Stanley & Monica Groothof

Beautifully said. Thank you for sharing this! –Stanley

We've starting having "Lunch Bunch" once a month or so at Telkwa (BC) CRC. People are simply invited to bring their lunch on a particular Sunday – plus some extra to share with guests – and stay after the service to eat and fellowship together. It requires little more than an announcement the week before and setting up some tables the day of. I've only heard positive remarks since a member got this going earlier this year.  – Stanley

What Michael B wrote above reflects my thoughts precisely. Indeed a new and helpful perspective for me. Thank you!

It surprises me how often webpage designers/programmers do this. With super-fast internet connections and/or ridiculously high bandwidth, maybe they don't even notice. ...Though it comes in handy if you'd like a copy of the little picture and then discover after saving it that it's at a high quality resolution!

Thank you for these reflections. I found them meaningful and reposted most of the above on my blog (providing the appropriate links and credit, of course). http://4thpoint.wordpress.com

Hi Kelli,

Trinity CRC in Rock Valley, Iowa, celebrated 50 years last year. Covid-19 threw wrinkles in some of our plans but we still had a very meaningful weekend of reviewing and celebrating God's faithfulness.

The council formed an anniversary team to plan the event. This team further divided into smaller sub-teams filled with additional members to tackle specific tasks (e.g., Saturday evening event, Sunday worship, food, commemorative book, etc.).

This page on our website will you give a glimpse into what we did: https://trinitycrc.com/trinity-crcs-50th-anniversary. It's not mentioned there, but we also published a book of info and memories from the past 50 years. And we gave away nightlights with Trinity CRC's logo on them as a piece of anniversary memorabilia and a reminder to keep shining for Christ in the years ahead.

Early in our planning we connected with a few other churches that recently celebrated an anniversary. One in particular that gave us some good ideas was Crosspoint CRC in Chino CA: https://www.crosspointchino.org/anniversary.

Hope there's something here you find helpful/inspiring as you celebrate your 10-year milestone!
~Stanley

facebook.com/telkwacrc

Usually something gets posted at least once a week. Same as New Hope above, "there's not a lot of two-way conversation on our page," but it's helpful for having an online presence and for alerting people to upcoming events.

Stanley

That's a fun video. I wish I could make something like that ...without it coming off as hokey and/or tacky. =) I'm sure there are people throughout the denomination who are up for such a task, and I'd love to see they come up with! ~Stan

I appreciate the conversation here. I'd like to respond in particular to something Joe Serge writes, about the baptismal ritual making children members of the family of God. He's absolutely right that the baptism ceremony itself does not make one a child of God – it symbolizes an existing reality. We often use the langauge of "sign" and "seal." But I'm trying to process the assertion that children are not part of the family until they are born again. We hold that children of believers are holy (see 1Cor 7); we comfort grieving parents who lost a little one that they are now with Jesus. This suggests to me that children are indeed part of the family before affirming the faith for themselves. But that leaves us with some tension: What's the point of being born again, as Joe correctly emphasizes, if we're already part of God's covenant family? Or: If there is a point when a child needs to consciously decide that s/he is part of God's family (be born again), how do we know when precisely that has happened or should happen? These are questions I've wondered about.

Tim, how do I search for people on the Network? If I'd like to see, for example, whether "Lisa K" is on the Network – someone who just sent me a message, so I know she's here – and I type "Lisa K" in the search box in my profile, I get no results. What am I missing? Thanks for your time! Stanley

Thank you, Brian, for crafting and sharing these! Maybe Reformed Worship would like to see these too.

Beautiful! This should be in The Banner and Christian Courier, in the inbox of CRC leaders everywhere. I'm glad you shared this. ~Stanley