“Adventures in Discipleship”

    What can you expect from Jesus when you are a disciple? Come find out at 10am on Sunday mornings this month. For the rest of November, we are going to be considering that question during our sermons on Sunday morning. There are three things that we can expect from chapters 3 through 5 in the gospel of Mark, as I see it.

    Sunday's passage is going to be Mark 2: 23 through Mark 3:35 and the adventure in discipleship for that Sunday is Defying All Comers. In the space of 40 verses, Jesus is going to, pardon the expression, piss of the civil authorities, the minions of Satan, and his own family. The response he's going to get are a conspiracy gathering two politically opposed parties, piles and piles of homeless demons (hoo-rah!), and a family trying to commit him to the nuthouse (or whatever the equivalent was back in those days). There is an old saying from the Civil Rights Movement that goes something like, "If they are shooting at you, you must be doing something right." Jesus must be doing something right.

    On November 20, we are sharing Mark 4: 1-34, where Jesus slips into that most annoying of literary forms, the "parable". The adventure in discipleship this Sunday is Confusing the Outsiders. Jesus says it as plain as day in vss. 11 and 12, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but no understand; so that they may nhot turn again and be forgiven." If that sounds confusing and very "un-Jesus", come on to church on November 20 and we'll talk about it.

    The last adventure in discipleship on this trek comes on November 27. The scripture passage is Mark 4:35 through the end of chapter 5. This adventure is Overwhelming Creation Itself… In our passage for this Sunday, Jesus stops a storm, casts out a Legion of shackle-busting, chain-breaking demons, drowns a bunch of pigs (let's talk Demon Bacon…), heals a woman who has hemorrhaged for forty years (in non-biblical, real world terms, this woman has had a continuous flow on menstrual blood for 40 years!), and raised a girl from the dead. So no pressure for those of us who seek to follow in his footsteps!

    First Church is on the corner of Market and High Streets in Perth Amboy, we are the stone church across Market Street from City Hall and not the brick church diagonally across the square from City Hall. For more information, check out contact info at www.fpcperthamboy.org.

From the November, 2011 Herald: Anchor Statement 5

Dear Friends,

"I am a member of the church, and I shall take time to share my faith with my neighbor so I see belief grow."

Do you notice anything different in the format of this one? Instead of "Each member shall…", it is "I am a member of the church, and I shall…" Moving from being an abstract 'core value' to becoming a personal vow of membership to our neighborhood is the intent.

This shall be the presentation of the Anchors in "the Dove", as personal statements of intent.

The first four anchor statements are about demonstrating our faith, this last one is about sharing our faith. Each of these Anchors is about how to build our neighborhood in the Kingdom of God.

Sharing our faith with someone is the Great Commission. It is what we are called to do as disciples of Jesus Christ.

    Some may challenge the order of our Anchors. It may be argued that we need to lead with sharing our faith, that building our Neighborhood follows the sharing of the faith. And while we may argue that our Anchors are not in a particular order, sharing our faith is last on the list.

    Our church is about living out the Kingdom of God as it came in with Jesus. It is not complete, but the elements are in place. Our Rabbi, our Teacher, has instructed us on how we are to live with one another. He conducted a ministry of healing and preaching that we carry on in a world full of pain. Most importantly, He took the greatest step, giving His life on the cross that, by the power of His blood, our sins are forgiven and we are made right with God.

This is the life given to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is the life we bear witness to in the world that surrounds us. Not simply by our words, but also by our deeds, by the structures we create, by the way we order our Neighborhood, we are spreading that grace around.

We begin by showing how Jesus has changed us, not just talking about it. May God bless us, may God grow our numbers, may God use us to carry the life-giving message of salvation in Him to a world in need.

In Christ,

Rev. Peter Hofstra

From the September 2011 Herald: Anchor Statement 3

Dear Friends,

 

"Each member of the church shall take time to serve your neighbor, so you may be Jesus' minister."

 

Service is the fourth Anchor to our work as a church. Here it is written out as an individual statement, a portion of what could become a membership covenant.

"Each member of the church shall serve…" There is no way around it. This is what the Session has agreed on, this is what the church professes each week, taking these Anchor Statements into our hands as part of our Worship Folder.

