A New E-newsletter...For Pastors

Today we’re starting a new, weekly e-newsletter for pastors in the CRC.

Why? If you are like many pastors we know, your email inbox fills up fast. Too fast. And we are partly responsible. Consolidating the announcements we send you into a single email allows us to reduce the number of mailings without cutting you off from information you might want and need.

But this isn’t just about sharing announcements. It’s also about pastors sharing with each other!

Featured Blogs, Featuring You

Every week we’ll feature a guest blog post featuring YOU -- well, you and others like you: CRC pastors, retired pastors, ministry associates, chaplains, seminary students, and other ministry leaders. What would interest your ministry colleagues? Do you have an issue on your heart? A practical tip to share? A reflection on something that happened? Share it with a few thousand of your closest friends.

Please read this invitation to learn more and submit your idea for a guest blog post. Don’t be shy. We have a couple weeks of features lined up but, after that, we’re counting on you. We don’t want a big blank space here, so send us your ideas.

Links You May Have Missed

In addition to announcements and featured guest blogs, the weekly e-newsletter also features links of special interest to pastors in the Christian Reformed Church. The web is huge and even the CRC’s web footprint is pretty big, so each week we’ll do some legwork for you.

We’ll sift through things and list links we think you might like -- whether they’re from ThinkChristian, Scott Hoezee’s “On Preaching” blog, The Network, Coop’s Column, and much more. We’ll add sources as we discover them, and drop ones that get low click-throughs.

What do you think?

Before launching this e-newsletter, we developed a prototype and sent it to 200 of you for feedback. The response was overwhelmingly positive -- nearly 100% of you said you preferred this format.

We hope you like this new way of not only sending announcements, but sharing links and ideas with each other. In coming weeks we’ll be fine-tuning this e-newsletter based on your feedback, so please feel free to reply to the email with your suggestions or, better yet, add your comments below. Even if you're not a CRC pastor, you are welcome to take a peek at it.

We want it to be your blog, so read this invitation and submit your guest blog idea now. We’re interested in what you have to say, and we think your ministry colleagues will be too.