My morning begin by attending church at Common Grounds Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. Worship had 35 people in attendance. The church had formerly been Calvary Reformed Church but had experienced suburban flight and a church split in the 60's. It was a large old church building that was now being used by a group of the church that is committed to have a witness in the neigborhood. A praise team led us in worship and a message was shared by a pastor that was retired doing pulpit supply as they have been without a full time pastor for about a year. They asked for people to pray for them for a period through August. I committed our church to pray for them. They were exicited for that prayer committment.
General Synod met in session at 2 p.m. Some of things that were accomplished are as follows:
- elected Lisa Vander Wal as president-she had been vice-president. This is mostly a formality
-Approved an agreement to formally recognize the Roman Catholic Church's Sacrament of Baptism as they will now recognize our Sacrament of Baptism. We currently do this in practice but it was never made formal They had not up to this point. This was big and has been in the works for 5 years. The Catholic church made this offer to the RCA and asked us to respond to it. (Last week the CRC denomination did the same at their synod meeting).
-noted there will be no increase in mission shares this year ( this hasn't happened in a long time)
-I was unexpectantly ask to stand before Synod ( I thought I had been caught catching a few winks!!)as First Reformed of Sully was recognized as one of 69 churches in the denomination that give over 10% of their total budget to Reformed Church missions. To put his into perspective, there are over 1050 churches in our denomination. Of those, 587 give to RCA missions. Thus, we are one of 69 top giving mission churches by budget in the denomination.
(About 10 other delegates stood up with me) Way to go First Reformed!!
-The night concluded with an ecumenical banquet.
Personal Notes
-it's a bad idea to have a great Sunday dinner and sit in Synod all afternoon! :)
-I am counting how many shirts I have left.Good thing Synod is over on Tuesday. I would have to do laundry!!
-Dorms never cool off. However, I did some horse trading and have a fan in my room in return for my First Reformed Sully shirt-talk about giving the shirt off your back. just kidding. I have still have my electric blue shirt but did get a fan. (It's who you know!!!)
-Sorry about any errors in spelling etc. I am new to this "blogging" thing and my program doesn't have spell check!!-This is an official disclaimer!!!
Trust you had a good day at worship in Christ! Until tomorrow!
Blessings!
Pastor Wayne
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