On Tuesday this week our nation experienced another school shooting. This was the 28th school shooting of 2021 and led to the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th deaths of the year from these shootings. In the 22 years since the Columbine shootings in Colorado, there have been over 230 school shootings. This doesn’t count the accidental misfires of guns in schools or the shootings that were stopped before any violence could occur.

As I read about the shootings in Oxford on Tuesday, I felt really angry and deeply sad. Sad for the families, classrooms, and churches who are grieving the loss of their children, classmates, and parishioners. Sad for the students who will be afraid to go to their school because of their experience. Sad for the students in our community who will attend school with increased anxiety that something like that could happen here. Sad for the kids of our church who have been raised in school not only to prepare for tornadoes, but also have “active shooter” drills every year so they know what to do if the unthinkable happens in our community.

And I am angry. Angry because I know nothing will change. Angry that another community will go through the same rituals of death and grief in a few months. Angry that we, the adults in our nation, seem to care so little about protecting the lives of our children at school.

I also know school shootings are not new, though they receive more media coverage now. The first school shooting in the US happened in 1764. There were 49 school shootings in the 1800s and 207 in the 1900s. While there are more school shootings than before, this has been a problem for over 200 years.

When confronted with the deep brokenness of our world, it can be tempting to yell into the void, to blame all those other people, to through ups our hands in despair. But the Christian response is to find a way we can respond with the love of God to bring more of God’s peace and wholeness to our world. I wonder what that might look like for you and me.

In reading a research article for school counselors, I learned recently that almost 90% of school shooters experienced significant long-term bullying. They also look like many of the kids in our community. Almost all are white boys. Many come from two parent homes and get mostly As and Bs in school. They have friends and are not loners. But, they are bullied. 

So what can we do?
1. We can ensure our church is a place where every person (child, teen or adult) is treated as someone of great value. We can include people in our social circles who may be new or simply be alone on a Sunday.
2. We can model kindness by how we talk in our homes about other people and on social media. Be the type of person who avoids gossip and intentionally speaks of the good in others so that our children don’t learn bullying behaviors from us.
3. We can relationally  invest in the kids in our community. Then, when they face bullying or other challenges, they will have multiple adults to turn to for advice and counsel and already have a deep well of emotional strength because they know they are loved by us. That is one reason I love mentoring through Kids Hope. I get to help a child in our community see how great he is and that even if his day is going terrible he has me in his corner cheering him on. 

And, maybe more broadly, we can support and cheer on the teachers and school counselors in our community. They not only teach content, but also work hard creating school environments that are safe for all the kids, especially those at risk of being bullied. 

All of these thoughts put me in a particularly Advent mood, longing for Christ to return and set all things right and make all things new again. Truly, come Lord Jesus.

– Greg

Connect to God
This Sunday we will gather for worship at 9:30 am. The service will be live-streamed at 9:30 and replayed again at 11. You can find the services either on our Facebook page, at zionreformed.online.church, or streaming on our Youtube channel. We will also rebroadcast a version of the service on WCET at noon on Friday and 4pm next Sunday. 

Join us this Advent season as we consider the importance of prepositions in our spiritual lives. This year we celebrate the God who has not called us to live under, over, for, or from God, but in Jesus came to be with us. At Christmas, we remember again God loves us so much he came to be like us and with us. Unfortunately, we can often unintentionally live over God, trying to assume control, rather than with the God who loves us.

We want to invite you to join us to celebrate the birth of Jesus this Christmas on either Friday, December 24 at 6:30 pm or Sunday, December 26 at 9:30 am. Both services will be very very similar (think almost identical) and will point us to the hope we have in our God who has come to dwell among us in the person of Jesus.

Grow in Community
Our High School youth group will be having their Christmas party this Sunday from 12-3 at Josh and Shawn Sanders house. And, our Middle School youth group will be having their Christmas party on Sunday, December 12, from 12-3 in the youth room. Students should make sure they bring a white elephant gift!

The Christmas Program music practice is on Saturday morning, Dec. 11.  K-5th kids will rehearse from 9:30-10:00, and preschoolers will rehearse from 10:00-10:30.  We’ll meet in the sanctuary. Because the “play” portion is pre-recorded this year, and the rehearsal is short parents are asked to stay with their children during rehearsal.

Serve the World
Earlier this week, Jenison Public Schools called with an emergency need for support from Threads. Apparently, two students had recently become homeless and were in need of new clothes and a third student was living in a local campground because their family was also homeless and had been wearing the same clothes to school for a few days. Today I am so thankful for teachers who pay attention to each student and care about not only their learning, but helping provide as much stability in their lives as possible. And, I am thankful for all of you and the ways you care for our community through ministries like Threads, Hand2Hand, and the Personal Care Pantry. May your work point our community to the hope of Jesus and the coming of his kingdom of Shalom.

