Leadership

Ardel B. Caneday | Elder

Ardel B. Caneday is a writer, teacher, consultant, conference speaker, blogger, and adjunct professor at the University of Northwestern in Saint Paul, Minnesota where he served as Professor of New Testament and Greek for twenty-eight years until retirement in 2020. He received his PhD in New Testament from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has written many scholarly book reviews and articles, including essays in two significant edited volumes: The Faith of Jesus Christ: Exegetical, Biblical, and Theological Studies (Paternoster, 2009) and A Cloud of Witnesses: The Theology of Hebrews in its Ancient Context (T&T Clark, 2008). Dr. Caneday is also the co-author (with Thomas R. Schreiner) of The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance and Assurance (InterVarsity, 2001). He and his wife Lois are happily married and reside in the north suburbs of the Twin Cities.

Phil Norris | Elder

Life’s Verse: Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Mt. 16:24-25
By the mercy of God, Phil, having been raised on a Pennsylvania farm, having lost both his parents by age seventeen, was regenerated in November 1971. He has served as a musician and music educator for over 45 years at the secondary, collegiate, and professional levels, having taught in the areas of instrumental music, music education, music theory, general and church music. In 2015 he authored the faith-based music appreciation text, Western Music SDG: A Concise Overview. His blog on God’s sovereignty can be found here.

Phil and his wife, Julie, have been married since December 1981, and have three children and four grandchildren.

Jim Ballentine | Elder

My dad was a preacher.  God, the Bible, the Gospel, sin and Jesus were front and center in our home.  I came to know that – without Jesus – I am without hope in this world.  He is my Savior.  God gave me a wonderful wife in Marva over 50 years ago and He has given us 3 wonderful children and 6 beautiful grandchildren.  We are grateful.  I was in pastoral ministry for 12 years but God helped me understand that I was too argumentative to pastor, so I became a lawyer!  I have enjoyed practicing law for over 30 years.  It’s a great privilege to be an elder at Christ Bible Church.

Tim Lovestrand | Elder

I graduated from college with a Bachelor of Science degree in Music Education (proficiency in Voice).  But my career has spanned many roles, including: private school principal, teacher, missionary to the Philippines, and software developer.  Married in 1972, Nancy and I now have five outstanding adult children and three of the cutest grandchildren you’ve ever seen.

Like quite a few other Christians, I have occasionally wondered exactly when it was that I was actually converted.  I thank God for my missionary parents, who faithfully brought up their children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4)  And, thanks largely to that training, I can say I have lived as a follower of Jesus since I was very young.  In recent years, though, I come to think that the actual moment God transferred me from darkness to light, from death to life, may have been in the context of an inner crisis I had when I was fourteen.