The Messy Reformation

Episode 272: The Banner's Future and the Confessional Renewal of the CRCNA — Lora Copley (Part 2)

In part two of our conversation with Lora Copley, editor of The Banner, the question turns from where the Banner has been to where it could go. Lora doesn't dodge — she names specifics. A Banner podcast launching this year, fully funded through grassroots giving, hosted by Derek Buikema and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra. A daily Synod 2026 recap modeled on the work of Abide Project. A growing donor base of "banner builders." Online space for articles ranging from 500 to 2,400 words, giving faithful Reformed voices a platform the print magazine can't yet hold. This isn't strategic spin. It's a vision of a publication actually serving the church it claims to speak with.
Then Willy turns the conversation toward confessionalism, and the heart of Lora's vision becomes clear. She isn't manufacturing a confessional turn at the Banner — the pitches are already coming. A stay-at-home mom in Chicago on a "Now What?" series for young adults. A church planter in the Multiply 222 network who tells every new disciple after twenty-six weeks of catechism that the only place to go next is Berkhof's Systematic Theology — because the book is incredible. The Reformed confessions are not a museum piece. They're how Reformed churches make disciples, and the CRCNA is hungry for leaders who believe it.
Lora heads into Synod 2026 to be interviewed and voted on as permanent editor. She admits she's nervous — her words tumble out like a clown car at the Ringling Brothers circus, she says — but she'll feel deeply dependent on the Lord and His Spirit, and that's a good place to be. We boast in our weakness so that Christ's strength may be known. The closing word is Jonathan Edwards: among all the counterfeits the enemy can imitate of the Spirit's fruit, the one thing he cannot counterfeit is the exalting of Christ. That's what Lora is praying for the Banner, the agencies, the denomination, and the Synod about to gather. Lifted, fixed, transformed eyes on Jesus. There is no other sign and wonder worth chasing.
Timestamps:
0:00 — Recap and lead-in
0:26 — Dreaming the Banner's future
1:07 — Reaching a younger, audio-visual audience
1:32 — The new Banner podcast launching this year
4:06 — Banner builders and grassroots support
5:34 — Willy on confessionalism in the Banner
6:48 — Berkhof Basics, Canons of Dort, and confessional pitches coming across the desk
8:33 — "Just send them to Berkhof": a church planter's discipleship story
11:10 — Jason on teaching doctrine to high schoolers
11:49 — Calvin was 26: Reformed confidence for a new generation
13:03 — A hunger for passionately confessional leadership
13:34 — Lora on heading to Synod 2026
15:42 — Nervous, dependent, and in the right place
18:29 — How to pray for Lora and the Banner
23:00 — Praise God for His faithfulness
27:45 — Pray, write, read, share
28:16 — Final words
29:04 — Jonathan Edwards on the one thing you can't counterfeit
Join and support us on Substack: https://themessyreformation.com/Intro music by Matt Krotzer

Episode 271: Breaking the Echo Chamber - Wider Voices in the Banner — Lora Copley (Part 1)

