Baldwin Christian Reformed Church

Baldwin Christian Reformed Church Rooted in God's Word, Growing in the Faith, Bearing Fruit in the World

Sabbatical Reflection 3: There was one rather significant thing on my personal “not-to-do” list for sabbatical: do not w...
09/03/2026

Sabbatical Reflection 3: There was one rather significant thing on my personal “not-to-do” list for sabbatical: do not watch or follow synod during the sabbatical. To most people that’s pretty easy, but I am a bit of a synod nerd. Before my sabbatical started, I had reviewed most of the agenda and developed opinions on many things. I usually watch the livestream if I’m not a delegate. I tend to have passionate conversations with other synod nerds. I’m pleased to report, for the most part, I followed through on this. I didn’t watch. I did get a text message or two but they didn’t pull me in. Being off social media probably helped a great deal. What did I do in my first week of getting back to work? I watched the synod videos.

A lot happened at Synod 2026. One of the biggest things was the adoption of a 20-point “Ten-year Strategic Plan for Church Planting in the CRCNA,” which came from Resonate Global Mission in a supplement to the agenda. This wasn’t something I knew about until I skimmed The Banner and started watching the videos. I’ll admit: my gut reaction was negative. Not because I disagree with planting churches but 20 points is a lot of stuff to do. It’s also really ambitious for the average CRC member, pastor, church, and classis to really get involved or commit themselves to. Part of what has alleviated some of my negativity was the presenter’s own admission that he felt that a bit, too. Is this guaranteed to work and be supported? We’ll see. There is a lot of trusting God to move people to get behind and involved in the efforts.

Another facet of this plan that’s grown on me is that it’s really not all about just church planting. There’s a lot that’s about discipleship and developing and raising up leaders. We’re not just talking about sending people to seminary to become pastors but from within our churches and classes. Combined with Thrive’s report encouraging renewal and developing elders, deacons, and others who will serve the church—there’s plenty to get involved in.

I won’t include all 20 points but let me share some that I see fitting the church and classis I serve:
• …Every congregation, classis, and denominational ministry [is called] to prioritize the multiplication of disciples who make disciples consistent with the biblical pattern reflected in Matthew 28:18-20 and 2 Timothy 2:2.
• …Every classis [is to be] supported and resourced to develop a clear and contextual leadership development pathway with identified ownership, aligned resources, and an active team guiding the process…[This includes: accessing] opportunities for leadership development within their congregations…[identifying] mentoring and training environments for emerging leaders within the classis…
• …Resonate Global Mission [is helping] churches, classes, and agencies of the CRCNA to discover helpful ways in which our church planting pathways can learn from and be connected to what God is doing in the global church today in the area of church planting.
• …The Office of General Secretary [is] to develop a denominational network of regional facilitators to support the discernment process for churches [that are diminishing in size, unable to provide leadership and/or meet financial obligations, or have no prospect of continued growth]…in order to provide a coordinated response for helping…discern whether God may be leading to renewal, closure, or other kingdom-focused options…
• [Church plants are to have detailed partnership, financial expectations, and funding with a parent church and classis.]

What I see in these five points are discipleship, developing and mentoring leaders, looking beyond just our denomination, aiding ailing churches even to closure, and partnering to plant churches. The point of this “strategic plan” and synod’s adoption of it in its entirety is to say this is what we commit to doing together. I know it’s hard to get buy-in when delegates make decisions “for” others. I know many churches and people might say, “I don’t know how we’re supposed to help,” “our volunteers are already burned out,” “we don’t have resources,” or “this seems like a fad.” The reality is, though, we as Christians shouldn’t need a lengthy synodical report to move us to do the work.

The CRC has been going through some stuff the last few years, as other denominations have too. But one of the things that’s been said is “We want to get back to gospel ministry”—well, this is it. Churches exist not just as clubs or meetings for their current members. We exist to help lead people to a saving knowledge and faith in Jesus Christ, to help and celebrate reform in our lives, to worship God and to see his kingdom spread. To put it simply—from one of the grounds given to adopt the plan, “The gospel calls us to a wholehearted commitment to make disciples and gather them into the church.” A huge component of the plan is also prayer and fasting—we must depend on God to help us do this work, to revitalize our denomination, to give us what we need to identify and develop disciples, leaders, and plant churches. Let’s get to work.

https://www.thebanner.org/news/2026/06/the-start-of-a-movement-the-next-10-years-in-the-crc

https://www.crcna.org/sites/default/files/Agenda_Supplement-Resonate_Global_Mission.pdf

09/02/2026

Dear Baldwin CRC Family and Friends,

Post-Sermon Reflections—Psalm 106:1-48: The declaration, “Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!” sounds most naturally as joy. Both in the form of declaring our faith, our trust, that this is who and how God is as well as in response to what he has done for us—if I ask you to put an emotion on it, it’s likely going to be happy. “Praise the LORD! Oh give thanks to [him]…Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting!” Those are all positive statements. They fit with the actions that we find in various psalms calling believers to “sing,” “make a joyful noise,” “worship and bow down,” “ascribe,” and “rejoice.”

