LaGrave Live

LIVE Evening Worship Service - Getting Our Houses in Order

Pastor Jonker leads a LaGrave evening worship service on being rooted in Christ, weaving together John 15, missionary testimony from Scott Miedema and Young Life, prayer for the church and world, and a sermon from Haggai 1 about rebuilding God’s house, rejecting spiritual self-sufficiency, and finding the deepest blessing in God’s promise: “I am with you.”

About The Service:

Pastor Jonker will preach on Haggai 1:1-15. His sermon is titled Getting Our Houses in Order.

Order of Worship:

https://lagrave.org/wp-content/uploads/2026-8-2-PM-Order-of-Worship.pdf

About Us:

We are a traditional CRC church in the middle of Downtown Grand Rapids, MI, worshipping at 8:40am, 11:00am, and 6:00pm. (10:00am and 6:00pm during the summer months)

We'd love to hear from you:

Connection: https://www.lagrave.org/contact

Let us pray for you:

Prayer: https://www.lagrave.org/prayerrequest/

Giving: https://www.elexiogiving.com/App/Giving/lagr107178

The August special offering is for Covenant House. Covenant House Michigan (CHMI) provides shelter and hope to young people aged 18-24 who are experiencing homelessness or victims of trafficking in Grand Rapids and Detroit. Their mission is to serve all youth who come to their doors with unconditional love, absolute respect, and relentless support.

Listen on the go:

Amazon Music: https://bit.ly/LGPodAmazonMusic

Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3tuOdwQ

Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/LGPodGoogle

Soundcloud: / lagravecrc

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3yXDFaT

Follow us!

Facebook: / lagravecrc

Instagram: / lagravecrc

Website: https://www.lagrave.org

#LaGrave #LaGraveCRC

Detailed Summary:

LaGrave Evening Worship and the Theme of Rootedness

This LaGrave evening worship service is centered on the theme “Rooted in Christ.” Pastor Jonker welcomes worshipers and explains that the evening will focus on roots and foundation, beginning with Jesus’ words in John 15 about the true vine and the branches. The corrected transcript identifies Pastor Jonker as the worship leader, Scott Miedema as the Young Life missionary speaker, and the congregation as participating through responses, prayer, and worship cues.

John 15: The True Vine and the Branches

Pastor Jonker introduces John 15 by connecting Jesus’ vine-and-branches language to Old Testament vineyard imagery, especially the image of Israel as God’s vineyard. He explains that in the Old Testament, God grieves over an unfruitful vineyard, and in the Gospel, Jesus presents himself as the true vine. The reading emphasizes that branches cannot bear fruit by themselves; they must remain in the vine. Pastor Jonker frames the service around this truth: apart from Christ, God’s people can do nothing, but when they remain in Christ, they bear much fruit.

Scott Miedema and Young Life in the Caribbean

Scott Miedema then shares about his family and their work with Young Life in the Dominican Republic and beyond. He introduces his wife, Jen, and their children, Caroline, Mara, and Reid, then explains that Young Life is active across the Caribbean, including Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and English-speaking islands. Scott says the ministry hopes to take 8,000 kids to camp during the summer so they can hear and respond to the gospel. He also describes his role helping equip leaders internationally, supporting thousands of staff and volunteer leaders who walk with teenagers and disciple them in faith.

Jonathan’s Story and the Need for More Calebs

Scott illustrates Young Life’s work through the story of Jonathan, a teenager in the Dominican Republic who fell in with friends involved in smoking, vaping, and selling vapes at school. Jonathan went to a Young Life camp, where a leader named Caleb came alongside him and helped him begin to understand the message of Jesus. Later, when Jonathan felt frightened and physically burdened in the night, he remembered Caleb’s words that he could pray, and he experienced a sense of relief. Scott says Jonathan has since been discipled by Caleb and returned to camp to serve by washing dishes, cleaning toilets, and helping his friends hear the gospel.

Prayer for Mission, LaGrave, and a Troubled World

After Scott’s remarks, Pastor Jonker leads the congregation in prayer, naming Jesus as cornerstone, solid ground, true vine, and the source of life for the branches. He prays for Scott and Jen Miedema’s ministry, asking that their work with young people be fruitful, joyful, and energized by the Holy Spirit. He also prays for LaGrave Church after 139 years of service in the city, asking that the church remain rooted in Christ as it considers future building and ministry plans. The prayer widens to the world, naming uncertainty, fear, instability, wars in Ukraine, Sudan, and Iran, and divisions between political parties, races, and classes.

Haggai 1 and the Ruined House of the Lord

The sermon turns to Haggai 1, set in 520 B.C., after the Jewish people had returned from Babylonian exile and were trying to rebuild Jerusalem. Pastor Jonker explains that the people were struggling to survive after the devastation caused by Nebuchadnezzar: poor harvests, weak shelter, economic hardship, and the exhausting work of rebuilding life from rubble. Their mindset was understandable: first food, shelter, and security, then the temple. But Haggai challenges them, saying they are busy building their own houses while the Lord’s house remains in ruins, and he calls them to “give careful thought” to their ways.

Beyond Maslow: The Deeper Foundation of God

Pastor Jonker reflects on why Haggai’s message can sound harsh, especially because the people’s survival concerns seem reasonable. He compares Haggai’s challenge with Deuteronomy’s blessings and curses, then warns against misunderstanding this as a health-and-wealth or tit-for-tat view of God. Using a childhood soccer-coaching analogy, he explains that biblical blessing-and-curse language is not mere threat but a description of how life works when people are, or are not, rooted in God’s ways. He then says Haggai does not agree with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, because beneath physiology and security lies something deeper: being rooted in God, his Spirit, and his people.

