Peter Kelder
Team Leader

Peter Kelder’s passion for the church began when he was a child growing up on Chicago’s south side. Kelder, who is the team leader for the Central U.S. Team, watched as church after church left the city. “That started my passion to see new churches in the city,” he says. It also cultivated his deep desire to see existing local churches thrive, be healthy, and outward- focused. “I want to see every church on a mission,” he adds.
Kelder, who has led the team since 2005, graduated from Calvin College and Calvin Seminary before serving as a pastor for 27 years in New York, Wisconsin, and Iowa. His wife of 36 years, Ruth, is the team’s Community Life Developer. Peter’s vision for ministry among Christian Reformed churches in the Chicagoland region is simple: “We would love to see a church in every neighborhood,” he says. “To do that, we want to help start enough churches to form clusters, which are groups of churches and leaders that collaborate and work together deliberately for mutual support, encouragement, and resource-sharing.”
Kelder and his team are actively helping to foster new church and campus ministry multiplication and missional leader development in the CRC. Specifically, the team is partnering with local churches and classes to create new churches through urban initiatives, start new campus ministries as they are created naturally, and foster missional leadership through clusters.