If you need help, either with food, personal care items, help grocery shopping, or with financial needs, please contact Jerrod Holzgen, our chair of deacons, and he can help connect you with the appropriate resources at Zion. His e-mail is Jholzgen@yahoo.com and his phone number is 616-520-1771.

Administration
I want to share a quick bathroom update. We sent our bathroom remodel plans out for bidding this week and plan to make a final decision on contractors by the end of this year. Our tentative hope is for the bathroom remodel to begin sometime in the middle of January.

We are also preparing to update some of our live-streaming technology through a generous donation. This work will add an additional camera and likely change the company we use to provide our streaming, This may change some of our we stream our services, but will hold drastically improve the quality and consistency of our online services. We will keep you updated with any changes to our online services as we learn more.

We continue to thank God for his provision of all of our needs and for the generous support of our congregation with their time, talent, and treasures.

Fiscal Year 2021/22 Budget:  $291,467.02
Fiscal Year 2021/22 Contributions: $217,081.55
Giving Last Week: $6,177.46
Thanksgiving offering $7,614.15

11-21-21 Bulletin

The gospel is never for individuals but always for a people. Sin fragments us, separates us, and sentences us to solitary confinement. Gospel restores us, unites us, and sets us in community.

– Eugene Peterson (Reversed  Thunder)

Western Theological Seminary just opened the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination. Eugene was a friend of the seminary and several of my friends traveled to Israel with him back in the late 90s while they were in seminary. He had such a heart for the local church and for pastors. I find his writing often encourages me.

I just ran across this quote from his reflections on the book of Revelation last week. I love this explanation of both sin and the gospel. Sometimes we can narrow sin down to breaking the moral rules laid out in scripture, but I thin that misses the point. God lays out moral rules for us so that we don’t destroy relationships with God, others, creation or ourselves. The rules are there to help us avoid those behaviors that damage community. Sin destroys community. It separates us from other people. It separates us from God. It even separates us from ourselves. We are blind to those darkest parts of ourselves. Those hidden motivations. Those character flaws we cannot even see ourselves. Sin keeps us from knowing others and being fully known even to ourselves.

We see the results of sin in families estranged, in broken marriages, in the angry and fearful divisions between ethnic groups, income groups, political parties, and even within Christianity. But the hope of the gospel is that in Jesus all those divisions can be overcome. It heals us where we have been broken. It unites us not in a common enemy, but in a common love for God. And, it brings us into community where we can be known, loved, and accepted where we are right now.

For me, this is the joy of gathering together each week for worship. I get to be with people who are not all like me, who view life differently than me, who have different struggles than me, and yet, we choose to join our lives together through a common love for Christ and in a mutual mission to love this world God sent Jesus to redeem. We get to be the church.

– Greg

Connect to God
This Sunday we will gather for worship at 9:30 am. The service will be live-streamed at 9:30 and replayed again at 11. You can find the services either on our Facebook page, at zionreformed.online.church, or streaming on our Youtube channel. We will also rebroadcast a version of the service on WCET at noon on Friday and 4pm next Sunday. 

Churches are not places of model behavior. They have as many people struggling with sin, pain, and brokenness as those outside of church. Rather than being perfectly healthy communities, church is the place we can go to acknowledge, face, and deal with our brokenness. The book of James confronts the conflicts, tensions, and mess of church life head on. This week, as we conclude out study of James, we are called to respond to unjustice and suffering with patient perseverance and an enduring hope in our God.

This Sunday, we welcome Lisa Cook who will be sharing with us her work with Teen Deaf Quest as they reach one of the largest unreached people groups in the world with the hope of Jesus Christ.

Grow in Community
Over the past several weeks, I have had multiple nurses in our church ask for prayers for our nurses and hospital workers. Talking with those in our church who have been in the ER or admitted recently, all talked about how overwhelmed the ER seemed to be. Please join me in praying for nurses, medical workers, and their families as they have been working extra hours and with extra patients for much of the pas year and a half.

This Sunday, Nov. 14, kids in Kindergarten-5th grade are invited to sing the song “Raise a Hallelujah” during the morning worship service. Please have your child come by 8:45 so we can practice before church. 

The kids will be rehearsing the music for their Christmas program every week after church until Dec. 12. Preschoolers stay in Room 206 after church for a 10-15 minute practice. Elementary kids meet after church in Room 205 for 20-30 minutes. 

We are reading through the New Testament over the next year as a congregation. The reading schedule for this coming week is below:
11/15  Monday         Revelation 13
11/16  Tuesday        Revelation 14
11/17  Wednesday   Revelation 15
11/18  Thursday       Revelation 16
11/19  Friday            Revelation 17

You can also find the reading schedule on our website under the Ministries tab.