Building the Living Temple and Hearing “I Am With You”

Pastor Jonker applies Haggai to the church by saying the call is not primarily to build a physical church building, but to build the deeper temple of God’s people. Drawing from Ephesians and 1 Peter, he reminds the congregation that the people rooted in God are the temple, living stones being built together into a dwelling place for God’s Spirit. He challenges the church to consider whether it spends more energy building wealth, reputation, careers, children’s success, bodies, vacations, and plans than building relationship with God and the community of faith. The sermon closes with the central blessing of Haggai: not guaranteed prosperity, but God’s promise, “I am with you.” Pastor Jonker illustrates this through Helmut Thielicke’s story of two dogs on ocean voyages, one terrified without its master and one calm because its master was present, concluding that when believers are anchored in Christ, they know they will be brought home.

LaGrave Live

LIVE Morning Worship Service 08-02-2026

The Way of Wisdom: Wisdom for Our Conflicts

About The Service:

We continue our sermon series on Biblical wisdom called The Way of Wisdom. Pastor Jonker will preach on the theme of keeping peace between each other avoiding a quarrelsome spirit. That's a theme found in proverbs such as Proverbs 22:24-25.

Order of Worship:

https://lagrave.org/wp-content/uploads/2026-8-2-AM-Order-of-Worship.pdf

About the Church:

We are a traditional CRC church in the middle of Downtown Grand Rapids, MI, worshipping at 8:40am, 11:00am, and 6:00pm. (10:00am and 6:00pm during the summer months)

We'd love to hear from you:

Connection: https://www.lagrave.org/contact

Let us pray for you:

Prayer: https://www.lagrave.org/prayerrequest/

Giving: https://www.elexiogiving.com/App/Giving/lagr107178

The August special offering is for Covenant House. Covenant House Michigan (CHMI) provides shelter and hope to young people aged 18-24 who are experiencing homelessness or victims of trafficking in Grand Rapids and Detroit. Their mission is to serve all youth who come to their doors with unconditional love, absolute respect, and relentless support.

Listen on the go:

Amazon Music: https://bit.ly/LGPodAmazonMusic

Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3tuOdwQ

Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/LGPodGoogle

Soundcloud: / lagravecrc https://soundcloud.com/lagravecrc

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3yXDFaT

Follow us!

Facebook: / lagravecrc https://www.facebook.com/lagravecrc

Instagram: / lagravecrc https://www.instagram.com/lagravecrc

Website: https://www.lagrave.org

#LaGrave #LaGraveCRC

Winning Less, Reconciling More: The Wisdom of Proverbs in Conflict

Summary

Conflict Is Often About Process

The service frames conflict as a universal human experience and emphasizes that disagreements are shaped not only by the issue at stake but also by the way people engage one another. The preacher asks listeners to consider their personal conflict styles, including whether they avoid confrontation, rush toward resolution, become emotional, or rely heavily on logic. Drawing from premarital counseling and everyday relationships, he argues that the process of conflict often causes more harm than the original disagreement. Proverbs is presented as practical wisdom for keeping conflict from becoming destructive quarrels and for moving toward understanding or resolution.

A Different Story Beneath the Conflict

The sermon introduces the idea of an "understory," meaning the deeper view of life that shapes how people interpret conflict. The preacher contrasts Proverbs with ancient and modern works that focus on defeating opponents, gaining power, and winning at all costs. He argues that those approaches assume enemies and struggle are fundamental to existence. Proverbs, by contrast, is rooted in a biblical story in which conflict entered through sin but is not the ultimate structure of creation. God's work moves toward harmony, restoration, reconciliation, and the renewal made possible through Jesus Christ.

Enemies as People Made in God's Image

Because Proverbs rests on a different understory, its wisdom does not instruct people to crush their enemies. Instead, it calls them to feed a hungry enemy, give water to a thirsty enemy, and remain open to reconciliation. The preacher challenges listeners to consider whether they still see an opponent as a person made in God's image and as someone with whom restoration might someday be possible. When people treat others as permanent threats who must only be stopped or overcome, he says, they risk abandoning Scripture's larger story. Christian conflict is therefore meant to remain shaped by hope, grace, and the possibility of restored relationship.

The Danger of Pride

The first major danger in conflict is pride, illustrated through the preacher's memory of being argumentative as a young teenager and being warned by his mother not to act like a know-it-all. Proverbs teaches that fools delight in broadcasting their opinions, while wise people listen to advice and recognize the limits of their knowledge. The sermon holds conviction and humility together: Christians may believe deeply, make judgments, and speak against injustice, but they must also remember their own sinfulness and limited perspective. The preacher warns against copying Jesus' sharp confrontations without acknowledging that Jesus could see people's hearts with a clarity ordinary human beings do not possess.

The Danger of Haste

The second danger is haste, because conflict tends to accelerate quickly from an issue into a contest of wills. A playground example shows how one insult leads to another, then to a shove, a stronger shove, and finally a physical fight. The preacher compares the wisdom of Proverbs with de-escalation practices that call people to lower their emotional intensity, avoid answering insults, speak respectfully, pause before responding, and create space. Proverbs repeatedly describes the fool as quick-tempered and eager to quarrel, while the wise overlook insults, drop matters before they erupt, listen, remain patient, and bring calm.

Conflict Beneath the Cross

The sermon concludes by connecting wise conflict directly to God's character and the cross of Christ. God is described as slow to anger, rich in steadfast love, patient with human rebellion, and unwilling to repay people according to what their sins deserve. Jesus receives insult and rebellion, responds with sacrifice, and asks forgiveness for those who harm him. The preacher therefore calls listeners to let every disagreement begin under the shadow of the cross, remembering the grace they have received and extending restraint, humility, patience, and reconciliation toward their neighbors.

