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Growing up, my parents instilled in my sister and I that we are to love our neighbor not just because we need to rely on them, but because they are family. My mother commuted to Ann Arbor daily, where she worked at the University of Michigan and was in a master’s program. Through her work and studies, my sister and I met folks from many cultures. We attended events and were able to use many of our senses to learn about a variety of cultures and faiths. I was able to turn my fears or anxieties into curiosities.

I am the type of person you'd expect to get myself into part-time pastoring or bivocationalism or whatever you want to call it. I've always figured out ways to get the money I needed or do the cool thing I wanted to do. I've never been too risk averse when it comes to these sorts of things. I'll avoid bodily pain, but stress was never something I tried to get out of.

The Christian Reformed Church is celebrating an important anniversary this fall: 100 years ago, Johanna Veenstra took a giant leap of faith. In 1919, she stepped onto the steamer Mauretania and crossed the Atlantic to Nigeria. She not only became the CRC’s first female missionary, but the first missionary to serve outside of North America.

CRC church plants are on the front lines of bringing and being the gospel of Jesus Christ in their communities—but many church plants don’t look or function the same way as established CRC churches.

“There is a disconnect between church plants and [established] churches,” said Beth Fellinger, a church planter and a regional mission leader for Resonate Global Mission. “When we work together, pray together, and aim for kingdom perspective, it can change much of that division.”