Candidate 42 Profile

Section A. Background Information

10. Year of Ordination

2008

11. Denomination of Ordination

Christian Reformed Church of North America (CRCNA)

12. If not RCA, what classis or supervising body from the ordaining denomination recognizes your ordination?

Classis Rocky Mountain

13. Present denomination

CRCNA

14. Present classis or judicatory

Classis Rocky Mountain

15. If you are not now a member of the Reformed Church in America, can you, in good conscience, agree with the doctrine, discipline and government of the RCA?

Yes

16. Do you support the mission and division of the Reformed Church in America?

Yes.

17. Citizen of what country? If not USA, do you have permit to live and work in the USA?

USA

18. Previous Experience

19. Formal Education

20. Continuing Education

21. Languages (list any languages, other than English, in which you can preach or converse fluently)

Section B. Reflection

1. Describe your strengths, the best of who you are, and what you bring in service to the church.

I was raised in the small town of Flushing, MI and grew up as a nominal Catholic. Despite the fact that my family did not attend mass regularly, those early experiences in church on Christmas, Lent, and Easter kindled my interest in the Christian faith and provided me with a sense of the hope and the riches of the Christian tradition. It was after my senior year of high school during a difficult time of my life that I first identified as Christian. During college, I was introduced to the Reformed faith through a campus ministry program at Grand Valley State University (Allendale, MI). After four years of Reformed preaching, teaching, and worldview, I realized I had found my home in the Reformed tradition and sought to root my passion in a theological education at Calvin Theological Seminary (Grand Rapids, MI; M.Div., 2008). In my fourteen years of pastoral work, I have always sought to help those who are walking through their own difficult times by offering the comfort of God’s grace and the resources of the Scriptures.

In these fourteen years of pastoral ministry, one of the most energizing parts of my job has been the opportunity to lead worship with people from all walks of life in mind. In my preaching, public prayers, and administration of the sacraments, I have always tried to speak to those who have been turned off by the church and to those who have never been to church. At the same time, I also try to preach to those who have been in church their entire lives, and I desire for long-time Christians to experience a deepening of their faith. In each of the churches I have served, we experienced baptisms (infants and adults alike), professions of faith, new people coming almost every week, and the reaffirmation of faith of long-time Christians. It gives me great joy that this included people of a variety of backgrounds, including people with Ph.D.’s and GEDearners, CEO’s and stay-at-home parents, lifelong Christians and people with deep religious trauma, people with tremendous privilege and those on the margins of society. I believe the reason for this is that the Christian message is for all, and when we preach and teach that the ground is level at the foot of the cross, this makes room for people of various faith backgrounds, those with no faith background, and those who have been in the church their entire lives.

In addition to preaching and leading worship services, providing organizational leadership and administration is one of my greatest joys. I believe God has gifted me with the ability to asses quickly and clearly what an organization needs to thrive, as well as the ability to cast vision and lead people toward that preferred future. In my current role as Lead Pastor, I have had the opportunity to lead through many new challenges. At the staff level, this has included helping staff heal from a traumatic past season, as well as hiring several new staff members. In council (the CRC’s governing board), I have led through a restructuring process to decrease the number of members on council and clarify our purpose and role as a council. I have also encouraged our council to move away from viewing itself as a complaint department where mistrust between congregation and staff was allowed to run rampant; instead, I have trained our council on how to avoid triangulation and instead to encourage direct communication. At the congregational level, I have led a culture change in which those who prefer hymns and those who prefer contemporary songs no longer keep a ledger to make sure everything is fair and equal; instead, we see ourselves as one united body, and this value of unity is more important than preference or taste. I am also actively providing guidance for groups that seek to listen and learn surrounding issues of racial justice and human sexuality. Finally, in my time at Harderwyk Ministries, I led a rebranding project, which included creating a new mission, vision, and values, as well as new logos, websites, social media, and signage. I also led through a process of worship renewal at Harderwyk’s Fusion service, revitalizing the out-of-date contemporary worship service with new songs and refreshed/retuned hymns, adding accessible liturgical elements to deepen our worship, and finding ways to make the established parts of our service more intentional and meaningful (e.g., the Lord’s Supper, Baptism, etc.).

2. Name two or three mentors who have significantly contributed to your ministry, and explain why these people are important to you.

