Mike Westendorf

I've said it a lot. I know you have too. I want to get back to normal. A wild wild west of living from day to day, week to week, closings, openings, masks, distancing, protests, politics, elections... it is stretching all of us. Our social media and media shows just how frustrated and tired we all are. Even the strong among us have rough days. So the prayer continues to go up to the Lord (for the Christian anyway) and the wish goes up to "karma" (for the unbeliever in Jesus) I JUST WANT TO GET BACK TO…

Isaiah chapter 43 was the focus for my Awake and Alive small group a couple weeks ago, and I really appreciated the time we spent with the encouragements from God's word. Of the ones that jumped out to me, the most interesting was the verse that I selected for this months' blog. Here it is in a bit more context: 

18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 

19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.…

Last week, I was challenged as I delivered a chapel to our grade school kids at St. Paul's. The text was the passage above, and as I prepped for it, I remember back to my mom's challenges to me when I was a kid to "quit yer stinkin thinkin!" As I talked with the kids, I recounted the times stinkin' thinkin' comes into play when: 

We get a bad grade. 

We do bad in a sport. 

We get in trouble at home. 

A friend doesn't want to play with us. 

On the heels of events like these, come the voices that we are…

I get asked sometimes about why I think Christianity is different. Why Jesus is different than all of the other religious figures? What makes Jesus so profound that I would make him my world view, and it keeps coming back to the reality of Grace and the reality of Karma. 
  
Karma, probably the traditional way Americans think about it anyway, usually comes around the idea that "what goes around comes around" You get what you deserve in the end. Your good deeds must outweigh your bad deeds. In other words…

Last week I was driving my Freshman son to school and we came up to what is known to be a Looooonnnng stoplight. While he insisted that we would be late, I decided that, instead of waiting for 3 minutes to go straight, I would safely and legally turn right, turn left and turn right again and save my son 2.5 minutes and keep him on time for class. He was quite frustrated with me at first and I asked him point blank "Do you TRUST me?". And from the back seat of the car, his blunt answer was - NO!

While it was…

Do you know what a "doppelganger" is? The dictionary gives the entry of "a ghostly double or counterpart of a living person". I had never heard the word before an artist that I have a lot of respect for somehow managed to put it into a song that somehow made a lot of sense. You see, I've been coming to a realization about myself and about us as human beings. There is a part of me that I really... Really... REALLY want you to know. And there is a part of me that I really... Really... REALLY hate. I would…

I just wanted to share with you some of the changes coming up and to ask for your prayers.

I have been the Director of Operations for Innovative Weather at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee for the past 12 1/2 years, where I mentor college students in the field of meteorology. I oversee all partner relationships, develop the internship program and do life with my staff. It has been an amazing run and on October 31st I will work my last formal shift as the leader of that intern program. Before that, I was…

There are probably 3 Bible passages that find voice in the songs of this album. For the Christian, they are very familiar passages of hope in troubled times, and I hope they are treasures to you. Romans 8:28 and Jeremiah 29:11. But during a season of intense challenge and fear, it was this diamond of truth in Lamentations that God sang over me and my family. While that fear gripped us for a time, God’s patient, steady healing had begun much earlier by planting so many stories of his faithfulness in our…

Spring is my favorite time of year. I enjoy Summer's heat, the colors of Autumn, snowstorms and Christmas lights in Winter. But I LOVE seeing the earth explode with color and life (and no I don't have allergies). God reminds us of his Gospel Grace "See I make all things new!" and I just revel in the longer days, warmer nights and the way things come to life. So what about this year? In the western US, they never really got a spring. It just jumped from a wet winter to summer. But for me, my precious…

In my 7th grade confirmation class, my students have had a hard time getting their heads around what the "Gospel" is. Most of the time they'll say "It's the happy part of the Bible" or "It's found mainly in the New Testament". They're not wrong, they just aren't right.

If you're new to Christianity, the idea of translation for the word "Gospel" is "The Good News" or more specifically, "The Good Message". I honestly prefer the word "message" in our context and culture of the day because nobody reads the…