Serve by Design

As you faithful readers have certainly noted, I have been at “low power mode” for the past two weeks since the blog anniversary article. I needed to take a break from writing due to a preaching opportunity, a graveside service, two training events, and two fellowship events to support other ministries in our busy church life. It has given me a welcome opportunity to recharge spiritually and reset for the fall! "Hard to look more relaxed!" - FB Comment by Marc K. One of the training events was our annual staff retreat where we spent the day off campus in a beautiful and nearby setting at the denominational conference center. It was my third opportunity to retreat with fellow staff members and receive training and instruction in “building a volunteer culture that thrives.” The leaders were in-house, but I thought several times, “This subject is so relevant that these leaders should ‘take this on the road’ and do conferences for other churches!” The day-long training included ...

Greetings, Readers! You will notice that today’s article looks a little different from my usual musings. This is the eighth anniversary of this work in progress. It all started in August of 2018 when I asked our tech savvy son, Marc, to help me set up a blog on my personal website ( www.mjkministries.com ). At the time, I was not sure how long this effort would last or that anyone would even read what I was writing. But to my surprise, God has blessed in an incredible way! Blogger At Work! As of this writing, Serve by Design has logged over one million and ninety-one thousand pageviews since its inception. The site regularly averages 45,000 pageviews each month. This issue represents the 400 th article! I have repeated this maxim a few times over the years, “Writers need readers!” I am grateful to each of you who take the time each week to open this devotional blog, read or scan through it, and then share your reflections. You are a blessing to me! Your verbal and written interaction...

My family and I have been eating black-eyed peas with ham and corn bread on New Years Day since January 1, 1978. We had moved to Granbury, Texas, four months before and quickly began learning the culinary ways of Southerners. On that first New Years Day in the Lone Star State, some close friends invited us to dinner and introduced us to the tradition of eating black-eyed peas. We soon learned the reason behind this perceived good luck and prosperity! Photo: Compliments of our Texas son, Marc! This tradition is thought to have had its roots in the post-Civil War era when African American slaves celebrated the Emancipation Proclamation with hopes for freedom and a new beginning. While many northerners would consider black-eyed peas to be nothing more than animal feed, Southerners knew that these peas with ham hock had kept them from starvation during Sherman’s march. I cannot imagine the great suffering and loss behind the tradition that emerged from those awful days in our country’s his...

I have had some unexpected blessings this week! It’s had me thinking, “I wonder if these people have been listening to my pastor’s messages?” Just this past Sunday, Pastor Roger was encouraging the congregation to identify a person or group that we could bless this week. Then, he asked us to get specific with a plan of how to bless them with our time, expressions of comfort or encouragement, or in some monetary way. A Welcoming Spirit! image credit: vecteezy.com My blessings started when a young adult lady insisted that she hold the door open for me to enter the coffee shop. I am usually accustomed to holding doors for others! I was delighted later when this same young lady helped me interpret what the barista was saying about my order. A day later, a second blessing involved Ms. Lori, the lady in charge of the laundromat. She grabbed my comforter and large blanket from the oversized dryers and insisted that she do the folding! And a final blessing was given by Bob, a casual friend, ...

I’m excited about the future of our three eldest grandchildren who are moving into their adult years! Ben and Brady just graduated from their high schools and are headed off to college this August. Brady is attending his mother’s alma mater at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and Ben is attending Texas State University in San Marcos. Ben has chosen Biology as his major (and maybe will double it to include art!) and Brady will be majoring in Business. They are expecting to continue to work for Walmart and Lowes for the next four years as well. They are gifted, ambitious, and have some big dreams! Granddaughter Tech Support Chloe will be a junior this year. She is an A student in her home school program. Good humored and artistic in her temperament, she enjoys creating art pieces and entertaining videos for family and friends. She sings on the Delta church praise team alongside her mother. Who knows how God will use her talents in these next years? Everything is speeding by so quick...

We were there! Well, not really, but we excitedly followed the news source coverage of the Artemis 1 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this week! This launch represents a major step in NASA’s return to the Moon. The Artemis 1 Mission occurred in the early hours of Wednesday morning and was launched toward lunar orbit with the expansive Orion capsule as its payload. This twenty-six-day test run (without astronauts) was propelled to its destination by the most powerful rocket in NASA’s arsenal to-date! The launch exploded from the pad with a whopping force of 9 million pounds of thrust! A look back to the future! The Keppler’s made a return visit (our third!) to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, August 2016, when the idea of a Mars mission was beginning to gain traction. During that occasion, we had our picture taken next to a prototype of the bulbous, gum-drop shaped Orion spacecraft. This four-passenger spaceship is being designed to transport astronauts to the Moon and later, to...

I recently attended a regional equipping conference for men, titled "Iron Sharpens Iron". Ministers and laity were present. During the opening session, Dan Hyun, a church planter specialist and founding pastor of the Village Church in Baltimore, Maryland spoke about success. Hyun believes that success is measured by what comes behind us, our legacy. Therefore, he made this compelling appeal to join in the endeavor of mentoring the next generation of Christian leaders by simply saying, “Be who you needed when you were young!” Teaching and Mentoring Image credit: depositphotos.com Hyun’s comment about the lasting legacy of mentoring the next generation resonates with me. I have been committed to mentoring relationships for more than 20 years now. I didn’t plan on being a mentor when I was younger, but in my maturing, middle adult years, some of my younger peers started introducing me as their mentor. It sounded surreal at first and certainly made me feel older, but I could see ...

I have a humorous reminder of the need for true friends. It is a cartoon depicting the sad occasion of a funeral visitation. It pictures two men standing before the casket of a deceased friend and contemplating their loss. One man laments, “I don’t understand why we are the only mourners here. He had more than 500 friends on his social media account!” Now, this is not a bashing of various online connections, but it is more a celebration of the face-to-face, tried and true variety of relating that we all need. There is no substitute for this blessing! We recently returned from our annual Texas vacation where we have a network of sweet friends. It has been our practice when possible to reconnect with them each summer while visiting our son and his family. Having lived in the Lone Star State for nearly 15 years, we put down some relational roots that have been enduring. Of course, we have cultivated just as many friends living back in Illinois these past 26 years as well. The old hy...