Lora Copley never thought she'd be editor of The Banner. When her name first came up, she sent back a crying-laughing emoji. She was a campus minister in Iowa, not a journalist. But on a Saturday afternoon — the day before the application deadline, while her daughter was napping — the thought wouldn't leave her alone. She put in her résumé fully expecting to be politely declined, and instead found herself in Florida, at the Multiply 222 conference, receiving a call she hadn't seen coming. In part one of our conversation, Lora tells the story of how God redirected her into the Banner, and what she's learned about the publication, the denomination, and the work in front of her.
This episode is for anyone who has thrown the Banner in the recycling and assumed nothing was going to change. Lora walks us behind the curtain — how feature articles get planned a year in advance, how unsolicited columns come in, how the Our Shared Ministry pages work, and why submissions have nearly tripled since December. She's not asking the CRCNA to manage decline. She's reading Hebrews 11 and the COD report side by side and refusing to pretend the gospel has shrunk. She wants to know what God is doing in Houston and Pease, Minnesota, and Acton, Ontario — and she wants The Banner to be the place where we hear about it.
The payoff is the moment Jason calls out in real time: he's been one of the Banner's most vocal critics for six years, and he's genuinely encouraged. Lora's vision — a publication that speaks with and within the denomination, that helps the CRCNA know both God and itself, that holds Calvin's twin pillars of wisdom together — is exactly the kind of cross-pollination a denomination in reformation requires. Part two picks up with Lora's dreams for the next five years, the Banner's confessional turn, and her nerves heading into Synod.
Timestamps:
0:00 — Intro
1:59 — How a crying-laughing emoji turned into a call to the Banner
5:30 — Hebrews 11 and refusing the script of decline
9:06 — Stepping into a new role: the steep learning curve
11:30 — December deep dive into Synod 2025
12:27 — What Synod 2025 actually asked of The Banner
14:00 — Speaking with and within the denomination
15:30 — Calvin's twin pillars: knowing God and knowing ourselves
17:59 — From interim editor to candidate for permanent editor
19:30 — A call to and a release from
20:48 — Behind the scenes: how Banner articles come together
22:00 — Features, columns, and Our Shared Ministry
25:57 — Why submissions tripled — and what that means for stewardship
27:38 — Widening the pool and breaking the echo chamber
Join and support us on Substack: https://themessyreformation.com/Intro music by Matt Krotzer

Episode 270: Synod 2026 — Passionately Reformed Leaders for a Passionately Reformed Denomination

Part two of our Synod 2026 preview goes after the bones: who has authority to discipline, what the church owes the state, what the church even is, and why confessional integrity at every level isn't a bonus — it's the basic ask. The technical density of these overtures hides deeply theological questions, and the answers will shape the future of the CRCNA.
Jason, Dan, and Willy work through the discipline-of-office-bearers task force and the Canadian-law pushback in Overtures 34 and 36, where pragmatism keeps trying to override principle. Then Christian nationalism: Overture 25 from Grand Rapids East, a public reading of Belgic Confession Article 36, and Willy connecting it to the Lord's Prayer. Classis Wisconsin's Overture 33 on Reformed ecclesiology gets the case it deserves — the study committee we actually need. The gravamen overtures are dispatched with the contempt they earn for being out of order.
The home stretch is confessional alignment: every employee a member of a CRC, every adjunct faculty member at Calvin Seminary signing the covenant for office bearers, the next Calvin Seminary president confessionally aligned and passionately Reformed — and synod prepared to reject any candidate who isn't. Synod has the authority. Stop apologizing for using it. Christ is still building his church, and we are ambassadors of his kingdom.
Timestamps:
0:00 — Wrap-up of the defining membership task force
0:30 — Discipline of office bearers task force (recommendations C, D, E)
2:23 — Overture 34 (Eastern Canada): Canadian-law objections
5:44 — Pragmatism is the door out of the church, not into it
6:09 — The Christian nationalism conversation begins
12:30 — Overture 25 (Grand Rapids East): defining Christian nationalism
14:37 — Reading Belgic Confession Article 36
22:29 — The Lord's Prayer and Belgic 36 in concert
26:40 — Overture 33 (Classis Wisconsin): Reformed ecclesiology study committee
37:34 — Gravamen overtures: out of order, fight is over
42:19 — Every denominational employee should be a confessionally aligned CRC member
45:39 — Overture 15 (Iliana): Calvin Seminary adjunct faculty
47:55 — The next Calvin Seminary president and synod's role
55:10 — Synod's authority and the courage to use it
57:03 — Closing words from Dan and Willy
Join and support us on Substack: https://themessyreformation.com/Intro music by Matt Krotzer

