Guiding Light recently received for the third consecutive year a $20,000 grant from the SpartanNash Foundation that will help support the nonprofit's Back to Work program.

The SpartanNash Foundation has provided a total of $70,000 to the nonprofit since 2016. Back to Work provides a short-term stay for men who are experiencing homeless and seeking full-time employment, along with support for their job searches.

Bishop Michael Curry is an Episcopal Pastor from N. Carolina. His name may be familiar to you because he performed the wedding ceremony of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Since that time, he has spent his time preaching and writing. In his new book, Love is the Way: Holding on to the Hope in Troubling Times, he stresses the importance of relationships and community. He is culturally literate, and many of the people he refers in to his book are other writers. I would love to see his library.

Conservative think tank the Acton Institute recently marked its 30th anniversary by reflecting on the significance of the Berlin Wall falling in 1989. These days, new walls are being erected due to the COVID-19 pandemic, wrote Acton president Rev. Robert A. Sirico in a letter to supporters.

"Thirty years hence, the most momentous thing seared into our memoires may well be the pandemic, not only in terms of the scores who have succumbed to the virus and the attendant misery and suffering of loved ones, but also the unintended consequences of political leaders in their actions and policies to combat it," wrote Sirico.

This is the column in which West Michigan Christian web writer Terry DeBoer surveys the landscape for the area's faith-inspired arts/entertainment/enrichment events over the coming month. It looks like we're still going virtual......

Dr. Rex M. RogersDiversity and inclusiveness are mantras of the new religion of political correctness. Not that these values are necessarily bad or wrong in themselves. Diversity can be a good thing. So can inclusiveness, if you aren't tossing aside morality when you use the term.

Certainly, diversity is a watchword of our culture today. One's demography is now destiny. News stories of appointments to government offices lead with the gender, race or ethnicity, maybe sexual orientation of the appointee before they report the professional credentials and accomplishments that hopefully justify the appointment. Identity politics, as it's called, has become a part of the "acceptable narrative" of currently ascendant ideology.

Long before the present-day, actually some two thousand years ago, God ordained something called the church, understood in lower case as a local body of believers (and usually non-believers as well), and capitalized as, the Church, the trans-cultural, trans-country, trans-time Body of Christ, the universal Church, the Family of God.

I don't know how many times over the last year I have heard someone say, "This has been a year like none other". We agree, and we are excited because there are opportunities to lead eyes upwards like never before.

The faces of many people show the discouragement, frustration, anger and the deep sense of questioning that is in their lives. This makes for good soil to sow seed into during these uncertain times.

This is the time of year we see news-feature lists of celebrities and other notables who passed away during the last 12 months. We thought it might be appropriate to remember some Christian music artists and others who entered eternity during this year who might not have made those other lists.

*Dr. Rance Allen – The gospel music singer-songwriter was a founding pastor at a Toledo, OH church, yet had a decades-long recording and performing ministry. His first album with his Rance Allen group came in 1972.

One of his long time friends was Grand Rapids-native pastor/music artist Marvin Sapp. Upon learning of Allen's death, Sapp noted that Allen was present at many of Sapp's milestone moments. "From the Stellar Awards giving me an award for (Sapp's song) "Best in Me" to my Inaugural Bishop's Banquet (in Grand Rapids). Every year I came to your church just to celebrate you as bishop, pastor and (your) musically anointed gift." Allen died Oct. 31 at age 71.

In a recent talk sponsored by the Christian Reformed Church Office of Race Relations, Mike Peters, director of the local 4 Fires Ministries, said too many people remain unaware of the Native Americans who live in their communities.

"There is next to no knowledge of native life," said Peters, an ordained non-denominational Christian pastor. "The vast majority of Americans never think about Native American issues. Even today, there are several states that have history books that have no mention of Native American history."

Calvin Theological Seminary President Jul Medenblik recently marked his 25th anniversary of ordination into ministry. He was ordained at Orland Park Christian Reformed Church in Illinois which was the mother church for a new church plant just beginning in New Lenox, Ill.

For the second year in a row, Wedgwood Christian Services is the recipient of a $10,000 grant from the Perrigo Foundation. The grant will help fund Wedgwood's Transforming Services, which includes its Wellness and Activity Therapy, Employment Training, Prevention, Manasseh Project Outreach, and Chaplaincy and Young Life – which is voluntary. These services enable Wedgwood to offer holistic treatment, and help youth and families heal from the trauma of abuse & neglect, exploitation, and substance use.

We saw this notice much too often during 2020The COVID-19 pandemic was the big deal during 2020. Its tentacles stretched over so much of our lives in ways we couldn't have realized early this year.

No one could list all the events, trips, concerts, gatherings, and other activities both indoors and outdoors which were affected.

Among the casualties were numerous faith-based artistic endeavors. Michigan's two major Christian music multi-day events - Unity Christian Music Festival in Muskegon and Big Ticket Festival in Gaylord - both were forced off the books until 2021.