Where's the Good Stuff this week?
Friday 1/16/26 roundup of what I've discovered on Substack
‘Good Stuff’ = blog posts I’ve read this week that inspired, educated, entertained, or moved me.
Which for a Free Range Priest, means reading more amazing, inspiring things about God, the church, the universe, and running.
Here’s this week’s roundup:
God stuff
‘Wake Up Dead Man’ by Kristin Du Mez. ‘… the impatience belongs to us, and to Blanc. Father Jud is remembering who he is, who Louise reminds him he is simply by assuming that is who he is. He’s a priest, after all. After that scene, things shift. It feels now that the murder mystery was a plot device for something else entirely.’
‘Behold, the Contemplated One’ by David S Harvey. ‘John, the great desert preacher, surprisingly then shows us how Christ changes him by less words not more. He is an evangelist, he is a witness, but he lives this out in the word “behold”.’
Church stuff
‘Christianity as vocation’ by Janette Parker Platter. ‘The young barista passing me my coffee said, “I am catching the vision. You have good priest vibes.”’
‘This is Not Ministry’ by Bo Pritchard. ‘When you structure relationship, you’ve created something else. You’ve created a program. And programs, by their nature, replace organic relationship with structured interaction. They replace presence with schedule, response with curriculum, mutuality with designated roles.’
Other stuff
‘My Best Friends Are Endurance Athletes’ by Mark Allen. ‘It’s because triathlon has a way of stripping away the fluff. It compresses life into a simple, honest question: What do you do when it gets hard?’
‘What your boss wishes he could tell you (If he wasn’t afraid of hurting your feelings)’. by Eric Hoke . ‘Your career growth is your responsibility.’
What I wrote this week:
‘The $135 million church building no one can use’. ‘Not even this nakedly ambitious show about nakedly ambitious people can cover up that what we do in ministry is worth more than any measure of worldly success.’
‘Bodily Prayer: Why it matters today. ‘God didn’t just save our souls. God took on human form, entered fully into the physical realm, and redeemed the whole person - the whole world. This means our bodies and souls are not separate entities. We are whole beings, made in the image of God.’
And finally…
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I always look for this post and the new additions to my reading list. Thanks for taking the time to do this. And what a nice bonus to see that passage from my post. You’re very kind. One of these days I would enjoy a discussion with you about being church in new ways. We’re trying some new stuff. We’ll see how it goes
Really appreciate these weekly roundups! The quote from the Mark Allen piece about triathlon 'stripping away the fluff' and reducing life to 'what do you do when it gets hard?' is powerfull stuff. That same principle applies way beyond endurance sports - it's exactly what good ministry does too, creating space to face real questions insted of distracting from them.