{"id":193,"date":"2015-06-12T15:29:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T15:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/?p=193"},"modified":"2015-06-12T15:29:56","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T15:29:56","slug":"general-synod-thursday-nightfriday-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/?p=193","title":{"rendered":"General Synod – Thursday Night\/Friday Morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday night we were \u00a0scheduled for worship scheduled from 7-8:30. \u00a0It was led by a praise band, which I was not thrilled by. \u00a0For a good part of 10 years I was a Youth Group Leader at Fort Miller. \u00a0Most years we tried to take our group of kids to the Youth for Christ convention, which usually included a lot of Praise songs. \u00a0I enjoyed it at the time, but its been a few years and I’m not familiar with the current batch of praise songs.<\/p>\n

I was greatly impressed by the speakers and the performance art. \u00a0If you look at the pictures on Facebook<\/a> you’ll see several pictures of a man drawing a picture of a man hand-painting a picture of Christ. \u00a0The performance was very moving. \u00a0The second speaker was Greg Alderman, the current President of the RCA. \u00a0He quoted that line we are all familiar with, “It was the Best of Times …” and went on to talk about his year. \u00a0His wife had graduated with a Masters degree and started a job teaching. \u00a0His daughter graduated high school and got a full gymnastic scholarship to a college in Texas. \u00a0He included several other examples of success in his life (being elected President at last years General Synod). \u00a0“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. \u00a0Remarkably, his injuries were minor. \u00a0His dog, pet of many years, died. \u00a0He mentioned several other failures. \u00a0Then he told us about his brother who died, worse, who committed suicide. \u00a0He talked about how others ministered to him. \u00a0Later he talked about his new dog, who every day, when he comes home is happy to see him. \u00a0The dog doesn’t care whether his day was good or bad, whether he succeeded greatly, or miserably failed. \u00a0The dog was glad to see him. \u00a0As Christians, perhaps we should be the dog. \u00a0We should love the person in front of us. \u00a0We shouldn’t care what’s behind them, just what’s in front of us. \u00a0Our ministry is to love our neighbors.<\/p>\n

That’s what I came out with….. I should be the dog.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Friday morning after breakfast our morning Plenary started with reports including one from Tom De Vries, the RCA General Secretary. \u00a0His presentation was very interesting. \u00a0Hopefully you have time to check out the live-streaming<\/a>\u00a0which is available on the RCA web page (click the link). \u00a0Rev. De Vries talked about some of the things coming up in the General Synod or the coming year for the RCA. \u00a0He expects some controversial topics to be brought up. \u00a0After reading some of the overtures I think we will be dealing with this afternoon. \u00a0I agree. \u00a0If you can, check out the live-streaming link above this afternoon. \u00a0I’m sure I’ll not be able to do the discussion justice.<\/p>\n

More later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday night we were \u00a0scheduled for worship scheduled from 7-8:30. \u00a0It was led by a praise band, which I was not thrilled by. \u00a0For a good part of 10 years I was a Youth Group Leader at Fort Miller. \u00a0Most years we tried to take our group of kids to the Youth for Christ convention, … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","post","publish","author-oldsaratoga","post-193","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194,"href":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/old-saratoga.rcachurches.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}