Shawn Sikkema is a CRC Pastor in Aurora, Colorado. He spent 20+ years as the pastor of one of the largest congregations in the CRC. He currently directs a street ministry that reaches some of the poorest people in the Denver Metro Area. Shawn has been my mentor for about 10 years. He has guided me in the areas of organizational leadership and vocational discernment.

David Ryaarsdam is a professor of church history at Calvin Seminary. I did not enter seminary with a lot of previous knowledge. I felt like a bit of an outsider because I did not grow up in the church and went to public school my whole life. I was just the kind of student that David was looking for. His classes in church history and spiritual formation were the high points of my coursework at Calvin. David showed me that all the academic achievement in the world is useless if we forget about our first love: Jesus Christ. This was a much needed perspective in the world of Calvin Seminary. In addition to this, the spiritual guidance he gave outside the classroom was invaluable. David also officiated my wedding and gave the charge at my ordination service. I now count David as both professor and friend.

3. What caused you to enter ministry, and what are the core values that define your vision for ministry?

My call to ministry developed gradually throughout college. I became a committed Christian during the summer after I graduated from high school. When I got to Grand Valley, I became heavily involved in the RCA/CRC campus ministry. When I became a student leader at that ministry, my campus ministers urged me to consider seminary. As I explored seminary, God gave me a great opportunity to study at Calvin Seminary on a full scholarship. My call to ministry was a combination of enjoying leadership in a ministry organization, the affirmation of my community, and open doors to seminary.

The following are my core ministry values:

Christ-centered: God has been moving throughout history to redeem the world. The life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ is the culmination of this redemption. The church is a place to be formed by the life and love of Jesus through liturgy, sacraments, contemplative practices, and a common life together.

Hospitable: Churches must seek to be communities of radical welcoming where one can be known and loved.

Invitational: Those who are far and near from God need a community of rest, healing, hope, and comfort. This is the invitation of the Gospel.

4. Explain the strategies or ideas that most excite you for helping a church to become and remain missional.

Collaboration: I have come to believe more and more that it is of the utmost importance for churches to form partnerships. Too often churches spend a lot of time and resources creating programs that already exist. Collaboration saves the church both time and resources. It also allows us to get outside our four walls and interact with other people. The more bridges that are built with other churches and with the community, the better.

Story Telling: Everyone has a story. It is part of the human experience. Even if someone doesn’t agree with your religion, they will still be willing to hear you tell a story about your life. Stories are a great equalizer. But it is necessary to learn how to tell your story. Learning to tell our story does two things. First, the self-reflection necessary for storytelling strengthens our faith. Second, nothing impacts people as deeply as a story. From “dramatic” to “ordinary,” every story has the potential to change a life. If the missional church is ultimately about going outside of the church walls so that we can share the love of Christ, then storytelling is an important discipline to practice.

Live Missionally: Whether it is the office, a PTA meeting, a coffee shop, or a group of mom’s playing at the park, there are endless opportunities to connect. Pastors cannot go into all of those worlds every single day. However, the people of the congregation live there. They work there. They play there. The goal of the pastor and the Sunday morning worship service must be to equip the saints for ministry in their various contexts.

5. Name three of your most passionate hopes for the Church at large, and why they are significant to you.

My first hope for the Church at large is that each and every believer would deepen in their love and knowledge of God. Two of the most basic mandates of the Church are to preach the Word of God faithfully and celebrate the sacraments joyfully. When I first became a Christian, the Bible is what fascinated me the most. In fact, I was amazed by what I was reading. When I started going to church, I always looked forward to the sermon. In many ways, I still approach my calling to preach with this same sense of wonder and excitement. The Word of God is amazing, and it is my hope that the church would experience this amazement through the preaching of the Word and participation in the sacraments. Although simple, my hope is that the Church would never lose focus on theses foundational practices.

My second hope is that this knowledge and love of God would compel each and every believer to have a heart for those who do not know Christ. Sermons, singing, prayers, and the like must deepen us, but they must also send us out into our world. I hope that the Church will continue to be involved in mission locally, nationally, and worldwide. There are many people who do not know God, and it is the Church’s mandate to go and tell them. This hits close to home for me, because someone decided to share the Gospel with me when I was 18 years old. God used that person in my life, and now I am a pastor. We need to go and tell.

