A Guest Blog from my good friend, Pastor Aaron Kunce. 30% of people ask questions of the people around them and are persistently curious about others. They are Illuminators. The other 70% might be perfectly nice people, but they don’t ask questions. They are Diminishers.

It is no secret that leading as an outsider in York County can be a challenge. There is an unseen graveyard of outsiders who burst onto the scene and crashed and burned here.

The vast majority of us want to become better employees. Have you ever considered that one tactic toward that end is to pray for your co-workers?

Whether we like to wrestle with it or not, each of us will one day breathe our last. Our families will be left to craft a service order for our funeral and names will be assigned to speak about you.

What last word will be spoken about you?

Surely there is some person in York County whose voice is a nuisance to you.

York County has not always been the easiest place to love. Our family’s move to York in 2004 from Raleigh, North Carolina was a bit of a culture shock.

One thing we learn from the farmer is that today’s fruit tells us about yesterday’s seed. What kind of seed have we been sowing in the fields called family and community?

“Help me understand” is the kind of slow, gentle, loving language that has the power to take your relationships from where they are today to something far more rewarding and fulfilling tomorrow.

From the People You Should Know podcast: If we are honest, getting to know complete strangers can be scary. In our debut episode, we had the honor of talking with the CEO of Logos Academy and Logos Works, Aaron Anderson. He talks about networking in this episode and how if he could give people one thing it would be the ability to network and get to know people.

Go ahead and cancel me for maintaining these friendships with my neighbors. These are people God has called me to love without exceptions or excuses.

Sorry. I'm not canceling my neighbor.

Most of us feel embarrassed or ashamed of being lonely because it feels like personal inadequacy or deficiency. What if there is a darkness behind what drives us to loneliness?

The world as we have known it for the last 18 months has been a challenge in which to find a rhythm. Our old ways of doing things have been flipped upside down.

Work, school, and church life were moved to different rhythms.

As a Dad invested in the future well-being of my six kids, I confess that I am struggling to keep up with the blistering pace of technological advancement.

There are likely good reasons why a departure may be justified. Before you say “I Quit,” perhaps you should ponder if you may need a season to renew your strength.

On this Father’s Day 2021, I want to take the opportunity to honor my Dad, Ricardo James Anderson. 

His friends call him Rick. My six children call him Grandpa. I call him Dad.

How do we fully recount the influence of those men in our lives we call Dad?

We should all be deeply concerned about the fracturing of our nation. The snag in the fabric has torn all the way into local communities and houses of worship. The tear does not show any signs of slowing. 

This year was my fifth opportunity to teach personal finance to a group of seniors at Logos Academy where I serve as CEO. All of our students are required to take this class where they learn about money, budgeting, the stock market, and a bit of basic economics.

I am convinced that their most important takeaway is not how to stay out of debt or become wealthy, but rather how to find joy in a life where hardship and difficulty will be unavoidable.

Anxiety is a normal reality of life. Young people wrestle with it and so do the elderly. Women can be oppressed by vexing thoughts and so do men who might struggle to admit it. 

The middle class has to battle it, the poor are berated by worry, and even the wealthy are fearful. Anxiety is not bound to particular ethnic groups or periods of world history.

Anxiety is born of the reality that we possess little power to control the world around us. 

“Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others… but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God ‘sending us’ to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE hell unless it is nipped in the bud. “

An obnoxious donkey is blocking your way on the path to success. That beast of burden brays and bucks and you just can’t get the stubborn beast to move.

The only thing that stands between you and your goal is that obstinate donkey.

Before you go kicking and beating the donkey to move it out of your way, you better take the time to discern why the donkey is blocking your way.