John VanDuzer

All Posts by — John VanDuzer

Armando’s Envelopes

“Fail to plan, plan to fail,” the old adage goes. Most of us don’t plan—don’t begin to budget—so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’s often not enough month left at the end of the money. My wife and I have found it a real blessing to be guided in our financial affairs by […]

Sometimes you can never have too much

I eat too much / I drink too much / I want too much / Too much…  I love the Dave Matthews Band and their video for their hit song “Too Much” (1996) remains delicious all these years later. Watch it (and dance like Dave if the kids aren’t watching)

How much will it take to make you happy? Research proves $75,000 oughta do it

Cool findings from PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America). And thanks to Meredith Thompson for telling me about this. Recent research has begun to distinguish two aspects of subjective well-being. Emotional well-being refers to the emotional quality of an individual’s everyday experience—the frequency and intensity of experiences […]

Closing time?

Have you noticed how many mainline churches have closed their doors due to declining numbers? Older members are dying and the churches are dying right along with them. But such a fate isn’t unique to churches, no. Social service groups like Kiwanis, Lions, Shriners, Soroptimists, Rotary and others like them are really struggling, too. For […]

Occupy this notion

I’m not one to play dumb. Yeah, I know that the Occupy Movement was targeting the richest of the rich; the top 1% of income earners compared to the other so called 99 percent. Sure, I think CEO salaries are outrageous (“Top Canadian CEOs earn annual worker’s salary by lunchtime on Jan. 2” was the […]

From Chapter Eight, Who Are You?:

Pastor Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill Church, Seattle) explains how Christianity is NOT a Religion: “The way to be right with God in every religion is by earning your way.  It is based on works, not grace.  Christianity is different from every religion in this aspect: all other religions (including Mormonism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism) state that you […]