From the Pastor – February

As I write this I am preparing to go away for four days to San Antonio, Texas for a denominational conference. While many Reformed Church (RCA) groups will be gathered at this One Thing conference I will be there with the RCA Parenting Church Network. Taking part in the “middle management” of this part of the conference I will be busy, but I anticipate enjoying it immensely. Why?

Just because it will be good to get away? Yes, though I will miss you and my family, absence usually does make the heart grow fonder. But that is not the main reason.

The main reason is that I am excited about North Branch’s participation in what God is doing in the wider church. You know by now that my role in our area Classis churches is to oversee the multiplication of new churches. Through our help the Reading, PA Hispanic church, which Carlos and Carmen pastor, has grown to 60 people on Sundays. They have started their own daughter church in Lebanon, PA, which is now worshiping 30 and anticipates renting a new building soon (cf. picture). Bob and Heidi’s plant in Oxford Valley is now worshiping 60 and is preparing for a grand launch. And then, my personal favorite, our own daughter church, Ignite, is preparing to launch her second cell group. Within each of these new groups there are a high percentage of people who are experiencing Jesus Christ for the first time! I am so blessed to be able to witness a powerful work of the Holy Spirit in these plants!

So to San Antonio I am bringing four other pastors from our Classis to explore giving birth like we have. If even one or two become partners with us in this venture we will no longer be alone! We are in the middle of God’s greatest work to bring new people to Christ through new churches that our Classis has seen in over 100 years!

And this is just our Classis. Throughout the other 45 Classes of the RCA in North America over 100 churches have been born since we launched our ten-year goal to plant 400. For the first time in a half a century God has blessed the old RCA with growth!
So I ask you to pray that God might inspire and challenge our denomination, the oldest in America, to help bring our nation to a deeper commitment to Christ.

Peace and joy,
Pastor Todd Buurstra

The Messenger February 2008

Click to read North Branch Reformed Church’s monthly newsletter:
The Messenger February 2008

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The Shepherd’s Kids and Young Adult News February 2008

Click to read the latest issue of North Branch Reformed Church’s monthly newsletter for children, teens and college students:
The Shepherd’s Kids and Young Adult News February 2008

Note: You need an Adobe PDF reader installed to read a PDF document. If you don’t have one installed, you can download a free PDF reader at www.adobe.com.

Sermon 1/20/2008

 From a Distance  John 1:29-34; I Cor. 1:1-3
 We were with Natsuko’s family in Japan on vacation several years back and I had a free day.  So I decided to do something I hadn’t done in years: climb, more like hike, up a mountain.   Mass transit took me to it’s midpoint, and above that I climbed railroad ties and then above the treeline it transitioned to well placed rocks, though not too steep.  Even though the crowd thinned the higher up, there were still a few hikers with me.  My calf muscles were aching a bit, but I was good.  This google picture seems too austere.
 The best part of the hike was enjoying the vista. Other peaks as you see here.  The cars streaming into the parking lot looked like ants.  The rice fields to my left.  The city with the train station to my right.  From a distance the sun-kissed world below looked peaceful, of one whole piece.  Is this how God sees the world?  Like Bette Midler’s song:
From a distance we all have enough, and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease, no hungry mouths to feed.
From a distance you look like my friend, even though we are at war.
From a distance I just cannot comprehend what all this fighting is for.
And God is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us from a distance.
Oh, God is watching us, God is watching. God is watching us from a distance.
So on Christian Unity Sunday and MLKing weekend how do we deal with difference?
 
The gospel passage talks about that intended to bring us together, the Spirit’s baptism.  Yet from the very beginning we notice great differences in the church’s teaching on the Spirit and baptism.  Fr. Joe and our Catholic cousins up on Rt. 22 see the Holy Spirit as being physically present in a baptism guaranteeing it’s effect.  We Reformed folk see the Spirit being spiritually present helping, but not guaranteeing, the parents and church keep their promises.  Our Pentecostal friends between St. Bernards and our church see the Spirit as being supernaturally present, not so ordinarily in the water but in extraordinary expressions of tongues and healing.  Philip Yancey tells us that the church has created 34,000 different denominations and sects the world over. We can’t even agree on baptism!  Much less to chronicle the wars that have been fought over it!
Theological differences.  There are also religious/social differences; particularly between Christians and Muslims in our world right now.  Tonight our churches will gain a greater understanding about Christian-Muslim relations in Darfur through the Dr. Barbara Cooper, an expert on the subject, at St. B’s from 7:30 PM.  Recently Rudy Guliani fired his veteran’s coalition co-chair in New Hampshire for saying things like:
Muslims need to be chased back to their caves…I don’t subscribe to the idea that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims.  They’re all Muslims.
How does God help us to deal with difference?
 We tend to look close (lift glasses).  We magnify the differences.  For the differences that we dislike we assign blame.  Last Sunday we baptized twins.  When I do a baptism I invite all the children to come forward and watch the baby baptized.  One of the twins had an obvious red birthmark right here.  The little boy who sat closest noticed it, stood up and pulled on the pantleg of the father saying, What’s wrong with your baby?
 
