God Moving At Maranatha

An Eventful January Launches our New Year

The old year is behind us, and the new year promises to bring a combination of excitement, challenge, and fun for our church.  It all begins with an eventful and event-full January.

January will be exciting.  This month we will launch our new vision and our new logo as laid out in the document Join the Journey.  The launch will start with prayer on the evening of January 19.  Council, and anyone who wants to join in, will travel the church building in small groups to pray for our members, our ministries, and our hopes for the future, as prompted by the rooms they visit.  Then, on January 30, we will have a special Sunday morning service to commit ourselves as a congregation to God’s plans for our future.
In support of our vision, our newly formed Hiring Team will start their work on Tuesday of this week. Robyn Buikema, Andy Geertsma, Linda Wattam and I will meet to discuss how we will find two new fulltime (or up to four part-time) staff members to help turn our vision into reality.

January will bring challenges.  Our biggest challenge has a name: Omicron.  With case counts rising, and individuals and families having to navigate the impact of the pandemic, it will take steady determination on all of our parts to stay connected as a church community and to keep our church life thriving.

Another challenge is Pastor Dave’s retirement which we will celebrate on January 9.  This occasion will be exciting too, of course.  We look forward to acknowledging Dave’s faithful service and to blessing him and Evita as they embark on a new chapter of life.  At the same time, we will miss the energy Dave has brought to Maranatha for the last 22 years.

January will be fun—a winter kind of fun.  Wanda Thompson had a vision to see a skating rink in our church’s parking lot.  Joe Veenstra has been busy this week constructing the rink and flooding the ice.   Harrison Noble and Aiden Van Roon have taken on the challenge of creating a Zamboni to keep the ice smooth!  Stay tuned for news of coming skating events.

We go into this year of excitement, challenges, and fun with great hope, because we know that the God who led His people through the Red Sea and who raised Jesus from the dead will faithfully guide us on every step of our journey.

— Pastor Tom