LaGrave Live

LIVE Evening Worship Service - The Most Excellent Way

Pastor Jonker leads a LaGrave evening worship service centered on 1 Corinthians 13, offering four meditations on Christian love as kindness, freedom from irritability, burden-bearing compassion, and the eternal love of Christ that never fails.

About The Service:

Pastor Jonker will preach on some of the attributes of love as Paul describes them in 1 Corinthians 13.

Order of Worship:

https://lagrave.org/wp-content/upload...

About Us:

We are a traditional CRC church in the middle of Downtown Grand Rapids, MI, worshipping at 8:40am, 11:00am, and 6:00pm. (10:00am and 6:00pm during the summer months)

We'd love to hear from you:

Connection: https://www.lagrave.org/contact

Let us pray for you:

Prayer: https://www.lagrave.org/prayerrequest/

Giving: https://www.elexiogiving.com/App/Givi...

The July special offering is for Westminster Food Pantry. The downtown food pantry provides an emergency supply of food and personal care items to people in need while also promoting self-sufficiency through referrals and education.

Listen on the go:

Amazon Music: https://bit.ly/LGPodAmazonMusic

Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3tuOdwQ

Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/LGPodGoogle

Soundcloud: / lagravecrc

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3yXDFaT

Follow us!

Facebook: / lagravecrc

Instagram: / lagravecrc

Website: https://www.lagrave.org

#LaGrave #LaGraveCRC

Detailed Summary:

LaGrave Evening Worship and the Shape of the Service

This LaGrave evening worship service is built around Scripture, congregational singing, prayer, and a series of shorter meditations rather than one long sermon. Pastor Jonker opens with Psalm 103, calling the congregation to praise the Lord who forgives, heals, redeems, satisfies, and is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” The corrected transcript notes that the worship-service structure, Scripture readings, meditations, prayers, and religious framing were preserved, with unrecoverable music artifacts condensed into clean worship cues.

1 Corinthians 13 and Love Within Limits

Pastor Jonker explains that the service will meditate on 1 Corinthians 13, the familiar biblical chapter on love. He says the inspiration comes partly from Lewis B. Smedes’s book Love Within Limits, which took each phrase from Paul’s description of love and reflected on it. Rather than covering every attribute, Pastor Jonker focuses on four: love is kind, love is not easily angered, love bears all things, and love never fails. The service reads the chapter aloud, moving from spiritual gifts without love, to love’s character, to the enduring truth that the greatest of faith, hope, and love is love.

Love Is Kind

The first meditation centers on Paul’s phrase, “Love is kind.” Pastor Jonker describes kindness as an ordinary, modest, unassuming word, not flashy or self-promoting. Yet he argues that real kindness is far deeper than mere niceness or “West Michigan nice.” He defines true kindness as a positive disposition toward others expressed in small, repeated acts of sacrificial generosity. Using Fred Craddock’s image of God giving each person ten million dollars to spend one dollar at a time, he teaches that kindness is distributed through small acts: raking a lawn, cooking a casserole, making a phone call, teaching children, playing with a grandchild, or driving someone to a doctor’s appointment.

God’s Daily Kindness and Human Kindness

Pastor Jonker then connects human kindness to the kindness of God. He acknowledges God’s great acts of kindness, including creation, the sending of Jesus, and Christ’s death on the cross, but emphasizes that much of God’s kindness is also daily, ordinary, and intimate. Friendship, laughter, a warm bed, a good meal, a roof overhead, coffee in the morning, and an evening church service all become signs that God’s mercies are new every morning. The meditation closes by reminding the congregation that God’s kindness is not only spectacular but also steady, ordinary, and repeated day by day.

Love Is Not Easily Angered

The second meditation turns to the phrase “Love is not easily angered,” or, in some translations, love is not irritable. Pastor Jonker explores irritability as a condition rather than a single act of anger, describing it as the emotional launching pad for anger. He gives humorous examples from his own life, including missing morning coffee, home projects taking too long, slow drivers, Detroit Lions losses, and poor golf scores. He says irritability lowers anger’s flash point, causing people to conduct anger from one situation into another and harm those around them.

Love Bears All Things

The third meditation reflects on “Love bears all things.” Pastor Jonker says this phrase lifts the congregation from the granular level of love into the grand sweep of what love can do. He describes love as having the power to absorb and bear the world’s pain, using the example of a widow support group where grief is shared and somehow becomes lighter. The mystery, he says, is that the burden is lifted onto the shoulders of Christ, who bore pain on the cross. In this way, Christian love becomes load-bearing love, rooted in the steadfast love of God that endures forever.

Love Never Fails

The fourth meditation focuses on “Love never fails.” Pastor Jonker teaches that among all the spiritual gifts, love alone has eternal effect. Even when loving actions do not produce the outcome people hoped for, every act of sacrificial love in Christ continues to matter. He gives the example of parents who loved an adopted child well, even though alienation later came into the relationship, and says their love did not fail in the scope of eternity. Because God is love, every part of 1 Corinthians 13 is not only a command for believers but also a description of how Jesus loves his people: patiently, kindly, faithfully, protectively, hopefully, and without failure.

Evening Prayer and Congregational Care

The service closes with an evening prayer that gathers the themes of the meditations into worship. Pastor Jonker thanks God for the creativity, abundance, perseverance, steadfastness, compassion, and personal nature of divine love. He prays for those grieving loved ones, including Gary VandeVelde and Laura Jane, and for members facing illness and cancer, including Carol Hoffman, Dave VanderArk, Renee Kuiper, Steve Palazzo, Dan Beemer, Jolene DeHere, Marshaan, Jim Crowell, Lloyd Tinholt, Sharon Van Houten, and others held in the congregation’s hearts. The prayer ends by affirming that God’s love is not only concerned with the large issues of the world, but also with the small details and struggles of each person’s life.

