I’ve been singing in church since I was about twelve. Even as a small child I would make my family watch me “perform” for them at holiday gatherings. In the car I would sing along with the radio and my mom was gracious enough to put up with me when Read more…
Nearly a century ago, a theologian and great statesman, Abraham Kuyper, wrote at length about the idea that all of life is broken up into spheres. Some of these spheres overlap. This is actually pretty easy to explain. Imagine your own life. You have a home life, a work life, Read more…
Here I sit at Newark Liberty airport after 3 days of the “Movement Day” annual conferences in Manhattan, sponsored by Redeemer Church. It was a great time. As always, I contributed a little, and I learned a whole lot. Let share a few key take-aways from that meeting. 1. Church Read more…
SAFE AND SOUND Psalm 127:3 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. Mark 10:14 When Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples. He said to them, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those Read more…
September 26, 2013 by Jonathan Assink Article written for YALT, the Young Adult Leadership Taskforce of the CRC. It’s headed up by Mark Hilbelink out of Austin, and a team of others around the country. Jonathan had been following their tweeting and blogging for a few months when they made Read more…
Why Small Groups? By Summer Mohrlang Allister loves going to the playground. Which means that several times a week we set out from home with stroller loaded down with snacks, sippy cup, hats, jackets, etc. on our way to the ‘park.’ Allister loves the slide, and swinging on the swing Read more…
Musings on Being Newly Married To me, being newly married is somewhat like becoming a citizen of a new country. You can guess about what kind of new things you’ll encounter before you go there, but you don’t really know until you arrive there. Upon arriving in this new Read more…
Since I have been writing this little column about church planting, I have mainly focused on Sanctuary’s work in the area of planting and have highlighted our planters. This month I would like to depart from that track just a bit. I want to take up a little space sharing Read more…
Is it Fall, already? Good grief. Can you believe we are just about 9 years old? What might this last year of our first decade hold for us? Well, let me offer a few thoughts. First, we have an opportunity to reach even more deeply into our Seattle culture Read more…
A cup of coffee, a quite spot, preferably in the sun, the bible or other theological book by my side. My perfect devotional experience. Except that is never, ever, the way life works. At least not when you have young kids. I rarely get to go to the bathroom alone, Read more…
There is action in the field of church planting with Sanctuary and our Seattle Cluster. How about these news items! Fountain Parish, Bellingham Sean Hall and company are making a difference in Bellingham with service to their neighborhood including a street top mural and they have a second church site Read more…
It’s been a lovely, warm, dry summer of 2013. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have. It’s been refreshing for all of us to have family adventures, Greenwood Park picnics and some new members at church such as Amelia Mohrlang and Eva Lee Moses. This month Read more…
How do we share our faith online? Wow, this was an interesting revelation for me. I hadn’t really thought about this until I was asked to write on this: How do we share our faith online? At first I thought the internet provides anonymity to people and it is difficult Read more…
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a good neighbor. In Matthew 22, Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, and unsurprisingly he said it is love God with all your being. But then he quickly answers the second question they hadn’t yet asked, the Read more…
THOSE CHURCH PLANTS JUST KEEP ON PLANTING NEW SEEDS. Everyone knows that our daughter church, The Harbor, has been rooting itself in Crown Hill, perhaps one mile to the Northwest of Greenwood. And, good things have happened there. First of all, the church has literally taken root with a community Read more…
My name is Wes Young and I am proud to be a part of the church and my cooking is part of what I do to help me pass the word of God to everybody. My cooking started when I was fifteen. I was raised in foster homes and the Read more…
LOOKING JESUS RIGHT IN THE EYE …. Some folks have accused Protestants, particularly those of us in the Reformed and Anglican traditions of being way too “Paul-focused”. The frequent complaint is that we spend so much time theologizing and teaching for the letters of Paul and catechisms and creeds that Read more…
Full. Full seems like a good word to describe Awake Church these days. Many of us are in a season of starting families and/or starting careers. Whether you are in this season now or were a while ago, you probably remember this “fullness.” Furthermore, the Aurora area continues to be a Read more…
The Sanctuary Church planting team is expanding in membership. We will have more names and details coming your way soon. We are hoping to add at least 2 really qualified people that understand Christian ministry to our team. At the same time, we are sad to say goodbye to Alyssa Read more…
A Brief Meditation on Worship and Painting by Matt Whitney In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. John Read more…
When I first went into rock and roll disc jockeying, slightly after the invention of electricity, there was a hit 45 rpm record that I spun over and over and over. It was sung by Andrew Gold, a one hit wonder, and the song was entitled “Oh, What a Lonely Boy”. Read more…
It is commonly said that refugee resettlement simultaneously exposes the greatest attributes and worst shortcomings of America. Alyssa and I get to see this everyday as we head to the other side of the tracks into South King County to work at World Relief Seattle. In the process, we also Read more…
We have two exciting new sources of church planting in our midst. Ben Katt and Clarence Presley. Ben is working one quarter time to identify new possible leadership to urban missional church communities. So far he has got one group exploring planting in South Park, near Boeing Field. And, another Read more…
Chris and I have collectively worked in education for 57 years. Besides that number making us sound frightfully old, we can also say that it is a field in which we still feel privileged to serve. The joy in building relationships and building competency in a kaleidoscope of students over Read more…
Spring and Summer are seasons that introduce the fresh and the new and the vibrant. I think we will find this to be especially true for the Summer of 2013. In addition to anticipating our weekly barbecues at Greenwood Park, we will also be opening the Green Bean (v.5). It Read more…
I think I know a little more about child-like faith than I used to. I have a front-row seat on child-like EVERYTHING right now: child-like playing, child-like eating, child-like mess-making … What about child-like faith in God? I can draw connections between the trust my son places in us, his Read more…