Episode 269: Synod 2026 — The CRCNA Needs to Cast a Vision Worth Funding

We're back from a short break with the first half of our annual Synod 2026 preview — and this is not a back-to-normal agenda. The Council of Delegates is bringing 27 recommendations forward, and Jason, Dan, and Willy walk through the bigger buckets the people in the pew should actually be paying attention to.
We dig into Recommendation K (Saturday-to-Saturday synod and the Lord's Day problem), Recommendation O (the quiet authority shift on the Program Committee), the biennial synods proposal in Y and Z, and the pay-to-play two-tier ministry shares scheme tucked into Overture 32. Overture 30 from Georgetown is the financial transparency we should already have. Underneath all of it sits a trust crisis the denomination keeps trying to solve by demanding more trust — when before trust always comes transparency.
The episode lands in the defining membership task force, where Dan calls us to stop rushing people into membership, Willy distinguishes commitment from understanding, and Jason wrestles honestly with both sides of a question that isn't yet resolved. The reformation isn't done. Keep pushing.
Timestamps:
0:00 — Intro and Synod 2026 preview
2:56 — Recommendation K: Saturday-to-Saturday synod and the Lord's Day
7:45 — Recommendation O: Director of Ecclesiastical Governance on the Program Committee
11:53 — Recommendations P & Q: Limited suspension reporting
14:13 — Recommendations Y & Z: Biennial synods and governance costs
23:23 — Overture 30 (Georgetown): Financial transparency
25:35 — Cutting bureaucratic bloat in the CRC
27:21 — Trust, transparency, and the Canoeing the Mountains principle
33:48 — Defining Membership Task Force
37:11 — Stop rushing people into membership
39:48 — Difference in understanding vs. difference in commitment
41:12 — Jason on the open theological question
Join and support us on Substack: https://themessyreformation.com/Intro music by Matt Krotzer

Episode Replay: Why Reformation Is Always a Return, Never an Evolution — Lee Christoffels

Lee Christoffels was ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in 1970. He has been preaching ever since — in Worthington, Minnesota, where his congregation has held services in four languages and watched the community around it change week by week; in Edgerton, where he now serves part-time in retirement; and in pulpits across the region whenever someone needs a preacher on a Sunday morning. Fifty-two years in, he still loves it. This episode is a conversation with a man who has seen everything the CRC has been through since the 1970s and has something clear to say about what holds.
Lee traces the drift that has shaped the denomination's current crisis back to a single question: what is Scripture, and does it have final authority? That question surfaced seriously in the 70s, when debates over biblical infallibility began to fracture the clarity the CRC had inherited. From there, Lee argues, the line runs directly through the battles over women in office in the 90s to the tensions surrounding Synod 2022. The problems were never sudden. They were the slow consequence of decisions made decades earlier, each one loosening the anchor a little further.
The conversation turns on one of the most misused phrases in contemporary church life: semper reformanda — always reforming. Lee insists the historic qualifier was never optional. Always reforming according to the word of God. Reformation is not evolution. It is not the church adjusting to its cultural moment. It is the church being called back — daily, personally, institutionally — to what Scripture actually says and what the church of the ages has always confessed. As Jason points out, the original Reformers did not see themselves as innovators. They quoted Augustine and Irenaeus and said: we are standing where the church has always stood. It was Rome that moved. That same logic applies now.
The episode ends where every episode ends: this is Christ's church and he bought it with his blood. Wolves will come. Keep a close watch on your life and on your doctrine. Preach the word in season and out of season. Lee Christoffels has been doing exactly that for 52 years. It is worth hearing from someone who has stayed the course that long.
Timestamps:
0:00 — Intro
2:08 — Lee's background: 52 years in ministry, Worthington CRC, family
4:20 — Multi-cultural ministry: 30 languages, four-language worship services
6:33 — Joys of ministry: seeing people grow in faith over decades
8:29 — The case for long pastorates; Piper, Begg, and leavening a congregation
11:48 — The CRC in the 1970s: Scripture authority questioned, infallibility debates
14:11 — Women in office and the fractures of the 90s; confessional subscription
16:01 — Two competing visions of what "reformed" means post-Synod 2022
17:20 — Semper reformanda: what "always reforming" has always meant
19:11 — Willy: the dividing line between the two groups
19:47 — Confessional unity as the CRC's real strength; Edmund Clowney
21:29 — "Doctrine unites": pushing back on a progressive slogan
21:54 — The Reformation's claim: "they left, we stayed"
23:26 — The only way to be reformed is to be Catholic (small c)
24:29 — Reform vs. evolution: prone to wander, always called back
25:44 — John 3: something in every believer's heart still hates the light
27:08 — Scripture authority as the primary issue facing the church today
28:48 — The Catechism and the fullness of Scripture
29:01 — The unity of Old and New Testaments; the case for Old Testament preaching
31:47 — Catherine Vos's Child Story Bible as a model of redemptive-historical discipleship
34:27 — Expositional preaching and where authority lives in the pulpit
Join and support us on Substack: https://themessyreformation.com/Intro music by Matt Krotzer