LaGrave Live

LIVE Morning Worship Service 07-26-2026

The Way of Wisdom: Wisdom and Deceit

About The Service:

We continue our sermon series on Biblical wisdom called The Way of Wisdom. Pastor Jonker will preach on proverbs like 11:3, proverbs that address the issue of honesty and truthful speech.

Order of Worship:

https://lagrave.org/wp-content/uploads/2026-7-26-AM-Order-of-Worship.pdf

About the Church:

We are a traditional CRC church in the middle of Downtown Grand Rapids, MI, worshipping at 8:40am, 11:00am, and 6:00pm. (10:00am and 6:00pm during the summer months)

We'd love to hear from you:

Connection: https://www.lagrave.org/contact

Let us pray for you:

Prayer: https://www.lagrave.org/prayerrequest/

Giving: https://www.elexiogiving.com/App/Giving/lagr107178

The July special offering is for Westminster Food Pantry. The downtown food pantry provides an emergency supply of food and personal care items to people in need while also promoting self-sufficiency through referrals and education.

Listen on the go:

Amazon Music: https://bit.ly/LGPodAmazonMusic

Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3tuOdwQ

Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/LGPodGoogle

Soundcloud: / lagravecrc https://soundcloud.com/lagravecrc

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3yXDFaT

Follow us!

Facebook: / lagravecrc https://www.facebook.com/lagravecrc

Instagram: / lagravecrc https://www.instagram.com/lagravecrc

Website: https://www.lagrave.org

#LaGrave #LaGraveCRC

LaGrave Live

LIVE Evening Worship Service - Lament Unleashed

About The Service:

We will delve into the last chapter of the book of Lamentations with the message, "Lament Unleashed." Chad Boorsma will preach.

Order of Worship:

https://lagrave.org/wp-content/upload...

About Us:

We are a traditional CRC church in the middle of Downtown Grand Rapids, MI, worshipping at 8:40am, 11:00am, and 6:00pm. (10:00am and 6:00pm during the summer months)

We'd love to hear from you:

Connection: https://www.lagrave.org/contact

Let us pray for you:

Prayer: https://www.lagrave.org/prayerrequest/

Giving: https://www.elexiogiving.com/App/Givi...

The July special offering is for Westminster Food Pantry. The downtown food pantry provides an emergency supply of food and personal care items to people in need while also promoting self-sufficiency through referrals and education.

Listen on the go:

Amazon Music: https://bit.ly/LGPodAmazonMusic

Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3tuOdwQ

Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/LGPodGoogle

Soundcloud: / lagravecrc

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3yXDFaT

Follow us!

Facebook: / lagravecrc

Instagram: / lagravecrc

Website: https://www.lagrave.org

#LaGrave #LaGraveCRC

When the Journey Hurts: Lament, Suffering, and the God Who Hears

Evening Worship Framed Around Lament

This LaGrave Live evening worship service at LaGrave Avenue Church is led by Chad Boorsma and centers on a service of lament. After opening music that includes recognizable words from Psalm 46, the service leader welcomes both in-person and livestream worshipers, offers a greeting of grace, mercy, and peace, and prepares the congregation through words from Psalm 9. The opening frames God as the one who reigns forever, judges with righteousness, remembers the afflicted, and remains a refuge for the oppressed.

Psalm 9, Prayer for Illumination, and Lamentations 5

The service continues with additional readings from Psalm 9, emphasizing God’s justice, the hope of the afflicted, and the prayer that the nations recognize their mortality before the Lord. After a musical response, the congregation joins in a responsive prayer of illumination based on Psalm 119, asking God to open eyes, minds, and hearts to His Word. The central Scripture reading is Lamentations 5, a chapter that cries out to God over disgrace, loss of inheritance, hunger, exhaustion, violence, mourning, desolation, and the unresolved plea for restoration.

Lament as a Biblical Way to Come Before God

In the sermon, Chad contrasts the joyful call of Psalm 100 with the grief-filled voice of Lamentations. He explains that while worship can include gladness, Scripture also gives God’s people permission to come before Him with sorrow, complaint, confession, and pain. The sermon places Lamentations in the aftermath of Babylon’s siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., explaining how the book’s poetic structure reflects the attempt to bring order to chaos, while chapter 5 breaks the acrostic rhythm as grief erupts into prayer.

Naming the Pain Without Pretending

The sermon walks through the suffering named in Lamentations 5: fatherless children, widows, violated women, disrespected elders, burdened boys, hunger, exhaustion, danger, slavery, lost music, vanished joy, and a desolate Mount Zion. Chad then connects that ancient grief to modern suffering through the story of a woman forced to retire from preschool teaching because of a medical condition, later losing income, mobility, independence, and support from some friends. The point is not to equate every suffering with Jerusalem’s devastation, but to show that all people eventually face grief, illness, loss, broken relationships, or burdens they do not know how to carry.

Recovering Lament in a Culture of Denial

The sermon challenges a culture, and at times a church culture, that often practices denial or amnesia around suffering. Chad references the book When the Journey Hurts: Finding Meaning in Suffering for Heart, Mind, and Soul, noting its concern that lament has quietly disappeared from contemporary American Christianity. He describes lament as a process of crying out to God, complaining honestly, making requests, and remembering God’s works. Scripture, especially the Psalms and Lamentations, shows that suffering in silence is not the only faithful response; truthful prayer before God is also faithful.

