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Showing posts from September, 2025

Every Piece Matters: Placed by God. Needed in the Body.

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  by Bart Denny A reflection on 1 Corinthians 12:12–27 (adapted from a sermon preached at Pathway Church in Saranac, Michigan on May 3 and available here ). Here's something I've never quite admitted out loud. There have been moments in my life — in ministry, even — where I quietly wondered if I actually mattered. Not in a dramatic, crisis-of-faith kind of way. It was subtler than that. I'd look around and think, Someone else could do this better than me. Maybe I'm not really that necessary here. I wouldn't have said it out loud. But the thought was there — that quiet assumption that if I stayed on the edges, if I didn't fully engage, everything would probably still be fine. Someone more gifted would pick it up. Someone more visible would carry it. I could just… hang back. And if I'm honest, most of the time that didn't come from laziness. It came from comparison. From not being sure that what I brought really made much of a difference. From finding it e...

When Civility Fails: A Pastor’s Response to Violence, Rage, and the Hard Work of Truth

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  by Bart L. Denny, Ph.D. Introduction — Why I must speak I have been reflecting on recent events in our nation and wrestling with how best to speak into them. As a follower of Jesus Christ and as a pastor, I believe my calling is to shed more light than heat in times of turmoil, and to offer the seasoning of grace in a culture that often tastes bitter. This will not be an exercise in soft-peddling. It will be frank, pastoral, and, where necessary, unflinching. Somewhere, this post will fail to address a consideration that it might have spoken to. I own it, saying in my defense only that space prevents my discussing everything that might be said on a subject and my views on it. Yet undoubtedly, this will cover more ground than most newspaper op-ed articles. Some readers may focus on one thing I say in the post without taking the entirety of what I said here in context. I pray you won't. But I resign myself to the likelihood some will. What I saw this past week I saw a young...