My final hope is that every local church would be a positive force in the community. I hope that even those who are not a part of it would say that the church is doing great things in the community. In other words, I hope that all churches would look for ways to extend beyond their own walls. I believe that this will give people who do not know Christ a safe way to encounter the Church. In addition, this will help the Church see itself as a servant to the community rather than just a building that happens to be in a community. This is important to me because for the Church to speak into the lives of people, it has to meet them where they are. The Church can no longer just expect people to come. Rather, the Church must go to them.

6. Give an example of how you would theologically address an issue facing your contemporary world. Please be thorough enough to help the reader to understand your thought processes and your life commitments.

An issue in our contemporary world that has been on my heart for many years is the exodus of our young people from the church. Whether it is the findings published by sociologist Christian Smith in Soul Searching and Souls in Transition or the insights found in the book UnChristian by David Kinnaman, it is clear that there is reason for concern.

The most basic theological approach to this issue is ecclesiology. Too often, well intentioned people will say that young people are the “future of the church.” However, this is not the case. Young people are the church right now. When we baptize, we welcome the children into the covenant community. One does not have to wait until age 18 to make significant contributions to the church. In fact, research has shown that young people who have been given significant opportunities to contribute to the life of the church are more likely to remain Christians after high school. Therefore, it is critically important to involve our young people in the life of the church in ways that allow them to have ownership.

Another important approach to this issue is helping to train families in how to incorporate faith in the home. Research shows that the number one religious influence in the life of teenagers is parents. Therefore, the church would be wise to use its resources to help families do this more effectively. The church can only be the church; it cannot take the place of the family. Rather, the church needs to support families by doing what the church is called to do.

Another solution to this issue is mentorship. Even though parents are the number one influence, research has also shown that young people are more likely to remain in the faith after high school when they have a number of non-parental adult influences in their lives. This is where the church can shine. The family of believers can help support each other. Simply by being surrounded by so many encouraging voices, a young person has a better chance of having a faith that endures.

In his book Soul Searching, Christian Smith observed that the faith of many young people has very little to do with historic, orthodox Christianity. Instead, they hold to a believe system that he calls Moral Therapeutic Deism (MTD). MTD assumes that God is distant and uninvolved in our lives, and all that he requires is being moral, nonjudgmental people. In his follow up book Souls in Transition, Smith argues that MTD ultimately fails after high school because it cannot sustain itself. One of the seasons for MTD is that young people have not been taught the content of the Christian faith. Again, this is where the church can shine. The church can help communicate the content of faith through Bible study, basic doctrinal instruction, and positive relationships. The Church needs to be committed to this.

7. What theologians, pastors, authors or other leaders have had the greatest influence upon your life and thought? (List up to 4 and explain.)

Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Engaging God’s World. This was my introduction to Reformed thinking. This book was instrumental in the development of my theological imagination. In addition to his writing, I had the opportunity to witness this great theologian preach with soulfulness and lovingly interact with students. Dr. Plantinga (or Neal as he is known by his students) was also one of the members of my oral comprehensive exam team. It was an honor to have one of my theological heroes be a part of that process.

Eugene Peterson. Many know Peterson for his imaginative interpretive work The Message. However, I have found a kindred spirit in Eugene Peterson after reading his spiritual theology series. Eat this Book is one of the most important books on the nature of Scripture that has been written in recent memory. Peterson’s spiritual memoir, aptly named The Pastor, tells the story of a man with amazing potential for academic greatness but who chose to work in the church as a pastor. He saw that as the most important work he could do. Peterson inspires me to be a better pastor.

8. How do you hope someone influenced by your ministry would describe what s/he considers to be most important?

1. I am loved: I have been saved by grace, and there is nothing I can do that will make God love me any more or any less. I hope they have experienced that love in tangible ways through my ministry.

2. I will live a life of love: Our response to what Christ has done for us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is to strive to live and love like Jesus.

9. Name at least one challenge for a pastor who accepts a Call to lead a church whose culture is other than his/her own.

Every culture has expectations. The biggest challenge for a pastor going into an unknown culture is understanding those expectations and how to navigate them. The ability to manage these expectations is a very important skill for effective pastoral ministry. Listening is the primary vehicle to understand these dynamics.

10. Describe your vision and hopes for the Church over the next 5-10 years.

That the church would grow in knowledge and love of Jesus Christ.

That we would develop/continue to develop partnerships within the community.

That the church would have a positive impact in the community

That the church would act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

That the church would be a safe place for the marginalized.

11. If there is anything else you would like to add about yourself that you think would help a search team to better understand and consider you as their next pastor, please elaborate here.