Remembering God While Asking Hard Questions

Chad emphasizes that Lamentations 5 both pleads for God to remember and models the worshiper remembering who God is. Even in the middle of sorrow, verse 19 declares that the Lord reigns forever and His throne endures from generation to generation. The sermon also affirms that prayers of lament can include frustration over what feels like God’s silence, as verse 20 asks why God seems to forget and forsake His people for so long. Lament does not always explain suffering or promise an immediate change in circumstances, but it gives people a faithful structure for telling the truth about pain in the presence of the God who hears the cries of the afflicted.

Prayers of Lament and Benediction of Peace

The service closes by putting the sermon into practice through four guided prayers of lament, each followed by silent prayer and congregational response. The prayers lift grief over death, illness and failing bodies, strained relationships and loved ones wandering from faith, and the world’s warfare, injustice, displacement, and persecution. The congregation repeatedly responds, “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.” After a closing musical response, the service leader sends worshipers into the week with a benediction, assuring them that the kind-hearted Lord goes with them and blessing them with God’s keeping, gracious face, presence, and peace.

LaGrave Live

LIVE Morning Worship Service 07-19-2026

The Way of Wisdom: Wisdom and the Poor

About The Service:

Rev. Peter Jonker will preach on Proverbs 13: 23.

Order of Worship:

https://lagrave.org/wp-content/uploads/2026-7-19-AM-Order-of-Worship.pdf

About the Church:

We are a traditional CRC church in the middle of Downtown Grand Rapids, MI, worshipping at 8:40am, 11:00am, and 6:00pm. (10:00am and 6:00pm during the summer months)

We'd love to hear from you:

Connection: https://www.lagrave.org/contact

Let us pray for you:

Prayer: https://www.lagrave.org/prayerrequest/

Giving: https://www.elexiogiving.com/App/Giving/lagr107178

The July special offering is for Westminster Food Pantry. The downtown food pantry provides an emergency supply of food and personal care items to people in need while also promoting self-sufficiency through referrals and education.

Listen on the go:

Amazon Music: https://bit.ly/LGPodAmazonMusic

Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3tuOdwQ

Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/LGPodGoogle

Soundcloud: / lagravecrc https://soundcloud.com/lagravecrc

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3yXDFaT

Follow us!

Facebook: / lagravecrc https://www.facebook.com/lagravecrc

Instagram: / lagravecrc https://www.instagram.com/lagravecrc

Website: https://www.lagrave.org

#LaGrave #LaGraveCRC

When Poverty Has No Walls: Wisdom, Justice, and the Grace That Saves

Summary

Worship, Welcome, and Confession

The service opens with congregational singing, a greeting of grace and peace, and announcements about fellowship gatherings, a missionary presentation, and upcoming church events. The worship leader introduces the continuing Way of Wisdom sermon series and identifies care for the poor as the morning's focus. A reading of Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus confronts the congregation with the consequences of ignoring suffering at one's gate. The congregation then confesses its failures to feed the hungry, welcome strangers, clothe those in need, and visit the incarcerated. The assurance from Psalm 130 emphasizes forgiveness, unfailing love, and full redemption.

Baptism into a Covenant Family

The baptismal portion welcomes Noah Thomas Leichert and Henry Roger Baumann into what the pastor describes as God's ancient covenant family. Beginning with Abraham and continuing through Pentecost, the pastor explains baptism as a sign of grace, belonging, and God's promises to believers and their children. Membership in this family gives the children a shared character, inherited stories of God's faithfulness, and the assurance of God's attentive care. It also brings obligations because the family participates in building God's kingdom and proclaiming Jesus Christ. The parents and congregation are asked to promise prayer, instruction, nurture, and faithful example as the children grow.

Prayer for the Vulnerable

Following the baptisms, the service turns toward confidential prayer requests and a pastoral prayer for people facing illness, grief, treatment, hospice care, and recovery. The prayer also remembers neighbors threatened by heat, poor air quality, and material need, asking that they receive shelter, health, companionship, and practical assistance. Families grieving recent deaths and supported missionaries in Haiti are commended to God's care. The newly baptized children, their parents, and their prayer partners are included in a petition for wisdom and strength. The congregation is challenged to recognize its blessings and use them to bless people around them.

The Many Causes of Poverty

The sermon begins by rejecting a one-dimensional explanation of poverty. Proverbs sometimes connects poverty with poor choices, laziness, procrastination, and the failure to work diligently, preserving an important place for personal responsibility. The preacher then emphasizes that Proverbs also identifies injustice, prejudice, social exclusion, and the absence of protective resources as causes that can trap people in poverty. The seventh-year agricultural law is presented as a God-given foothold for the poor that unjust landowners could remove. Low-income housing resistance and the contrast between wealth as a fortified city and poverty as ruin illustrate how people with resources possess protections that the poor often lack.

Becoming a Fortified Wall

The second major sermon point concerns the obligations of people who have resources. Proverbs calls believers not only to avoid exploiting the poor but also to notice them, listen to their cries, defend their rights, and give generously. The preacher uses his own habit of avoiding eye contact with panhandlers to explore how a seemingly practical act of avoidance can train the heart to ignore vulnerable neighbors elsewhere. The sermon connects Proverbs with the agricultural laws of Exodus and Leviticus, including the seventh-year rest and the practice of leaving part of a harvest available for those in need. The congregation is urged to become the protective wall that poverty has denied to others and to allow care for the poor to take root deeply in the heart.

Grace Revealed in Human Poverty

The final sermon movement argues that care for the poor reflects God's own character because God hears, defends, identifies with, and stands beside those in need. Jesus is presented as one who entered material poverty, centered good news for the poor in his ministry, and taught that service to the least is service to him. The preacher then turns from material poverty to the spiritual poverty experienced when families break down, illness becomes incurable, sin is exposed, or human ability reaches its limit. In those moments, people discover that achievements, money, and impressive resumes cannot supply the grace they need. The message concludes that the same divine compassion directed toward the materially poor is also the compassion through which Jesus saves, calling successful people to recognize their own dependence on grace and extend that grace to their neighbors.

