Author: thebarefootevangelist

Kids Korner: Listen for the message (December 7th)

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Read Matthew 3:1-12 with your family.

On the second and third Sundays of Advent we spend time with John the Baptist. In the Gospel of Luke, we are told Jesus and John are cousins, but there is no story telling us that in the Gospel of Matthew. If we go by what Matthew says, they two men did not know each other in person, just by reputation.

In this story John comes into Jerusalem ready to tell people about the Messiah – which means the “anointed” one, or chosen one who will rescue them from their sad situation under Roman occupation. The people who had power in the Hebrew community of Jerusalem, namely Pharisees and Sadducees, did not want John to deliver his message, so they tried to shut him down. John got really mad at them and called them a “brood of vipers”, which means a group of poisonous snakes.

John was trying to tell them that no matter how rich they were or what kind of power they had in the temple or with the Roman government, they would be judged by their behaviour and how much they follow the teachings of love and sharing that John was teaching.

John knew Jesus would be coming to teach everyone about the way God wanted them to live, and giving excuses that they worked for the temple did not matter at all.

A Voice Crying Word SearchDownload

John the Baptist Colouring PageDownload

Sunday Reflection – Advent I, November 30, 2025

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Be ready

Matthew 24 36 No one knows the day or hour. The angels in heaven don’t know, and the Son himself doesn’t know. Only the Father knows. 37  When the Son of Man appears, things will be just as they were when Noah lived. 38 People were eating, drinking, and getting married right up to the day the flood came and Noah went into the big boat. 39  They didn’t know anything was happening until the flood came and swept them all away. This is how it will be when the Son of Man appears.

40 Two men will be in the same field, but only one will be taken. The other will be left. 41 Two women will be together grinding grain, but only one will be taken. The other will be left. 42 So be on your guard! You don’t know when your Lord will come. 43  Homeowners never know when a thief is coming, and they are always on guard to keep one from breaking in. 44 Always be ready! You don’t know when the Son of Man will come.

Kids Korner: Get ready, God is coming (November 30th)

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Read Matthew 24:36-44 with your family.

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. For Christians, this is the first day of our new year. Every Christian year begins with the first Sunday in Advent, and this year we will be growing our faith by through the Gospel of Matthew.

In our story for today we are reading the warning from Jesus to pay attention and be ready for when God comes, because we do not know when it will happen.

People have tried to predict when God is returning for hundreds and hundreds of years, and they seem to ignore the part of the reading that says don’t waste your time trying to figure it out because there are no warning signs.

So what does Jesus mean about being ready?

It means do the right thing when you can. Remember how Jesus taught us to live, and try to make other people feel better about the world around them.

There is no special level we have to reach in order to be ready. God has made us enough.

Be ready word searchDownload

Be ready colouring pageDownload

Meeting God in everyday places

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I have so many conversation with folks that start with the theme “I don’t want to be part of the institutional church”. Sometimes it is because they have been hurt by the church, sometimes it is that they feel they don’t fit in or will be judged, and a lot of time it is that people see the behaviour of those who attend and realize their words say one thing but their lives and choices say another. Folks don’t want the hypocrisy.

I get it. The hypocrisy is real. That is why my work is increasingly outside the institutions. I like to call it Church Beyond Walls. The downside is the institutions have the money, so doing what I do doesn’t pay the bills. The upside is authenticity and meeting people on their spiritual journey. In fact the earliest Christian missionaries worked outside walls because those walls did not exist until Rome took over the Christian faith after 320 CE. Paul and Priscilla are just two people we read about in the Bible who spent their time outside with people, talking to and teaching them about faith in Jesus.

People talk about the church being ‘God’s House’, but in all honest the best part of our faith happens outside the walls, were the institution is not reinforced by the limits of a building.

If we sit for a minute to review our day, and put it through the lens of “spiritual encounters”, we can often see the opportunities that have presented themselves. They can be simple conversations with someone on the street, encounters at work, or family moments before the day gets hectic or afterwards when everything is winding down for the evening.

When these encounters are conversations they might be about faith, but most likely will be about something else entirely. Sometimes the spiritual moment is just watching as someone feels seen and acknowledged. This is especially true of marginalized folks like homeless people or the elderly, people who seem to fade into the background and rarely get spoken to as an equal.

Sometimes it is merely eye-contact and a smile.

And the encounter will be transformative.