What does it mean to serve our neighbor? I do not believe that states the question correctly. Rather, what needs to our neighbors have? Taking time to know your neighbor, to pray for them, that is how the needs are identified. Once the needs are identified, how we serve our neighbor is how we fulfill those needs.

Wonder how? Matthew 25: 31 to the end of the chapter provide a good biblical baseline of needs that we can respond to. 1 Corinthians 12:4 begins a passage on the gifts we may have from the Holy Spirit to use in service of our neighbors. Indeed, pick a gospel, any gospel, and read about how Jesus served.

When we serve our neighbor in the name of Jesus, when we are a minister of Jesus Christ, then we have done a little more to build up our Neighborhood, our Community in the Kingdom of God.

When we serve our neighbor, looking out for their needs, instead of in at our own desires, we have modeled ourselves on Jesus, we are in imitation of Christ.

When we serve our neighbor, we are taking our church life to the next level. In that moment, we have dared to let the Spirit push through to the forefront of who we are and what we are doing.

This Program Year is a year where we will face real change in how we 'do church'. These are 'the rules of the road'. Frankly, it may offend some people, daring to put demands on people who have attended this church maybe for a lifetime.

But attending church is not enough. To claim Jesus as Lord and Savior means putting our lives into His hands. It means obeying His command. And our Anchors, our Core Values, are how we at First Church have agreed we will do that.

 

In Christ,

Rev. Peter Hofstra

From the Summer Herald 2011: Anchor Statement 2

Dear Friends,

 

Take time to pray for your neighbor, that you may surround them in God's love.

 

This is the second of our Anchor Statements, those things that anchor us to the life we believe Jesus is calling us to.

 

Notice how each Anchor statement is phrased, what we shall do for our neighbor, and the expected result. What frustrated me about so many Core Value statements is that they just list the word, in this case Prayer, with a short reason why, in the abstract, it is important.

 

For our church, to achieve the vision of our Ships, the application of prayer, as an anchor, is very specific. Pray for your neighbor, to surround them with God's love.

 

Prayer is our communication with God, but not simply the sharing of information. Prayer is joyful celebration, prayer is painful lamentation, prayer is coming in the heights of our wonder to thank God, prayer is coming in the depths of our despair when there does not appear to be anything else to do.

 

Prayer is not between equals. Prayer is what we offer to the One who created the heavens and the earth, who has the power to do ANYTHING. Scripture says that God is love (1 John 4:8). To surround our neighbor with God's love is to surround them with God. And this is all done by prayer.

 

Prayer is the foundation for all our work in Jesus. Surrounding our neighbor with God's love is not simply a means of protecting them. Asking for that love means asking for God's movement in their hearts to accept the time and the service we offer, to hear the message that we offer, to come into this community of faith that we rejoice in.

 

To proceed without prayer is quite simply to proceed without the presence of the Living God. To do that and dare to call ourselves God's church assumes that we do not desire God's care or God's guidance in what we do. Then we shall surely fail. Without prayer, we shall surely fail.

 

But with prayer, God's leading will never fail. I am your servant,

 

In Christ,

Rev. Peter Hofstra

 

 

From the May, 2011 Herald: Our Anchor Statements

Dear Friends,

 

What anchors our work as a church? What do we value? What things define our congregation as we seek to grow and reach out into the community that surrounds us? If our what we intend to do is defined by our purpose, what defines the means by which we accomplish those ends?

 

In keeping with the theme of our Purpose, our Three Ships, we are going to define these as our Anchors, values that anchor our work as the church of Jesus.

 

That are that each member of the church shall . . .

1. Take time for your neighbor, so you may grow closer to them.
   
2. Take time to pray for your neighbor, that you may surround them in God's love.
   
3. Take time to know your neighbor so you may create community.
   
4. Take time to serve your neighbor so you may be Jesus' minister.
   
5. Take time to share your faith with your neighbor so you see belief grow.
   

 

 

Step One: TAKE TIME.

 

Our Anchors are set up in the structure of the Great Commandment: Love God with heart, soul, body, and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself.

 

Each Anchor is built around the assumption that we love God. If we did not, why would we do this?

 

Then, each Anchor explicitly lays out our work in relation to our neighbor.

