DAY OF ENCOURAGEMENT
Presenters
Dallas Apol is a retired professor of foreign languages at Dordt College. Dr. Apol has led many trips to Latin America and has been heavily involved in Amistad Cristiana in Sioux Center, Iowa.
Candace Brands is the ministry coordinator for Minn-I-Kota Youth Network as well as a leadership consultant for Youth Unlimited.
Lee De Groot is the youth coordinator for MINN-I-KOTA Youth Ministries. She has the privilege of meeting, working with, and encouraging the youth and their leaders in 50 different churches in Minn., S.D., and Iowa. She also enjoys writing easy-to follow lesson plans and researching resources for the MINN-I-KOTA website. In the past five years Lee has shared her life journey and God's amazing grace to many large and small groups.
Karen DeMol teaches Music Theory, Music Literature, and Music and Worship at Dordt College, where she has also chaired the music department since 1985. She is a long-term member and co-chair of the Worship Committee at her church.
Rick Droog is the ministry coordinator for the Siouxland Diaconal Conference. He is also a member of the Communities First Association. He has worked with several churches throughout the Midwest.
Keith Getty and his wife Kristyn have been at the forefront of the modern hymn movement over the past decade demonstrating the ability to successfully bridge the gap between the traditional and contemporary.
Jack Gray is a retired pastor currently residing in Sioux Falls, S.D. He served at churches in California, Washington, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Iowa during his full-time ministry. He has written material to help pastors determine if rural church ministry is a good fit for them.
Aldon Kuiper is a retired pastor who served churches in Rock Valley, Hull, Des Moines, Cedar Falls, Salt Lake City, and Terra Ceia, North Carolina. He is married and has three children and seven grandchildren.
Jerry Meadows has formally served churches with an emphasis on youth ministry. For 13 years he was a pastor of students and families in churches that ranged from 600 to 2,300 congregants. He then supported youth leaders and churches for six years as an executive director of a regional youth ministry network. After adding to that experience another six years as a short-term mission specialist mobilizing teams to Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia, he is helping to advance church youth ministry throughout Canada and the U.S. as the mission program director at Youth Unlimited.
Eric Rankin, Troy Broers, Ron Heemstra, Jan Henryson, Nathan Stob, and Neil Van Schouwen are forum panelists who have lay leadership and professional experience in finances, loans, and more.
Kurt Rietema, his wife Emily, and family live in the neighborhood of Argentine in Kansas City, Kan. In this lower income, ethnically diverse neighborhood, the Rietema’s lead Christian community development efforts for the CRC and desire to see a new faith community emerge as they seek God’s shalom for Argentine.
Fred Stoeker is a best-selling author and conference speaker who challenges men to become sexually pure and to reconnect in true intimate relationships with their wives or girlfriends. Fred also emphasizes the importance of the father-child relationship in this battle for sexual purity and charges fathers to become actively engaged in training their sons and daughters to stand pure in their relationships.
Norm Thomasma is an ordained CRC pastor from Stevensville, Mich. Norm served 20 years as a parish pastor, 11 as a church planter, and nine in an established church. After a year of clinical pastoral education in Kalamazoo, Mich., he began working in 2002 for Pastor-Church Relations, of which he is now the director.
Bill Thornburg was a missionary in Nigeria for 16 years. Thornburg taught at Edgar H. Smith Memorial Bible College, participated in a church development program among the Dakka people, and worked in Muslim outreach and the discipleship of new believers in northern Nigeria. He and his family returned to the U.S. in 2002 where Bill served as the regional missions mobilizer for the U.S. Great Lakes Region for several years. In 2006, he took on the newly created position of missions resource consultant for Christian Reformed World Missions. Bill holds a Masters in church education from Calvin Theological Seminary.
B.J. Van Kalsbeek is a chaplain and manager of the spiritual care department at Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City, Iowa.
Steve Van Zanen served as a pastor in Minnesota and as a missionary in Eastern Europe. From this service, he was called by Christian Reformed World Missions to mobilize churches and their members for missions. He also helps churches understand and respond to recent trends in missions as well as to the ongoing task of reaching the world for Christ.
Loren Veldhuizen is an attorney from Orange City, Iowa, who is on the CRC Board of Trustees.
Thomas R. Wolthuis is associate professor of theology at Dordt College. Dr. Wolthuis teaches Biblical Studies and Youth Ministry and has previously served as a Christian Reformed pastor and church planter.
Todd Zuidema is pastor at Hope CRC, Hull, Iowa, where he has served since 2005. He is married to Leah, who is a professor of English at Dordt College, and father to Lindsey and Emily, who are students at Hull Christian School. Pastor Todd is thankful for the dedicated elders at Sully CRC who took the time to teach him the value of the Heidelberg Catechism when he was growing up.
