Thursday night we were scheduled for worship scheduled from 7-8:30. It was led by a praise band, which I was not thrilled by. For a good part of 10 years I was a Youth Group Leader at Fort Miller. Most years we tried to take our group of kids to the Youth for Christ convention, which usually included a lot of Praise songs. I enjoyed it at the time, but its been a few years and I’m not familiar with the current batch of praise songs.
I was greatly impressed by the speakers and the performance art. If you look at the pictures on Facebook you’ll see several pictures of a man drawing a picture of a man hand-painting a picture of Christ. The performance was very moving. The second speaker was Greg Alderman, the current President of the RCA. He quoted that line we are all familiar with, “It was the Best of Times …” and went on to talk about his year. His wife had graduated with a Masters degree and started a job teaching. His daughter graduated high school and got a full gymnastic scholarship to a college in Texas. He included several other examples of success in his life (being elected President at last years General Synod). “It was the worst of times ….” – During the year while driving in his mini-van through an intersection he passes twice a day almost every day, he was hit by an older gentleman who ran a red light and pushed into oncoming traffic. Remarkably, his injuries were minor. His dog, pet of many years, died. He mentioned several other failures. Then he told us about his brother who died, worse, who committed suicide. He talked about how others ministered to him. Later he talked about his new dog, who every day, when he comes home is happy to see him. The dog doesn’t care whether his day was good or bad, whether he succeeded greatly, or miserably failed. The dog was glad to see him. As Christians, perhaps we should be the dog. We should love the person in front of us. We shouldn’t care what’s behind them, just what’s in front of us. Our ministry is to love our neighbors.
That’s what I came out with….. I should be the dog.
Friday morning after breakfast our morning Plenary started with reports including one from Tom De Vries, the RCA General Secretary. His presentation was very interesting. Hopefully you have time to check out the live-streaming which is available on the RCA web page (click the link). Rev. De Vries talked about some of the things coming up in the General Synod or the coming year for the RCA. He expects some controversial topics to be brought up. After reading some of the overtures I think we will be dealing with this afternoon. I agree. If you can, check out the live-streaming link above this afternoon. I’m sure I’ll not be able to do the discussion justice.
More later.