Joel Kiekintveld is the Co-Director of the Anchorage Urban Training Collaborative. A Street Psalms Senior Fellow, the Pastor of Reclaim, the host of The AnchorED City Podcast, and an affiliate professor at The Seattle School. For 17 years he served Parachutes Teen Club and Resource Center (Anchorage, AK), which he helped found in 2003, as Executive Director and Founding Director. Parachutes served teens ages thirteen to eighteen years old. Many of the active members of the drop-in center were high-risk and street-involved. Joel has served as a pastor and youth pastor in both Michigan and Alaska. Joel holds a PhD in Practical Theology from the University of Pretoria (South Africa), a Master of Arts in Global Urban Ministry degree from Bakke Graduate University, a Bachelor of Religious Education degree from Reformed Bible College (now Kuyper College), and a Certificate in Non-Profit Management from The Foraker Group/ University of Alaska Fairbanks. He was ordained as a Commissioned Pastor by the Christian Reformed Church in 2008. Joel lives, works, and plays in Anchorage, AK, with his wife Stacey, and has three daughters Naomi, Emma (and wife Kelsy), and Sydney. Joel lives in intentional community in the Dimond Estates trailer park.
Churches don’t close because they lose their vision (or fulfill it), and they don’t close when they get too small. Churches close their doors when they run out of money. Often the demise of a congregation is dressed up in other language, but the cold hard fact is that churches close when they run out […]
Esther Meek in “The Other: Returning to Our Natal Philosophy in the Mother’s Smile” invites us into a relational knowing that is deeply dependent on and indebted to the other. Meek defines this other as “another being—the world, a person or thing—beyond me.”She goes on to explain that “even the mention of the other rightly […]
Joel Kiekintveld suggests open arms and shared space as a tough remedy for our cultural and political divides.