 

Step one is to take time for our neighbor. If we want to get theological, we might call it "intentional ministry" or "deliberate outreach". Those are fine terms where they are used, but they don't describe us.

 

Ours is a community in action, taking a message of hope and service into the world. Our values, our anchors, reflect that.

 

This is how we will accomplish our purpose of Worship, Discipleship, and Apostleship. I am your servant,

In Christ,

Rev. Peter Hofstra

 

 

Horror and Our Desire to Watch

A friend of mine was telling me about a video going viral on YouTube. It features a young boy in China getting run over by a truck, about people just walking past, about another truck… He had to turn away. I found the link, but I couldn't bring myself to watch it. It seems to cover everything wrong with our world, violence on children, the cheapness of human life, how little we might get involved… And we may blame this story on "them", over "there", but how many people are watching over here? Shocked and appalled but riveted?

If I didn't believe in a God that I had faith could overcome even THAT, I would despair. If I did not believe that even things so horrendous, so…God-awful…could not be overcome by the grace in Jesus, I don't think I could do this job. It has taken me a few days just to think about it, just to pray about it, just to consider blogging about it. But if I don't, it is just going to slip away, another bit of horror in a sinful world, and no reaction to it.

I hope calling what happened "sinful" helps to restore the full, ugly, evil meaning of the word. It's not just a 'church word' that has been so over-used as to be meaningless. It is evil in the world, it is horror in the world, it is the full extent of what humanity can perpetuate against humanity. It does recognize, I hope, that there are monsters in the world.

It is ironic that I enjoy Halloween so very much. I like the 'monsters', the vampires, werewolves, zombies, mummies, and the variations therein. It has gotten me some negative feedback as a minister that I will dress up as something dark and foreboding. I do it because it is make believe. There are real monsters out there, but they are us.

But I am not here to dwell on the dark side. If 'sin' can be re-infused with all that is horrid and terrible in the world, I believe 'grace' can be infused with "the powers of good" to overcome any such sin. I have to admit, I am not sure how to turn something like this video around. A boy is dead, horribly, and thousands of people have watched it, maybe repeatedly. But if we are talking about it, if we are figuring out what needs to be done to respond to it, if we dare to say that Jesus is stronger than that, that the Kingdom of God here on earth can bring comfort and grace and goodness to overcome even that, then we are already letting Jesus flow.

Apostleship: the Third Ship…

We worship Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, we seek to be Jesus' followers, to be His disciples, and finally, we seek to be His apostles, we seek to serve.

Faith without works is dead. James said that. For us, apostleship is the process of using our faith in a matter to help other people. Our Core Value statements-our Anchors to continue the nautical reference-are all acts of apostleship, reaching out to our neighbors. We emphasize this service, this ministry, because it is vital to the growth, sustainability, and progression of our Neighborhood. Serving one another in the name of Jesus is fundamental to the exercise of our faith. When we begin to serve someone else in His name, we have taken our faith out of the realm of a mental exercise, something we just give mental assent to, and we actually start to change our lives for the more Christ-like.

How is apostleship different from simply being a nice person? How is church different from a walk-a-thon for cancer research? Both serve others, both can happen on a Sunday morning. I think the difference is the neighborhood. You might have a friend or a group that goes with you on the walk-a-thon, but in the Neighborhood, you can build a network of people willing to push through to the Next Step. A church mobilizes people in the name of Jesus so that the church may become a sponsoring agency of the next walk-a-thon.

And maybe they can move the time to let more church-goers participate…

There is something else to apostleship. I am a pastor, it is my vocation, it is my call. I am daily trying to do "the Jesus thing." In the church, our members are busy people, busy with their jobs-especially in a time when the job market is so very fragile, busy with families-both the children being raised and the parents watched out for, busy with priorities, with commitments, with all the things that make up life. Many times, those choices are dictated from the outside. The boss, the family, the other thing is the driving force of how time is spent and time is given.

When engaged in an act of ministry, when being an apostle, the member of our Neighborhood has re-prioritized to put their relationship with Jesus on top. Coming to the realization that doing for another person in the name of Christ, for the love of Christ, by the grace of Christ, because you choose to, because you want to, because it is what you believe you do as a good person, a helping person, a saved person, and not because you 'have to' or are obligated to or because it is your turn or your job, I hope you realize that in that moment, to use the language of Scripture, you have been Christ for that other person. It is tough to get your head around that, but a marvel to get your heart around it.