LaGrave Live

LIVE Evening Worship Service - Legacy

About The Service:

LaGrave member and Rest Haven Chaplain, Rev. Tricia Bosma, will preach. She will use Romans 4:16-25 as her text for the sermon, "Legacy."

Order of Worship:

https://lagrave.org/wp-content/upload...

About Us:

We are a traditional CRC church in the middle of Downtown Grand Rapids, MI, worshipping at 8:40am, 11:00am, and 6:00pm. (10:00am and 6:00pm during the summer months)

We'd love to hear from you:

Connection: https://www.lagrave.org/contact

Let us pray for you:

Prayer: https://www.lagrave.org/prayerrequest/

Giving: https://www.elexiogiving.com/App/Givi...

The June special offering is for Pine Rest Patient Assistance Fund: Part of Pine Rest Foundation Fund offering financial assistance for individuals, families and children who need care.

Listen on the go:

Amazon Music: https://bit.ly/LGPodAmazonMusic

Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3tuOdwQ

Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/LGPodGoogle

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A Legacy of Faith When Hope Seems Lost

Called, Welcomed, and Sent by God

Trisha Basma opens the evening worship service with Jesus’s call of Matthew and His declaration that He came not for the righteous, but for sinners. She connects that passage with God’s call to Adam and Eve in Genesis, emphasizing that God continues to come to His people, call them, and send them into the world. After welcoming both in-person and online worshippers, Basma introduces herself as a LaGrave member and chaplain serving residents in long-term care, rehabilitation, and memory care at Resthaven in Holland, Michigan. She then turns to Genesis 12, presenting Abram’s call as a reminder that God not only summons people into relationship but also sends them out as agents of blessing.

Creation, Human Dignity, and Prayer in the Darkness

The service continues with Psalm 8 and its vision of God’s majesty displayed throughout creation. Basma reflects on humanity’s smallness beneath the heavens while also emphasizing the dignity, honor, and responsibility God gives human beings within creation. In prayer, she contrasts the brilliance of creation with the darkness of sin within human hearts and the wider shadow of evil, disease, and suffering in the world. She asks for forgiveness, renewed light through the Holy Spirit, and strength for the congregation. She offers specific intercessions for members receiving hospice care and those battling cancer, asking for endurance and the light of God’s love. The prayer also extends to LaGrave’s plans for serving people in the Heartside District.

The Spiritual Question of Legacy

Turning to Romans 4:16–25, Basma introduces the G.E.R.O. 6, a spiritual assessment designed for older adults. She explains that it explores death and dying, spiritual concerns, religious concerns, autonomy, connection, identity, and legacy. While several themes overlap with other assessment tools, she notes that legacy is the distinctive concern in the geriatric model. In her chaplaincy work, residents often ask whether their lives mattered, whether they made a difference, and how they will be remembered. These questions can become especially urgent after a dementia diagnosis, when people fear increasing dependence, diminished identity, and the possibility that their remaining life will become smaller or less meaningful.

Abraham’s Delayed Promise and Dashed Expectations

Basma uses Abraham as the sermon’s central example. In the ancient Near East, legacy was closely connected with land and descendants, yet Abraham initially possessed neither. God promised him both a family and a land, but many years passed without visible fulfillment. Even after God confirmed the covenant, Abraham learned that he would not personally witness the full realization of the promises and that his descendants would first endure generations of enslavement. Basma compares Abraham’s disappointment with modern experiences such as losing a hoped-for job or promotion, missing an achievement, or enduring the pain of childlessness. She acknowledges that hope can become painful when reality appears to contradict everything a person expected from God.

From Hoping for a Blessing to Hoping in God

Romans describes Abraham as believing “against all hope,” and Basma presents this as the sermon’s central spiritual transformation. She describes a seismic shift in Abraham’s faith: his hope moved from the blessing itself to the God who had the power and faithfulness to accomplish what He promised. Basma illustrates this with a child standing at the edge of a pool, trusting not merely that arms will appear, but that the father waiting below is dependable. Abraham believed that God could bring life out of bodies marked by age, barrenness, and apparent death. That trust, rather than the immediate possession of land or descendants, became Abraham’s true legacy and was credited to him as righteousness.

Hope for a Church That Appears to Be Dying

Basma then applies Abraham’s experience to concerns about declining church attendance, church closures, and younger generations leaving both the church and the faith. She cites a report estimating that 10,000 churches may close during the year, using that figure to illustrate why many believers fear that the church’s legacy is weakening. She recounts older residents grieving congregations they served for decades and mourning that their children and grandchildren have walked away. Empty sanctuaries can appear, in her image, like barren wombs unable to bear witness to the life and light of Christ. Yet she argues that the apparent decline of the church is not the final word because Jesus promised to build His church and declared that the gates of Hades would not overcome it.

The Covenant of Christ and a Living Legacy of Faith

Basma concludes with three sources of hope: God’s promises remain dependable, Christian hope must rest in God rather than visible results, and death is never the final answer in the work of God. She compares God’s covenant with Abraham to the new covenant established through the body and blood of Jesus Christ. She argues that if Abraham’s covenant displayed God’s determination to keep His promises, then the blood of Jesus gives believers confidence that the promises of redemption and the life of the church will also be fulfilled. Through faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, believers receive righteousness and become bearers of light in a dark world. She closes by urging believers to live so that their obituary could truthfully say they left a legacy of faith in Jesus Christ.

