Munholland Methodist Church

06/25/2026

Jordan Peterson is a Jungian psychologist who has spent decades studying myths, symbols, and moral frameworks from many cultures around the world. He was not looking for religion. He was following data — tracking what human beings, across every time and place, have consistently believed gives life meaning. What he found stopped him. Every culture — without exception — produces the same figure. Peterson calls it the Hero. The one who aims for the highest good. Who enters suffering voluntarily so others don’t have to. Who sacrifices himself because the goal is worth it. Who redeems his community because his life is spent for others. Different languages, different centuries, different continents — and always the same story underneath.

Peterson spent years resisting the obvious conclusion. He is a psychologist, not a preacher. But his own framework kept pointing the same direction. In his landmark work Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, he traces the architecture of human meaning across cultures and finds that the Hero archetype sits at the top of every human value hierarchy. And then — with what you can only describe as reluctance — he says it plainly: the Christ narrative is the fullest and most complete expression of that Hero archetype humanity has ever produced. He is talking about an archetype. The apostle Paul — a man who met Jesus on a road and spent the rest of his life following him — would say Peterson got close but missed the most important thing. “My only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me.” (Acts 20:24) Paul wasn’t following a pattern. He was following a person.

Every culture has been telling the same story because every culture carries the same deep longing — for someone who will aim high enough, suffer willingly, and give himself for others. That longing is not an accident. It is the signature of a God who planted it there. The Hero every culture has been reaching for is not a myth. He walked into history, died on a cross, and walked out of a tomb. The story underneath humanity’s hopes and longing for a Hero points to Jesus.

Who is the Hero you are following?

Blessings,
Jonathan

06/22/2026

Somewhere along the way, most adults forget the song. They sang it as children — This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine — and they meant it with the uncomplicated confidence of someone who hasn't yet learned to be embarrassed by faith. Then life happened. Doubt crept in. The gap between what they believed on Sunday and what they faced on Monday grew wide enough to feel unbridgeable. Or they simply got tired, distracted, pulled in too many directions to keep the light in the front of their minds. The song is still there. They just stopped believing they had anything worth shining. At the VBS closing last week, children stood in front of their parents and grandparents and sang it again. They had spent a week learning that Jesus is the light of the world, that He is powerful, that He is the Son of God. And then they sang about taking that light everywhere they go — not as a performance, but as a commission they didn't yet know they were receiving.

That commission is older than the song. Paul stood in the middle of Athens — a city full of people reaching for something they couldn't name, building altars to unknown gods, searching through philosophy and pleasure and principle for the thing that would finally make sense of their lives — and he named the source of the light. God made the world and everything in it, Paul told the philosophers gathered at the Areopagus. He gives everyone life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:24–25). He placed every person at their appointed time and appointed place so that they would seek Him and find Him. And then Paul did the one thing the philosophers of Athens had not done: he went to where the search was already happening and stayed there, day by day, in the marketplace, with whoever happened to be there. He let the light shine in the least convenient and least tidy places. Not just in the synagogue. In the agora.

The children who sang that song last week will forget it again someday, unless they see adults who still mean it. The people in your neighborhood who are quietly searching — who check their horoscope and try their crystals and wonder in the dark whether any of it is real — they are not waiting for a program. They are waiting for someone who carries a light that doesn't go out when the conversation gets uncomfortable. You have that light. It was planted in you. It has been tended through every dry season and every doubt. The world doesn't need you to have all the answers. It needs to see the light that still shines through you — in the carpool line, at the office, at the Mardi Gras parade, in the honest conversation at the end of a long evening with someone who is still looking.

The song hasn't changed. The world needs to see the light that shines through you.

Remember the song: ‘Everywhere I go, I’m going to let it shine. Everywhere I go, I’m going to let it shine. Everywhere I go, I’m going to let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.’

06/21/2026

06/20/2026

In 1776, Methodists made up 2.5% of religious adherents in America — the second-smallest denomination in the colonies. By 1850, that number had grown to 34.2%, making Methodism the largest religious movement in the country, with Baptists a distant second. The explanation isn't complicated, but it requires honesty about what kind of organization the early Methodist movement actually was. It wasn't an institution — a body that builds a place, establishes services, and waits for people to show up. It was a movement. The circuit riders didn't build churches and wait. They saddled up and went to crossroads, fields, town squares, and every gathering place they could find. John Wesley had given them the posture decades earlier when the Church of England closed its pulpits to him: "I look upon all the world as my parish — in whatever part of it I am, I judge it my bounden duty to declare unto all that are willing to hear the glad tidings of salvation" (John Wesley, Journal, June 11, 1739). And then he went into an open field and preached to three thousand people who were never going to walk into a church on their own.

Paul operated from the same posture in Acts 17. The text notes that before he was ever summoned to the Areopagus — the formal intellectual council of Athens — he was already in the marketplace, "day by day with those who happened to be there" (Acts 17:17). The synagogue and the street corner. The formal setting and the agora. He didn't wait for the right venue or the right audience. He went where the conversation was already happening and stayed there. When he finally stood before the council, he landed on the resurrection — the claim that God raised Jesus from the dead as proof of his authority. Some sneered. Some wanted to hear more. A few believed on the spot, including Dionysius, a member of the council itself, and Damaris, a woman of standing in a room where women rarely had standing. The gospel crossed every line. It always does, when someone is willing to go.

