And here is a little information on Pat’s career:

She graduated from Hope College in 1972 and received her Master’s Degree for Bilingual-Bicultural Education from Rutgers University. She has taught ESL (English as a Second Language) for one year, Bilingual/Monolingual Grade 2 for 35 years, and Bilingual First Grade this past year.

Reformed and education, this has been a good pair throughout the centuries. We are grateful for Pat keeping up this well-tried tradition and wish her God’s rich blessing for the coming school year.

On Sunday, May 18th, Walter Boyles was confirmed during our regular service. This celebration was the culmination of almost two years of meetings, discussions, curriculum planning and teaching. Sandy, Hartmut and members of the Christian Education Committee did not want to simply proclaim Walter confirmed because he reached a predetermined age. We all wanted this to be meaningful. Covering traditional Reformed theology with Walter was not possible. So what could be done?

A search for appropriate materials was not successful. We are a small congregation, but we are not short of members that know how to teach individuals with autism. With Hartmut’s input regarding essential religious topics, Sandy, Heather and her husband, Dan, went to work designing a way to teach Walter. They used principles developed at Eden Family Services, a school for autistic children. After many sessions, it was apparent that Walter had demonstrated sufficient knowledge to be confirmed.

Now, back to Sunday’s service: what a great celebration it was! Several of Walter’s classmates and their families were guests at the service. Certainly our Eden guests left our church with a clear understanding of how important Walter is to us. The play, presented by our FRC kids and written by Pastor Susan, was fun and featured Walter in a speaking role. The sermon delivered by Pastor Hartmut was excellent and touched on how much we have learned from Walter. The music, which was offered by Stef Beemsterboer, Ellen Hamilton, and our organist Viktoriya, was very moving. And, of course, the food after the service was excellent.

The Reformed tradition tells us that self-pride is not a good thing. We could not help, however, being proud of Walter and for his accomplishment, as well as being proud to be a member of a congregation that welcomes and loves Walter as much as we do.

Please come on June 15th and celebrate Father’s Day and the end of the church school year by worshiping in front of the church. Be prepared that we will still do “things differently” by including a special time with the children leading worship, which will be followed by a Special Grilled Luncheon (hot dogs and hamburgers and much more!) provided by the Worship & Education Committee. We will be asking for a donation for the luncheon, which will defer the costs of sending Erie to a summer Bell ringing camp at Westminster Choir College.

Games and other activities are planned for the kids and the young at heart. So wear your sneakers and sun screen, as well as hope for good weather!

Sandy has invited many friends and folks who work at the Eden Institute. In fact, she has asked that in lieu of gifts, folks make a donation to our church or to the Eden Institute Foundation. Come and welcome Walter as a confirmed member of our congregation!!!

Usually we follow a short liturgy of gathering, brief prayer together, a gathering of concerns, reading of a Bible passage while listening intently, followed by a time of meditation and intercessory prayer to close. In total, we gather for about 45 minutes to an hour. If you have any questions, please speak to Pastor Susan.

All are welcome to come when you can. This is an open circle!!!

You might be wondering: why 40 days? Because Jesus fasted and was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days. Lent, then, is our time of fasting, prayer, temptation and repentance. Lent is not required anywhere in scriptures, but it has been a custom, which Christians have practiced for most of the last two thousand years. There are other customs such as stripping the sanctuary of all flowers, candles, and colors during Lent. We generally do this on Maundy Thursday when we cover everything with black cloths. In any case, any of these customs help us to turn inward and examine ourselves, even as it reminds us of the dark and colorless Sabbath day when Jesus lay dead in the tomb.

We do want to celebrate Lent with all of these customs and introspection, but we also want to provide some interesting stimulus in worship which would unite these six Sundays thematically. Therefore, the Christian Ed. Committee has prepared a short skit with the kids, which will be played in installments. Every Sunday during the Lenten Season, another scene will be presented of the play Virgil’s First Easter, by Eddie McPherson – a comedy for the Lenten season. Of course, for those of you who don’t make it to church every Sunday, there will be a very short summary of the previous weeks. We think that this play offers some thought provoking and yet, humorous way of reflecting Jesus’ sacrifice for us and why we follow him. Don’t miss the opening scene on February 10th.

  

Slideshow of this year’s White Gift skit performed by the church children. 

We live in an era when not just our church laments stagnant membership growth – or even decline – but many other mainline churches with us in the Western hemisphere. Sometimes it appears even miraculous how long some of our smaller congregations can, indeed, survive under these conditions.

However, not everything in this regard is just miraculous. Some of it is also very intentional and the result of many helping hands. Church partnership is one of our logical responses to the fact of dwindling membership. We here at First Reformed are blessed through the friendship of another and quite similar church, the First Reformed Church of Astoria, Queens, and its pastor, Rev. Dwayne Jackson.

Last spring, members of our church spent a weekend in Astoria visiting with FRCA during our annual pilgrimage. The Astoria church is an urban church that faces many of the same problems we face. During our visit, we toured their neighborhood, shared meals and worship, discussed our common challenges and built relationships. Our church extended an invitation for a reciprocal visit on the Sunday when Marlin and Sally Vis would be speaking about their mission work in Palestine.