Serve the World
Every year, we designate three organizations to receive our Thanksgiving Offering. This year the Deacons have chosen:
1. The Pregnancy Resources Center which provides health care and support to women and families facing an unexpected pregnancy so they feel empowered to choose the life of their child.
2. Oasis of Hope Center that provides medical care to low income residents in the Grand Rapids community in the name of Jesus.
3. The Family Network of Wyoming’s Christmas Store. This seems self-explanatory. 🙂

Many Christians in the Middle East, Africa and southeast Asia suffer for their faith. Last year an average of 13 Christians were killed every day for believing in Christ and they need our prayers. Many of them will find it too dangerous to celebrate the Christmas holidays. 
    Pray for their boldness to continue sharing the gospel and teaching God’s Word.
    Pray for their wisdom and endurance so they will not grow weary in serving Christ amid opposition.
    Pray that many will come to know Christ as their Savior and that they will know they are not alone. 
Two organizations that minister to the persecuted are Voice of the Martyrs (vom.org) and Open Doors (opendoorsusa.org). Those web sites contain more specific information and how to donate.

If you need help, either with food, personal care items, help grocery shopping, or with financial needs, please contact Jerrod Holzgen, our chair of deacons, and he can help connect you with the appropriate resources at Zion. His e-mail is Jholzgen@yahoo.com and his phone number is 616-520-1771.

Administration
We continue to thank God for his provision of all of our needs and for the generous support of our congregation with their time, talent, and treasures. 

Fiscal Year 2021/22 Budget:  $257,836.21
Fiscal Year 2021/22 Contributions: $188,582.09
Giving Last Week: $10,030.50

11-7-21 Bulletin

I promised last week to provide an update on actions and decisions made at General Synod just over a week ago. It feels like either I can provide a book of thoughts or only a brief thumbnail sketch. So, since no one wants a book of my thoughts, following is a sort of brief thumbnail sketch of the week.

General Secretary Rev. Eddy Aleman gave a report on the RCA early in the week that is well worth your time to watch. And yes, I know it is about 55 minutes. You can watch it here. He talks about the 68 new church plants and the growing diversity of our once Dutch denomination. Listening to Eddy, I feel great hope and confidence in God’s future for the RCA.

The bulk of our time was spent considering three proposals from the Vision 2020 team. This is a team created to consider a way forward through our ongoing disagreements around the proper response to human sexuality. Some in the RCA are vocally open and affirming regarding LGBTQ people (this group accounts for about 5% of RCA churches). Others believe such behavior is declared in scripture to be sin and so should not be tolerated in church. And many people and churches fall somewhere between those two poles. For more than 40 years we have lived with this tension as a denomination. Over the past few years, some churches have made clear their intention to leave the denomination over these differences and so the Vision 2020 team was tasked with finding a way to work through these issues.

They came with three proposals that were discussed in breakout groups for about 2 hours each on Thursday and Friday and then most of the day on Saturday in a full session. First, they proposed forming a team to restructure the denomination to be more responsive and nimble and allow for churches to associate within the denomination with churches who share a similar view on how to respond to LGBTQ people in their midst. This proposal was approved.

Second, they proposed spinning off RCA Global Missions into a separate 501c3 so that some of the more conservative churches who are planning to leave the denomination would still be willing to support RCA missionaries. After much discussion, this proposal was denied at the recommendation of the Vision 2020 team as they heard from more and more churches that they would support their missionaries no matter what happened with the RCA. Interestingly, the RCA is known for our global missions. Many people from other Christian traditions have commented that we “punch above our weight class” in global missions. We are not a big denomination, but we have a huge impact globally in missions and ecumenical work.

Third, they proposed regulations to clarify the process for a church to leave the denomination. The RCA has some unique rules that cause the property of a church to automatically revert to the Classis (local governing body) if the church leaves the denomination. The Classis can then decide if they will allow the church to keep its property. For the next 5 years, this proposal creates a regulation that requires Classis to let churches keep their property when they leave to go to another denomination. It also requires 75%of members to vote to leave the denomination. This proposal was approved.

