Tim Postuma

Great info, Terry. Thanks for sharing this. The form looks easy enough, so I'm going to apply for my church and see what happens.

An update...in case this helps other churches...

Over the summer and fall, our church gutted and completely renovated the house (with some expert advice from a local housing ministry and some generous donations from local tradespersons). A couple of weeks ago, we had a beautiful service where the house was dedicated. We invited our long-time neighbor's children (now adults) and other family members to the service. It was touching as we witnessed something good come from something so sad.

Our pastor David Kromminga wonderfully tied it all together, preaching on being "restorer of streets with dwellings" (really worth listening to....look for the sermon here dated Nov. 13, 2011). At the end of the service the entire congregation left the building, walked over to the house, surrounded it hand-in-hand, and dedicated the house with prayer, oil, words, and songs. Beautiful.

So what are we doing with it? We're being neighbors.

It will remain a house where people live. In this case, people who feel a special calling to live in intentional community together, be an active part of our neighborhood, and work alongside all of us in doing God's work through the ministries of our church. We commissioned them at the same worship service.

We're calling it the "House of Servants" and it's modelled in part by what Grace CRC has done as well as other churches and initiatives like Project Neighborhood (see Karl's notes above).

It's still very new, but we're excited. Hopefully this update helps other churches who might feel called to this type of ministry and presence.

P.S. Since then, we've come across another initiative from several neighborhood churches and community/housing organizations that want to partner together to turn abandoned properties into homes. We checked on 3 boarded-up houses on our street and, as it turns out, they're all owned by out-of-state investors/speculators (one purchased for literally $10!). Our church isn't being asked to make any financial commitment - just to help with open houses, welcome baskets, and getting the word out that the properties are available (most don't have for-sale signs). We're going to hear more about it at our council meeting tomorrow night, but we're hoping it's another way our church can be a God-honoring presence in our neighborhood and continue to be 'restorers of streets with dwellings'.

Cool. I just got an email saying we've made it to the next round in the selection process. It didn't say how many other churches were in this round, but I'm hopeful.

Thanks so much, Terry, for posting this on The Network!

At our most recent elders meeting, we discussed this very issue. One easy (but hopefully significant) change we made was to assign young adults to a district separate from their parents. So, for those that grew up in our church, they move from Youth Elder to their 'own' district at the age of 18.

Hopefully that helps remind them - and us! - that they are an adult member/attender in their own right. They'll get the same elder visit as any other member, including a conversation about their participation in the life of the church. And the lines won't be so blurred as when they have the same elder as their parents.

I'm looking forward to hearing what comes of your round-table discussion. Keep us posted.

And, in the meantime, what other things have churches done to be better enfold young adults into the full life of the church?

Thanks for the link to that, Dave.

I also just saw that the seminary is hosting a panel discussion on the Belhar Confession next week Tuesday, October 12, at 7:30pm. Here's a link to their events calendar and the description:

John Cooper, Victoria Proctor-Gibbs, and Peter Borgdorff will dialogue on the Belhar Confession. Thea Leunk will moderate the discussion. One question that will be addressed is "Should the Christian Reformed Church adopt the Belhar?" Free and open to the public. Please join us. 

Maybe this could be recorded, or webcast? I'll email the seminary to see if they can let us know about that.

I just heard back from Betsy at the seminary. The panel discussion WILL be recorded and broadcast live (if technology cooperates). Links will be available on the CTS Lecture Archive page (update: or try this lecture calendar page). She writes:

"...a box will appear in the top left of page that says something like "listen/watch live."  Be patient for a couple of minutes so the IT guys can get things going (or if we start a couple minutes late).  If for some reason it doesn't work it will definitely be on the archive within days of the event."

Thanks, Amy. You actually can do this now, but it's not as easy to find as it should be. Look for the "Share" button at the bottom of any post and there's an option to email to a friend.

We've been working on a more obvious implementation of that (i.e. in the sidebar of all pages). That will be launched very soon - in fact, it might even be later today if all goes well.

That's great, Stanley. Forwarding specific articles to specific people is going above and beyond. It gets the RIGHT content into the hands of the right people. Thanks!

re: Banner ads - Yes, it's all one 'family' of CRC ministry so it's basically an internal transfer. But if they didn't charge us anything, I'd be asking for a Network ad on the back of every issue (market value: $4,500). CRC ministries get a discount, but by 'paying' something close to fair market rates we don't crowd out important income from outside advertisers.

Any way you slice it, print is expensive. So that's why we're so appreciative of pastors and staff that help get the word out through email, bulletin announcements, etc. It doesn't work for everything, but when it does it means we can spend less on paper/postage and more on ministry.

I should have mentioned that the tool we use - reCPATCHA - actually serves an additional function...helping digitize old texts that require human (rather than computer) recognition.

It's nice that those 30 million entries/day are being harnessed for some extra good. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.

I think you're both right. Part of the problem is the fact that we actually have two different search tools right now - one that searches guide content and another that searches the forums.

On our roadmap, we've added a project to look at replacing both with Google custom search (which we use on CRCNA.org). We've got a few projects ahead of that one, but hopefully it won't be too long.

Once we've got one, universal search tool it will make it easier to display throughout the site. With the growth we've been seeing on The Network this fall, search will become more and more important.

Keep the suggestions coming! We're listening closely and suggestions like this help make the site better for everyone.