Darrell Delaney Becomes Director of ReFrame Ministries

Former pastor at Madison Square Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., and campus minister at Grand Valley State University in, Allendale, Mich., Rev. Darrell Delaney has been appointed new director of the Christian Reformed Church’s media outreach, ReFrame Ministries.

Delaney will start work May 11, as part of planned transitional overlap with current ReFrame director Kurt Selles, who is retiring in July.

“I’m an evangelism and discipleship person,” Delaney told the CRC’s Council of Delegates, gathered for its May meeting where it conducted a total of three interviews for vacant denominational leadership roles. “I can see God using ReFrame—Today, Groundwork—making sure God’s gospel gets out. I had to be a part of it, so I put my name in, trusting that if it’s God’s will, he’d do what he would do.”

Today is ReFrame’s daily devotional, in print and online in several languages, and Groundwork is the ministry’s weekly Bible study audio program, which Delaney has cohosted with Rev. Scott Hoezee since 2021.

“Back to God isn’t gone,” Delaney said of the original radio broadcast that started the media ministry in 1939. “It’s the same old gospel message. The message will not change, but the methods that we employ (to convey) that message? I’m excited to see where that will go.”

Delaney described Groundwork as a “digital Romans road”—a formerly common tool for evangelism that relays the gospel message through passages from the book of Romans. “The Lord is using it (ReFrame) to get his word far and wide, and I want to be a part of that.”

Planning for a transition to a new director had been underway since Selles indicated his plan to retire but “picked up pace” in November, U.S. director of ministry operations Dan DeKam told delegates, with a finalized job description, a month-long posting, and two rounds of interviews with four, and then three, of the top candidates, before deciding to present Delaney for the role. DeKam managed the interview team, which included three members of the Council of Delegates, two representatives from ReFrame, and executive director, Canada, Al Postma.

Ron Karelse and Felix Fernandez, who serve on the Council of Delegates’ ReFrame Committee, introduced Delaney to the gathering, asking first for him to relay his faith journey.

Delaney said he responded to the gospel at 11 years old, because of his mother’s love for Jesus, but he had no real early discipleship, which he feels led to his own call to do youth ministry early on. He trained at Kuyper College and then Western Theological Seminary and later Calvin Theological Seminary for a Master of Theology in pastoral care.

In 2022, after pastoring for several years at Madison Square, he said it was “a full circle moment to go back to campus ministry where my faith was rekindled.” From there he began serving Reach the Forgotten jail ministry.

Delaney is working on a Ph.D. in organizational leadership that interrogates the question, “How do we help pastors and leaders lead from a place of wholeness and not burn out?” He plans to interview people who have left ministry “to understand how they make sense of it” and, from what he learns, establish indicators to help: “What can I change so I don’t get to the crash-and-burn stage?” He said it's “a full-time online program but designed to work around full-time work so I can focus on what God is calling me to and complete the studies ‘inch by inch.’”

ReFrame is a mult-lingual, multi-platform ministry that operates in nine major world languages and nurtures partnerships with in-country media missions. “I’ve been a part of intentionally diverse ministry my whole life,” Delaney told delegates. “It’s central to my understanding of the gospel—‘light to the nations’ (quoting Isaiah).”

Recognizing preaching as one of his strengths, Delaney said he’s glad that opportunities to do that while visiting supporting churches “is baked into the role.”

Saying he wants to “be a bullhorn, get the word out” about the successful gospel mission of ReFrame, he also believes “there will be opportunities to reclaim the place that it had in faith formation of the believers in the Christian Reformed Church” using “avenues for communication that this generation is using without neglecting the tools that God has already blessed” and “listening carefully to the team bringing along what God’s been faithful in and starting in on new opportunities.”

The Council took a vote on the recommendation to appoint Delaney in executive session, with chair Michael Ten Haken later announcing, “I’m happy to let you know that you've been overwhelmingly approved by this body to be the next director of ReFrame Ministries.”