Going multicultural has long been a challenge of traditionally Anglo denominations, including the CRC. But, we are working hard at being a people of “every tongue and tribe and people and nation” per the glorious view of the book of Revelation. And, here in the Seattle area, we are taking Read more…
Over the past year and a half since moving to Washington, Chris and I have lived in two different apartments, bought three cars, traveled to Michigan and back six times, driven thousands of miles, camped in seven state parks, made hundreds of pots of coffee, and held down five Read more…
I was recently visiting with a new friend and colleague who is just completing doctoral work and is here in Seattle establishing an Institute for Northwest Culture and Theology. It’s pretty exciting. But, what I want to share with you is one nugget that I really took away from that Read more…
I have often struggled with the frequently spiritualized notion that we are “who we are in essence” but not “what we do.” I don’t think that’s true. At least not totally true. I am a Christian. And, I hope, that connects to “doing Christian” – love, justice, peace-making, integrity, honesty, Read more…
I generally don’t talk about giving on the internet, but perhaps, one-on-one, over a good cup of coffee, I might share our experiences with tithing. So, in reading this article, please imagine that it’s just you and me, and we’re having a quiet, personal conversation … I “met” Jesus while Read more…
If you are reading this newsletter in a place where you can kneel and pray, please do. At best read this and fold your hands and pray for our dear friends pioneering ministries here in Seattle and beyond. When I first became interested in church planting, denominations invested millions of Read more…
Have you ever had a week where everything seemed to come together? You have been praying and you feel – Wow, now that was an answer to prayer? That was my week! Over the last couple of months I have been praying for a clear understanding of where God was Read more…
Seattle is now an official Kingdom Enterprise Zone. We are joining forces with the Reformed Church of America and our Christian Reformed Church to renew churches, renew communities, do campus ministry and actively plant new churches. This partnership includes grant funding for administration, coaching, gatherings and church plants. All of Read more…
Matthew gets us up close and personal with Our Lord Beginning February 24th, Sanctuary will engage in a Sunday morning series on the Gospel of Matthew that will take us through the Lenten, Easter and Pentecost Seasons. I love reading and teaching from Matthew. The stories told by this early Read more…
“A time to come as you are and care for one another.” Those are the words on the sign one of our community members put together to advertise Community Hours at the Green Bean, which take place from 9am-11am every Saturday. Those words aptly summarize an objective we are trying Read more…
As families within our church grow, we will soon have children becoming adolescents. It won’t be long before they are in middle school, and then high school. Adolescence can be a very angsty, confusing and hard time in a young man or women’s life. There are a lot of thing Read more…
We are embarking on an exciting church planting possibility through our Seattle cluster that I want you to keep in your prayers. We are currently formulating a proposal to engage in a multi-cultural emphasis. We are dreaming about the idea of having a part time pastor/recruiter in the inner city Read more…
“Dinner and a movie tonight?” “I dunno, what movie do you have in mind?” Well, this February through April we are going to take in a series of video talks called Alpha. The Alpha Course is an opportunity to explore the meaning of life, the existence of God and the basics Read more…
MISSION GREENWOOD kicks of Sunday morning January 20th, 2013 at Sanctuary. For 5 weeks, we will be sharing messages from Scripture as well as stories and the vision about who we are and what we do as a church here in Greenwood. We will be sharing a bit of the Read more…
Growing up in a small town in central Mississippi, I knew just about everyone and everyone knew me. For this reason, it was absolutely impossible to get away with anything because everyone also knew my Mama’s phone number. When I was a kid, I used to dread going grocery shopping Read more…
There’s a hole in the ground where the old Green Bean (version 3.0) used to be, a warm place to gather and have coffee where the Green Bean is now (version 4.0) and a concrete floor slab where Green Bean (version 5.0) will stand. So, here’s a quick update on Read more…
Ben Katt takes Awake and Aurora Commons on the road! Well, kind of. Perhaps you are aware and perhaps not, but Ben Katt has received a grant from Christian Reformed Home Missions to pursue potential new church locations throughout the city where he could use his great leadership skills to Read more…
Signs of Advent are all around us. We will be exploring a number of the signs of Jesus’ coming during Advent 2012 at Sanctuary. I have never done an Advent series like this before. It comes to us as a gift from the Scriptures, and from the imagination of some Read more…
Walking Along Side Aging Parents By Sara Caldwell How does one help skew the numbers of those living in multi-generational households in our country and neighborhoods? Join the growing trend. That’s what we did six and a half years ago – in order to “walk along side” my mother, Read more…
I just never thought my mom would be a widow…we all figured Dad would be the one left. The youngest and healthiest of 5 brothers-and-sisters, at 78 my dad looked so much like Star Trek’s Capt Picard, that folks would stop and point. Fit, dignified, calm under all circumstances…I never Read more…
I want to give a special shout out to Simon Cunningham and his work with Roots Church up on Capital Hill. Simon is a born evangelist/apologist. Very few people I have met possess his strength in dialoguing about the Christian faith with those who are far from faith. It’s wonderful Read more…
At our annual Fall retreat, i had a chance to share about Christian meditation for a few minutes and send us all out for a spiritual exercise. A surprising number of people found that very helpful and have asked me about solitude and meditation. So, I will share a few Read more…
Jamming on James. Beginning the 30th of September, we will be doing a message series on the New Testament book of James. Many scholars believe that James was actually Jesus’ half-brother. His work is an enduring piece that brings together theology, spirituality and authentic daily life to the glory of Read more…
Folks occasionally ask me how many churches we can help plant at one time. My answer, not to be in anyway glib, is “I don’t know. We have never exceeded our maximum yet.” I honestly mean that. New church plants are the best single way to lead new people into Read more…