Seventeen82

  Between June 14-25, Christian Education Ministries hosted our denomination’s (ARPC) summer conferences for middle and high school students at Bonclarken (the ARP’s conference center). I understand those were two great weeks, and our Lord worked powerfully among the students.    After the conferences were finished, Brad Anderson, the conferences’ director, sent a text to a group of ARP ministers, including me, that read: “We have the next generation of ARPs and need to work on holding on to them. The conferences go well because of everyone that attends and serves. They’re a bright spot in the denomination.” I immediately thanked God for his grace and for the good work of those who led, served, and oversaw the conferences when I received the text.    I also thought about a conversation that Brad and I had with Chip Sherer during our Synod meeting in June. He told us that, as the President of Bonclarken, he believed that Bonclarken’s role in the growth and develo...

I wrote the below post on three essential commitments the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARPC) needs to make regarding church planting five years ago, while finishing up my term as Chairman of Catawba Presbytery's Committee on Church Extension. I repost it today because it is more relevant now than it was in 2017. Recent research reveals that the number of "nones" -- those not affiliated with any religious faith -- continues to rise in America. And, none of us have to be convinced that the Church's influence on the broader society has waned significantly in the last 5 years. Here are two statistics that are telling.  First, the percentage of the population of my county -- Chester County, SC -- who do not identify with any religion has ballooned to somewhere near 50% at present, and it continues to rise. This is shocking given that our county is located squarely within the region of the country commonly referred to as the Bible Belt. If this is the case for us...

The Bi-vocational Knight: The Case for Bivocational Ministry Part 1 by Rev. Mike Chipman      I started my ministry career as a youth worker at New Albany Presbyterian. After some time there, I came under the care of the Mississippi Valley Presbytery as a student of theology. I was moving into the big time. I saw the land of ordained ministers as a land of anointed knights, and I was a squire. I hoped to one day trade in my dagger and scrub brush for a sword and shield. Several situations exacerbated this feeling. Once, I filled the pulpit in another ARP church. Before my sermon, the elder introduced me as, “Mike Chipman, who is training to be a real pastor one day.” In another church, the elder introduced me as, “Chip.” You know, like the idiot sidekick monkey-boy who's there for laughs and to make the hero look smart. The pastor may have introduced me that way because of the thing growing on my shoulder. Whatever the case, that day finally came when I was dubbed, ...