Adoring the Bringer of our faith, learning to bring to others as the Bringer of our faith brings to us, and bringing to others the gifts that we have been brought, that is our purpose as a church. In accomplishing that purpose, we are building up our Neighborhood in the Kingdom of God.

Discipleship, the second ship of our church…

It means to be a follower. There is a motor cycle club of that name. It is the designation of three discernable groups in the New Testament who surrounded Jesus. There is a generic designation to all those who followed Jesus. There are the 70 who were 'sent out'. There was the Blessed Dozen, starring with Jesus in a great Leonardo Da Vinci painting of the Last Supper.

It's who we are as we grow for a lifetime in the tutelage of Jesus Christ. When we give our lives to Him, we have entered officially into that covenant of disciple and Rabbi, student and Master, learner and teacher, guided and mentor, those who want to live life as it ought to be lived and the one who has actually done so, by the power of the Living God. To be a Christian is to be a disciple of Jesus. Everything that we learn, from what book has the hymns in it the first time we come to worship, to the stories from the Scripture, to figuring out how to run a bake sale, to recognizing and surrendering sinful practices in our lives, those are all in the Syllabus of "Being a Disciple."

Discipleship follows and grows out of Worship. In Worship, we have stepped into the Light of Jesus. In Discipleship, we step back out and start the process of allowing the Holy Spirit to mold us into reflectors of that light, witnesses of the triumph, evangelizers of a world that needs the healing power of Jesus so badly.

A couple of other 'ships' follow on to Discipleship. I'm thinking of Fellowship and Stewardship. Fellowship is the deliberate mingling and befriending of the others in our Neighborhood of faith. It beings with the passing of peace in church, where we, in an act of worship, reach out to wish the peace of Christ to the rest of our "pew-mates". It continues into larger events, usually involving food, that the church prefers. It may include social contact outside the church 'sphere', sharing time, sharing interests, striking up friendships among the congregation members. We do this to build the neighborhood, to build our contacts in that neighborhood, we do it to create around ourselves a support network of the faithful, recognizing, at the very least, that we are not alone.

Stewardship touches on the Great Idol of our time. Yes, we are created to be stewards of our time and talents to God's service, but the Elephant in the pew is the piece about money. You are a disciple of Jesus? You are growing in the neighborhood you are in? Are you supporting that neighborhood, that church, with your pledges and offerings? Do you truly turn from spending habits on your own life to realizing that if you give 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, God is letting you keep 99%, 98%, 95%, 90%? Or are you uncomfortable with the thought that what we give is a measure of our discipleship of Jesus?

The other 'ship' in Discipleship is "Education-ship". Yah, it doesn't quite fit, but it is the learning component, learning what Scripture says, learning what the church teaches, learning the history we have (so we are not doomed to repeat our mistakes). Maybe 'intern-ship' or 'apprentice-ship' doesn't sound quite so awkward as we keep hammering this metaphor.

But all of it is about becoming more like Jesus.

Worship: Our First Ship…

We were created to glorify God. Simple, end of discussion. To do so is to worship God. Worshipping God is an experience, it is an opportunity, it is to bathe in the Light of the World. We do this thing called worship on Sunday mornings. We get together for an hour, gathering our neighborhood into our sanctuary, and for that time, we go to another place.

That other place is none other than God's presence. To worship is to praise God, is to adore God, is to be in the power of the Living God, is to celebrate the One God, Yahweh, our Father who art in heaven. Ultimately, the description of worship is more metaphor than it is logical progression, more symbolic entry into the divine than it is something we can break down and describe piece by piece. That is because to worship, our eyes must be turned upward. They must be turned to God.

The liturgy of the worship service is designed to keep our eyes on the prize. In worship, we are not trying to solve problems, we are not trying to run programs, we are not trying to build the structure of the church up. Rather, when experienced powerfully in the Spirit, while we worship, we transcend just for a little while. We step out of the mundane world, out of the sinful world, out of the world of pain and destruction, and for a few minutes we are hanging out with the angels. For a few moments, we may just touch the grace of the Almighty.

