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Today in our worship gatherings, we announced that we are both receiving parental leave upon our return from Korea, where we will pick up our adopted son. Here’s the announcement … News About Randy & Joleen’s Parental Leave As you know, we are adopting a baby boy from Korea. We expect to travel to Korea … Read more
Regular readers of our blog will know that we are thinking a lot about parenting these days as we prepare to bring Ethan home from Korea. Part of our thinking recently has been about how best to pray for him — now and in the years to come! Randy recently posted several prayers for the … Read more
At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the miracle of the coming of God in human form. Jesus declared, “I am the light of the world” (John 8.12). The world in which we live can be a dark place. It doesn’t matter who you are, you face darkness in some way. It may … Read more
Over the course of the last several weeks, we have both conducted field research for our dissertation work. Between us, our travels have taken across Pennsylvania, as well as to New York and Ohio. In our last D.Min. update, we announced our topics. Joleen is studying integrated small groups and Randy is studying how leader/communicators … Read more
After a lot of deliberation, we have finally settled on a name for Baby Willis. That’s a good thing, because as someone pointed out to us, he probably wouldn’t want to be called Baby Willis forever. 🙂 Anyway, his name will be called: Ethan Quinn. The photo here was taken when he was almost 5 … Read more
One of the best things you can do is to learn from other people’s experiences, including their mistakes. Learning from others and their mistakes is certainly a good and necessary habit for leaders. Someone put it this way … Learn from the mistakes of others — you can never live long enough to make them … Read more
Do you ever need God’s direction for your life? More than a decade ago, I started collecting prayers in the Scriptures where the pray-er asks God for help on the journey of life. I started this collection at a time when Joleen and I really needed God’s direction in our lives and ministries. Show me … Read more
What kind of culture or environment do we want to create for our child? That’s the question we’re asking ourselves as we prepare for parenthood. So far, we’ve talked about cultivating a God-centered culture. Another component of the culture we want to create is a learning culture. We believe that all of life is a … Read more
I recently came across the following prayer from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (edited by Arthur Bennett). The language is a bit archaic, but the spirit of the prayer is relevant. O GOD, I know that I often do Thy work without Thy power, and sin by my dead, … Read more