Rally Day – September 12th!

Please join us on Sunday, September 12th for NBRC Rally Day!

The commissioning for the new school year starts at our 9:15 am contemporary service, and children will be dismissed to church school classes at about 9:30 am.

To kick off the new school year, our doors will open at 8:30 am with a continental breakfast. You will be able to review the curriculum that the church school will be using, as well as register your child(ren) and explore the other exciting opportunities that are offered by NBRC before attending the commissioning service. Our Rally Day event will continue after the first service if you can’t join us earlier.

Newsletters and Calendar September 2010

Stay informed of events and opportunities within the NBRC community.

• The Messenger Newsletter (PDF)
• The Shepherd’s Kids and Young Adult News (PDF)
• Please refer to our Online Event Calendar for the latest dates and times.

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.

Service 8-22-2010

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Sermon: “Sabbatical Learnings: AND”
by Pastor Todd Buurstra

Job 1:21;
I Cor. 2:9

Probably 30-40% of the emergency calls–when I was on a 24 hour on-call shift at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital doing chaplaincy work for my sabbatical–were to help people to die. To start us thinking about the topic of facing our mortality, here is 60 seconds from 60 Minutes…

How do people of faith face death?

First let’s recognize that our whole culture fears death. We are even uncomfortable saying the word so we’ve come up with all kinds of euphemisms; i.e., roundabout ways to say death. Help me out here. I can think of kicking the bucket, giving up the ghost, meeting my Maker, passing away, an appointment with the Grim Reaper… Others strike you?… My RWJ supervisor, Rev. John deVelder would preach, It’s death! Say it: death, death, death!

Not only do we avoid death in speech, we avoid it in behavior. Even though we say we can’t avoid ___ and taxes; ____ being?… we do. We color our hair or take Viagra to mask our age. Why? To postpone dealing with death. (That’s a debate in our house. The wife wants me to color my beard, but I don’t because I have to face the Gray Reaper.) Which one applies? I don’t do hospitals/doctors/wakes… Why? Probably so I don’t have to deal with death. I learned even more how the healthcare professionals avoid death by having their default behavior be to hook a patient up to a respirator, or do CPR for an hour, or whatever, to avoid… Lastly, we’ll come back to this, most of us have not filled out an AD: healthcare proxy or living will.

And this fear of death is bankrupting our country in dollars and spirit. Three striking statistics from that 60 Minutes segment are:

• $55B are spent in the last two months of life;
• 20-30% of which is wasted! And,
• 30% of hospital stays are unnecessary because the system rewards admittance and procedures.

And the fear of death costs in dollars because it first costs in spirit. I came into the hospital room, noticed the patient tossing and turning and said, John, you’re restless, what’s up? I’m afraid. What are you afraid of, John? Didn’t I tell you what the doctor said? If you did, I don’t remember. What did the doctor say? They’re calling in hospice. I’m not going to make it. I’m sorry, John, so that makes you afraid? Yes. I understand. If I had a dollar for every time that happens in a 600 bed hospital like RWJ, I could pay my kids’ college in cash. Death is scary

And so we turn to the only medicine that can help this fear: trust in God. And here’s where the biblical story of Job is helpful. You may remember that Job was a rich man, with a rich family life (7 sons, 3 daughters; 7000 sheep, 3000 camels)—the Bill Gates of his day. As Job and his family were enjoying the high life, Job was also happy and humbled by his blessings. Important, because one day, in the blink of an eye, he lost everything. In a fit of understand-able grief and anger Job’s wife told him to curse God and die! But Job had a different reaction. Maybe it was shock, but certainly it was a profound spirituality. His reaction was, please read it with me (Job 1:21)… Wow! Now that’s the power of faith. Indeed one commentator wrote:
A man may stand before God stripped of everything
that life has given him, and still lack nothing.