 But from God’s distance we notice more similarities than difference.  The epistle lesson addresses Paul’s entire letter to… both their LORD and ours.  And so among Christ-followers we assert that there is more that unites us than divides us!  And even between we Christians and Muslims we can say that we are all Abraham’s children.
Last Sunday we experienced a type of contemporary service and then gathered in this sanctuary to try to discern together God’s will on our worship service format. 
Does God want us to keep two, virtually identical blended services?
Or does our mission call us to have one service with more contemporary music and another with more traditional?
Guess what?  We didn’t agree.  But I was proud of how we spoke honestly and directly to the issues involved, especially given the emotional nature of music preferences.  But I was most proud of how at the very end we all joined hands for prayer.  There a traditional music lover; there a contemporary music lover.  Not two churches but one family in Jesus.  That’s the church at her best.  Able to see more similarity than difference to the point that we pray together.  Now pray for consistory to have wisdom in its decision.

Imagine a church that looks upon difference as God does…from a distance. 
Imagine a church that doesn’t see Protestant and Catholic but Christian.
 Imagine a church that recognizes each other’s baptism.
 Imagine a church that welcomes each other to the LORD’S table.
That’s the church that looks upon differences, like God, from a distance.  Amen.
 

Men’s Breakfast Saturday 01/19/2008

The next Men’s Breakfast is Saturday, January 19th, from 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM in the Fellowship Hall. Enjoy good food, good friends, and a deeper faith.

Dennis McGale will lead a discussion on the DVD from Phil Yancey’s book: “Prayer – Does it make any difference?”

Lenny Laich will be preparing breakfast, but could use a helper. To volunteer, call Len at (908) 526-6286, or the church office at (908) 725-2313.

Sermon 1/13/2008

Why Keep On Praying?  Unraveling the Mysteries      Luke 18:1-8

Why keep on praying?
One day a father had two agenda items for his sunny afternoon:
rake and parent his toddler–two things which don’t always go together.
So Dad was in the backyard with a rake and the toddler who watching the rake move-ments kept saying, I do!  I do!  I DO!  Then when Dad would pile the leaves in the wheel-barrow the child kept on, I go! I go!  I GO!  So how to have a meaningful afternoon with an eager toddler in a yard full of leaves?  Good thing Dad was off from work that day! 
So here’s what Dad did.  He got the baby rake out of the garage and the child’s red wagon.  Dad said, You help daddy with your rake and wagon!  Yeah, I help.  Me big help!  Actually the little rake was usually moving leaves away from Dad’s pile back into the cleanly swept yard.  Then instead of filling the wheelbarrow Dad filled the little red wagon and set Jr. on top for a ride to the firepit.  Wheee!  Mom took a picture to remem-ber the afternoon’s work/fun because it was great, though it took twice as long to get done.  Why would that be great?  Because a relationship was deepened and a task accomplished.  This is precisely why we keep on praying—because even though we get in God’s way, God wants to deepen our relationship while accomplishing the mission.

What pauses our prayer button?  At beginning and end Jesus seems to repeat the same answer: Jesus told them a parable…and not to lose heart…when the Son of Man comes, will he find on earth?  In short we could say, faith.  The child secure in the father’s love kept after the rake and the ride because he trusts daddy.
Sometimes our theology, particularly reformed theology, gets in the way.  God doesn’t want my help.  God will do what God will do whether I pray or not.  Such hyper Calvinism is like the father who says, No you don’t DO, you go inside with Mom! 
Yancey points out that keepin’ on prayer requires a certain type of faith.  
[Faith is] a form of engagement with God…
Like Yancey, I struggle with mountain moving faith, but I can surely stay engaged.
 The faith that keeps prayer moving may be like the cable that moves the cable cars in San Francisco.  No forward propulsion engine but just a cable underneath the street.  Faith is that which locks on to the cable and keeps on holding to move the cars up San Fran’s hills.  The Spirit’s power is that cable.  Without persistent prayer we fall back.
 