We meet God in those moments where we share part of ourselves or make ourselves vulnerable. Often there is a feeling of compulsion that goes along with the moment, an urge to say or do something. I once felt a strong push to tell a young mother that she had a gentle touch with her two small children, and that it was a joy watching her. Her smile was radiant. No one had ever told her that before, and she had been wondering if she was any good at the job. We presented God for each other.

Jesus pointed out in scripture that whenever we do for someone else, we are doing for God. With that in mind, keep looking for spiritual encounters through your day. It will surprise you how many you have, and how many times you have met God in ordinary places.

Sunday Reflection – November 16, 2025

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Warnings and preparations

Luke 21 5 Some people were talking about the beautiful stones used to build the temple and about the gifts that had been placed in it. Jesus said, 6 “Do you see these stones? The time is coming when not one of them will be left in place. They will all be knocked down.”

7  Some people asked, “Teacher, when will all this happen? How can we know when these things are about to take place?”

8 Jesus replied:

Don’t be fooled by those who will come and claim to be me. They will say, “I am Christ!” and “Now is the time!” But don’t follow them. 9 When you hear about wars and riots, don’t be afraid. These things will have to happen first, but this isn’t the end.

10 Nations will go to war against one another, and kingdoms will attack each other. 11 There will be great earthquakes, and in many places people will starve to death and suffer terrible diseases. All sorts of frightening things will be seen in the sky.

12 Before all this happens, you will be arrested and punished. You will be tried in your synagogues and put in jail. Because of me you will be placed on trial before kings and governors. 13 But this will be your chance to tell about your faith.

14  Don’t worry about what you will say to defend yourselves. 15 I will give you the wisdom to know what to say. None of your enemies will be able to oppose you or to say that you are wrong. 16 You will be betrayed by your own parents, brothers, family, and friends. Some of you will even be killed. 17 Because of me, you will be hated by everyone. 18 But don’t worry! 19 You will be saved by being faithful to me.

Kids Korner: Preparation and faith (November 16th)

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Read Luke 21:5-19 with your family.

Sometimes it sounds like Jesus is predicting bad things, when in reality the writer of the story is remembering what already happened. When we hear the Gospel stories we have to remember three times in history, and think of what how the story would be heard in each time period.

  1. The time when Jesus was alive and was teaching everyone
  2. The time the writer was writing (in the case of Luke, that was around 80-90 CE, so after the Temple had been destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE)
  3. And our time so that the stories can make sense to us

This story was written after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and it is a memory of the time when Jesus had visited the Temple while it was still there.

We know because we live in the now times, that when Jesus talks about the Temple being rebuilt in three days, that he was really meaning he was the Temple, the place of worship, and he would be resurrected after three days.

But that isn’t the important part. The important part was Jesus telling his closest friends to prepare for God’s world, but don’t get distracted by the stories of disasters. Those are not signs of God doing anything, those are just things that happen in every place around the world.

What we have to prepare for is the new world, where people share what we have and take care of each other. That is what we have to be prepared for. Even if our families don’t agree with us, we have to have faith and remember Jesus’ promise of a different way of living.


Jesus makes a prediction word searchDownload

Watching the temple colouring pageDownload

Making the ordinary sacred

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Words and experiences get thrown around often without people knowing the meaning. ‘Sacred’ is one of those words. We use it in church to talk about sacraments and all the churchy stuff pastors and priests do, and that seems to make it steps removed from average folks. Even when you look the word up in the dictionary there seems a line between ‘them’ and ‘us’ when it comes to items and actions designated as ‘sacred’.

That distinction isn’t necessary, and it certainly isn’t how Jesus lived.

To make something sacred, or holy, is a choice, not a designation. The Bible is not “holy” because it is an item beyond our daily lives. It is “holy” because collectively we have decided that it is. It’s still just a book.

The same practice can be used in our regular lives, and by recognizing the ‘holy’ or ‘sacred’ in our day to day, it makes both prayer easier and it helps us feel better about mundane tasks.

One of my great spiritual inspirations is the character of Father Mulchay from the tv show M*A*S*H. One episode has him mixing cement for the floor on their operating room, and he’s singing to himself while he mixes. The look on his face shows that he is experiencing joy in the moment. He is experiencing God. He understood service was needed, no matter how messy or forgettable, and he treated it as a moment of worship.

He made that choice.

And that choice is available for all of us.

It takes only a small bit of effort to choose to make the mundane task into a moment of prayer or worship, to make it sacred, and that is something we can choose to do.

And once we do that, we can start to look around us to find other moments of the sacred. They are everywhere. Picking up something a child has dropped. Folding laundry in preparation for it to be used again. Doing dishes that will be dirtied by people having a proper meal.

