Today, my daughter Bridgy was an altar server for the first time. I posted a picture on Instagram to commemorate the occasion. Church has been a part of my life since before I was born. The older I get, the more I enjoy it, but I still get nostalgic for the past. I...
My friends at Bonita Park Campground posted this long lost picture of my parents and me on their Facebook page. I attended Nazarene church camp at Bonita Park in 4th and 5th grade. I am so happy to have this picture!
I was 10-years-old and life unfolded like laundry on a line. We were sheets baked in the wind, our dreams heavy like wet, pilling blankets pinned to a wire. I was pulled taut between two poles, my mother, my father. Fastened in 15 different places -- to shame and...
Members of Generation X (b. 1961-81) who were raised in typical, conservative, Evangelical churches in the late 60s and 70s (especially older Xers), grew up on a steady diet of rapture sermons, songs, and even film. I was born in 1967, and somewhere between three and...
The Kermit Church of the Nazarene, located in a small town in West Texas, closed several years ago. My father pastored there between 1976-78. One night during a revival service, the visiting evangelist's wife sang a special. She sang in a hilarious nasal falsetto and...
Yesterday, I caught an interview (taped March 31, 2009) with John Cougar Mellencamp on National Public Radio in which he talks about how he was raised in the Church of the Nazarene. My brother shared this fact with me several years ago, but I had totally forgotten...
There’s a church in the valley by the wildwood, No lovelier spot in the dale; No place is so dear to my childhood, As the little brown church in the vale. --William S. Pitts, 1857 Growing Up Nazarene When I was little, growing up Nazarene in humble parsonages across...
Some little girl’s are enamored with their mother’s dresser, but it was my father’s dresser that held all the wonder and mystery that could hold a young girl's attention and curiosity. It was always a mess with little pieces of paper and sermon notes; receipts from...