Recent Posts
Wedding Season
As both a musician and a pastor, I’ve gotten to participate in a lot of weddings over the course of my life. I think I was 12-years-old when I first played the piano at a ceremony, and I loved it from the start. Weddings are uniquely celebratory days. Everyone at their best and brightest. A feeling of optimism and promise and— well—love!
Nominations
In 1 Corinthians 12, the Apostle Paul draws an analogy between the complex functioning of the church and the complex functioning of the human body. It’s a brilliant part of the Bible. The main point is that God designed and gifted us each differently so that we might experience the joy of depending on each other. The body can’t be all head or mouth or hands, that would be monstrous! Just as God designed the various parts of our anatomy to work together, so it is with the spiritual gifts that God gives to the members of his church.
What I Learned This Summer, Finale
For the last few weeks, I’ve been writing about how the Synod of our denomination – the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA) – has adopted an audacious10-year strategic plan for church planting. The goal is that our denomination of about 900 churches would plant 1,000 new churches in the next 10 years. I noted last week that achieving this goal would take some miracles...
What I Learned This Summer, Part 4
Last week I wrote about how the Synod of our denomination – the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA) – adopted an audacious 10-year strategic plan for church planting. The goal is that our denomination of about 900 churches would plant 1,000 new churches in the next 10 years. How would that even be possible?!?
A couple of quotes from the report that Synod adopted:
What I Learned This Summer, Part 3
Earlier this summer, the Synod of our denomination – the Christian Reformed Church in North America – met in person at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from June 12–18. Every Synod is a unique, one-off mix of delegates from around the USA and Canada tasked with providing leadership and oversight for the nearly 900 churches in our denomination...
What I Learned This Summer-Part 2
In mid-July, I was able to spend a couple of great days with a group called “The Adaptive Leaders Cohort” which convened in Evins Mill, Tennessee – about an hour west of Nashville. This was a group of a dozen church and non-profit leaders from all over North America (from California to Philadelphia, I was the only Illinoisan there, although there was an Iowan repping the Midwest, too)...