Our two congregations may have different ethnic backgrounds, different customs and different foods – but we both have an extremely committed membership, beautiful historic buildings (and all the problems that come with it), as well as a heart for the diversity and the challenges an East Coast inner city church can offer.

Yes,  “extremely committed”: just consider the early hour at which about a dozen of the Astoria members had to get up on Sunday, Dec 9th, in order to have breakfast with us here at First Reformed. Or talk about the courage of Astoria’s Children’s Choir. Its delegation to us consisted of Briana,
 Penelope and Julia, supported by tiny Jada who suddenly was Spirit-led in joining the three. To be so young and to face two congregations, two pastors, and a missionary from Jerusalem! Extremely committed, indeed! And we do not want to leave unmentioned Kenyata who helped Briana and Allison in lighting our Advent candles that day. If you look at all these children, you will share in the sense of hope that is still very much prevalent among our churches.
The Christian Ed Committee organized a continental breakfast for the visitors and the Hospitality Committee prepared a hot lunch luncheon (thank you, Joan, Ethel, Margaret, Janet, Erie, and everybody else who was so diligently involved behind the scenes).

We were also blessed that day by a very engaging sermon from Pastor Dwayne on the subject of peace and how it can be promoted. While preaching in his lively and engaging manner, Dwayne created quite a dialog within our combined assembly. It built something new, a momentary church greater than our two particular congregations, a vision to linger among us. Several of the children from FRCA sang two contemporary songs from their upcoming Christmas Pageant. The Astoria children had a fun time in Sunday school acting out the story of the birth of Christ with our children. After the lesson, Allison and Ahjani led a Christmas ornament craft project.

After worship, members from both congregations listened to Rev. Marlin Vis from Jerusalem (see the Pastor’s Corner on page 1). The luncheon offered ample opportunity to make plans for the year to come. The relationship between our congregations is growing stronger. Some members of each congregation were heard to be discussing opportunities to come together in the future and work on projects to serve our communities, especially the members of the Property Committees of both churches who took a liking to each other. Exchanging volunteers and experience in preservation matters may be one way of fostering our partnership. Thank God that we are not alone!

Walter is an autistic child on the low functioning side of the spectrum. He is almost non-verbal and has a number of mannerisms. He also has a warm smile, a deep sense of belonging to our church, great parents, and quite a network of supporters within our church family. Now he has reached confirmation age.

But what does one teach a young person in Walter’s condition? There are no special needs confirmation class curriculums for Walter’s level. Walter’s mother, Sandy, and I knew only one thing: We would not want to pursue Walter’s confirmation just for the sake of the ritual.

The Elders of the church supported us in this. Early on, they expressed concern that the curriculum for Walter would not just establish requirements for Walter to pass. This would contradict our understanding of God’s grace. Instead, the Board of Elders wished for a curriculum that focused on Walter’s potential for learning and growth in the faith.

Back in 2005, this sounded well intended but also very ambitious. However, before we knew it, we received help from two great sources.

The library of the Boggs Center at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey provided sample curriculums for higher functioning children. Rev. Bill Gaventa, the leader of the Boggs Center, helped us compile a list of learning goals and objectives. This was then reviewed by a member of our church, Heather Epstein, and her husband, Dan. Both are special education teachers and fluent in a teaching approach called Discrete Trial. Finally, Heather and Dan translated the curriculum into the language of Discrete Trial.

Thanks to their work, we soon had four lessons divided in numerous sessions, all compiled in a thick three-ring binder with spreadsheets. Each session contains learning tasks broken down into sequences of ten trials each. The outcome of each trial is recorded on  a spreadsheet. This makes success measurable.          

Walter has made tremendous progress in these sessions. Since May, 2007, he has learned the following:

1. To go alone from Fellowship Hall to the sanctuary when prompted.

2. To recognize the cross as a special object.

3. To distinguish our pew Bibles from other books.

4. To recognize us pastors.

5. To sing the Gloria Patri together with others.

One of the most exciting features of Walter’s confirmation class is the involvement of other church members. Some have served as distracters to help Walter distinguish between a pastor and a layperson. Our seminary professors, John Coakley and David Waanders, have served in addition to Susan and me as robed pastors during our sessions. This has helped Walter realize that there are many pastors. Other church members have helped teaching a particular trial session or filling in the spreadsheets.

We teach twice a week, Friday evenings at our home in Jamesburg, and Sunday mornings before church. Come spring, we will celebrate Walter’s confirmation. By that time, it will be a feast for our entire church family because so many of us have taken part in these classes. What a powerful manifestation of God’s love this is.

Thank you, First Church!

Contrary to other Sundays, Fellowship Hall was almost empty during this time because everybody was busy preparing something. Thanks to Ethel Salamone’s and Joan Fekete’s cooking talents, the kitchen exuded beautiful smells. From the adjacent Randolph Room one could hear John Coakley’s clarinet, and later Ellen Hamilton’s flute. Led by Sandy Boyles, the children were enthusiastically rehearsing in the sanctuary, with a few members of Consistory (Bruce Bothwell and Joan Fekete) and us pastors joining them. At the same time, Stef Beemsterboer installed a PowerPoint projector we had borrowed from our Regional Synod office. Later Pastor Susan and Viktoriya Raufova, together with Liz Hance as soloist, had the young generation rehearse the children’s anthem. It was a lot of fun.