When we can do that, we have the reason for building our neighborhood in the Kingdom of God. When we have touched the divine, had our eyes opened to something new, taken the focus off ourselves and put onto the author of our creation, we have seen the love and the grace and the blessings and the caring and the perfection that is God. And it something to be anticipated, something to be pursued, something to be experienced, in body, soul, mind, spirit, emotions, holistically.

Sunday morning can be the time to charge your batteries for the week ahead, fill up at the pump of Living Water, build you up on Sunday so that you can face Monday. To work best, it doesn't just happen on Sunday. What happens on Sunday, the corporate gathering of the people of God, is the BIG ONE. But each of us, in our own lives, daily can worship the Living God, touch the perfection of heaven, and bask in the Light of the World.

This happens in devotional times that we set aside for God each day, times of reading God's word, coming to the Lord in prayer, communing with our Father. In those moments, we pursue individually what we celebrate all together on Sunday morning.

It starts with those delightful words, Let us worship the Living God…

From a letter sent to parents, Sept. 26, 2011.

“For the kickoff of this Program Year, when all our children came back into the Sanctuary to celebrate communion, that prompted two questions.
1. Isn’t it the parent’s decision when a child should receive communion?
2. When is a child ready to receive communion?

To the first question, the answer is yes. It is the parent’s decision. It is a decision they made when they chose to have their child baptized, when, in that decision, they promised-with the help of the entire church community-to raise their child in the Christian faith.

That leads us to the second question. When is a child ready to receive communion? When is a child ready to accept the love of Jesus? When is a child ready to participate in the life of the church? When is a child ready to do that next thing in the faith? As parents, as a church, we have promised together to raise, teach, and model our faith to make them ready.

Perhaps the question needs to be rephrased, what should the child know before they take communion? What do they need to understand? They need to know that Communion, like Baptism, is important in the life of their family and important in the life of their church. They need to know that they are important enough to us to be part of it. And, like the rest of us, they will then take a lifelong journey into the Wonder and Mystery of Holy Communion, and, like the rest of us, never exhaust its full meaning.”

To create Our Neighborhood in the Kingdom of God, we must build upon what will unite us. First and foremost, Worship is what unites us. Human beings were made to give praise to God. The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the basic Reformation instructional text of the Presbyterian Church asks this question: “What is the chief end of humanity*?” The answer is that humanity’s* chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. (Purists will note that humanity has replaced the word ‘man’ to better designate women and men).

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus’ command to his disciples concerning communion is “Do this in remembrance of me.” That is where it starts. We take a cubed piece of white bread, we take a small cup of grape juice, and we eat and drink in remembrance of Jesus Christ. And when we bring our children into church, when we gather as families to eat of the bread and drink of the cup, that is the very first lesson that we are going to teach. We receive communion to remember Jesus Christ.

When the disciples received that meal for the first time, they didn’t know all the details of what Communion entailed. That came later. What they knew is that they must remember Jesus. The bread, the cup, the eating and drinking, those were physical reminders for them, and for us, and for our children.

Envisioning a Neighborhood in the Kingdom of God

Welcome to Pastor Peter's blog. It is a new means of communication for the First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy. There is a lot going on and more coming. This is a year of exciting transition and growth in our church.

What was the best neighborhood you were ever a part of? It could be a place you lived, a place you visited, some place you read about, saw in the movies or on television, a place you can picture in your mind's eye that you would like to live in. In a world of sin and evil, where every line of 'safety' seems to get broken, what would it be to create this best neighborhood where all that is safe, loving, and gracious in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ could be practiced?

What if we took what Jesus said in Luke 17, that the Kingdom of God is among us, what if we took that seriously as the foundation for building our church? What if we scoped out the Kingdom of God and we chose to build a neighborhood in that Kingdom where we can pursue WWJD, What Would Jesus Do? What if we started a process now that will come to fulfillment at the Second Coming?

This blog is going to be a place where we can pursue that together. It is a place for feedback, a place where questions can be tackled, a place where Next Steps can be put into play.

If you have discovered us by accident, our website is www.fpcperthamboy.org. I invite you to come worship with us, 10am on Sunday morning.

Pastor peter