All ongoing tasks are opportunities to be seen as sacred. And once we make that mental shift, the joys in life are easier to find.

Sunday Reflection – November 9, 2025

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Life after death

Luke 20 27  The Sadducees did not believe that people would rise to life after death. So some of them came to Jesus 28  and said:

Teacher, Moses wrote that if a married man dies and has no children, his brother should marry the widow. Their first son would then be thought of as the son of the dead brother.

29 There were once seven brothers. The first one married, but died without having any children. 30 The second one married his brother’s widow, and he also died without having any children. 31 The same thing happened to the third one. Finally, all seven brothers married this woman and died without having any children. 32 At last the woman died. 33 When God raises people from death, whose wife will this woman be? All seven brothers had married her.

34 Jesus answered:

The people in this world get married. 35 But in the future world no one who is worthy to rise from death will either marry 36 or die. They will be like the angels and will be God’s children, because they have been raised to life.

37  In the story about the burning bush, Moses clearly shows that people will live again. He said, “The Lord is the God worshiped by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”38 So the Lord isn’t the God of the dead, but of the living. This means that everyone is alive as far as God is concerned.

39 Some of the teachers of the Law of Moses said, “Teacher, you have given a good answer!” 40 From then on, no one dared to ask Jesus any questions.

Kids Korner: It will be different in Heaven (November 9th)

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Read Luke 20:27-40 with your family.

In the Hebrew tradition at the time when Jesus was alive and teaching 2000 years ago, there were three groups of people, three different ways of understanding what they believed. The Essenes who had a lot in common with Jesus’ followers, the Pharisees who were regular folks and challenged Jesus all the time, and the Sadducees who were from rich families and did not agree with Jesus’ teachings about God at all.

Our story today tells about a time the Sadducees challenged Jesus about a new life after death. The Essenes and Pharisees agreed with Jesus that there was something more after you died. The Sadducees did not believe in life after death. So the Sadducees tried to set Jesus up.

But once again, Jesus was ready for the Sadducees and told them that life after death looking a lot different than the life they were living.

In life after death, what we often call Heaven, everyone is alive in God and free to love each other without all the rules that divide people of this life.


Life After Death word searchDownload

Jesus and Sadducees colouring pageDownload

Being grounded in the Gospel message

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I get a lot of comments on the name I have chosen for this website. A few weeks ago I went over why I chose evangelist and barefoot, but the comments keep coming. The online ones focus on “evangelist”, and given the all too frequent negative use of that term, I am not the least bit surprised.

In real life, however, it’s the ‘barefoot’ part of worship leadership that keeps getting people’s attention. That is especially true as the weather turns colder here in Canada. Aren’t you cold, I’m asked on a regular basis. Yes… yes I am, to tell you the truth. Especially when I step outside of church after service on to the cold stones or concrete. I don’t feel it when I’m leading worship – I move around too much – but I feel it when I stop.

There is a long line of Canadian women who felt more comfortable, more approachable by performing barefoot. Women like Anne Murray, Rita MacNeil and k.d. lang all performed barefoot, and if anyone was asked today what they remember about any of these women’s performances, it would probably be that they felt real.

Although the barefoot part gets attention when I’m leading worship, I don’t do it for that purpose. It’s a fun ice breaker, arguably, but this preference tells a larger truth – my desire to be grounded in what I am doing and saying.

Making the Gospel feel real to folks living 2000 years after the writers wrote it and the people lived it, is no easy task. The differences in cultural context alone make things confusing, and reading any of the Bible thinking it all makes sense dropped into our modern culture is a recipe for disaster, no matter who tries to do it that way.

One thing we can count on once cultural and historical context is explained, is the through line of social justice. The early church was never meant to be a religion. The earliest followers of Jesus were quite at home in their Hebrew tradition, they just saw where adjustments and changes needed to happen. Their focus was not on creating structure – that came later with Rome’s take over of the faith – the focus of the first centuries was on making life better and equal for everyone.

When we read the words of the Magnificat, we have to recognize how powerful it is to hear that the powerful are brought down and the weak are raised up. There is no changing places as so many in power fear, there is merely an equaling of places in society.

By grounding ourselves in the Gospel, we can see where change needs to happen. It helps us avoid the superficiality of salvation-behaviour encouraged in so many places, and it allows us to focus on the social Gospel that Jesus preached. Change, inclusion, social equality, mutual dependence, shared abundance… those are all Gospel ideals.