Room to reconsider
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Room to reconsider

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Editor’s Note: This article is based on a zoom conversation between Rev. Cecil van Niejenhuis, retired co-director of the office of Pastor Church Resources for the Christian Reformed Church and Virginia and Neil Lettinga, who work as a team in specialized transitional ministry. The Lettingas have worked with at least 10 church councils in their…

Give us this day our daily beauty
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Give us this day our daily beauty

It is early. A woman steps out of her front door, hitches up her skirt. In her hand is rice powder. It’s not yet sunrise. She has already swept and dampened the ground. Now she bends, dots the earth, and draws outward a design that is both geometric and freeform. It is kolam, a traditional…

Family reimagined
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Family reimagined

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Mark Glanville and his brother Luke are on a mission to reimagine kinship and its boundaries. What does that mean? “We think that the Bible is forming God’s people to embrace people on the margins as family.” “Jesus had a reputation for creating a ‘makeshift’ family with all of the ‘wrong’ people,” Mark says, which…

خوش آمدی
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خوش آمدی

In three years, Willowdale Christian Reformed Church (CRC) in Toronto has almost doubled in size, thanks to Farsi-speaking newcomers from Iran. Long-time members of Willowdale’s congregation will tell anyone who listens that this is the work of the Holy Spirit. No one planned to have a ministry to Christians who speak Farsi, but church members…

A Light to the Lonely
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A Light to the Lonely

On Thanksgiving Monday, Peter Elgersma and his family rolled up their sleeves to cook for Richmond Hill Community Christian Reformed Church’s second “to-go” thanksgiving dinner. I chatted with Elgersma, a CC board member, about the dinner. Peter and his family, five in total, volunteered to cook and individually package 150 meals for the church’s 28th…

Chickadee grace
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Chickadee grace

As I write this from Edmonton, Alberta, it’s looking to be a long, cold winter exacerbated by a pandemic that requires limited human-to-human contact. Normally our house is full on Christmas Day with our children, their partners and grandchildren, as well as a couple of dogs. Tables are stretched, extra chairs are hauled up from…

Humble Hospitality
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Humble Hospitality

“There is nothing greater than giving people space to be,” says Nicola Bartel, executive director at Mercy Canada. “To go into those dark places and not be alone. That’s the love of God when he promises that he will never leave us. And when he sits with us in that dark place and in the presence of somebody – a neighbour, a friend, whoever that is – he works in that community, in that beautiful space, and helps someone walk through it and out of it.”

Mud on my Glasses

Mud on my Glasses

Sometimes it takes your glasses getting dirty to remember that they’re even there. I learned that I hold a pretty stunted view of hospitality from a woman named Marie Issaka in Bamako, Mali.

How to be radically hospitable when you’re an introvert

How to be radically hospitable when you’re an introvert

I forget what the monks are famous for. I forget what St. Benedict taught the world: that hospitality is radical. It’s not about having a certain thread count or brand of throw rug; it’s not about a cinnamon smell when people enter the home or vacuumed floors.