Mike Westendorf

Does anyone else have a hard time sleeping after the time change? Well I couldn't sleep last night and part of it has to do with an experience talking about Romans 8:28 that I'd like to share with you.

I was recently given the opportunity to put together a chapel message for our school of K4 through 8th graders and was given the challenging assignment - help…

It had been a challenging Tuesday. Good healthy wrestling at work on some future planning, the anticipation of Awake and Alive 2024, the concern about a big snow storm, an encouragement from a 14 year old... and then the text. "Prayers for Adam please, he is very sick". Many of you know Adam and have followed this journey, but that text was from the ER where he had been diagnosed with Strep, the Flu,…

In my work with young adults, I've been wrestling with the realities and challenges of children transitioning to independence. This is quite the process that involves major challenges to our identity, meaning and purpose.

The apostle Paul writes this in 1 Corinthians 13 - "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." As we grow up, our identity is no longer rooted primarily in the family or friend/high…

The Battle Between Capability and Capacity 

I have been doing some studying on a personality test called the Enneagram. Finding I am a 2 on the Enneagram was somewhat liberating, but also a bit like getting splashed with cold water. Called "The Helper" I learned that while I am healthy I am positive and people oriented and a great asset for building community, I am motivated by pride and have an unconscious motivation of being needed. People Pleaser? Yeah... that's me. 

Over the past several weeks, stress…

"On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then... they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts..." - Matthew 2:11 

THEN... 

A few weeks before Christmas as I was preparing to play my first concert in 9 months I remembered why I love the story of the Wisemen so much. It has to do with that word THEN. As a worship leader I've heard it said that worship is about hearing, or about seeing, or about responding. Those are all parts of that I…

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 dumb…