Blog

All the churches of the Ames-Des Moines CityChurch take the bread and the cup—but some take the cup at the end of the meal, and others do so at the end of the meeting. All the churches invest some time in instruction, singing, sharing, and praying; some do so in a predictable order, and others do not. Some churches plan out certain elements for the formal meeting time—and (you guessed it!) other churches don’t.

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It was the end of a hard day. I was recovering from surgery and the kids were crabby. James had just come home, tired from a long week at work. Everyone was hungry, but the food situation was sketchy because I hadn’t made it to the grocery store. Just then, a knock on the door. In came Tom and Kelsie Olsen with supper for us. Nothing fancy – a pot of soup and some cornbread. They walked right in, turned on my stovetop to keep the soup hot, and set the cornbread on the counter.

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At the end of a long day, David and Beth spend a few relaxing moments reading. A plate with one cookie left sits between their chairs. As David reaches out to take the last cookie, Beth looks indignant. She opens her mouth to protest, but then the scene freezes! Two new characters walk onto the stage: the Devil and God’s Word. Pretending to be inside Beth’s head, they argue back and forth about how Beth should respond to David. God’s Word wins the day and Beth politely asks “I was really looking

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The scene: Bustling crowds of families. Parents and children. Grandparents. Tables set with plates, cups, baskets of bread. An overflowing abundance of fruit, meat, and breakfast casseroles. Smells of pancakes and waffles. Coffee. It’s a scene that is reminiscent of any typical gathering of a family around a meal for a major holiday. It’s a little chaotic. It’s a bit loud. It’s the coming together of people to share a family meal.

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“Family of families” is a phrase that gets tossed around a bit in our Urbandale Church. It’s not something taken lightly, because it points to a greater calling of what our church body is striving to be: a family.

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No matter what neighborhood you live in, everyone has a common problem in the fall: leaves. My neighborhood is no exception, and may even have a larger than average leaf problem due to the number of giant, old sycamore trees in the area. Our North Campus/Yuma cluster has found over the years that a great way to show love to our neighbors and benefit the community is to help solve this problem and rid as many yards as we can of unwelcome leaf piles.

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An army of volunteer labor assembles every year to put on the annual BILD Summit Friday evening banquet. Come have a look at the hard work that goes into making the banquet a success.

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Each church within the Ames/Des Moines CityChurch network has characteristics that make them unique to the neighborhood or area they are impacting. One characteristic that makes Union Park Church unique is that three of its main families and the leaders of the church live within blocks of each other. Being in such close proximity to each other leads to another unique characteristic, a project that is part of the church’s greater vision.

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Northwest Ames Church was excited when a new church was planted just down the street, on Idaho Avenue. Right away, the two churches could sense the potential of working together. “When Nate bought the house next to us, I thought, ‘This is a cluster just waiting to happen,’” says Steve Kemp.

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Kathy Keller teaches the combined 5th and 6th grade ordered learning class on Sunday mornings. In the 5th and 6th grade class, students pull together all the work from their previous years of ordered learning and write author’s intention statements for almost every book in the Bible. You might think that kids this age aren’t capable of doing that level of work, but Kathy argues otherwise. “They are capable of much more than we think they are,” she says.

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In 2003, Curt and Terri’s marriage was nearly finished. Although they were done with each other, God was not done with them. For many years they had both been alcoholics. Their marriage, while not ideal, had at least been a shared experience. Recently though, Terri had changed her ways, gotten involved in AA, and tried to reform her life. Curt, however, did not share her conviction and made no serious effort to change. His alcoholism became worse than ever. Terri was fed up with her marriage and

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Caleb Keller approached me at a music rehearsal in November of 2014 with an idea to write a song, as our network was studying Jeff Reed’s series on the Story. "What if we added some verses to O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, so that it was a really full depiction of The Story?" The first verse was evocative of Israel’s messianic expectation in exile, but the Story was not fleshed out through the rest of the original verses. Caleb wanted to use that longing for Emmanuel to frame a song laying out the ma

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Mix the elements of music, food and families together in a local park and you’d think what resulted would be an ordinary church picnic. However, last Sunday’s gathering of the Ames-Des Moines CityChurch was anything but ordinary.

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Tom and Kelsie Olsen recently joined Yuma church as part of a strategic move initiated by their church cluster's leadership team. One of the first things that Tom noticed when they got there was the lack of quality music. Yuma Church’s music time mainly consisted of singing to worship videos on YouTube, and without live music, it felt like something was missing. Tom had played the guitar in high school, but hadn't picked it up much in recent years. He knew, though, that if he applied himself, he

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The churches of the New Testament were not islands unto themselves but were connected through a complex network spanning cities and the entire Roman Empire.  The Ames-Des Moines CityChurch is a network of sixteen churches throughout the Ames and Des Moines areas and also part of a larger network spanning almost a dozen cities across the United States called the CityChurch Network.  

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On the evening of Sunday, May 29th, barbecue smoke drifted through the valley of Emma McCarthy Lee Park. Our neighborhood was having picnic. Gathered around a 6-foot charcoal grill, patient families waited with meat ready to be cooked, while two grill-masters expertly flipped everything from burgers and hotdogs to steaks and kabobs. Underneath the nearby park shelter other neighbors conversed at tables or perused the buffet of side dishes. Church members bustled by, making sure the food was in o

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How did somebody who describes herself as “in-print person,” who didn’t even like blogs, wind up writing a blog? I put this question to Laura Rendall, who started the Ames/Des Moines CityChurch blog in 2015. “My original idea was for a CityChurch magazine-type,newsletter in printed form,” she said. “I had the idea probably a year after we first deconstructed into smaller churches [in 2010].”

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On a Sunday evening a few weeks back, North Campus Church gathered round to focus on two of their youngest members, Bryce and Bre Van Dyke. Bryce and Bre, ages 15 and 13, are transitioning from childhood to adulthood, and North Campus wanted to take a moment to recognize the significance of that transition.

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At a meeting of Boone Church, the adults are usually outnumbered by the kids. To Dan and Tamara Law, Max and Heather Cook, Keith Cook, and Jordan Cook, one of the church’s most important responsibilities is successfully passing on their faith to those kids. Max lays out their vision: “The goal should be for the faith of each generation to go beyond the last. We are hoping that our kids at their current ages will go beyond where we were at those same ages.”

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In Titus 3:14 Paul lays out a vision for how churches should conduct themselves: “Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order to provide for urgent needs and not live unproductive lives.” Since their very beginning, Gilbert Church has been considering how to implement this vision in their own town.

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