What if I’m not happy, though? And not just a little bit—what if there are circumstances in our lives that have brought great grief and sorrow to us? What if, as Psalm 42 says, “My tears have been my food day and night…My soul is cast down within me”? Even then, are we to give thanks and praise to God? Yes! That doesn’t mean we put on a mask and must be fake, though.

When those who returned to Jerusalem post-exile rebuilt the temple and celebrated the Passover, there was appropriately great joy! “…The LORD had made them joyful…” (Ezra 6:22) However, as they were re-devoting themselves to God and his law, they realized just how far God’s people had left him. “While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men, women, and children, gathered to him out of Israel, for the people wept bitterly…Ezra withdrew…neither eating bread not drinking water, for he was mourning over the faithlessness of the exiles…All the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain” (Ezra 10:1, 6, 9). Their weeping was not against the goodness and love of God, which was the only reason they could even be back in Jerusalem and rebuilding it. Their distress was an acknowledgement of their brokenness, that of previous generations, and what that had brought on them. Yet their tears of grief could change to tears and songs of joy because they knew God is faithful, loving, and merciful to all who seek him.

When we experience problems in our lives or in this world—whether due to our own sins or those of others or we realize something exists because our first parents chose to go against God, we don’t need to gloss over it. God has given us the ability to lament, express our pain to him, and ask for him to rescue us. As we trust him to receive us, to keep us, to change our struggles, to return and make all things new—as we remember who we are relying on and what he is capable of, remember to give thanks to God—even in sorrow! Remember that you’re turning to him because you trust in his steadfast love and goodness. “…Give thanks in all circumstances…” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

Tonight (Wednesday) at 7:00pm, the new Learn Your Bible class led by Pastor Dan will meet in the library. If you’re new to the Christian faith or the Bible or wish you knew more, this class will look at different aspects of Scripture and the big picture of how its accounts, themes, and books connect. Just bring a Bible or one will be provided. All ages welcome.

Tomorrow night (Thursday) at 6:00pm, the Women’s Bible Study will have a kick-off fellowship time at the Wevers (2108 90th Ave.). All women are invited.

Join us for worship on Sunday as we turn to 2 Kings 21, where we find the account of King Manasseh. Pastor Dan’s sermon as we look at hopes and fears around growing and lacking faith is entitled, “One Generation Away…”

Our offering is for Tyler and Christina Helfers.

Thank you to those who are serving this week:
Monitors—Bob & Barb M
Praise Team—Kelly P & Amy
Pianist—Brian
Tech Booth—Eric & Kelly G
Greeters—Jim & Kelly P
Refreshments—Marius & Raquel

Join us on Sunday afternoon at 1:30pm as we lead worship at the Baldwin Care Center. All are welcome to participate in our choir or visit and worship with the residents.

Backpack Blessings and Church Picnic—Join us at 2:00pm next Saturday (September 12) for an all-church picnic and to also ask our Lord’s blessings on our children, the community’s children and teachers, administrators, leaders and programs! We will not be distributing backpacks but spiritually filling them with these blessings and our support. Please consider joining us in this important ministry as well as a time of games for all ages, delicious food and fellowship. Family and friends are, as always, welcome.

3rd-6th/7th-Adult Sunday School and Afternoon Bible Study will begin next Sunday (September 13). K-2nd Sunday School will begin on September 27.

Send a message to learn more

08/27/2026

*If you are normally on the church email list and haven't received this or last week's reflection, check your spam folder and/or add [email protected] to your address book. If you'd like to be added to our email list, comment below or email [email protected] and [email protected].

Dear Baldwin CRC Family and Friends,

Sabbatical Reflection 2: One of things I noted going into my sabbatical was that my work and calling is not limited to what I do at and for the people of Baldwin CRC. I’ve been heavily involved in Classis committees and work. I’ve gone to synod multiple times as a delegate and have been chosen to serve as an officer at one of those, but I have also served the denomination on a study committee. I do this work, not to brag, not to build up my resume or status, not because I’ve got all sorts of time, but because I genuinely enjoy serving the broader church, too. I believe to be a pastor in the CRC means a commitment to serve in at least some of these places.

