Alumni

Carlos Erazo ’14, Pastor and Social Media Influencer, to give 2025 Commencement Address

msk23@calvin.edu — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 16:49:10 +0000

Carlos Erazo ’14, Pastor and Social Media Influencer, to give 2025 Commencement Address msk23@calvin.edu Tue, 04/01/2025 - 12:49

As a freshman at �鶹��, Carlos Erazo ‘14 was invited to speak for 15 minutes during chapel.

“I was nominated. I didn’t volunteer,” recalls Erazo. “I was terrified.”

From El Salvador, Erazo had never preached or spoken in front of that many people, and certainly not in English. “But I felt in my fear, God reassuring me ‘it’s not going to be you, it's going to be me, to be a blessing to the people who are going to listen to you,” said Erazo.

Receiving encouragement

After he spoke, unsure of how it went, Erazo received some feedback. “Pastor Mary said, ‘you did amazing,’ and that word meant way more to me than she probably thought,” said Erazo. “At Calvin, I had great teachers who encouraged me, challenged me, did little things that showed me that they believed in me.”

Over the next decade, Erazo would become a content creator on multiple social media platforms attracting millions of followers with some of his content receiving millions of likes.

On May 10, 2025, Erazo is returning to where it all started, his alma mater, to give the Commencement address to the Class of 2025.

“For me, it’s a huge honor,” said Erazo. “I want to address the idea of remaining faithful and trusting God with the rest.”

Erazo is currently the Pastor of Digital Ministries at Lakepointe Church in Dallas, Texas, a ministry serving tens of thousands of Spanish and English-speaking people in-person and online across multiple campuses. In his position, he supervises a team that oversees church online, produces a weekly podcast, coaches, shepherds, and provides digital strategy.

Discovering his unique calling

Erazo’s path to the pastorate was anything but traditional, but it was during his time at Calvin that he more deeply understood that he could be Christ’s agent of renewal in whatever sector or sphere God called him to.

“I enjoyed the Reformed theology that I learned [at Calvin]. It was extremely helpful for me,” said Erazo. “I think I discovered my passion to do ministry, to be a preacher, a missionary evangelist in a different way, and that happened at Calvin.”

So, the communications and economics double major picked up a $200 camera and tripod at a local Meijer grocery story and got to work.

“As a sophomore, I started a YouTube channel. As someone who has always been passionate about sharing my faith, I wanted to share my faith with my friends in El Salvador,” said Erazo. “This was pre-social media before the iPhone had a front-facing camera, so to record yourself was very awkward.”

The path Erazo was heading down was looking quite different than he had anticipated when he first stepped into the United States and onto Calvin’s campus a couple of years prior.

“Before graduating college, I thought I had an obligation as an international student to come here, get the best paying job I could and then go back to El Salvador to provide for my family,” said Erazo. “That was my plan at the end of the day.”

The journey begins

But Erazo says he had a conviction from God to not pursue that path, but instead to become a Christian YouTuber.

“I didn’t have 10 million subscribers, maybe not even 10,000 at the time,” said Erazo. “But I graduated knowing I need to pursue more ministry and digital media and share my faith.”

In 2014, he graduated from Calvin with a clear calling and a partner for the journey ahead, his former classmate and wife, Brooke Erazo ’14, who would help him create videos and upload the content.

It didn’t take long for Erazo to attract millions of followers across multiple platforms and for him to start receiving speaking engagements all over the world. He admits it was a busy and exhausting six or seven years.

“It was all gas, no brakes,” said Erazo. “My wife and I were known by a lot of people, our social media platforms grew, but we were not really known. We were connected, but we felt very disconnected.”

Stepping into a new season

Feeling isolated and tired, the Erazos sought refuge. They knew that started by finding a church and by trimming down everything they were doing.

“We found a local church with a congregation of English and Spanish,” said Erazo. “I knocked on the door and said, ‘whatever you need me to do, I am able to help out.’”

So, Erazo was hired as a part-time student pastor for one of the churches’ campuses. A year later, in January 2020, he was asked to take on a full-time role to help with church online.

“Brooke and I prayed, and we felt this is a new season. So, I called the pastor and said, ‘I’m in,’” said Erazo. Two weeks later, the job loomed much larger.

“Literally two weeks after I accepted the online church pastor role, COVID happened,” said Erazo. “All of a sudden, this church of over 10,000 people was all online, and we are building the plane as we’re flying.”

Inspiring the next generation

Now, a few years later, Erazo is serving as the pastor of digital ministries for the church. He also recently published a book in Spanish called “Follow Me,” playing off the words Jesus said to his disciples in today’s social media-saturated culture. He still shares content in various forms across many channels, including YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, and Facebook, and he doesn’t shy away from challenging and sensitive cultural topics because “if the church doesn’t disciple people, the world will,” said Erazo.

As Erazo prepares to return to Calvin’s campus in May, he is hoping his words will inspire others to be faithful in following Jesus.

“Your identity as a follower of Jesus is to be faithful and that’s good news. Obviously, there’s a place for hard work, endurance, boldness, and courage, but ultimately you want to be faithful.”

Wed, 04/02/2025 - 12:00

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It’s all about the approach: Mayor takes lessons learned at Calvin into new role

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 17:28:17 +0000

It’s all about the approach: Mayor takes lessons learned at Calvin into new role msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 03/26/2025 - 13:28

On January 1, 2025, David LaGrand ’88 was sworn in as the mayor of Grand Rapids, Michigan. In doing so, he became the first �鶹�� graduate to assume this specific role.

A mayor’s role, in essence, is to manage various aspects of a city, everything from preparing and planning a budget to issuing administrative decisions and minor regulations. What a mayor accomplishes during their term is typically what they are remembered for. Addressing the “what”—the city’s needs—is important to LaGrand. But he believes the “how”—the approach to doing so—is what will actually lead to the city’s flourishing.

