Pastor’s Blog

Check out the latest content from our pastors and elders on timely topics and relevant resources to help us grow in our faith and engage the world around us for God’s glory.  

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Teaching/Equipping Pastor Ben Keller Teaching/Equipping Pastor Ben Keller

Worship

That’s an important question, and one that members and regular attenders of Refuge Church ought to give due thought to, as well as anyone considering not just where they are planning to worship, but why…

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Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman

Fidelity Month: Praising good instead of pride

According to God’s Word, earthly government exists “to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good” (1 Peter 2:14). Unfortunately, June has long been a month where the official government declaration and celebration has inverted that godly aim, championing evil and hoisting up its rainbow-coopting flag as though it were good. However, Christian advocacy in the civic sphere has finally generated some change, as 10% of U.S. States have officially opted out of praising pride to lift up something good instead…

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Teaching/Equipping Pastor Ben Keller Teaching/Equipping Pastor Ben Keller

Paved with (Progressive) Good intentions…

From gang initiations to gas chambers, from terrorists to traffickers, humankind has always maintained that some sort of virtue or perceived good was involved in their aims, however demented. So I am not interested in the good intentions of Progressive Christians who - with regard to those under their awful "care" - effectively pour WD40 on a slip-n-slide to damnation.

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Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman

Honed for the Holidays: an ADVENT challenge

Are we going to let the holidays HAPPEN this year? Or take them captive to Christ? As the holidays approach, sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it’s a good time to consider how we are following our biblical mandates: spouses, parents, and more. Even if we aren’t married, or don’t have kids, we have relatives and others in our lives. We can ask questions…

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Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman

Celebrating a Christian Life: Bob Vanderpol

He was a fixture in the church; most can’t remember a time when Bob wasn’t there, greeting each arrival in the lobby before service, inviting them to lunch afterward. His fellow seniors were happy to see him, and the kids felt welcome too. Bob had both veterinary and missionary stories to share (and eye-rolling jokes to go with them).

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Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman

Christian DATING Resources?

A young man recently reached out to me asking for some good reading material on dating, since he’d recently started exploring a relationship with a girl at church. Frankly, when he asked me for good books on the subject I came up completely blank. But even my elders had mostly blank stares and shrugs when it came to reading material on the subject. And so…

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Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman

Sermons for Non-Christians

I’ve had that experience, sitting in a powerful message with a great preacher and thinking “my friend [INSERT] should hear that one.” Sometimes it answers a question or concept that I bungled or felt inadequate to impart to them in a previous conversation. I try to send those to them and say “here, this person said it WAY better than I did.”

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Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman Teaching/Equipping Pastor James Harleman

Halloween

It’s the time of year when leaves die and trees turn to skeletons. The garden stops providing. An evening stroll changes from bright sun and chirping birds to dark night and the howling wind. As Halloween approaches, the fact that we begin to consider death and ghost stories is not inherently pagan, it’s human.

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Sanctity of Life

I was born in 1973, in the wake and under the shadow of Roe v. Wade, to a mother who was informed I'd be deformed and told she could legally end my life in her womb. I've lived my entire life in light of this Supreme Court decision and could scarcely imagine a world where it wasn't the tragic ruling precedent.

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