“Triple Blessing”: Case Study of a Partnership between the Church and the Community
The tsunami of COVID-19 infections hit the world in the spring of 2020, opening doors for churches to bear their neighbours’ burden. Amid the virus outbreaks in long-term care homes and the shutdown of family-owned businesses, opportunities to serve the community prevailed. Aligned with its calling to be “a tangible display of God’s renewing power,” New Westminster Christian Reformed Church (NWCRC) in British Columbia, Canada, embarked on a mission to restore dignity in the neighbourhood through a partnership with the community called “Triple Blessing”. More…
Yet I Will Rejoice
In this COVID-19 online world, we are constantly connected, but at a price: isolation, loneliness, and disconnection from the physical world. The church’s vocation at this time is to reconnect the disconnected. In Japan, we stand outwardly strong, making sacrifices together, yet we struggle in silence to cope with our losses. My church community, COEN Life (Sapporo), seeks to be a safe place to grieve and support one another. My role is to serve tea. More…
Who Are the Invisible People God is Using to Disciple Us?
Volume 32, Number 2, Fall 2020
A Tribute to Dr. Packer
Dear Jim was my longest friend, dating from our first meeting at the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Union, or Inter-Varsity, in October 1947, where I was the senior member, just commencing to lecture there, and Jim was an undergraduate student in Classics. He was browsing in the small library, that the O.I.C.C.U., or Oxford University branch of Inter-Varsity, had on campus, and immediately discovered John Owen was appointed Chancellor of Oxford after the Civil War by King Charles. He read Owen’s Commentary to the Hebrews, and it so enthralled him that he read and re-read the Epistle to the Hebrews four times that Sunday. Jim had been brought up in a nominal Anglican family, but now his faith journey seriously began. More…
Better a Creative Mess: An Interview With Dr. Cindy Aalders
Some years ago Dr. Packer contacted me to say he was ready to donate more of his books to the library at Regent. He’d been donating his books for years, but his increasing trouble with his eyes provoked a sober intention to donate his remaining library. He was clear the books should go to Regent. This initiated a series of conversations in which I encouraged him to also consider the value that his papers, both personal and professional, would have for the ongoing study of evangelicalism and Puritanism. More…