LaGrave Live

LIVE Morning Worship Service 07-12-2026

Hearing Abel, Raising Cain

About The Service:

We welcome Rev. Scott Hoezee, Director of the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Seminary, to our pulpit, and we will celebrate the Lord's Supper together. Rev. Hoezee's sermon will be "Hearing Abel, Raising Cain" from Genesis 4:1-16.

Order of Worship:

https://lagrave.org/wp-content/uploads/2026-7-12-AM-Order-of-Worship.pdf

About the Church:

We are a traditional CRC church in the middle of Downtown Grand Rapids, MI, worshipping at 8:40am, 11:00am, and 6:00pm. (10:00am and 6:00pm during the summer months)

We'd love to hear from you:

Connection: https://www.lagrave.org/contact

Let us pray for you:

Prayer: https://www.lagrave.org/prayerrequest/

Giving: https://www.elexiogiving.com/App/Giving/lagr107178

The June special offering is for Pine Rest Patient Assistance Fund: Part of Pine Rest Foundation Fund offering financial assistance for individuals, families and children who need care.

Listen on the go:

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Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3tuOdwQ

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The Better Word: From Cain's Restlessness to Christ's Peace

Summary

A Worship Service Grounded in Forgiveness

The service opens with confession and assurance drawn from Psalm 32, emphasizing that acknowledged sin is met by God's forgiveness. Congregational prayer then holds together personal illness, grief, birthdays, church ministries, missionary work, denominational renewal, international suffering, and the hope that God's love and faithfulness extend beyond every human need.

No Red Card with God

The children's message uses soccer's yellow and red cards to explain conviction, confession, and grace. A yellow card becomes an image for the Holy Spirit's warning when someone lies or harms another person. Unlike a referee who permanently removes a player, God does not cast repentant people out of his family; confession is met with forgiveness.

Reading Cain and Abel Beyond the Simplest Version

The sermon turns to Genesis 4 and challenges children's-Bible summaries that portray Cain as obviously evil from birth and Abel as obviously righteous. The preacher observes that the text gives little explanation for God's different responses to the offerings, making room for a more careful reading of Cain's anger, God's warning, and the tragedy that follows.

The Cry of Innocent Blood

After Cain kills Abel, Abel's blood becomes the Bible's first voice of an innocent victim crying from the ground. The sermon connects that cry with continuing violence throughout human history. Cain's punishment uproots him from the soil and makes him a restless wanderer, yet God still marks and protects him, interrupting the cycle of retaliatory death.

A Better Word Spoken by Christ

Hebrews 12 provides the sermon's central theological claim: Jesus' blood speaks a better word than Abel's blood. Abel's blood names injustice and death, while Christ's blood speaks grace, life, resurrection, and reconciliation. Jesus represents both victims and perpetrators, revealing God's insistence on life even where human beings repeatedly choose violence.

Communion as Reconciliation and Homecoming

The closing illustration from Places in the Heart imagines victims, perpetrators, the dead, the marginalized, and the guilty sharing communion and exchanging the peace of God. The service then moves directly to the Lord's Table, where bread and cup proclaim that Christ brings restless wanderers home, creates shalom, and offers forgiveness and rest to wounded hearts.

LaGrave Live

LIVE Morning Worship Service 07-05-2026

The Way of Wisdom: A Teachable Spirit

About The Service:

We will continue our summer sermon series called The Way of Wisdom. Pastor Manion will be focusing on Proverbs that show us the value of learning and receiving feedback from others. Her sermon is entitled "A Teachable Spirit."

Order of Worship:

https://lagrave.org/wp-content/uploads/2026-7-5-AM-Order-of-Worship.pdf

About the Church:

We are a traditional CRC church in the middle of Downtown Grand Rapids, MI, worshipping at 8:40am, 11:00am, and 6:00pm. (10:00am and 6:00pm during the summer months)

We'd love to hear from you:

Connection: https://www.lagrave.org/contact

Let us pray for you:

Prayer: https://www.lagrave.org/prayerrequest/

Giving: https://www.elexiogiving.com/App/Giving/lagr107178

The June special offering is for Pine Rest Patient Assistance Fund: Part of Pine Rest Foundation Fund offering financial assistance for individuals, families and children who need care.

Listen on the go:

Amazon Music: https://bit.ly/LGPodAmazonMusic

Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3tuOdwQ

Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/LGPodGoogle

Soundcloud: / lagravecrc https://soundcloud.com/lagravecrc

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3yXDFaT

Follow us!

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Website: https://www.lagrave.org

#LaGrave #LaGraveCRC

Learning to Love Correction: Wisdom, Humility, and the Teachable Spirit

Summary

A Service Framed by Wisdom and Grace

The service at LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church opens with worship, welcome, and a reminder that the God who raised Jesus from the dead is present with the congregation. The morning centers on wisdom, correction, humility, and the grace of being restored when one has wandered. The call to confession draws from Matthew 18 and James 5, emphasizing that correction is not meant for shame or exclusion but for reclaiming one another in love.

Confession That Breaks Pride Open

The confession acknowledges the ways people resist wise correction, ignore the community God provides, and cling to pride. The assurance of pardon from Ezekiel 11 promises a new heart and new spirit, replacing hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. The worship language presents repentance not as humiliation but as an opening to God's mercy and transforming work.

Prayer for a Church and Nation in Need of Holiness

The pastoral prayer reflects on creation, sin, national life, and the need for God to purify and remake his people. The congregation prays for those recovering from surgery, those receiving treatment, those in nursing care, and families grieving recent deaths. The prayer also recognizes the nation's anniversary while placing ultimate trust not in earthly governments but in God's sovereignty.