Episode 268: Classes Need a Plan for Dying and Planting Churches in the CRC — Denominational Structure Roundtable (Part 2)

If episode 267 made the case that the CRC has a congregational health crisis, episode 268 asks why the structures meant to address it aren't functioning. The answer, according to Matt Haan, is simple: classes have never had a plan. Not a real one. They were formed by proximity, not strategy, and the denomination has never seriously addressed that. What would it look like to treat a classis as a territory — a defined patch of the kingdom — responsible for every church and every unchurched community within it?
Matt introduces the CRC belt of the Bible: 80 percent of the denomination falls within 100 miles of I-90, north or south. Everything outside that corridor is harder. Dan DeGraff adds the legacy dimension — it's not stubbornness keeping struggling churches together, it's that the building is woven into people's faith stories. But he also names what he learned at a recent candidacy gathering in Phoenix: some classes have figured this out, and the ones that haven't need to be challenged, not coddled. Meanwhile, Jason drops the news that Classes Wisconsin is bringing an overture to Synod 2026: before the CRC plants more churches, it needs to answer a basic question — what is a church?
Matt closes with the line that cuts deepest: one church in Classis Iakota had more baptisms than 11 classes combined. That's not boasting — it's a challenge. The gospel is still alive. God can do amazing things when people are willing. The question is whether the denomination is willing to do the unglamorous work of supporting the outposts of the kingdom — not just the exciting new plants, but the struggling congregations that need someone to walk with them and help them figure out what comes next.
Timestamps:
0:00 — Willie: swallowing pride and drawing from covenant community (rewind)
0:38 — Matt: classes need to have a plan
1:00 — The history of how classes formed — there was no plan
2:00 — The CRC belt of the Bible: 80% within 100 miles of I-90
3:00 — A full church life cycle roadmap: plant → emerging → revitalization → close
5:00 — Dan: legacy feelings — "This is the church that raised me"
6:00 — Hard conversations are actual leadership — without them, people spin their wheels
9:00 — Matt: the smaller the place, the bigger the pride
11:00 — The CRC's post-WWII church landscape and why it's changing
13:00 — Jason: the 40-year mark when churches hit crisis
14:00 — Dan: the last 40 years of the CRC — women in office, human sexuality, COVID
15:00 — COVID and the sexuality debate stalled classes renewal work
16:00 — What classes are planting churches? Iakota's four church plants
17:00 — Funding nearly half of pastor salaries — and the limits of classis capacity
20:00 — If the OPC is already there, support them — don't compete
21:00 — Let's plant even if it never gets above 70 members
22:00 — classes are territories for us to care about
24:00 — We have locations and willing churches — we just don't have planters
25:00 — The pastor shortage makes it hard to plant churches
29:00 — Classes Wisconsin overture: define what a church is before planting more
30:00 — Dan: the Quorum Deo conference and what good missionaries look like
32:00 — Matt: one church in Iakota, more baptisms than 11 classes combined
34:00 — Jason closes: "I could keep yapping, but we'll end it on that"
Join and support us on Substack: https://themessyreformation.com/Intro music by Matt Krotzer

