Pastor's Pen

Pastor Art Dykstra
Weaponized Empathy and Compassion
August 29th, 2025
Weaponized Empathy and Compassion: A Biblical Christian PerspectiveWe live in a world increasingly shaped by emotion.  I often see well-meaning and “good” people go sideways in what they stand for and I can’t help but think what a brilliant deception it is to weaponize empathy and compassion.  Especially amongst my “tribe”. However, Christians are called to discern the difference between genuine c...
Human Flourishing and Sexuality
August 28th, 2025
Do Moral Rules Really Protect Us? What History Says About Sex, Culture, and CollapseI read this fascinating paper based on a massive book written back in the 1930s.  An Oxford anthropologist named J.D. Unwin studied 86 different civilizations and asked a simple but profound question: Does sexual freedom affect how cultures rise and fall? His book Sex and Culture is over 600 pages, but his findings...
The Rapture is coming
August 28th, 2025
Picture this: God sets a divine calendar with seven spectacular feasts, each a dazzling rehearsal for His grand redemptive story. In fact, these “appointed times” literally mean “dress rehearsals”. So, in a sense, in a premillennial dispensational view, these Feasts of the Lord (Leviticus 23) are like cosmic Post-it notes, reminding us of His perfect plan.Imagine the Feasts of the Lord as a divine...
How to do sermon prep
August 21st, 2025
So here is how I start:Immerse in the TextSunday night, I read the passage (e.g., Proverbs 4:1-7) multiple times without a goal, just to let it sink in and feel familiar.Pray for GuidanceEarly Monday or Wednesday, I pray in the sanctuary, asking the Holy Spirit what He wants to teach His people through the text. This aligns my heart with God’s.Analyze the PassageReread with purpose to grasp contex...