I paced the first base coach’s box and watched my little boy warming up on deck. Every cell of his body reflected eager nervousness. When his turn came he stepped into the batter’s box and went through the motions he had seen others perform.
It was his first year of baseball. Every game he put in his three innings in right field which earned him a couple at-bats during each game if things went well for the team. When he was in the batters box my heart …

“It is a great advantage to a minister to commence his public life in a small village, where he can have time a quiet for study and reading: that man is wise who avails himself of that opportunity.”
-C. H. Spurgeon
All-Around Ministry
In the harvest field now ripened
There’s a work for all to do;
Hark! the voice of God is calling
To the harvest calling you.
Little is much when God is in it!
Labor not for wealth or fame.
There’s a crown – and you can win it,
If you go in Jesus’ Name.
Does the place you’re …

Would anyone out there be willing to send the poor missionary family money in large amounts so we can afford to buy some new socks for our children? We are just bare-ly clinging to life here.
Just kidding folks. We have never done better. God is so good to us. We all have plenty of nice socks with no holes. Why those girls each have their own bathroom stuffed with makeup and their own closets crammed with clothes.
Lois even has an expensive …

I started a little tradition a few years ago. We were in a department store. Lois and the girls were looking at makeup and stuff. We were trying to avoid the young women in the white coats intent on spraying us with things when an idea came to my mind that I should have resisted. I picked up a lovely sample of women’s cologne in a spay bottle and when Chuk turned away I gave him a generous shot of it in the back of …

We just returned from a weekend retreat at Camp Barakel. As always the food and fellowship at Barakel were good. I preached four times at Barakel, a total of about nine times this week. This morning we welcome a nice group of young people to the Stonebridge Newsletter from the retreat this weekend.
It was a beautiful, cold weekend up north. There were over ten inches of snow on the ground. The pines were all dressed in it. We did a little ice …

This weekend Lois and I have had all or part of five days together. That is something I am not sure we have done in twenty-five years. We enjoyed our annual Directors Meeting and Valentine Banquet at IBLP Headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. It was a treat, complete with valet parking, live classical music, a five-course meal, candles, flowers, gifts in our room, and lots of great fellowship with others who serve in our ministry.
All the way from Flint to Oak Brook Lois read the …

Aren’t naps just a luxury? I fell asleep in a big overstuffed chair in a bookstore once but the kids woke me up because I was drooling and they were embarrassed. Cats aren’t like that. They don’t embarrass their offspring when they nap. They are perrrfectly natural at it. Cats just close their eyes and drift off into sleep in the coziest positions and places. We used to have a cat who loved to curl up and nap on the hearthstone when the fire …

Pastor Larry Whiteford drove a little orange Honda. Even though he was the Senior Pastor and the founder of the church, he didn’t have a special parking place for himself. He parked at the far end of the parking lot and walked in on Sunday morning. He always arrived before anyone else. He could have parked anywhere he wanted to park.
One day he explained this unusual behavior to me. “I don’t think it’s good to take that honor upon myself. There are …

Edgar DeWitt Jones
Edgar DeWitt Jones caught my attention from the opening paragraph of his book, The Royalty of the Pulpit.
“I shall long remember the summer of 1948 at Pentwater Michigan, where I summered with my family. To be sure, one cannot easily forget the wonder of “the million-dollar sunsets” that we were privileged to see from our cottage daily, nor the whispering of the wind in the pine trees that nightly soothed us to sleep; but the circumstance that made this particular summer so unforgettable was the fact that …