So why persevere in prayer?  Because God wants to accomplish God’s mission with us so that we feel the joy of being a BIG HELP!   In other words, in St. Augustine’s words: a person prays  “that he himself might be constructed, not that God may be instructed.”  You and I need more than anything else to be constructed in this way.
 If we persevere in prayer what happens?  Yancey tells the story of a tourist watch a devoted Jew rocking back and forth at the Western (Wailing) Wall in Jerusalem.  The tourist asks What do you pray for?  For righteousness, peace in Jerusalem, health… The tourist replies are these prayers effective?  The Jew deadpans, It’s like talking to a wall.
 Yet something does happen.  Take the contemporary style service that we’re experiencing and the forum following this service.  We wouldn’t be at this point without persistent prayer.  In 2004 I was a firm proponent of our current service format.  Then the church set as one of its three priorities for the next 5 years to grow in evangelism.  I took that as a call from God to keep praying about how God might want us to reach out.  As I prayed I begin to think of some requests from NBRC members for a contemporary service.  As I prayed I began to investigate the worship services of growing churches around us.  And I came to the conclusion that some change was necessary.  Is this the right one?  Your prayer will help answer that but my prayer changed my view on things.
 Or let’s take a social issue.  In 1953 the East German communist government crushed a protest for freedom.  In 1989 Christians meeting in the church where Bach played organ began a series of candlelight prayer marches.  Soon 10,000, 30,000, 50,000, then a half million joined these candlelight prayer marches.  One night there were one million marching in Berlin until finally the Berlin wall splintered in pieces like I hold.

 So, why not experiment this week with the persistent prayer that changes things?  Pick an issue and pray it over and over until you change or it changes, Amen.
 
 
 

You’re Invited to a Bonfire

Ignite! is the name selected for the new church plant. A homecoming event for twenty/thirty-somethings will be hosted on Sunday, January 13th, at 1:00pm, at the home of Matt Vollers.

We invite you to learn more about Ignite. If you know a young adult or family who might be interested, please pass the information on to them.

Please RSVP to David Mojica at (908) 655-5200 if you would like to attend.

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Sermon 1/6/2008

What is Prayer?  Keeping Company with God              Psalm 85 During Epiphany season we let God’s light warm our passion through a religious bestseller.  This year in sermon and small group we are studying Prayer by Philip Yancey.  Yancey begins his study of Prayer by asking what is prayer?  There was a young man who suspected an older man of living such a blessed life that the young man believed that here was a saint who must spend a lot of time on his knees.  So he decided to secretly follow him for a full day to see.  The young man peeked in when the older man awoke—no prayer.  He followed him to work darting behind trees—no prayer.  Surely he spends an hour praying at night, the young man thought.  But tip-toeing in the shadows of his house—no prayer.  So finally the young man tiptoed upstairs slid under the bed to time his bedtime prayer.  Must be at least an hour! He thought.  The older man opened the sheets, slid right in, turned off the light, and said,God, thank you for talking with me all day, Amen.Not that a set prayer time isn’t important, but that saint understood Yancey’s definition of prayer as keeping company with God.  You will learn how to keep God’scompany today! Yancey begins his book by looking at prayer from our perspective, and then from God’s perspective, so that we keep good company with each other. Prayer from our perspective begins with the Latin root of the word prayer:  precarius—precarious.  You can see this from our church Prayer Chain.  How many requests are we praise God for the beautiful day… for God’s infinite love?  No, they tend to be for the precarious situations of life: cancer, sickness, death.  As Thomas Merton said:  Prayer is an expression of who we are…  We are living incompleteness.  More Americans will pray than have sex this week; however, many of the prayers are foxhole prayers.  Foxhole prayers only involve God in trouble whereas keeping company allows God into our whole life in a real way.  That last part is important.  As I get acquainted with Mark Swart I find that I most appreciate his honesty.  He dares be so honest as to critique my sermons!  I like that because without honesty what do you have? So in keeping with the Psalms Yancey tells us to pray honestly.  He quotes Abraham Joshua Heschel we cannot make Him visible to us, but we can… p. 43  The psalmist chides God in 85:5: What?! Will you be angry with us forever!  This is very challenging for me because in the church we’re known for polite, positive prayers.  But most of the Bible’s prayers in the psalms are, to paraphrase Deborah Tannen, “ritual bitching;” i.e., lamenting the wrongs of life.  Do we dare be that honest with God? From God’s side, the God of Truth wants a real relationship with us.  When I visit a Shinto shrine you put your money in the offering box before you pray.  Apparently money gets the attention of the gods.  From God’s side prayer isn’t a transaction but a relationship.  And in this relationship God wants the real me.  God can handle that.  Recently I’ve prayed, God, how could someone do that to me! God listened lovingly.  That cooled my anger so that I was open to the Spirit’s whispered prompt, I wonder how they feel?  Till finally I found a fair way to handle it.  The real God engaged the real me.            Honesty to the God of truth is a major way that Yancey helps us keep company with God.  This week be real to God, and let God be real to you.  You’ll connect.          

The Shepherd’s Kids and Young Adult News January 2008

Happy New Year!

Click to read the latest issue of North Branch Reformed Church’s monthly newsletter for children, teens and college students:
The Shepherd’s Kids and Young Adult News January 2008

Note: You need an Adobe PDF reader installed to read a PDF document. If you don’t have one installed, you can download a free PDF reader at www.adobe.com.

The Messenger January 2008

Happy New Year!

Click to read North Branch Reformed Church’s monthly newsletter:
The Messenger January 2008

Note: You need an Adobe PDF reader installed to read a PDF document. If you don’t have one installed, you can download a free PDF reader at www.adobe.com.

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