A surprising encounter with my dad, Jesus, and Jerry Seinfeld opened a door to long-awaited healing. Last April, I found myself sobbing unexpectedly and uncontrollably while sitting in a barbershop for a haircut. It was the first time I’d really wept since my father passed away a month earlier. I’ve had a complicated relationship with grief. Six years before, I left vocational church ministry. I resigned from a church I’d helped plant 15 years earlier, a church I thought I’d retire from. But conflict and unhealthy leadership had wreaked havoc on my soul, and it was time to go. In… [...]

Task force proposal promises to help US and Canadian congregations work together more easily. What’s the relationship between the Christian Reformed Church in North America in Canada and the Christian Reformed Church in North America in the United States? It’s complicated. The Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) is single denomination. But legally it exists as two separate entities—one incorporated in Michigan, the other north of the border. Bound together by faith and history, they carry out their work through joint ministry agreements. How the two operate in unison can be a bit confusing even for those within the… [...]

To verbally dismember women is denigration, not inclusion. When the Supreme Court’s draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked in early May, a tweeted response from the American Civil Liberties Union had a curious omission: It listed groups the ACLU said would be disproportionately harmed by the end of Roe v. Wade (1973), but it didn’t mention women. And this wasn’t the ACLU’s first foray into treating women as the-sex-who-must-not-be-named. The organization likewise marked the one-year anniversary of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by tweeting out a pro-choice quote painstakingly—and painfully—edited to erase… [...]

All people — including Christians — go through moments of disbelief. We even use the common phrase, "I have to see it to believe it," to express our need to see and understand something tangibly. We may have negative thoughts that separate us from what God wants to do in our lives. Throughout my work in ministry supporting children, I have heard countless heartbreaking stories where it feels impossible to help improve their situation. However, I receive many good news reports that counteract... [...]

Have you ever heard the saying, "If you were arrested for your faith, would there be enough evidence for your conviction"? It’s an interesting question to reflect on. Do I go to church enough? Am I nice to the cashier at the supermarket? Do I yield for the right amount of time and wave people on ahead of me enough? Thankfully, none of my good deeds equate to my salvation through the blood of Jesus. But I think about John and Peter in Acts 4 and how they were arrested for sharing about Jesus:... [...]

One morning a few years back I was dropping Liya, my then-4-year-old daughter, off at her preschool. The director gently scolded me by telling my daughter to “remind her father to give her a jacket on such a cold day.” I humbly nodded to show that her parenting coaching had been well-received. Liya spoke up: “I actually have two fathers! My daddy here who forgot my jacket… and my Father in heaven.” As I hugged her goodbye and drove away that day, I felt such a sense of gratitude — and freedom... [...]