Mid-year 'Good Stuff' roundup (part 1)

It's summer, I'm out of town, and I'm sifting through my favorite Substack articles (so far) this year

Jul 03, 2026

It’s the 4th of July weekend. Then I’m off on retreat.

So I thought this would be a good time to look back on my favorite ‘Good Stuff’ articles so far this year, curate them for you, and set them to publish while I’m gone.

So that’s what I’m doing!

These next few Fridays - July 3, 10, and 17, I’m sharing 10 of my favorite articles from past ‘Good Stuff’ Friday blogs.

I can’t tell you how hard it is to narrow them down to just 30 articles (plus one of my own each week). There is SO much good writing about the church, life with God, and how to live a meaningful life. And running. And other random things.

It will be hard to miss a bunch of writing during these weeks, too - I’ll mostly be off-line. But I’ll spend some extra time working on it when I come back.

In the meantime, enjoy the first 10 articles, from January 9 - March 6, 2026. I sure enjoyed reading them again…

My Mom Died Well - Here’s What that Taught Me

by Ray Kennedy Wisdom-in-Progress

‘A good death isn’t defined in the final hours. It’s built — day by day, year by year — in the living that comes before it.’

How far back in time can you understand English?

by Colin Gorrie
’It’s a thousand years of the English language, compressed into a single blog post.

Read it and notice where you start to struggle. Notice where you give up entirely. Then meet me on the other side and I’ll tell you what happened to the language (and the blogger).’

Invoking the Lord

by Chad Brooks

‘We can’t worship what we don’t know. What we are invoking are the actions the Lord reveals to us.

So chew on that.’

To Fill the Church with Wonder

by Mike Turner

‘My mind told me the unusual lighting effect was achieved through water droplets reflecting ground light, magnified by the season’s peculiar atmospheric conditions.

My heart, though, responded differently.’

My Best Friends Are Endurance Athletes

by Mark Allen

‘People sometimes joke that triathlon friendships are bonded by suffering. There’s truth in that, but I think it’s deeper: we’re bonded by chosen suffering.

This Is Not Ministry

by Bo Pritchard

‘Ministry becomes programmatic. Not because programs are inherently evil, but because programs, by their structure, cannot be relational in the way the New Testament describes’

The School of Adulting

by Scot McKnight

‘One of the hidden geniuses of a healthy church body is young people learn how to be adults from men and women who have figured out a lot of things about how to live a life that matters’

Why Replicate When You Can Reimagine?

by Jim Keat

‘It’s one thing to copy-and-paste Sunday morning onto a screen. It’s another to cultivate worship that is native to the space where it’s happening.’

Seeing the deer

by Diane Roth

‘I love to watch them leap. But I love to watch them standing still as well. The stillness between us seems like an unspoken prayer. What is my prayer? Perhaps it is, “please let me get a little closer.” Or, “let this moment last.” Perhaps it is just the wonder, the “now” of it.’

Christianity as vocation

by Janette Parker Platter

‘But he also shared his conviction that all Christians are called by God to do good in the world. I said, “Yes! That is our baptismal covenant!” which is the real sign I’ve been deep in the weeds of Episcopal ordination exams. One does not usually just say “baptismal covenant” in the wild to non-Episcopalians. (But maybe we should!)’

Here’s one thing I wrote..

Fasting as a ‘weapon of love’

‘Fasting is our call to spiritual endurance training. To hearing God’s voice, and nothing else. To remembering our dependence on God, and our preparation for standing on holy ground.’

and finally…