A unique quality of modern North American Christianity is that, outside of Pentecostal circles, believers rarely report visions and dreams as experiences connecting them to God. When we have dreams and visions, we attribute them to the jalapeňo nachos we ate before bed! Not so for the rest of the world. During my years living overseas, I noticed that visions and dreams were common and critical to the faith of many believers.
This is also true in Scripture. Almost all of the Old Testament prophets and patriarchs (Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel) experienced God through dreams and visions. In the New Testament, on Pentecost, Peter explained that visions, dreams, and prophecy would be prevalent in the “church era.” Later, Paul’s vision of the man pleading with him to “come over to Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16) led to the spreading of the gospel in Greece, Rome, and the rest of the Roman Empire. Dreams and visions are important ways that God has communicated with his people from the beginning until today.
What dreams and visions could the Holy Spirit be using to get the attention of CRC congregations and leaders today?
In 2024-2025 I participated in all 10 of the Gather events throughout North America. In every one of these meetings (attended by 630 CRC members and leaders in total), people shared powerful stories of how God prompted them to share their faith with non-believers. Many of those stories led to personal transformations. Some of them led to a major change in congregations or the initiation of new ministries. For me, these Gather stories were a vision of how the Holy Spirit is directing the future of our congregations.
Like most of the dreams and visions in Scripture, this vision comes at a time of challenge. Abraham had his vision of inheriting a Land of Promise when he didn’t have a pinch of it to call his own. Ezekiel had his dreams and visions of Israel’s restoration while sitting on a river bank in Babylonian exile. Saul experienced his vision of Jesus on his way to persecute believers in Damascus.
Christian Reformed congregations have struggled for many decades with evangelism and church planting. There were many stories of disappointment during the Gather events—outreach events missing the mark, leaders pleading with their congregations to be more hospitable to no avail, parents grieving for children who no longer practice their faith. Our CRCNA denominational survey has, over the decades, shown that speaking about our faith with non-believers is one of the biggest challenges for CRCNA folks. And yet…
God-given dreams and visions don’t describe a future that depends on our skills, intelligence, or capacities. Those kinds of things we call strategic plans. God-given dreams and visions describe a reality that only the Holy Spirit can deliver. And we are having them.
At Synod 2025 in Ancaster, Ont., I was amazed that the conversation that sparked the most energy was one about church planting. Just a few months from now, our denominational ministries, with Resonate Global Mission as the lead partner, will present a 10-year church-planting vision to Synod 2026 for its discernment and approval.
That vision will call CRC folks to become disciples who make disciples. It will encourage prioritizing the development of new leaders, especially diverse leaders. It will request intentional and clear partnerships between congregations, classes (regional bodies), and denominational ministries. It will challenge churches near the end of their life cycle to consider a restart or making their resources available to CRC church-planting efforts. It will ask CRC congregations and classes to embrace and learn from global church planters. Finally, it will propose sacrificial giving to support the establishment of new churches in North America.
Presented in this “Our Shared Ministry” section are stories of Christian Reformed people obediently chasing God-given dreams and visions to share their faith and plant churches. God is giving all of our churches a vision for evangelism and church planting—not because we are good at it, but because God is.
This is the last column on the results from the Gather Initiative. I encourage you to read the short Gather report found at crcna.org/Gather. It provides an amazing vision for what God is doing in CRC congregations.
About the Author
Rev. Zachary King is the general secretary of the CRCNA. He is a member of Cascade Fellowship Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Mich.