Recalibrating Vertical_Getting It Right in the Church

Recently, James MacDonald started a 40-day “devotional” video series leading up to a re-launch into "ministry." He started this series exactly one year to the day that the elders of Harvest Bible Chapel fired him for cause. If you know James MacDonald, you know starting his “devotional” on February 12, 2020 was intentional. If you don’t know James MacDonald, you need to know starting on that date was intentional.  The verse MacDonald used in his February 9 Facebook page teaser post caught my attention : … for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries. (1 Corinthians 16:9 ESV) By using this verse and including the second half of the verse, MacDonald hopes to position anyone opposing his return to “ministry” as adversaries. MacDonald regularly portrays himself as under attack or as the victim. He is doing his best to weaponize Scripture here. If you know MacDonald you may share my skepticism. You may share my concern as you see hi...