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How did we get to a point wherein significant educational inequities – injustices – seem intractable? And why aren’t Christians shouting from the rooftops about it? Why doesn’t educational injustice seem to make the list of our primary concerns? Or maybe even our secondary concerns?

There have been many metaphors for pastors. How might we enrich our understanding of the pastoral role by considering pastors as “stewards of the Mystery?”

Some time has passed since June’s Christian Reformed Church Synod 2024. The Reformed Journal reached out to several people from across the CRC asking them to respond to three questions.

Our democracy is the beloved wooden boat. It only persists through love and maintenance and attention to see and replace the rot it before it sinks the whole enterprise. And it takes work.

I know many people who have spent their lifetimes clustered for refuge in a church (Reformed, Christian Reformed, Evangelical-Whatever). Now they refuse to do so and would rather paddle off into whatever the future brings without it. They tell of feeling bereft, anxious, and guilty. They are grieving.

There are many women of earlier generations - and still today - whose brilliance, talents and professional skills contribute significantly to the success of their male partner. And, in spite of their spouse’s acknowledgments, they often remain underestimated or largely overlooked.

If you know a pastor’s spouse, check in with them. Give honest space to share. They might be bearing more than you know. Pastoring can be a very hard and demanding job. I know. I’ve been there. But I’ve also come to learn that being a pastor’s spouse brings unique challenges of its own, burdens often not known or understood.

God unmistakably did call Dr. Ida. Though she was determined not to follow her father and his seven siblings into RCA mission work, determined not to spend her life in "dirty, dusty" India, she found she could do nothing else after being present one night at the successive deaths of three women in childbirth because their husbands refused for cultural and religious reasons to allow male doctors to attend them. As she heard the funeral drums the morning after all…

Worship is the place where we face our fears, the place where we empty ourselves and wait to see if what Jesus said is actually true: “If you seek your life, you’ll lose it, but if you lose it, you’ll find it; unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Worship is the place where we wait for the fierce love of God to do its…