A Children's Lesson from the Recipe for a Sweet Life

The children's message uses cake ingredients as a picture of instruction. Some ingredients taste sweet by themselves, while others are bitter, yet all can work together in a recipe. In the same way, children are told that parental guidance can feel pleasant or unpleasant, but loving instruction helps shape a good life that honors God and blesses others.

The Sermon: Receiving Correction Without Fear

The sermon explores Proverbs on rebuke, discipline, and teachability. It contrasts wounded responses to correction with a wiser posture that sees every Christian as a lifelong learner. The preacher names the damage caused when abuse is mislabeled as discipline, while also challenging the opposite tendency to resist apology, accountability, and change.

Three Pathways Toward a Teachable Spirit

The sermon offers three pathways: see yourself first as a learner, seek trustworthy people who can offer wise feedback, and receive God's correction as an expected expression of divine love. Correction is compared to gold when it comes from a wise and loving source. The message closes by grounding human change not in self-improvement or shame but in Jesus, who loves people enough to redeem and transform them.

LaGrave Live

LIVE Evening Worship Service - Powers, Principalities, and the Promises of God

About The Service:

Pastor Jonker will preach on Ephesians 6:10-20.

Order of Worship:

https://lagrave.org/wp-content/upload...

About Us:

We are a traditional CRC church in the middle of Downtown Grand Rapids, MI, worshipping at 8:40am, 11:00am, and 6:00pm. (10:00am and 6:00pm during the summer months)

We'd love to hear from you:

Connection: https://www.lagrave.org/contact

Let us pray for you:

Prayer: https://www.lagrave.org/prayerrequest/

Giving: https://www.elexiogiving.com/App/Givi...

The June special offering is for Pine Rest Patient Assistance Fund: Part of Pine Rest Foundation Fund offering financial assistance for individuals, families and children who need care.

Listen on the go:

Amazon Music: https://bit.ly/LGPodAmazonMusic

Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3tuOdwQ

Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/LGPodGoogle

Soundcloud: / lagravecrc

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3yXDFaT

Follow us!

Facebook: / lagravecrc

Instagram: / lagravecrc

Website: https://www.lagrave.org

#LaGrave #LaGraveCRC

Stand Firm in the Armor: Faith, Children, and the Promise That Christ Already Reigns

Worship Rooted in God’s Sovereign Grace

This LaGrave Live church service from LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church opens with a call to worship from Psalm 145, praising God’s greatness and the way one generation commends His works to another. Reverend Peter Jonker then frames the evening around the book of Ephesians, beginning with readings from the opening chapter. He highlights three major proclamations: that believers are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that God’s plan is to unite all things in heaven and earth under Christ, and that Christ already possesses power above every rule, authority, power, and dominion.

Prayer for Children, the Vulnerable, and the Congregation

The service includes a congregational reading from Our World Belongs to God, followed by an evening prayer centered especially on children and young people. Reverend Jonker thanks God for the gift of life and prays for children living in poverty, hunger, war, conflict, neglect, and abuse. He also prays for the church’s own children’s ministries, including Kids Hope and youth ministry leadership, asking that LaGrave’s children feel known, loved, and formed within God’s love. The prayer also lifts up members of the congregation who are sick, in hospice, grieving, or otherwise in need of comfort.

The Armor of God and the Reality of Spiritual Struggle

The sermon is based on Ephesians 6:10–20, where Paul tells believers to be strong in the Lord, put on the full armor of God, and stand against the devil’s schemes. Reverend Jonker describes Paul’s picture of spiritual warfare as vivid and serious: on one side are the powers of darkness, spiritual forces of evil, and flaming arrows; on the other side are ordinary believers wearing the armor of God. He emphasizes that this struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and spiritual forces that work against God’s people.

Passing Faith to the Next Generation

To bring the passage into ordinary life, Reverend Jonker focuses on the struggle to pass Christian faith to the next generation. He cites demographic concerns about the growing number of religiously unaffiliated people, often called “nones,” noting the rise from small percentages in previous decades to much larger numbers today, especially among younger generations. He mentions research from Ryan Burge and describes the concern many churches feel as they wonder how to help children, grandchildren, and young adults remain connected to faith, worship, Scripture, and the Christian community.

Principalities, Powers, and the Culture That Shapes Young People

Reverend Jonker explains that the spiritual battle is not primarily against individual neighbors, critics, or young people who reject religion. Instead, he says the battle is against deeper powers and systems that shape culture. Drawing on Christian Smith’s Lost in Transition, he names several forces affecting younger generations: moral relativism, rampant consumerism, intoxication or escapist experience, sexual confusion, and radical individualism. He describes these not merely as isolated choices, but as cultural forces that sweep people along and make it harder for young people to receive and live within the Christian faith.

Warning Without Fear

Although Reverend Jonker takes the struggle seriously, he warns against panic. He places Ephesians 6 in the larger context of Ephesians, where Paul confidently proclaims that believers are chosen by God, that Christ reigns above every power, and that God’s plan to bring all things under Christ cannot be stopped. He cites C.S. Lewis’s warning that people can give the devil either too little credit or too much credit. For Jonker, the church must be vigilant without becoming fearful, protective without becoming overly sheltered, and confident that children ultimately belong to the Lord.

Standing Through Prayer, Truth, Love, and Presence

The sermon closes by returning to the armor of God as a practical pattern for faithful living. Reverend Jonker describes the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shoes of the gospel of peace, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the Spirit as ordinary but powerful practices: teaching the faith, telling the truth, doing justice, bringing peace, praying, worshiping, and staying present with the next generation. He recalls research from the Fuller Youth Institute suggesting that one of the strongest predictors of faith continuing in a child’s life is having several caring adults in the congregation who know, love, and pray for that child. The message ends with encouragement: keep praying, keep loving, put on the armor, and stand.