September 1, 2012
Dear Friends,
This past week I spent several days gathering documents
to complete our church’s loan application for the Legacy Project.
One of the documents that I was looking for was the By
Laws of the church. After an afternoon
of searching countless minute books and records, I found out that back in 1937,
our church’s Articles of Incorporation and By Laws were merged as one document.
If I have bored you with this paper search, bear with me
for just a little longer in my transition.
One fact as I read countless years of consistory notes
that covered decades of church existence is that periodically the question was
asked “What is our mission as a church?”
As I returned these historical minutes back to the vault,
that question echoed in my mind.
My mission as your pastor is to clearly and passionately
remind us at First Reformed of our mission as a church.
If I don’t, I have failed first and foremost in helping
define and develop our vision and our reason to exist.
What is our mission?
Look no further than our mission statement. “Impacting Lives for Christ.”
I know there are many theological variances that can
bring this statement into further depth but in a nutshell, we exist to “Impact
people for Christ.”
We do this first by being committed to our creator God
and responding to His love.
We do this by living lives for Christ. Being the hands and feet of Jesus!
Digging into all those minutes reminded me of the ways we
have done mission in the past. Thus, for
present and future generations of this church, we have to be clear and ever
diligent as we live our mission statement.
As we do so it becomes clear that ministry is a
marathon. It’s not how you start that
matters but how you end!
Let’s keep our eyes on Christ! Impacting Lives for Christ!
God is good!
Pastor Wayne Sneller
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