I’m writing this one week into what promises to be one of the most bizarre seasons of our lives. One week ago here in Illinois, the governor’s stay-at-home order went active, and since then the majority of us have been acclimating to new rhythms of working from home. For those of us who spent our days at work in the church, suddenly our lives have become full of Zoom meetings and wrestling with what ministry looks like when you cannot be with people in person. This week has been interesting to me. It’s been fascinating to watch churches all over scramble and avalanche my newsfeed with invitat ..read more

Up until this point in our story, you have only heard my (Cassie’s) perspective. But today, we want to share Cord’s perspective. His side of this story is really where the power of our testimony lies. We have been writing these blog posts in partnership with each other, and we see great value in bringing Cord’s voice into all of this, creating the space for him to share why he cheated in the first place and what brought him to “rock bottom”. We’ve decided to take an interview style approach. Cassie: “What was your journey into infidelity?”  Cord: “It was never my intention to cheat on m ..read more

Doris had a rare retinal disease since she was a child. This disease made her vision very cloudy and blurry, and would also put a web-like structure over her vision. She recently had Covid and everything got worse and she developed arthritis throughout her body, which is actually linked to her rare disease. This day at the conference, she could barely see. At one of the conference sessions that I was sharing, she sensed the Lord tell her, he needs to pray for you. So after one of my workshops later on, she waited over and hour to receive pray. Talk about tenacity! Me and my translator, Cami, b ..read more

The first time I saw pornography I was in middle school. It instantly became a vice to me and followed me through high school and eventually into Bible college. I was riding a constant roller coaster. I wanted to be free. But no matter how hard I would try to break my addiction, my sobriety would only last a few days until I would be back to searching for explicit content and downloading all the dating apps to talk with girls. I felt so much shame. I was studying to be a pastor. I should have had a handle on my own struggles. How was I supposed to help lead other people into freedom when I wa ..read more

Like it or not, the cultural narrative today has been largely dominated by the disruption of COVID. And to make matters all the more fun, the Church is currently experiencing yet another critical disruption within a disruption, as racial tension boils over to the likes not seen since the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and ‘60s. Needless to say, we indeed live in such a unique and historical time!  It’s this conversation on race that’s hijacked much of the Church’s attention and narrative (understandably so) as we find ways to discuss and reconcile race-related injustices, racial tension ..read more

I was standing in the kitchen close to midnight, my heart racing and temperature rising, with my own voice echoing through the house. My mother stared blankly at me, turned around, and walked out. I took a breath. I could feel the air, thick all around me. I took another breath. In the pit of my stomach, I felt this heaviness, disappointment, and regret. I thought, “I can’t believe I did that and said that. This can’t be all there is. There has to be more. I will find the more.”  What you need to know is that in college, I really started to find my voice as an activist. I was passionate ..read more

My story starts pre-Civil Rights (in the ‘40s and ‘50s), as I was raised in a middle-class white household, fairly standard, though my dad was a tavern owner (a bit of an unusual job in our suburb). I was raised around more Black people than most because my dad employed them.  My father was a non-believing Jewish man and my mother a closet Catholic—that itself was an unusual combination for the times. Besides the prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” etc, I was given no sense of the Lord or any idea that God would love all people and remained unaware of t ..read more

Growing up in a small, rural community in the Central Illinois cornfields, I had little interaction with other races and cultures. While we had two foreign exchange students from the Philippines and a few multiethnic students, my community was predominately white. As a result, I did not have an opportunity to have a conversation with a Black person until I was in 7th grade! He was the only Black adult at an all-white Christian church camp I attended in another rural community not far from mine. For the purpose of sharing this story, I will call him Sean.    Sean was kind, caring, fu ..read more

It was a rainy Texas night, and we were all tired from a full day of traveling. My family and I were returning home from one of our many family road trips. I woke from a light sleep in the back seat of our Ford Fairlane station wagon as my dad, whom I refer to as “Pops,” pulled off for a pit stop.  We pulled into a small-town bar, the only place in sight, anticipating that we would all be able to take advantage of the opportunity to stretch our legs and take a much-needed bathroom break. I watched ..read more

As the COVID-19 dust seemingly began to settle, a chilling and heartbreaking video surfaced of George Floyd being slowly strangled for eight minutes by the knee of an officer with his hands in pockets. He begged for the basic right to breathe. The words that he struggled to release that have now become symbolic and forever tattooed on our memory was a phrase that went completely ignored: “I can’t breathe.” As life was being forced out of this Christian father’s body, he even cried out for his deceased mother’s help. This was my breaking point.  I wept in front of my wife as I attempted t ..read more