And when we trust in God we trust not only for the present but for the future. So the Spirit inspires Paul to write beautiful poetry of heaven (I Corinthians 2:9)…

I remember walking into Eva Jane Mosko’s bedroom for her last moments. Her husband of approaching 60 years sat in the single bed with her with his arm around her. She was uncon-sciously struggling to breathe her last, and he was sending her on to Jesus by saying things like: Soon you’ll hear the angels sing. You won’t feel anymore pain. You’ll be praising God. You’ll see Jesus face to face… You know, if you’re around for my last breaths, send me that way.

And so I invite you to do one thing: AND. Allow Natural Death. On the ledge and on the back table is what we used at RWJ, called Advanced Directives. By filling one out you can name a healthcare proxy, complete a Living Will, or both. Don’t be afraid. Trust God. AND.

Once upon a time, twin boys were conceived. Weeks passed, and the twins developed. Soon they exclaimed: Isn’t it great that we were conceived? Isn’t it great to be alive! Together the twins explored their world. When they found their mother’s umbilical cord they sang for joy:
How great is our mother’s love, that she shares her own life with us!

As weeks stretched into months, the twins noticed how much each changed. What does it mean? asked the one. It means that our stay in this world is ending, said the other. But I don’t want to go, said the one. We have no choice, said the other. But maybe there is life after birth!

But how can there be? responded the one. We will shed our life cord, and how is life possible without it? Besides, we know others have been here before us, but none have returned to tell us of life after birth. No, this is the end. And so the one fell into deep despair, If conception ends in birth, life in the womb is meaningless. Maybe there is no mother after all. But there has to be protested the other. How else did we get here? How do we remain alive? Maybe she lives only in our minds. Maybe we made our mother up to make us feel good.

And so the last days in the womb were filled with deep questioning and fear. Finally, the moment of birth arrived. When the twins had passed from their world, they opened their eyes. They cried. For what they saw, exceeded their fondest dreams:
No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him.

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Sermon 8-15-2010

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What Worries Me Most About Returning as Your Pastor
Rom 2:1-11

You know the thing that worries me most about coming back from sabbatical? This word: RESPONSIBILITY. Now don’t misunderstand me, I’m not afraid of taking responsibility for myself and for the job that I do, I’m afraid of taking too much responsibility and letting others have too little responsibility. For instance, I’m worried about being at a meeting and then realizing that I’m the only person around the table that is looking five years down the pike because I haven’t prepared the group. I’m worried about tossing and turning in bed because I feel alone in a direction that I feel God calling us because I haven’t effectively shared where and why I feel called. How do I share the responsibility of leadership better?

Now I can’t be alone in feeling this.

Is there not a parent or grandparent here who sees everyone else buying everything else for their kids, and wonders, should we be so cheap whether that be a prom dress or more legos?

Or, is there an employee here who does not feel guilty when the boss harangues your group in the conference room about dedication to the goal? You want the promotion/money, right?

Or, is there a person here who can change channels with a smile on your face when you see those lethargic kids with bloated bellies and flies swarming their faces as they starve?

So what is God’s intent on the appropriate amount of responsibility?

In the ancient world of Bible times, and the modern, secular world, human responsibility has been messed up in competitiveness. Kind of like this vine choking out this little tree. Survival of the fittest is really just a return to ancient nature religions. To get a god’s favor, you had to compete with other gods and people by offering more money, or a good sacrifice, or your first born., in a chaotic world where you compete for a god’s attention its hard to see your responsibility as anything more than cut-throat.

Similarly in our secular world we have a hard time figuring out how much responsibility to take. So if life is about the survival of the fittest then take a lot of responsibility, take charge, get control, pull some strings, so I get what I want. Otherwise I have no one to blame, but me.

I got a speeding ticket less than a mile from my house the other day. It was one of the few lower humidity days so I was sailing home with my windows down, whistling a happy tune, doing 40 in a 25, and sure enough, Mr. Ocifer caught me red-handed. As he sauntered over to me I thought, How can I get out of this? Tell him who I am? Tell him who I know? You know, win the ticket war? I decided to do none of those, but just admit it and pay the fine. Dang!

