Author: Jon Gauger

Last night I dreamed a horrible dream.  It has haunted me to the point where I can no longer delay sharing it.  Understand that I am not a prophet, nor do I claim to have the biblical gift of prophecy.  But…this is my dream. I was in my own town.  Familiar streets and places.  Yet I was very far away.  It seemed like evening, but I couldn’t really tell. The sky was dark, but not black.  More of a strange gray greenish color. As I walked around, I was surrounded by violence—and its evidence.  Broken things.  Broken relationships.  People using…

Let me just come right out and say it: I believe there’s a problem with prayer meeting. Not in all churches.  But in most churches I’ve been in.  And possibly in your church, as well. The problem is this.  We have allowed our prayer times to become disproportionately dominated by health concerns.  We pray for sick people—as we ought—but to the point of minimizing other critical issues: revival, repentance, the salvation of lost people.  Some of these elements are present in some prayer meetings…but they get a comparatively small piece of the prayer pie. I’m all for praying for the…

And now a few words in defense of Pastors.  Already I can see the raised eyebrows of my listeners.  "What do you mean–in defense of pastors?"  It's my careful observation–over a couple of decades now–that most pastors really COULD use a little defense.  So given the fact that October is Pastor Appreciation Month, I thought I'd try to get you to appreciate your pastor a bit more.  About the only way to do that is to address some common misconceptions people have about pastors.  Misconception #1  Everybody fauns all over the pastor.  He gets all the affirmation in the world.  …

Funny thing about getting a hole in your blue jeans.  You rarely notice the start of the thing.  A small frayed area becomes a little hole.  The little hole becomes a big hole.  And then the jeans are not terribly useful. In my opinion, that’s a metaphor for the state of today’s Christian music. I stumbled on to the problem when trying to find songs that would match a series of devotionals I was doing.  You can find tons of songs that “Wanna praise the Lord.  Wanna praise the Lord.  Yeah.  Yeah. Yuh-yeah…Wanna praise the Lord.” But the moment you…

As I write this, directly behind me in my office is a small round table.  On it is a sheet of white paper—the visible evidence of a visit from three year old Joslynn Jaeger.  The paper is festooned with an arc of seven bright orange stickers. Also on that sheet of paper, tiny crumbs of dried out play dough.  She and her “Grandma Di-Di” made two cats—one yellow, one black. They are, alas, both disassembled and back in their respective plastic cans.  Yet the evidence of Joslynn’s visit is still present.  Underneath the first paper is another, bearing a partial…