• August 28, 2019

    10 Things Church Planters Want You to Know About Church Planting

    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.”

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  • June 28, 2019

    10 Misconceptions About Being a Missionary

    What does it mean to be a missionary? People have different ideas about life and work as a missionary. We want to explore a few common misconceptions so we can better understand what it means to follow God’s call to share the gospel throughout the world.

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  • June 25, 2019

    Bucket-Filling Moments

    “My bucket is empty. I need a hug.”

    “Thanks for putting a drop in my bucket when you said those nice words to me!”

    Those phrases might not make sense to you, but at Nicaragua Christian Academy International (NCAI), our Circle of Friends groups are now keenly aware of the invisible buckets that float above our heads each day after spending a month on this theme, based on books by Carol McCloud.

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  • June 18, 2019

    Being Present in the Community

    Around 9 p.m., I stepped outside to enjoy the cooler evening air. Right on my heels was our dog Belle, her mouth holding a bright rubber ball.

    After tossing Belle’s ball down our dead-end street a few times, I struck up a conversation with a guy from several houses down who was also enjoying the evening breeze. We had never met, but chatting about my well-behaved dog was an easy way in.

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  • June 13, 2019

    Getting the Feel of It

    Resonate Global Mission missionaries Dawn and Eugene Michelson recently returned to North America after serving for 32 years among the Fulani in West Africa. After visiting churches who partnered with them in mission, they will officially retire in August 2019. Here is a reflection from Dawn on her experience returning to North America after serving abroad as a missionary.

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  • June 7, 2019

    How Important Is a Church?

    “There are three main reasons families leave LCC International University,” said the guy interviewing us.

    “One: They get tired of fundraising. If they don’t maintain a clear vision of the value of LCC’s mission and the importance of a support network to their ministry in this spiritually difficult place, they lose the motivation to play the double role of full-time professor and full-time fundraiser.

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  • January 11, 2019

    Hospitality Is Key to Ministry

    We want to be like Jesus, sharing God’s goodness, grace, and love with others, but no ministry on earth compares to Jesus’ ability to minister with people who are hurting, broken, or lost. Jesus calmed storms, gave sight to people who were blind, and raised the dead. What can we do?

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  • November 2, 2018

    Fundraising: Ministry, or a Dirty Word?

    Fundraising doesn’t always have a stellar reputation. At best, some view it as an unpleasant means to get to the “real” spiritual work. At worst, it’s a “necessary evil.”

    But Henri Nouwen writes in A Spirituality of Fundraising that “fundraising is, first and foremost, a form of ministry.”

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  • November 1, 2018

    Have We Lost the Art of Conversation?

    Recently the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, started a free bus service that runs nearly from my front door straight to downtown. Now all of my excuses for not using public transportation are gone (now it is convenient, consistent, and free!), so I have been making use of it as much as possible. As I have ridden, I have tried to use it as an opportunity to notice the people around me and be open to conversation.

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  • October 10, 2018

    The Unspoken Challenges Female Church Planters Face

    “I think there’s a lot of pressure to be really good as a female pastor—not just an OK pastor,” said Sam DeJong McCarron, who works as a ministry vocational consultant for the CRC’s Pastor Church Resources. “You have to be the best of the best because you’re a woman and a female pastor in a denomination that holds two views on it.”

    Sam and her husband, Nate, are ordained ministers of the Word in the CRC. They were recruited to plant a church in Denver, Colorado, in 2009—but they could not find a CRC church right away that would ordain both of them.

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