About
April Yamasaki is a pastor, author, editor, and spiritual formation mentor grounded in sacred pauses, soul care, and living with faith and hope.
For over twenty-five years, April served as the lead pastor of a growing, intergenerational, multi-ethnic Mennonite congregation. Then she felt a new wind of the Spirit to focus on the writing side of her ministry.
She now serves as resident author with Valley CrossWay Church, which is a liturgical worship community; edits the daily devotional magazine Rejoice!; and mentors others both informally and in her role as a spiritual formation mentor with Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary.
April’s latest book is Hope Beyond Our Sorrows: Learning to Life with Life-Changing Loss (Herald Press, 2025), taking its place alongside Sacred Pauses, Four Gifts, On the Way With Jesus, This Ordinary, Extraordinary Life, and other books on living with faith and hope. She blogs on faith, life, and ministry at AprilYamasaki.com and WhenYouWorkfortheChurch.com, and on Substack with a focus on writing as a spiritual journey.
April holds a Master of Christian Studies from Regent College. She was happily married to her high school sweetheart until his death three years ago from cancer-related complications. Though grieving, she is grateful for a wonderfully supportive family and church community, good work, good friends, and God’s mercies new every morning.
About This Website
When I started blogging, I chose the tagline Writing and Other Acts of Faith, borrowed from author E.B. White. I loved his children’s books (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little), The Elements of Style he wrote with William Strunk, and his many engaging essays. And I loved his comment: “Writing is an act of faith, not of grammar.”
For all of us—writers or not—acts of faith are part of being human, even if you don’t think of yourself as religious, even if faith seems like a foreign country to you. We all take leaps that we can’t explain, we all sense the unseen beyond what we can see, if not in writing or worship and prayer, then in nature, art, music, the eyes of a lover or a child. We have eternity in our hearts as an ancient preacher once noted (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
On this website, I share some of my writing, books I’m reading, Scripture, prayer, and other everyday acts of faith. Whatever life holds for you today, I pray you’ll be refreshed and renewed by articles like these:
- A Promise of Healing, Freedom, and Joy
- How to Pray About Mental Illness When You Can’t Find the Words
- 25 Self-Care Ideas for the Heart: For Singles, Widows, Married People, and Everyone
- Why I Believe the Bible Encourages Women in Ministry (for H. who asked)
I generally publish a new article on alternate Tuesdays with time off here and there for Canadian holidays and vacation. You can always sign up for free email updates to read at your own pace, and if you sign up now, you’ll also receive a free ebook as a subscriber bonus: How to Pray When Prayer Seems Impossible.
About When You Work for the Church
I never thought I’d start a second website. But then my professor husband was abruptly told before Christmas that his employment at our denominational Bible college was being terminated for financial reasons. He was pressured to sign a non-disclosure statement and say only that he was “retiring early” (which he refused to sign or to say), expected to teach until the end of the spring semester, with a new and younger professor already hired for fall—all this through no fault of his own and after 26 years of teaching and scholarly achievement.
My husband and I lamented the loss of his job and how poorly he was treated, but by God’s grace, we also moved forward. He soon found a healthier situation, teaching seminary and graduate students in Bible and leadership. And I started When You Work for the Church: the good, the bad, and the ugly, and how we can all do better, writing as a way to educate myself and others:
- What Do You Do When Your Job Is Terminated?
- How to Get Over a Painful Job Termination—Or Can You?
- The Best Articles on Self-Care in the Church
- The 7 C’s of Healthy Teamwork
- plus book reviews and other posts on doing ministry better, including articles curated from other sources.
I generally post on Tuesdays, alternating with posts on my author website. To encourage a healthy rhythm of work and rest, I also offer an ebook as a subscriber bonus: Sabbath Rest for the People of God.
About My Substack
With two websites and other writing, editing, and speaking, I never intended to start my own Substack. But surprise! I discovered that Substack had created a profile for me and populated it with two guest posts that I had written for a blog that shut down some time ago. Ack!
What Substack created was so dated that I claimed my profile and updated it myself—which might have been Substack’s plan all along, since I went on to connect with other Substack writers and readers, and have been posting some of my publishing journey there:
- Writing as A Spiritual Journey
- Are You Procrastinating or Percolating?
- My Week of Too Much
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Publication
If you have a Substack of your own, I’d love for you to follow me, and I’ll follow you back. But you don’t have to know anything about Substack to look around, so please feel free:
Endorsements
Hope Beyond Our Sorrows is the compassionate companion we all need while navigating life after loss. April Yamasaki’s reflections are honest, acknowledging the pain of grief rather than explaining it away. . . . The tender kindness she exudes through her writing makes her book a must-read for those grappling with different types of loss, as well as those who want to better support those who mourn.
—Kendra Broekhuis
author the novels Between You and Us and Nearly Beloved
I envy those who have April Yamasaki as their pastor,
but Sacred Pauses widens her ministry;
she now becomes a wise spiritual director to many readers.
—Arthur Boers
author of Living into Focus: Choosing What Matters in an Age of Distraction
In my soul’s journey into the deeper, darker, and nutritious soil
of soul care, I have looked to April Yamasaki as a trusted guide.
I read everything she writes! In Four Gifts, her powerful insights are on brilliant display.
—Christena Cleveland
author of Disunity in Christ,
Founder and Director of the Center for Justice + Renewal
As I’ve read her writing, I’ve been honoured to know April.
Her honesty and guidance have helped me also know Jesus better, to know myself better, and to gain a greater grasp of Christ’s love for me.
—Chris Maxwell
author of Pause with Jesus: Entering His Story in Everyday Life,
Director of Spiritual Life and Campus Pastor at Emmanuel College
To learn more about April Yamasaki, please see her pages on Books and Speaking.
April Yamasaki 