September 2020
Download a full pdf of this issue below or find links to every feature, news, column, review, and Our Shared Ministry article included in this edition. Not the date you wanted? Find issues back to January 2016 here or use the search function at the top to find articles going back to 2005. To find something even older, The Banner archives are maintained at Calvin College's Hekman Library.
Features
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The past few months of COVID-19, race relations, and vivid examples of police brutality further highlight the divisions that exist between us. How do we show Christian love?
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We gulp this brew down like poison. Someone needs to be blamed if we’re to make sense of this brokenness. Right?
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Church shopping became church hopping, then church stopping.
News
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For two weeks out of every winter, Ann Arbor (Mich.) CRC hosts additional shelter space for the Shelter Association of Washtenaw. This year, their second week of hosting turned into 12 weeks, benefitting the church and the men.
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Forty-two years since the Indigenous Family Centre opened in Winnipeg, Man., an Indigenous person, Shannon Perez, will serve as director of the organization.
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New housing at 501 Eastern Ave. in Grand Rapids, Mich., officially opened last month featuring 17 apartments set aside for under-housed young people. Members of Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church played a key role in the project’s completion.
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The Christian Reformed Church in North America Canada Corporation met for a half-day in July to further discuss the governance restructure.
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Two groups of Dordt University engineering students, 20 years apart, worked on designing a pediatric wheelchair for the development support agency Hope Haven.
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Berny Niemeyer, a church planter and pastor who lived for more than a decade with Alzheimer’s Disease, died May 20.
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Jim Versluys, who served for 33 years as pastor to several Christian Reformed congregations, died May 15.
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Hope Unexpected, an eight-year-old organization serving young single mothers in Byron Center, Mich., opened a second location in January. Now they’ve adapted their approach to continue supporting families.
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A gentle, wise servant of God, Bill DeJong died May 30 at age 90.
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Immanuel CRC members Mike Earls and Gerry Gysbers in Hamilton, Ont., often take their band Deservedly So into local nursing homes to perform for residents. During COVID-19, they’ve kept the sing-along going with an online concert.
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Youth Unlimited adapted its annual summer mission trips due to the COVID-19 pandemic. About half the usual number of churches signed up for SERVE@Home, but even some of those plans had to change.
Columns
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Ambas albergan un resentimiento latente ante percepciones de desprecios y maltratos. Y pareciera que a ambas, les encantaría castigar a la otra por varios medios.
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This historical novel about the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 has striking similarities to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.
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As we start this school year, we know things will be different.
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I grew up with constant criticism from my parents. I don’t want to hurt my children like I was hurt, but I can’t seem to stop being critical. Help!
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How an album found by a Spotify algorithm provided a spiritual breakthrough.
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Many Christians who have walked closely with people who are same-sex attracted recognize a purity of love in many long-term, committed same-sex relationships in today’s modern society.
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A 75-year history of evangelicalism that identifies the forces that have turned Donald Trump into a hero of the Religious Right.
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Based on a true story, a young black lawyer fights to get an innocent man off of death row.
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Both harbor simmering resentment at perceived slights and mistreatments. And both, it seems, would love to punish the other by various means.
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A little boy creatively makes a rocket ship while stuck inside on a rainy day.
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See how readers responded to recent Banner issues, articles, and columns.
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I wonder what I would have done if I was in Ebed-Melech’s place. Would I have acted courageously? Or would I have remained silent?
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Changes keep coming, and like waves on the shore, I can’t stop them. As Mom’s disease progresses, we have no choice but to move along with it.
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Convicted of their past sin and consumed with the ensuing guilt, they experienced the same crushing concerns.
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In the midst of a pandemic and the greater call for social justice and equity, what might ‘being missional’ look like?
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Lent and advent celebrations were totally absent in the first 30 years of my 75-year CRC experience. Now they abound. Why now and not then?
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양측 진영은 모두 자신들이 느끼는 모욕과 홀대에 부글부글 끓는 분노를 품고 있습니다. 그리고 모두 다양한 방식으로 상대측에 벌을 주고 싶어하는 것처럼 보입니다.
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양측 진영은 모두 자신들이 느끼는 모욕과 홀대에 부글부글 끓는 분노를 품고 있습니다. 그리고 모두 다양한 방식으로 상대측에 벌을 주고 싶어하는 것처럼 보입니다.
Our Shared Ministry
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On the evening of May 20, Midland (Mich.) Reformed Church opened its doors to some of the 10,000 people who were forced to evacuate their homes and the surrounding communities due to flooding caused by the breaking of two dams.
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As a person with a physical disability, I am happy I can work from home right now during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Resonate ministry leaders challenged cohort participants to go for walks in their neighborhoods, check in with neighbors, and experiment with different ways to connect with people.
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El contexto lo es todo.
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“I realized through listening that other young people are facing the same problem as me, but also that there is a solution in Christ.”
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Little did we know that within a few weeks, the rise of COVID-19 would force us to revisit this question.
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Knowing that worship leaders and churches would be scrambling to meet the needs of their congregants, the group tabled its agenda and began to create resources.
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문맥이 모든 것이다.
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문맥이 모든 것이다.
