There is a theology floating around out there, well-meaning, earnest, occasionally a little smug, that goes something like this: “Real church is people, not buildings. Real faith doesn’t need four walls and a mortgage. Buildings are a distraction, maybe even a spiritual liability, evidence that a congregation has gone soft on mission and started loving its own comfort a little too much.”

I see people nod along to this, the way you nod along to things that sound humble and therefore must be true. I understand the point, and I know they mean well, but you need to know I have never once nodded my agreement to any of those opening statements.

I hope to explain myself.

For early access to this work-in-process, I invite you to subscribe to my Substack called “Middle Kindling”. Link is in the blog post.

I hope this message brings deep comfort to those of you who are, like I am, “in the middle” of some long process. YES, the Lord is the God of the “suddenly”.

But He also loves to tell a long, long story. He’s with you, in your middle.

Discover what it means to administrate the covenant “in your middle” - meaning: the covenant you are under. The Gospel. With all its new covenant, new and better promises.

There's a hummingbird who flew past my studio window last week. I have’t even put out a feeder yet this year, but there he was, hovering in that impossible way they do, wings a blur.

I think about the hovering, sometimes. And I hope to make it make sense to you by the end of this post. My brain is a kaleidoscope of associations, which can often make me sound…well, “eccentric”.

Because that hummingbird made me wonder if you are already living the thing. The actual thing. The sort of life you’ve been dreaming of and saving to Pinterest boards and praying for.

Did you know that all the poets and real people have mostly left social media?

They have.

And they’ve (mostly) gone to Substack.

It’s the most non-performative space where a real exchange of ideas can still occur. And…it’s impossible to ghost people there.

It’s a place for the writer’s writer.

And so, I’ve also created a Substack for all who want to escape the cold paper-fires of Instagram. It’s called “Middle Kindling”.

Here’s your link , and here is an excerpt from my latest post there:

There is a peony on my studio table right now that has no business being this beautiful.

It is the last one of the whole year. The peonies are finished, every other bloom has come and gone, done its work, dropped its petals. But this one held on. And this week, I cut it and put it in an old amber bottle, the kind meant for something else entirely, something utilitarian and unremarkable, and set it in the middle of my art table, among the paint-stained surfaces and scattered supplies and the paper with its half-finished botanical sketch.

And I keep stopping to look at it. Not because it's the most perfect peony I've ever grown. It's actually a little ragged at the edges now, as last things often are. But there is something about the last bloom of the season, the one that arrives after you've stopped expecting anymore, that stops me in a way the first ones never quite do.