In The Pastor, Eugene Peterson shares a reflection that he had while reading Moby-Dick. “There is a turbulent scene in which a whaleboat scuds across a frothing ocean in pursuit of the great white whale, Moby Dick. The sailors are laboring fiercely, every muscle taut, all attention and energy concentrated on the task…In this boat, however, there is one man who does nothing. He doesn’t hold an oar; he doesn’t perspire; he doesn’t shout…This man is the harpooner, quiet and poised, waiting. And then this sentence: ‘To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet out of idleness, and not out of toil.’

“Was this a confirmation to cultivate what I had named an ‘unbusy pastor’? A harpooner?...If there is no harpooner in the boat, there will be no proper finish to the chase. Or if the harpooner is exhausted, having abandoned his assignment and become an oarsman, he will not be ready and accurate when it is time to throw his javelin” (281-282). It reminded of what the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him” (2 Timothy 2:1-4).

None of us can do everything. None of us is called to do everything. It’s what we find in our understanding of the institution of deacons in the early church, “…The twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, ‘It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word’” (Acts 6:2-4). We must know our gifts and callings. We must understand that different people have different capacities to work in time, efficiency, and skill. To go back to the Moby-Dick analogy, yes, a harpooner must be ready to go when it is time for their job, but the oarsmen must be ready and fit for theirs, too. The harpooner will never have a chance to take down the white whale unless the oarsmen put him in position. At this point in my life and ministry, it’s easier for me to identify with the oarsmen.

I need to be careful not to take on or commit to too many things—I know that. After this Synod, I was put up for a new denominational task force. I’m willing to serve because the subject is one I’ve already invested a lot of time and thought into and because my service on a previous study committee concluded. In Classis Lake Superior, there are certain roles that are nearing their end and I don’t plan to seek another term, but I’m still active in some. I’ve decided to step away from my work with the Messy Reformation and similar ventures, not because I’ve had a falling out or disagree with the platform or think the CRC is done with this season of reformation, but because I need time and focus. My family and our church needs more of my time and focus.

Another book I’ve been reading is The Pastor’s Family by Brian and Cara Croft. It’s a book that has been and is still bringing conviction to me. Brian writes, “The demands on those who pastor are always greater than what they can meet. This tends to create some default patterns in which ‘the squeaky wheels’ of ministry get the grease, so to speak, while other, equally important areas of responsibility are less attended. Often, the pastor’s family is the wheel that squeaks the least…

“There are many demands on a pastor’s time, and most of them are legitimate. Yet the real problem of neglect is actually rooted in something deeper than just competing demands for time and attention. The problem is something that is innate to our nature, something that does not vanish with better planning and more deliberate delegation of pastoral responsibilities. Getting organized won’t fix this. Learning to manage your time won’t solve it” (32).

What’s the problem, then? What groundbreaking discovery did Croft make? “The problem stems not from the demands a pastor faces but the way he and his wife choose to respond to those demands. In the heart of every pastor is an innate wiring, a tendency to fulfill his desires and meet the demands of life in broken, selfish, and sinful ways. This is the fundamental problem that leads a pastor to neglect his marriage and his children” (43). “A pastor’s heart is no different from any other heart. A pastor’s neglect of his family cannot simply be blamed on the pressures, demands, and unrealistic expectations that have been placed on him. In the end, the struggle he faces—and the neglect of his family—has one root cause: a sinful heart” (45).

I’m still working to figure this out. Especially as I get back to the various duties I’ve talked about—and that I enjoy—I need to remember to prioritize my family. That means not just accompanying or chauffeuring my wife and kids around, but being present with them, investing in them, loving them. The harpooner and the sailor were away from home to do their duties. Most of my time is spent at or around home but that doesn’t mean I’ve been present or giving the grease to my family. There’s a sin piece to that which I’m still learning to address. There’s a difference between an unbusy pastor and a lazy pastor. I don’t think this is only a thing pastors deal with, but it’s not something to be ignored. To the members of my congregation, this is not me telling you, “Don’t contact me,” or “Back off on pastoral care requests”—no, my primary vocational calling is to serve with you. But I hope you can also see me making space for my family.


Join us for worship on Sunday as Pastor returns and brings a message on Psalm 106 entitled, “Sinners Resting in a Good and Loving God.” We will also be celebrating the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper—let us prepare our hearts as God has called us to.

Our offering is for the Baldwin Community Food Pantry.


Website Issues: If you went to our church’s website between Saturday and Wednesday, you may have noticed it was pretty bare. After taking with our host, we’re not real sure what happened, but it’s back up now. We’ve updated the calendar feature to run off a Google Calendar. If you have something to add or want changed on there, please talk to Pastor Dan.