Providing space for many voices

“If there’s one thing I want to do in the next eight years, it’s actually getting all of us in the habit of thinking government is not something that happens to us, government is something we do together,” said LaGrand.

A way LaGrand is doing that is by hosting Mayor Mondays, an in-person gathering held in various locations around the city that provides a weekly opportunity for the community to have open discussions around the topics that matter most to them.

“I want to be someone who helps all of us frame and envision how to live in a community where we actually listen to and value each other equally, which is really hard,” said LaGrand. “But guess what? I think that that’s the central calling of being a follower of Jesus Christ—to figure out how to absolutely instantiate those kinds of values.”

Prioritizing posture in solving problems together

LaGrand says that housing, justice, infrastructure and neighborhood development are a few of the key issues he’s hoping to work with the community to address in the coming years. But he’s aiming higher than simply trying to make headway in these areas. Again, he says it comes back to the way in which the problems get addressed.

“Our politics right now are defined by a lot of self-righteous dynamics on the left and the right. If you listen to people on both sides, they’re so busy reinforcing their own biases and being so sure they are right and demonizing people who disagree with them because it’s sort of a drug, it can feel good, it can feel self-affirming,” said LaGrand. “But it breaks down on human contact. It’s really hard to hate somebody in person. It’s a lot easier to hate someone in isolation. So, if we can spend more time with each other, I think we can fight that mechanism. But we have to figure out how to do it. Because if we can’t deeply and profoundly disagree with each other about things without imputing malice, we’re done, it’s a necessary precondition for democracy.”

Practicing values learned at Calvin

Figuring out how to do this well is a top priority of LaGrand’s and he’s grateful that his Calvin education was a pivotal training ground equipping him for this very task.

David LaGrand talks with guests at the "Executive Breakfast Series: The Future of Grand Rapids" held on February 12, 2025, at �鶹��.

“I always say that I think Calvin is grad school for being a Christian. It’s the place where you get to spend four years thinking about how does being a Christian going to integrate with the work you do for the rest of your life,” said LaGrand, who also earned a juris doctorate after Calvin. “For me, this [my time at Calvin] was easily the most important part of my education. I mean law school is a credential, but Calvin is where I got to spend four years thinking about vocation. And the ability to do that is priceless.”

LaGrand is now hoping that training will pay off for the city he is entrusted with leading.

Seeking renewal here and becoming a model to follow

“Forty percent of this country doesn’t believe anything the government says right now. And I’m not saying we’ll be able to solve this in the United States of America. I’m just hoping we can solve it in Grand Rapids,” said LaGrand. “God puts us into places, and we can try and do things in the places we are. So, we are all in Grand Rapids, so we can figure out how to do this here as a response to a national challenge and maybe that’s a scale we can wrap our brain around.”

Because as LaGrand mentions, while Grand Rapids can’t solve the country or world’s problems, it can provide a model for what participating in government with civil discourse looks like. And that can have ripple effects.

“States watch what other states are doing. So, the stakes for Grand Rapids doing great things are that other cities may copy us,” said LaGrand. “There’s an opportunity for us to have outsized influence, but the way to have outsized influence is just to do better. If we can figure out how to live in a community where we actually value everyone’s voices equally regardless of whether you think they work as hard as you, whether you think they’re as smart as you are, whether you think their lived experience is as important as your lived experience—figure out the list that makes you feel better than other people and try and burn that list—if we can live and model that out in ways that work and make sense, we can be an example.

“If we can make Grand Rapids an important part of the kingdom of God, then we’ll be in a beautiful place.”

Wed, 03/26/2025 - 12:00

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New Traditions and Spaces Highlight Homecoming & Family Weekend

msk23@calvin.edu — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 19:14:27 +0000

New Traditions and Spaces Highlight Homecoming & Family Weekend msk23@calvin.edu Tue, 10/01/2024 - 15:14

On Friday, October 4 and Saturday, October 5, �鶹�� welcomes alumni, families, and the broader community to its Grand Rapids campus for Homecoming & Family Weekend.

The weekend is full of familiar traditions like the Calvin Classic 5K & Youth Run, the Fall Music Festival, and the Grand Prix Bed Races. And this year, Calvin is set to kick off some new traditions, including the university’s first-ever Homecoming football game.

“We are excited to celebrate longstanding traditions at Calvin, while welcoming in a new hallmark staple of our future homecoming celebrations,” said Jeff Haverdink, executive director of alumni & family engagement. “We are beginning a whole new chapter of what it looks like to celebrate homecoming at Calvin, and we are excited to give our alums yet another reason to come back to campus to see all of the exciting things happening here.”

Calvin has quite the lineup of events planned. On Friday, guests can enjoy the Grand Prix Bed Races, a cookout on the lawn outside Knollcrest Dining Hall, the Calvin Music Festival, and the first-ever cornhole tournament with $1,500 in cash prizes.

Saturday’s festivities include the Calvin Classic 5K & Youth Run, the inaugural homecoming football game, and a soccer doubleheader which includes the dedication of the new stadium. An on-campus farmer’s market and improv show round out the weekend festivities.

While the lineup of activities is impressive, what many guests will discover as they move around campus are the new spaces that have opened up in the past year, including the first phase of Commons Union, the new state-of-the-art soccer stadium, and the brand new track & field complex located on the far east side of campus, to name a few.

“If you haven’t been back to Calvin for a few months, you’ll want to come check out the campus and all the new and reimagined spaces,” said Haverdink. “The weather is looking great and I’m not sure there’s a better time of year to take in the beauty of our campus.”

Check out the full schedule of events at calvin.edu/homecoming.

Tue, 10/01/2024 - 12:00

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