The institution asks: who is coming to us? The movement asks: where are the people, and how do we get there? The answer to that second question is almost never far away. It is the carpool line, the office, the backyard gathering where someone, after enough conversation, admits they don't know what they believe anymore. That is your Areopagus. Jesus didn't say come. He said go — to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). The ends of the earth start at the end of your driveway. The question this week is not where your mission field is. It is who your mission field is — and whether you're willing to go to where they already are.

Jesus didn't say come. He didn’t say wait. He said go — go to your mission field.

Who in your life are you waiting to come to you — when the invitation was always for you to go to them?

06/19/2026

Francis Collins spent his career as a scientist's scientist — trained to follow evidence wherever it led, no matter where it pointed. He led the international team that mapped the human genome, reading what he described as the instruction book of human life, three billion letters of DNA encoding the complexity of a human being. He started the project as an atheist. He ended it on his knees. The journey between those two points wasn't a single moment. It was a slow accumulation: the fine-tuning of the universe's physical constants, calibrated so precisely that life seems almost impossibly intentional; the moral law, the universal human sense of right and wrong that evolution alone couldn't account for; and then, unexpectedly, the person of Jesus, encountered through C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity while Collins was simply trying to understand what Christians actually believed. He followed the trail of evidence for years. When his team finished sequencing the genome, he described the experience as both a scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.

Paul's sermon at the Areopagus in Acts 17 was built for people exactly like Collins — educated, thoughtful, and reaching. When Paul told the philosophers of Athens that God "is not far from any one of us" (Acts 17:27), he wasn't offering a feeling. He was making a claim grounded in creation itself. God designed the seeking into human beings, Paul argued, placing every person at their appointed time and in their appointed place so that they would reach for Him and find Him. The trajectory Paul describes is rarely sudden. It is usually slow — evidence by evidence, conversation by conversation, someone patient enough to stay in the dialogue while another person follows the trail. Collins followed it for years before it brought him somewhere. The man who spent his career reading the most intricate text in the known universe concluded that someone had written it — and that that someone was reaching toward him.

Most people who come to faith don't come all at once. They come the way Collins did — incrementally, often reluctantly, following a thread they can't quite let go of. The people in your life who seem resistant to faith are often not as far from it as they appear. They are asking questions. They are reaching, even when they wouldn't use that word. God placed them at their appointed time and place — and placed you near them for a reason. You don't need to have all the answers. You need to be present in the conversation long enough for someone to follow the evidence home.
God placed the people in your life at this appointed time so that they would seek Him — and find Him through you.

Who in your life is quietly following a trail of evidence toward something they haven't named yet — and what would it mean for you to stay in that conversation with them?

06/17/2026

Walk through any neighborhood and you'll find the altars. Not stone ones with inscriptions — though those exist too. Your neighbor who started doing eastern yoga and now talks about chakras and energy alignment. Your coworker who heads to the French Quarter to get their palm read or a tarot card reading. Your adult child who calls themselves spiritual but not religious, genuinely trying to find something solid to stand on. Your friend who has quietly decided the universe is indifferent and pleasure is the point. Every one of them is reaching for something they can't quite name. These are not bad people. They are hungry people. They are Athenians.

Paul walked into Athens in the first century and recognized the same thing. The city was full of shrines — every street corner, every neighborhood, every philosophical school, another attempt to name the divine. Ancient writers recorded that Athens was dotted with altars to unknown gods, built as religious insurance against whatever power they might have missed. Paul looked at one of those altars and said, in Acts 17:23, "I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship — and this is what I am going to proclaim to you." He didn't mock the altar. He used it. Because he recognized it for what it was: not arrogance, but anxiety. The Athenians had done everything they could think of and still weren't sure they'd gotten it right. That altar was the most honest thing in the city.

The altar to the unknown god is still being built. The form changes — but underneath every version of that search is the same longing: for something larger than yourself, for a moral north star, for a sense that your life is connected to something that matters. G.K. Chesterton wrote that the danger when people stop believing in God is not that they'll believe in nothing — it's that they'll believe in anything. The hunger is designed in. God built the seeking into every person so that finding him would feel like coming home. Listen to what your neighbors and coworkers are saying. What is the spiritual anxiety underneath their searching? When you recognize the longing, don't miss the opportunity to let them know what they're actually longing for — life in God.

Blessings,

Jonathan

06/17/2026

🌟 What an AMAZING week at Vacation Bible School! 🌟
Our kids brought so much energy, joy, and heart to every single day — and we couldn't be more proud of each and every one of them! From the songs to the stories to the friendships made along the way, this week was truly something special. 💛

06/16/2026

🎵 YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT…
Join us for Mission: Possible – Sharing The Gospel...By Our Love, our exciting summer Music Camp for kids completing 2nd through 8th grade!
📅 June 22–26

⏰ 9 AM – 12 PM
Each morning your child will dive into music, faith, and fun as we explore what it means to share the love of Jesus with the world around us!

If you have not signed up yet for this amazing mission, do so soon! 🎶
1201 Metairie Road, Metairie, LA 70005

06/15/2026

🎵 YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT…

Join us for Mission: Possible – Sharing The Gospel...By Our Love, our exciting summer Music Camp for kids completing 2nd through 8th grade! If you have not signed up yet for this amazing mission, do so soon! 🎶

📅 June 22–26
⏰ 9 AM – 12 PM

Each morning your child will dive into music, faith, and fun as we explore what it means to share the love of Jesus with the world around us!
Space is limited — don't miss out! 🎶

Munholland United Methodist Church
Register - munhollandchurch.org