Crown & Covenant Blog

Have you ever started packing over two months before taking a trip? Well, that’s what we are doing here at Crown & Covenant. Yes, we are excited about the upcoming RP International Conference at Calvin College! Are you planning to attend and have you sent in your registration? It is a terrific experience to meet with many Christians of the denomination from all over the US as well as other countries. You will not want to miss conference lectures, sectionals, and worship. Meeting old friends and making new friends adds to the enjoyment of the conference.

So here at the office, books are arriving, and we are pricing and packing them. We are going to have a huge book table—a whole room just for Crown & Covenant products. It would be great to see you there.

We just received boxes and boxes of our newly revamped Psalm Settings booklet. We updated this booklet four years ago to fix a number of musical and layout issues found in the original “green” booklet. However, there were still some things that were less-than-ideal, especially the size of the type. 

In this new version, we have standardized the type-size making for a more readable and singable book. We have also fixed some of the lingering musical issues. 

If you would like a copy, you can get one from our website.

We had a minor office tragedy a couple weeks ago. Quite unexpectedly, our coffee maker quit making coffee. It looked fine—the lights were on, the buttons worked, but the machine wouldn’t brew the coffee. As the coffee maker’s primary responsibility in this office is to propel all of us to new heights of motivation and innovation, there was understandable dismay at its passing.

After a few days surviving on coffee brought from home or the various coffee shops/gas stations on all our various routes to work, a shiny new coffee maker took center stage on the counter in the kitchen. 

I love a happy ending.

In the past several months we have transitioned at Crown & Covenant from using the traditional Pitney-Bowes postage machine to the new Online Postage system called Endicia. It’s exciting to be able to print postage stamps in whatever amount we need. No more running to the post office for stamps or waiting for them to arrive when purchased Online. Be aware that postage costs are going to increase again on May 1st! Crown & Covenant tries to keep apace of and implement the most modern methods of shipping so that your orders arrive in good order and as quickly as possible.

“Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day” was April 24. In the U.S., this official day began about 15 years ago. At Crown & Covenant, there are many days through the year when you can see the bright face of a child in our offices. That tradition goes back at least 20 years. My wife and I, sharing one job, had times when we  needed to be working together. There were even a couple of board meetings where we had a playpen nearby!

Most recently, it is the shining face of three-year-old Alexa that we see from time to time. She is the daughter of our business manager, Josh. Sometimes she is here for just a few minutes, sometimes a few hours. But always she is a refreshing addition to the workplace.

Recently a former employee came back to work temporarily for us. We encouraged her to bring her child Kinsey with her if it meant that working for us would be more feasible. We’d rather have valuable employees working with restrictions than not working at all!

Besides, God has placed us in families–a critical part of, and reflection of, His promises to us. We are missing something, and making our children miss something, if we strictly forbid them from the workplace. It’s good for them to see us going about our day’s business (Deuteronomy 6:5-9).

It’s easier in a small office environment to allow this kind of flexibility. Someone who works at a nuclear power plant or who digs ditches can’t include children often. But for those who are able, it’s much more of a blessing than a hassle.

You may or may not be familiar with Johannes Geerhardus Vos, but we can all still learn a lot from his writings. For 33 years, J. G. wrote a quarterly magazine called Blue Banner Faith and Life. Some of the studies from this magazine have been compiled into books already, and others are in the works.

One of the most beneficial things Vos did in his magazine was define theological terms in a succinct manner. Crown & Covenant has compiled all of these definitions (nearly 400 of them), and created a widget for you to use on your website or blog. It updates itself everyday and will add great content to your site!

You can see what it looks like in the right-hand column here on our blog.

Have you ever wondered about where Crown & Covenant ships Psalters and other materials? Well, not long ago we shipped several cases of The Book of Psalms for Singing to Hawaii while a few months earlier we loaded a wooden pallet with boxes of Trinity Psalters to go to Singapore. Sometimes our orders go to South Africa, other times to India or Ireland. Occasionally, it’s Peru and often it’s Canada. People all over the globe are singing Psalms because of Crown & Covenant!

You read that number correctly. Since its first printing in 1973, The Book of Psalms for Singing has been a blessed part of the worship of God’s people around the world.

After receiving our most recent shipment, we wondered how many copies of The Book of Psalms for Singing have been printed and sold over the past 35 years. Would you believe 100,000? Yes, a denomination with a membership of about 6,500 has produced 100,000 copies of its psalter. This number really shows how widespread the use of The Book of Psalms for Singing is in a variety of churches.

We hope you join with us in rejoicing at the spread of psalm-singing to God’s people everywhere!

As mail clerk of Crown & Covenant, packing materials are very important to me. We are blessed by many people who donate clean packing materials that we are able to recycle. We are pleased when people donate clean packing peanuts, bubble wrap, air bags, packing newsprint, and small reusable boxes. Thank you every one for your kindness and thoughtfulness!

Someday we may be able to utilize a forklift, but for now the best such a machine could do would be to unload the book-laden boxes from a delivery truck and then dump them down the concrete steps to our basement stockroom.

That is why my heart skipped a beat when we saw the 18-wheeler outside our office at 8:30 a.m. last Monday. The 3,000 psalters weren’t to arrive until the next day. At that moment, it was just Drew’s and my four biceps and a truck driver who was desperately seeking our fork lift.

After a panicked call to the next-door RP Seminary, which produced eager and sacrificial students Jay Strunk and Keihei Takiura, the driver suggested the books could be redelivered the next day. This gave us time to do things right.

The next day a smaller trailer with a liftgate backed up within several yards of our stock room storm doors. Despite arriving a bit earlier than planned, several Seminary students and staff ran over to give us a lift. Due to past experience, we placed a folding table on the steps, legs extended only on the lower side. The trucker unloaded the palettes and the helpers slung the boxes, one by one, toward the inclined table. There, they slid down to the helpers below who continued the bucket brigade until the boxes were securely in place on stockroom palettes. It took less than an hour and we celebrated with pizza. Special thanks are due to Grant Van Leuven, Sam DeSocio, Paul Martin, Zack Kail, and Young-Ho Kim. With friends like these, who needs a forklift?