The scriptural worldview is radically different from either the ancient Greco-Roman or the modern secular worldviews. If the ancient religions and modern secularism both muddy responsibility by seeing the world as mainly competitive, then the Bible clarifies responsibility by calling us to answer before God in covenant. Covenant is a sacred contract whereby we know what God wants from us: 10 commandments, the great commandment… Covenant is a sacred contract whereby each of us stands equally responsible before God. Competition, covenant.

Listen to how the Spirit through Paul clarifies our responsibility before our covenant God: 5-8You’re not getting by with anything. Every refusal and avoidance of God adds fuel to the fire. The day is coming when it’s going to blaze hot and high, God’s fiery and righteous judgment. Make no mistake: In the end you get what’s coming to you—Real Life for those who work on God’s side, but to those who insist on getting their own way and take the path of least resistance, Fire!… God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. He makes up his own mind. So everyone is equally responsible before God.

In terms of taking too much responsibility or too little responsibility I am thinking in these terms. Let’s say that God allots 10 responsibility points (we’ll call them RPs) in every situation. If there are two people involved in an argument, they probably each get 5 RPs. As the old adage goes, it takes two to tango/tangle. But let’s say that my tendency is to take on too much responsibility for situations; such that I make my kids’ beds, or I call in sick when my spouse is drunk, or I’m the only one thinking 5 years down the pike in a leadership meeting because I haven’t prepared others to do so. Then I may get 7 RPs and the other have only 3 RPs left. Will that turn into a healthy situation? It won’t use others’ creativity, and I will be anxious. Or, if my tendency is to avoid responsibility by, say, sleeping my life away, I may get 3 RPs, and the people who work for me get 7 RPs. Will I be healthy with so much bedrest? Hardly.

But let’s break it down even further. Let’s say that I’m team teaching VBS, and each is taking their full 5 RPs. How does God fit in? Well, God is not going to teach VBS for me, that is take all 5 RPS and so I don’t have to prepare. But in my preparation, if I pray for God’s strength and help, if I pray for my kids, I am letting God take 3 of my 5 RPs, so that I can do my best confidently. This is the way a covenantal responsibility with God and others works, I think.

During my sabbatical my new church start committee had a proposal to grant $25K to the fastest growing church plant on the east coast to get them additional staffing to keep growing and to start daughter churches. I thought it would pass with flying colors, but my replacement fumbled, and it lost 9-4 because of misinformation. Doggone! At the risk of taking 7 RPs I decided that I’d attend only the part of the July Classis meeting that would deal with this issue because for the $25K grant to pass to win more people to Christ would save me work in the long run. But how to persuade the 9 NO votes? By this time I was getting tired of hospital chaplaincy work so I decided to take a few longer breaks (3 RPs?) to call the classis members to listen and persuade. July 20 on meeting night we sat in Three Bridges Reformed Church under a tin roof with only a ceiling fan in 90 degrees and 90% humidity. Anxious I prayed, Lord, I’ve done what I can do, help me to listen well (their 5 RPs), and trust you. I made my presentation listing the concerns that I had heard in my phone calls, and what my committee was doing to address them. Then I turned to what a great opportunity we had to help Liberti church add staff to reach more people and to start daughter churches! At the 20 minute mark it was my turn to listen. The opposition went on for most of the next 40 minutes. At the 60 minute mark one of the swing votes sounded negative. I counted that we would lose 6-3. Lord, I’ve done all I can (5 RPs), I’m listening (5 RPs), but You’re going to have to save this one (3 of my 5). At the 75 minute mark an elder from PA makes a compromise motion. At 76 minute mark I realize that it will grant the $25K, but it won’t help the other side. Lord, am I responsible to point that out? Be quiet. Its my turn. Finally, at 90 minutes the vote is taken, and we win 5-4! I walk out, look up at the stars next to the steeple and whisper my thanks, and God says, You done good. And the star winked.

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