As I share this update I am just setting off to begin the project I have titled Worship Round the World. The premise of Worship Round the World is that I will visit 12 different churches in 12 very different places to get to know those congregations and to join them for a Sunday service. Each of these churches will worship in a way that is consistent with Scripture, yet also faithful to the local language, customs, and culture. In this way each worship service will be unique yet distinctly biblical. I will be making the journey with my friend Tim Keesee.

This was a project I dreamed up a few years ago and fundraised for in 2019. I had intended to set out in 2020, but then the world slammed shut because of the pandemic and is only now getting back anywhere near to normal. If all goes well, the great majority of the travel will take place by the end of this year. In 2024 we will produce a book and video series based on all we saw and experienced. Our great hope is that it will encourage us all to praise God for what he is doing each and every Sunday as his people gather together to join in a worldwide chorus of praise to his name.
While we very nearly reached our fundraising goal in 2019, travel costs have increased substantially since then and we know we will fall short. If that sounds like something that would interest you, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the project through Frontline Missions. (Click and then scroll to the bottom of that page.)
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In other news, I have a new site design that will be launching in the days ahead. This is a huge project that has been underway for some time now. When it launches you will quickly see that things look a lot different, but I hope you’ll also find that things function better. I’m sure there will be some initial bugs and errors, so please just bear with me through those. I’ll have more to say about this project soon.
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Last month I undertook what I think may prove one of the most difficult things I have ever done: I changed my keyboard layout. I learned to type, as you did, on a keyboard with a standard QWERTY layout. In fact, I learned on an actual manual typewriter back in ninth grade, the teacher tapping a yardstick while together we rhythmically chanted (and typed) “A … S … D … F … G … H … J … K … L … semi.” I learned well and have been able to type at nearly 100 words per minute ever since with almost perfect accuracy. Yet it is now well-known that while the QWERTY layout may have made sense for typewriters it doesn’t make as much sense for computers. And it has the unfortunate problem of putting the most-used keys in some of the most awkward spots—spots that often require stretching the weakest fingers. I deal with significant pain when typing and, having exhausted most other solutions, decided it was time to take this radical step. 
I researched the different options and landed on Colemak (in the “DH” variant for those who follow such things). It has been extremely difficult to overcome 30+ years of muscle memory but bit-by-bit I am getting it and my typing speed and accuracy are slowly recovering. I expect it will be ages before I am back to my old speeds, but I am, at least, getting closer to being able to type at the speed of my thoughts. I am also correcting some bad typing habits and forcing myself to strike the right keys with the right fingers.
I probably didn’t help my cause a lot by also changing to a new keyboard at the same time. I picked up the strangely-named and strangely-shaped Moonlander which offers some very helpful functions, such as a way to eliminate the shift keys (thus mitigating a lot of wear and tear on pinky fingers). Anyway, the whole process has been extremely difficult and frustrating, but I am hopeful the results will be good in the end—and that eventually my brain will clue in to where the “d” key now is, since that’s the one that continues to torment me the most.
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As for the family, all is well, I think. Abby is into the second semester of her junior year at Boyce College while her husband Nate is working full time and taking classes online through The Master’s University as he works toward finishing up his degree in business. Michaela is pressing on in her final year of high school and looking forward to beginning at Boyce in August. Ryn is working full time at a coffee shop in Louisville while also auditing some classes at Southern Seminary. Aileen is still enjoying her job as a personal assistant for a neighbor who works in real estate. The Lord continues to bless us in so many ways and we continue to wish only that we might honor and serve him.

Joni Eareckson Tada has had a long and faithful ministry. I expect you are familiar with the basic outline of her story—how in 1967, when she was just 17 years old, she was involved in a diving accident that left her paralyzed. In the initial stages of her recovery she stewed in sorrow and self-pity and for a time sank into depths of darkness, despair, and depression. But over time she became convicted that her condition was God’s will. God did not mean for her to resent it, but to accept it, to embrace it, and to use it.

