Theology

The past few weeks I have been taking a new bus route to work from my friend’s house. The route passes through Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood that is seen by many as a place of homelessness, poverty, and addiction. While there are many homeless people on the street who seem lonely and isolated, there is also a deeper sense of relationships and a tight-knit community where people care for and look out for one another, and share their hopes and pains with each other – like a family.

One of the dismaying trends within evangelical Protestantism in America is the growing divide between those evangelicals who emphasize the church’s responsibility to proclaim a gospel of individual conversion and those who emphasize the church’s responsibility to advocate for social justice. It is a trend that featured prominently at this summer’s synod of the Christian Reformed Church.

Three Februarys ago, the emotional, psychological, and spiritual fatigue I felt after completing a 2.5 day training on Understanding Racism hosted by CORR (Congregations Organizing for Racial Reconciliation) caught me off-guard. As a woman of color living in the United States, the daily grinds of life that seek to diminish or challenge my personhood are an ungodly but regular fact of life. If you disagree, you are probably not a woman or a person of color.

I want to tell you about friends of mine, Harouna and Marie Issaka. He is from the Hausa people, and she is both Hausa and Mori, ethnicities of their native Niger. They have followed Jesus through situations that I can only imagine, and I learn more about what it means to follow Jesus through them.

A few weeks ago my sister was visiting me and I excitedly wanted to play her some new music that I’ve really been enjoying. She listened and enjoyed it too. But she also raised a concern with me. She had been with me a few days and almost all the music we listened to was made by men. As a musician herself, she told me more about some of the struggles women face in the music industry.

And I realized I was part of the problem. The diversity in my music collection is not great.  

Calling all pastors! Have you ever talked about creation care or climate change from the pulpit? We encourage you to participate in the Creation Care Preaching Challenge. Keep reading to learn more about the challenge, discover creation care resources, and learn how you can incorporate creation care and climate change into your preaching.

So where does creation care appear in the Bible?

John Calvin does not always receive the best press outside of Reformed circles. He is often portrayed as an archconservative and an ideological father of capitalism. Most recently, the topic of Calvinism returned to mainstream debate when Betsy DeVos was nominated Secretary of Education by Donald Trump.

God is not impressed.

Why, you ask? Allow me paint an evocative picture.

Sing song, sing-a-long.

Hands raised to high heaven,

Like the branches of red oaks

Only inches shy of touching the big blue sky.

While the world sleeps, the Christian’s alarm clock beeps

It’s Sunday, says the mind as our lips get on their grind

Creating great services, working hard on our performances

and striving even harder to maintain appearances.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke, a lawyer put Jesus to the test by asking a bold question - “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The lawyer already knew the answer written in the Law, which is love God and love your neighbour. Not fully satisfied with the answer, he followed up with an honest question, “And who is my neighbour?” I have been thinking about this simple yet challenging question as I encounter others in my daily life, work, church and neighbourhood.

While there were several members of the great cloud of witnesses who shepherded me into the worldview and polity of the Christian Reformed Church, one of the more memorable is my friend Pastor Ken Vander Wall.

Rev. Ken Vander Wall is an ordained minister of the Christian Reformed Church who serves as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Campus Minister at William Paterson and Farleigh Dickerson universities. He is also always on call for members of Madison Avenue CRC in Paterson, New Jersey (NJ) who desire his counsel or help.