For the North End Community Ministry / food pantry visit http://necmgr.org or call (616) 454-1097.



We meet for worship at 214 Spencer Street NE. Directions.
Service begins Sundays at 10:00AM.

Shepherd’s Pen (Page 17)

Meme Jesus vs. the True Jesus

We’ve all seen them. They often begin appearing around major holidays like Christmas and Easter and like most memes they have a tiny hint of truth, some outright falsehoods, and are mostly full of facepalms of ridiculous claims. I was recently asked about this particular meme: At a quick glance the problems with the claims…

set your house in order

A friend recently posted an intriguing question online: if you did not need a paycheck, what would you do differently? How many of us work a job merely for the paycheck? If we each had enough money to last us the rest of our lives, we might do something different. As soon as I saw…

tribalism and the spirit of antichrist

One frequent charge against Christians in general and Protestants in particular is the existence of denominations. The implication is that if we were truly united we would all believe exactly the same stuff and think exactly the same way and even approach ministry in exactly the same form. The problem with this is this has…

this ain’t Planet Fitness

New City will celebrate its eleventh birthday next month! This means we’re still a fairly young church and we have growing pains as we lack some of the long-established structure of older churches. That’s also an advantage, by the way. One of the great things about starting a new church is whenever anyone says, “We’ve…

we do not celebrate Lent

Lent is not a time of celebration. This is because fasting is not a time of celebration, but of lament and of seeking the Lord. Because Lent is a season of fasting, it cannot be a season of celebration. The celebration comes at the end of Lent when we assemble together to celebrate the Lord’s…