Next week Wednesday (September 2) at 7:00pm, the new Learn Your Bible class led by Pastor Dan will meet in the library. If you’re new to the Christian faith or the Bible or wish you knew more, this class will look at different aspects of Scripture and the big picture of how its accounts, themes, and books connect. Just bring a Bible or one will be provided.

One of my (Pastor Dan's) commitments with the sabbatical was to write reflections from my time away. Here is a first one...
08/21/2026

One of my (Pastor Dan's) commitments with the sabbatical was to write reflections from my time away. Here is a first one...

For eight years an unstained, empty, wooden box has been with my family. Most of that time, it’s been on the floor, resting against a dresser, in my bedroom. It’s a shadow box that a family friend gave us following the loss of our daughter Ellie in 2017. It was for us to decorate and fill with items that we have in her memory.

Finally, this summer sabbatical gave me the opportunity to work on that, to get it done, to put it up. I stained it. We laid out pictures, molds of her hands and feet, a hat, dress, and some other items that she was given while in the hospital. While we’ve had a few pictures of her with other family pictures, this memory box better reminds me of Ellie. She was created, she lived, she died, and I trust she is loved by God and with him. In the processing of my grief in the summer after her passing, it was necessary for me to come to a point of being thankful to God for her. In a way, having this box helps remind me of gratitude. It’s not a shrine; it’s a display. It’s a symbolic reminder of a person, a time, a place, and circumstances—all related to me as a husband, father, and person.

Being a pastor engages those aspects of life as well. In his memoir, “The Pastor,” Eugene Peterson wrote, “I wonder if at the root of the defection [of many pastors] is a cultural assumption that all leaders are people who ‘get things done,’ and ‘make things happen’…While being a pastor certainly has some of these components, the pervasive element in our two-thousand-year pastoral tradition is not someone who ‘gets things done’ but rather the person placed in the community to pay attention and call attention to ‘what is going on right now’ between men and women, with one another and with God—this kingdom of God that is primarily local, relentlessly personal, and prayerful ‘without ceasing’” (5).

Being a pastor is contextual. It’s being called in a particular time, to a particular people, in a particular place. While that can sound simple—“just find your preferred or best-fit context,” pastoring involves all the circumstances that come with that time, people, and place. It connects with life and death, with joy and sorrow, with gain and loss, with emotions, sicknesses, trials, disagreements, gifts—with seasons where these mount up one after another as well as those days more comfortably managed. The reality is that people don’t always act or react the way you expect them to. Stress, antagonism, burnout, addiction, laziness, stubbornness, and change show up and the particular time, people, and place that a pastor can get used to shifts.

The box I worked on this summer looks different now from what it did at the beginning of the summer, which was the same way it had looked for eight years. Fundamentally, it’s still a wooden box, but it contains and displays something now. It shows something else than just a natural woodgrain.

People change. Communities change. Songs change. Technologies change. Schedules change. Being a pastor of a local church over longer periods of time requires change (or adapting) to what is happening in and around one’s congregation. The message I’m called by God to deliver—the gospel of Jesus Christ for salvation—is unchanged. The identity of who I’m pastoring also doesn’t change—not just “Baldwin CRC” but that this congregation is “‘…a holy congregation [to be treated] with respect and dignity…’” (160). Pastoral work will look different at times, though. It requires flexibility.

As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9:19, 22-23, “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them…I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.” That doesn’t mean that all sorts of changes must be injected into churches, but a necessary understanding (or permission) for me as a pastor is that it’s okay for how I serve Baldwin CRC in 2026 to be different from how I served it in 2019 or how previous pastors served it. My focus is to be the kingdom of God, seeing people discipled in Christ, and sharing with you and others in the blessings of the gospel. That’s the ultimate finished product of my pastoral ministry here.

8-16-26 Worship ServiceScripture: Judges 16:1-22Sermon Title: Beware of a Blind-Sided HeartCheck out the recorded servic...
08/16/2026

8-16-26 Worship Service
Scripture: Judges 16:1-22
Sermon Title: Beware of a Blind-Sided Heart
Check out the recorded service on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39QUt9isKpE the Baldwin CRC webpage: https://baldwincrc.org/sermons/beware-of-a-blind-sided-heart/ . Audio recording also available on the website.

August 16, 2026 Beware of a Blind-sided Heart Preacher: Pastor Jack Van Marion Series: Single Passage: Judges 16:1-22 Download Files Bulletin Topics: Discernment « Glory and Grace

Address

897 U.S. Highway 63
Baldwin, WI
54002

Opening Hours

9am - 12pm

Telephone

+17156842928

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Baldwin Christian Reformed Church posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category