Keep the Fire Burning
Every fire starts with a simple, small spark. Through last year’s Hearts Ablaze campaign, so many good, new sparks were ignited in the midst of our community. Our congregation pledged more than $11 million through the end of 2026 and we have been keeping our promises: we are giving extraordinarily, faithfully, even above and beyond those pledges.
Of special significance, our community expressed a longing to go deeper into the Bible as an act of discipleship in the coming years. With the guidance of our Elders, early in 2025, our Sunday morning worship services focused on the theme of “Eat This Book” as a way to get more of the Scriptures into our lives. And this fall, we’ve embarked on a nine-month journey to Walk Through the Bible. What a great spark!
In response to the financial generosity of the congregation, our debt has already been cut in half! As we continue down this path, we will (by God’s grace) be debt-free by the end of 2026. And as our church carries less debt, we are able to reallocate more of our tithes and offerings to ministry and acts of service. Here are just a few highlights of what’s newly possible from recent months:
We were able to hire our first ever Director of Congregational Engagement, Rev. Jason Turner. For the first time, every position on our ministry staff is filled and we are uniquely ready to grow Up, In, and Out.
In August, we were able to extend our outreach all the way to Gotani, Kenya by helping to send a team of 16 to work with our partner missionaries, Abel and Christa Muanica, and serve 1,600 children one week, and 700 teens the next. It’s so good to know that God is on the move both far off and close to home!
We’ve worked hard to make a new home for the Elmhurst Farmers Market at Elmhurst CRC. What an amazing opportunity to share our “front porch” with thousands of friends and neighbors and create access to healthy, farm-fresh foods and delicious breads.
And we’re getting ready to finalize plans to reimagine some of our physical space in order to give greater visibility and accessibility for prayer, as well as new dreams and visions for how to enhance and deepen our existing ministries to make them even more fruitful.
This November marks the mid-point of this two-year discipleship journey.
For some of us, this coming month will be a strategic time to:
Recommit to our sacrificial pledges and keep on faithfully following through
For others of us, especially those are are new to ECRC over the past year:
This may be a time to jump onboard the Hearts Ablaze train
And for some of us who have had a major change in life circumstances during the past year:
This might be the right time to recalibrate our pledges and intentions accordingly
– Pastor Gregg