Episode 267: The Numbers Nobody Wants to Talk About in the CRC — Denominational Structure Roundtable (Part 1)

The CRC's vacancy crisis isn't evenly distributed. While Thrive reports 146 vacant pulpits, statistician Dan DeGraff's independent tracking puts the real number between 107 and 128 — and the worst of it is concentrated in Canada, where one in four churches currently has no pastor. Host Jason Ruis and co-host Willy Krahnke are joined by Dan DeGraff and Matt Haan for the first of two roundtable episodes on a conversation the denomination has been avoiding: what actually happens to the churches nobody's talking about?
What follows Dan's data is a taxonomy of hard decisions. Jason lays out three distinct buckets — plant, revitalize, and replant/close — and argues that conflating them has cost the CRC real opportunities. Matt reframes what "church planting" could mean: not just new locations, but paid-off buildings with dwindling congregations that need a pastor and a fresh mission. The conversation turns to emerging status, a provision in the church order that should apply to the estimated 206 CRC churches under 45 members — but almost never does. A third of U.S. churches are already under 45 or officially emerging. The tool is already there. Most congregations aren't using it.
The episode ends with pastoral realism. Closing a church isn't failure — sometimes it's the Lord calling a body to lay something down and do something new. But getting there requires more than a decision: it requires swallowing pride, drawing on the covenant community, and letting classies step in before it's too late. This roundtable starts the conversation that needs to happen.
Timestamps:
0:00 — Intro: why this roundtable exists
1:00 — Dan: how he tracks vacancy data and why it differs from Thrive's numbers
3:00 — The breakdown: 107–128 vacancies across the CRC
5:00 — One in four Canadian churches has no pastor
6:00 — The real crisis: Canada's 23–26% vacancy rate
7:00 — Matt: pastor life cycles and what they look like in a classis
8:00 — Reframing "church planting" to include paid-off buildings with no pastor
9:00 — Jason: three buckets — plant, revitalize, and replant/close
12:00 — Willie: how long should a church sit at low numbers before changing status?
13:00 — Jason: a 40-member church and what the transitional minister found
15:00 — Delaying death: when revitalization efforts make things worse
16:00 — Church visitation, classis involvement, and hard conversations
18:00 — Rural far-flung churches and inter-denominational soft agreements
19:00 — Willie: framing closure as calling, not failure
20:00 — Jason: emerging status and the 45-member threshold in church order
21:00 — 206 churches under 45 — and almost none are in emerging status
23:00 — Dan: a third of U.S. churches are under 45 or officially emerging
24:00 — Matt: plant → emerging → established → revitalization → close
27:00 — "Church planting is sexy" — and revitalization isn't
28:00 — Jason: why the CRC should focus on church planting AND renewal
31:00 — Willie: swallowing pride and drawing from your covenant community
Join and support us on Substack: https://themessyreformation.com/Intro music by Matt Krotzer

Episode 266: If We Are Faithful Now, We Can Trust the Word — Harry Frielink (Part 2)