What does all of this mean? I have a few ideas.
1. You will probably hear of some churches in West Michigan who will choose to leave the denomination. Some of these churches have been upset the RCA approved the Belhar Confession that says both that racism is wrong and that the gospel compels us to work for both racial reconciliation and justice. Many of them also disagree with RCA practices which allow women to be ordained as Elders, Deacons, and Ministers. Differences over LGBTQ issues are only one of many reasons they are choosing to leave.
2. The RCA is going to become a much more racially diverse denomination as over 80% of our recent church plants are churches reaching minority ethnic groups. This has only increased with a Nicaraguan refugee serving as our General Secretary.
3. Our Classis has in the past and I expect will continue to hold to a traditional view on human sexuality. We will continue to not ordain people actively in a same sex relationship to the offices of Deacon, Elder or Minister. We will also continue to not allow our pastors to officiate same sex marriages.
4. At Zion, Consistory has not discussed these decisions yet, but I suspect not much will change at Zion as we continue to seek to love our neighbors and tell people about the new life in Christ available to all.

– Greg

Connect to God
This Sunday we will gather for worship at 9:30 am. The service will be live-streamed at 9:30 and replayed again at 11. You can find the services either on our Facebook page, at zionreformed.online.church, or streaming on our Youtube channel. We will also rebroadcast a version of the service on WCET at noon on Friday and 4pm next Sunday. 

Churches are not places of model behavior. They have as many people struggling with sin, pain, and brokenness as those outside of church. Rather than being perfectly healthy communities, church is the place we can go to acknowledge, face, and deal with our brokenness. The book of James confronts the conflicts, tensions, and mess of church life head on. This week, as we continue our study of James, we hear a hard word for the abusive rich. Judgment is coming. God is going to set things right.

This Sunday, we welcome Dr. Rachel Postle-Brown, the principal of Bursley Elementary. We have been partnering with Bursley Elementary and Kids Hope for the past year and will be doing so again this year to provide mentoring to students and encouragement to the teachers of Bursley. We look forward to hearing from Dr. Brown.

Grow in Community
Steve and Shawn Landstra received difficult news this week as small spots were found on Steve’s lungs. This raises his diagnosis to stage 4 lung cancer which is considered treatable, but not curable. Please keep Steve, Shawn and their daughters Haley and Carly in your prayers as they process this news and Steve begins treatments again next week.

This has been a fun week at Zion. Jim Peterson has been busy painting our lobby. Threads was busy sorting clothes Monday night while at the same time the Personal Care Pantry was holding a distribution. That afternoon Hand2Hand was meeting with a representative of Feeding America to talk about how to partner more effectively in distributing food to kids in our community. Like RCA Global Missions (mentioned in the introductory reflections), Zion punches above its weight in its local community impact!

On Sunday morning, Nov. 14, kids in Kindergarten through 5th grade are invited to sing “Raise a Hallelujah” in front of church. If you child would like to join in, please have them at church a few minutes before 9:00am. We’ll meet in the sanctuary to practice before church.

We are reading through the New Testament over the next year as a congregation. The reading schedule for this coming week is below:
11/1    Monday         Revelation 3
11/2    Tuesday        Revelation 4
11/3    Wednesday   Revelation 5
11/4    Thursday       Revelation 6
11/5    Friday            Revelation 7

You can also find the reading schedule on our website under the Ministries tab.

Serve the World
Last week Threads Boutique and two other ministries were presented to a group called 100+ Women Who Care.  This is a group of local women who are interested in supporting the community by contributing to local charities as a group to increase the impact of their donation.  During the presentation, the mission of the organization had to be described, along with how it serves the community, who it impacts, and how many it impacts.  After the presentations of the three ministries, each woman in this group voted on which ministry they would like their donation to go towards, and the organization with the most votes received all the donations from each of these women.  AND, THREADS WON!!!  $5,000!!!!   So many people will be blessed with this donation!  The plan is to use this money to purchase and provide NEW winter coats, boots, and snowpants to the children of the families that shop at Threads.  What an incredible opportunity it was to present Threads and spread the word about this ministry to the community.   To be able to receive so much money for this ministry on top of that is truly amazing!  Thank you Jesus!

Last week, we shared a need from Jenison Public Schools for people to help prepare meals for a class being held by Love Your Neighbor (formerly Love, INC). If you are interested in helping provide food, you can sign-up at the link below.
Connections Meal Signup

If you need help, either with food, personal care items, help grocery shopping, or with financial needs, please contact Jerrod Holzgen, our chair of deacons, and he can help connect you with the appropriate resources at Zion. His e-mail is Jholzgen@yahoo.com and his phone number is 616-520-1771.

Administration
We have been busy cleaning out some closets and storage rooms in the basement. As a result, we have uncovered plates, cups, coolers and more that we do not need at church. If you are interested in giving any of these items a new home, you can do so following worship on November 7. Any donation to support Zion will be appreciated, but not required.

We continue to thank God for his provision of all of our needs and for the generous support of our congregation with their time, talent, and treasures.

Fiscal Year 2021/22 Budget:  $235,415.67
Fiscal Year 2021/22 Contributions: $168,368.31
Giving Last Week: $5,902.00