CRHM Supports New Ministries

More than one dozen new churches and campus ministries, from small-town Ontario to inner-city Philadelphia, are among the new work that Christian Reformed Home Missions is helping to start in the fiscal year 2010-2011.

The new ministries already underway include Square Inch Church, a new youth-oriented church in an up-and-coming urban Grand Rapids, Michigan neighborhood; Campus Edge, a new campus ministry at Michigan State University; and new church plants located in the smaller communities of St. Thomas, Ontario and Davis, California. Another new ministry, New Straightway Church, seeks to bring the gospel to a crime-ridden area of Waterloo, Iowa.

Home Missions is playing the role of strategic partner in supporting all of these new ministries.

"Home Missions is especially excited by the creativity and imagination of partners this year in identifying new ministry opportunities that take fresh approaches to ministry as well as funding," remarks Ben Vandezande, interim director of Christian Reformed Home Missions.

"It seems we are finding ways to create much greater ownership at the local level and also have Home Missions come alongside as a fruitful conversation partner as ministry opportunities are defined and developed. We thank God for this synergy and partnership."

Along with local churches and other strategic partners, Home Missions helps multiply new churches and campus ministries, cultivate diverse missional leaders, and focus churches on mission.

Most new Home Missions-funded churches are centered in an existing CRC, supported by other churches in a classis or region and coached, trained, and mentored by Home Missions staff and volunteers.

For the current fiscal year, Home Missions is providing more than $2 million to support new churches, many of which have been in existence for several years.