Before Harry Frielink was a pastor, he was a camp counselor, shaped by a man named Matthew Kingswood who asked a deceptively simple question every summer before the kids arrived: are you in the word with people? Not are you ready with your theology. Are you in the word — actually, with actual people? That question has never left Harry. This episode follows him through the harder parts of pastoral ministry: the isolation, the marriage under pressure, the theological controversies that arrived at Synod and in his living room, and ultimately to his closing word — a phrase that came from a mentor ten years into his ministry, repeated twice for emphasis: blow on the live embers.
Harry is candid about pastoral struggles. He references Paul Tripp's Dangerous Calling — the danger of a pastor who lives above or outside the body of Christ rather than in it — and says this is a trap he's actively tried to avoid by building real friendships inside and outside his congregation. On the scripture authority question underlying the CRC's controversies, he says personal experience and story were placed above the word in the human sexuality debates. His read on the Human Sexuality Report goes against the grain of how the debate was framed: he saw not a culture war skirmish but a gospel opportunity — a chance to name the full spectrum of sexual brokenness and ask, how does the gospel address this? That opportunity, he says, is still there.
Harry is encouraged by Synods 22 and 23, surprised by the vote totals, and grateful for young pastors speaking with clarity and courage. He sees Classis Toronto beginning to turn its attention toward the Great Commission — revitalization, discipleship, getting ready for people already coming to the doors. His closing encouragement draws on three simple practices: blow on the live embers where the Spirit is moving, be in the word yourself, and pray — privately, faithfully, at a level you'd be glad to lead publicly. You'll never preach at a level above your own reading. You'll never lead in prayer beyond your own prayer life. And that, he says, is grounding enough.
Timestamps:
0:00 — Intro (cont'd from Episode 265: preaching, prayer, pastoral care)
0:45 — Who are your inspirations?
2:40 — Matthew Kingswood: camp ministry and the question that shaped Harry
3:46 — Kent Hughes's Disciplines of a Godly Man; men's group on Saturdays
5:39 — Biggest pastoral struggles: isolation, marriage, time demands
10:23 — Scripture authority as the underlying issue in CRC controversies
12:30 — Human sexuality as a gospel opportunity, not a culture war skirmish
14:23 — Synod involvement: delegate in 2010 and 2012
19:13 — Synods 22 and 23: surprised by the margins, grateful for the direction
21:13 — The third mark of the church: discipline is broader than hot-button issues
26:11 — Paul VanderKlay at Synod 25: a new day in CRC leadership
28:29 — Closing: Blow on the live embers
Join and support us on Substack: https://themessyreformation.com/Intro music by Matt Krotzer

Episode 265: The Church Was the Training Ground — Harry Frielink (Part 1)

Harry Frielink has served the same classis for thirteen years while the denomination around him transformed. He came up through RTS Charlotte and Calvin Seminary, took a call in southwestern Ontario, and eventually settled in Barrie — an hour north of Toronto — where he's now been pastor for over a decade. What he's observed from that vantage point is not a smooth doctrinal progression, but a denomination that came to a cliff edge and, surprisingly, stepped back. This episode is about formation and faithfulness: how a pastor gets made, how a classis gets tested, and what you learn when the train wreck finally happens.
Harry traces his own formation — from the pastoral notes Douglas Kelly wrote in the margins of his syllabi at RTS, to the practical wisdom that said he'd always be an outsider if he didn't go to Calvin, to his conviction that the church, not the seminary, is the real training ground. In Classis Toronto, he watched classical oversight quietly fade — no regular church visits, little deliberative work — until the weight of disaffiliation made it unavoidable. He describes going with another pastor to visit Meadowvale CRC before things came to a head: not to score points, but to ask the actual questions. Where do you stand on scripture? On the historicity of the fall? On the atonement? They were honest. And that honesty named what actually divided them.
Harry has watched Classis Toronto shrink from 8,000 members to 2,000 since 2005. He says that soberly, not triumphantly. What encourages him now is not that the fight is over but that people are finally looking forward — toward evangelism, church revitalization, the slow work of discipleship. He's also learned something true about himself: he is not a spiritual Superman. The council leads. Elders teach. Deacons serve. The pastor equips. That's not a retreat from ministry — it's a Reformed ecclesiology, practiced honestly, finally beginning to bear fruit.
Timestamps:
0:00 — Intro
0:06 — Harry's background: Guelph, Ontario; teaching before ministry; family life
1:50 — RTS Charlotte: Douglas Kelly, Bob Carroll, pastoral formation
4:22 — Decision to go to Calvin; spending time in Grand Rapids
6:51 — Classis Toronto involvement
8:30 — Challenges in Classis Toronto: theological engagement behind the controversies
10:22 — The October 2025 disaffiliation crisis; being yelled at from the chair
12:53 — Handling disaffiliations: heavy, conflicted, not celebratory
15:38 — Visiting Meadowvale CRC: naming what actually divides
19:42 — What Harry has come to know about the CRC: confessions and scripture
20:55 — The denomination's confessional turn — surprised and grateful
21:55 — What Harry has come to know about himself: not a spiritual Superman
25:31 — Pastoral strengths: preaching, catechism, discipleship classes
Join and support us on Substack: https://themessyreformation.com/Intro music by Matt Krotzer