Though at first tempted to believe her great sorrow marked the end of her service to God, it actually proved to be the opening chapter of it. It spurred her to found Joni and Friends, a ministry that, for 45 years, has been serving people with disabilities. She has written a number of books, spoken before millions, and led many to Christ. She has been a blessing and inspiration to so many people for so many years.
But for all she has done publicly, I suspect her greatest impact may be through personal interactions. I have encountered many people who can tell stories of her words of kindness and acts of love—how she ministered to them when they were in times of distress. I am thankful that on a few occasions she has reached out to be a blessing and encouragement to me and that she was willing to write some kind words about Seasons of Sorrow. But let me tell you what means even more than her direct involvement in my own life.
In 1965 my aunt Nancy committed suicide after a long battle with mental illness. My grandfather was a Supreme Court judge who was prominent in Montreal, so her death became quite public. The musician Leonard Cohen, who had been part of Nancy’s circle of friends, wrote a popular song about her, and he and others blamed my grandfather for her death. There was shame heaped upon him and upon the family. Eventually, my grandfather also took his own life. This one little family had now suffered two huge tragedies.
Yet in all that pain God reached out and saved the unlikeliest of converts—my dad. And through my dad he saved my mom and several of my aunts and uncles. He also saved my grandmother. But those severe losses had, of course, left her scarred and devastated. And though her faith was genuine, she was involved in churches that offered few compelling answers to life’s big sorrows.
She was still quite a new and unseasoned Christian when she heard of a young lady named Joni who had written a bestselling book and whose story was now being told in a film. My grandmother decided to write Joni a letter to describe her circumstances and to express her distress and confusion. Maybe this young lady would understand. Maybe she would even return her letter and offer some sympathy and guidance.
And, sure enough, Joni did reply to her. In a lengthy and heartfelt letter, she encouraged my grandmother. She helped her. She blessed her. She drew her attention to the Lord. In the few years that remained to my grandmother, she often told what a blessing Joni had been to her.
I thought of this recently when focusing on Paul’s words in Philippians 3 where he instructs Christians to press on with a single-minded devotion. “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” he uses the metaphor of a race to tell believers to press on toward the goal—the goal that is the presence of Jesus Christ. And in that light, consider this: All the way back in the early 1980s, Joni ministered to my grandmother after the loss of her daughter. Forty years later, she ministered to me after the loss of my son. (And, of course, until I wrote these words, she would have had no idea of the connection…)
And this is what I so love and respect about Joni. For all these years she has been single-mindedly pressing on toward the goal and it’s clear that she does not intend to stop until she reaches it. There’s a stirring beauty in the fact that she is pressing on in a wheelchair, pressing on with a broken and weakening body, but a strong and growing faith. And she loves to tell people that when she reaches the goal and sees Jesus, she will finally leap to her feet, only to immediately fall on her knees to worship him—to worship the one she has been pressing toward all these years. What a day and what a moment that will be!

Blessings to you, my friends.

(Yesterday on the blog: Are We Performing or Are We Participating?)
One Month After the Roe Leak: Reflections on the Supreme Court’s Draft Opinion
Though we saw many hot takes on that leaked draft of the majority opinion of the Supreme Court, Steven Wedgeworth waited a month to offer some slightly more mature reflections.
Expressive Individualism and the Death of Mental “Illness”
“Everyone who knows anything at all knows you must never attribute someone’s character or behavior to their identity. It is universally agreed in polite society that no person is ever good or bad at something because of their gender, or their race, their family, sexuality, etc. To indulge in this reasoning is at best a crude stereotype, at worst an expression of flagrant bigotry.” Or that’s what we’ve been led to believe…
Why the Promise that Jesus Will Build His Church Does Not Mean He Will Necessarily Build My Church
This is a key distinction.
Beware the Free Steak Dinner and Financial Advice Retirement Seminar
“I recently received another one: an invitation in the mail to a ‘free dinner and retirement discussion.’” I am starting to get those too! Chris Cagle tells what they are about (though from a distinctly US-based perspective).
Letters from Lockdown: A Shanghai Pastor on Pandemics and Persecutions
“Though the church I serve in Shanghai still rents a physical space for worship, for many weeks it seemed useless. As much of the world—and many of the churches in it—moved on from strict pandemic protocols, a viral uptick here kept many Chinese Christians in an extended lockdown.” I was challenged by this one.
Embodied Discernment: Learning to Discern with Our Minds, Hearts, and Actions
“If discernment is a spiritual gift, you’ve got it. You never turn off your discerning brain—it’s always engaged and evaluating the words you read, hear, and sing. You have a stack of theology books on your desk and a tattered, marked up Bible. Whenever a theology question comes up during Bible study, all heads turn to you.” This is all good, but it comes with certain temptations.
Flashback: Could You Use Some Joy Today?
But we do not need to be Christians for long before we learn that the greatest joy connected to wealth does not come from gaining but from giving…Where we tend to associate joy with how much we get, higher joy comes from how freely we give.

Reading the Bible isn’t just reading words on a page but listening to one who loves us more than life itself, and who has a very clear agenda for our lives and our world. —Gary Millar