Where's the Good Stuff this week?

Friday 1/30/26 roundup of what I've discovered on Substack

Jan 30, 2026

‘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

‘Jesus. Jesus. Jesus’ by Thea Curry-Fuson. ‘Jesus rarely does what I think he should do. Instead, Jesus goes, following the haters that more recently shouted in opposition than worshiped at his feet.’
‘The Priority of Preaching’ by Mike Turner. ‘…the preacher is one who announces what God’s Word reveals about his character; his actions through history, culminating in the life, death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus; and his providential control of all of creation, up to and including the judgment that he will one day exercise over each one of us.’

Church stuff

‘What makes this work so hard is why this space exists’ by Loren Richmond Jr. ‘Ministry does not scale cleanly into fractions. A 1/2 or 3/4 role still carries full-time emotional, cognitive, and relational demands. Schedules are inflexible. Emergencies don’t respect job descriptions. And the remaining income often has to be earned in work entirely outside one’s specialty. What looks like flexibility on paper becomes precarity in practice.’
‘The Sunday Worship Scandal No One Wants to Talk About’ by Kenneth B. ‘The question remains, simple and stubborn: does it matter how we worship? And if it matters, does it matter only in the sense of personal taste, or in the deeper sense of obedience?’

Other stuff

‘Pep Talk’ by Maggie Smith. ‘It’s hard to write, feeling like you’re bringing a pen to a gunfight. But can poems remind us of our humanity? I think they can, and I think we desperately need a reminder.’
‘My Fashion Era’ by Tyler Hill. ‘ … maybe that’s the invitation for all of us. To stop hiding the parts that once felt dangerous. To trust that what is truly us is not a threat to love, holiness, or belonging, but the very place where they begin.’

What I wrote this week:

‘The message about the cross is foolishness.’ ‘Sometimes, being a Christian can make us feel helpless. But if we can stand to bear these moments, if we can be there without being able to fix them and without moving away, we will find that something, something we don’t really know is there for us, moving us forward, leading us towards the light, bringing us home.’
‘Hearts up! Where the Practice comes from.’ ‘It’s pre-denominational. virtually every Christian tradition retained the Sursum Corda, even when they disagreed on everything else.’

And finally…

This is what I call “The Iron Law of Church Growth.” If you have a bunch of gray-haired folks and not many kids, it’s almost impossible to pull out of that death spiral.