I am in my 46th year serving as a pastor in the CRCNA, have lived through turbulent times but to read our present moment described as
“…we are living through a time of some disturbance in our life together…” is more than baffling. It is beyond comprehension. I weep for where we are. I don’t know if “weeping” is verb, a noun or a word to be looked up in a dictionary to understand a time as this. I do know this: now is the most broken place I have experienced in our church family.
Thank you Chris for sharing your vision, goals and practices. I find this helpful for what we are doing. We are at an earlier but similar place in restructuring elder/deacon districts. It is our goal also to move to a new place of being church for one another. Community, every member caring for the body, is a model we are intentionally following based on I Corinthians 12 (Church=the BODY of Christ).
Once upon a time, I believe Louis Tamminga wrote an article on creating a team to care for the inactive members. Is there anyone else who knows of what I am talking about? Can you help me find this article? Thanks [email protected]
For this year I chose I Peter 1:15/16 "holy", a word that has not only been removed from the secular word bank (other than the occasional 'holy cow', 'holy smoke') but also limited to defining God by the Christian community. None-the-less, it is presented by the Apostle Peter as front and center in defining the church, its members and how we are to live in "all" things.
I second your encouragement to have a listen to One Sentence Sermon. There is much to learn here on how NOT to do “church” signs as well as how to do it BETTER.
Posted in: Did Synod 2024 Ignore or Violate Church Order?
I am in my 46th year serving as a pastor in the CRCNA, have lived through turbulent times but to read our present moment described as
“…we are living through a time of some disturbance in our life together…” is more than baffling. It is beyond comprehension. I weep for where we are. I don’t know if “weeping” is verb, a noun or a word to be looked up in a dictionary to understand a time as this. I do know this: now is the most broken place I have experienced in our church family.
Jim Poelman
Posted in: What's Old Is New Again: Experiencing Community at Kitchener Community CRC
Thank you Chris for sharing your vision, goals and practices. I find this helpful for what we are doing. We are at an earlier but similar place in restructuring elder/deacon districts. It is our goal also to move to a new place of being church for one another. Community, every member caring for the body, is a model we are intentionally following based on I Corinthians 12 (Church=the BODY of Christ).
Jim Poelman
Redeemer CRC, Sarnia On
Posted in: Activating the Inactive
Once upon a time, I believe Louis Tamminga wrote an article on creating a team to care for the inactive members. Is there anyone else who knows of what I am talking about? Can you help me find this article? Thanks [email protected]
Posted in: Do You Have a Theme Word for 2016?
For this year I chose I Peter 1:15/16 "holy", a word that has not only been removed from the secular word bank (other than the occasional 'holy cow', 'holy smoke') but also limited to defining God by the Christian community. None-the-less, it is presented by the Apostle Peter as front and center in defining the church, its members and how we are to live in "all" things.
Jim Poelman
Posted in: One Sentence Sermons (The Wit of Church Signs)
I second your encouragement to have a listen to One Sentence Sermon. There is much to learn here on how NOT to do “church” signs as well as how to do it BETTER.
Thanks for catching this.