Episode 264: I've Never Fixed Anyone — Shaun Furniss (Part 2)

If you walk into a pastoral care situation knowing exactly how to fix it, you will make it worse. That's where Part 2 begins—with Jason and Shaun naming the pride that destroys pastoral ministry the same way it destroyed King Saul. From there, the conversation turns to some of the most honest and practical territory the Messy Reformation has covered: what to do with the overwhelm you can't show the congregant, why your elders are co-shepherds and not a board, and what Ole Hallesby's book on prayer has to say to every pastor who has ever felt crushed by the weight of ministry.
The practical advice here is unglamorous and proven. Church doesn't end after the doxology. Get to know your district—not "so-and-so's sister" but her name. Pick two or three people each Sunday and have a real conversation in the narthex. Calvin said it well, and Jason paraphrases it from memory: the care of souls is so overwhelming it can never be done by one man—this is why God gave us a body of elders. The co-pastoring model at Trinity CRC makes this concrete: people want to be fed by the same hand that holds theirs at the bedside, not a specialist they barely recognize.
The episode closes with Hallesby's insight that all prayer flows from helplessness—and that prayerlessness is usually a sign you think you've got things under control. Helplessness, rightly understood, doesn't produce fear. It produces courage. And from there, the final from Shaun: "I've never fixed anyone. I've never healed anyone. I've never saved anyone. But by God's grace, I've had a front row seat to what he has done in many people's lives. And that compels us all the more to worship him."
Timestamps:
0:00 — The Holy Spirit is the true counselor (rewind from Part 1)
0:35 — If you step in knowing how to fix it, you will make it worse
1:03 — King Saul: pride goes before the fall in all of pastoral ministry
1:28 — As fathers and husbands: reliance on God in every moment
1:45 — Parenting is like being a blind man in a dark cave
3:00 — Valley of the shadows (Psalm 23): don't convey overwhelm to your congregant
3:58 — Where to take pastoral overwhelm: the body of elders
5:14 — Elders as the board you report to vs. the shepherds you link arms with
5:43 — Being a non-anxious presence
6:33 — Why pastors struggle to open up to their elders
8:12 — Practical advice: get to know your districts
8:58 — Church doesn't end after the doxology
10:53 — CCEF and resources for pastoral counseling
12:03 — The co-pastoring model at Trinity CRC: why it works
14:28 — People want to be fed by the same hand that holds theirs at the bedside
16:45 — The temptation to specialize: comes from the business world, not the Bible
18:31 — All discipleship flows from some form of relationship
19:17 — Pointing to Christ, not to yourself: the savior complex in pastoral ministry
20:43 — Twice-a-week suicide notes: the season that broke Jason
21:31 — Lord, this is your church. I'm going to bed.
22:57 — Baptismal promises and the gut-wrenching reality: they were His before they were mine
24:14 — Pastoral ministry is one of the most humbling things
25:03 — One of the most beautiful and sanctifying callings
25:34 — Calvin Seminary internship in the Dominican Republic
26:26 — Ole Hallesby's Prayer: all prayer flows from helplessness
28:20 — God won't give you more than He can handle (the correct version)
30:07 — Final word invitation
31:26 — I've never fixed anyone — but I've had a front row seat
Join and support us on Substack: https://themessyreformation.com/Intro music by Matt Krotzer