During worship, we performed a play written by Sandy Boyles under the title An Extreme Church Make-Over. It was a revised version of the popular TV show. It did not lead to tearing down the old church but expressed great appreciation of the many historic features of our buildings.

At several points during the performance, our youngest children, dressed with the hardheads of true church construction workers, listed famous names of our church’s past: Theodorus Frelinghuysen, John Henry Livingston, Elias van Bunschooten, Jacob R. Hardenbergh, to name a few. It was a moving experience because it felt a little like passing the baton to another generation. When I thanked the children I said that some day they would make fine members of Consistory.

Then our architect, Margaret Westfield, delivered a mission moment and gave us some more insight from her perspective why our buildings are worth preserving. It was the first time she addressed the congregation on the whole.

Then the luncheon came, combined with Margaret’s slide show. Thanks to great visual documentation for now almost 200 years, she was able to take us on a great history tour. We saw the familiar features of our church embedded in various periods of time, and we realized: Our buildings mean more than providing shelter for our current programs.

In total, we have now received pledges from our congregation and former members in the amount of $146,230.00. Thank you to everybody who committed him or herself to this great project! I am also pleased to announce that every member of our Consistory has submitted a pledge; our “board” is 100% in support of the project.

It is still a long way to go until we will reach the match of $750,000 for the state grant we hope to obtain next year. Yet there is more help on the way. We are approaching every congregation of the Reformed Church in America, we have requested help from the City of New Brunswick, as well as Middlesex County and various foundations. We are also planning on a larger external fund-raising event for Mar 9, 2008.

Throughout the weekend we pondered various Bible texts on the subject of water: Noah’s ark, Israel crying by the rivers of Babylon, Jesus walking on water, and Jesus stilling the storm. We asked ourselves where our situation at First Reformed Church would be in all of this. And we listed the storms of our life together: the challenges of the Preservation Plan and the upcoming fund-raising campaign, but also the challenges of working with minorities: our Autism-focused confirmation class, our church’s role as a regional dialog center in the homosexuality debate, and our outreach to Latino school children with the lunchtime recitals, to name but a few.

Unforgettable will be the play that Sandy Boyles wrote and that we performed during worship on Sunday morning in response to all these challenges. Charlie Devich played a very convincing if hard-of-hearing Noah who was being summoned by God, alias Bruce Bothwell, to build an ark like in boat. It was wonderful to see how the two of them brought out all the comical elements in this story. This, in turn, enabled us to laugh about ourselves and to gain some healthy distance from all the duties and demands of daily life at church. We hope that you will enjoy the second performance of the play during worship at our church on September 9th, Rally Sunday.

Don’t forget that service will resume the winter schedule on Rally Sunday and will start at 10:30 a.m.

Dates to Remember

Oct 5 — 7:00-9:00 p.m. Homosexuality Dialogue
Oct 6 — 9-11:30 a.m. Homosexuality Dialogue; RCA Listening Team, Rev Dr. John Stapert
Oct 13 — 6:00 p.m. Community Potluck & Game Night
Oct 12 — Commitment Sunday with Potluck Lunch

If this is the case, then the book discussions on Sunday, September 9th, and Sunday, September 16th, are just for you. They will both take place right after church and they will introduce you to the most interesting question of how it happened that we Christians acquired the Word of God in the form of a book.

In two guided readings of Bart Ehrman’s book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (Plus)we will trace back our Bible’s story of origin and discuss some of Ehrman’s observations, like the following:

• The number of the variant readings of the New Testament is greater than the number of words in the New Testament.
• The New Testament, deemed by many as the verbally inspired Word of God, was not complete in its current form until the 4th century.

Each session will take place in the Randolph Room. Reading material will be provided during the first session. There is no preparation necessary to attend. Hope to see you there!

Yet this was not all that made Sunday, August 12th, interesting. The children’s sermon was different, too, as our children, led by Lillie and Allison, performed a rap that celebrated Abraham as the father of three religions, the People of the Book. The verses below may give you a hint of what happens when an old-country pastor becomes infected by hip-hop culture:

But old Abe thought it was funny
When God showed him all the stars
And said they’re more than Jersey cars.
“And that’s the number of your kids.
Now count them, man of wits!”

And so I got my Jewish brother,
And Fatima her Muslim mother.
And that is all I have to say
On Abraham, the real cool dude.
God talked to him and was not rude.

It was no coincidence, then, that eighteen of us attended a friendship dinner at the Interfaith Dialog Center of our Turkish friends in Piscataway in the evening of the same day. We shared a lavish meal, had a remarkable slide show introducing us to Turkey and its history, and exchanged beautiful gifts with one another. Our children repeated the rap singing of the morning and found new friends. We also spent considerable dinner time planning a trip to Turkey which our Muslim friends have offered to our church.

When the day was over, I felt grateful for the many experiences and impressions it had produced. And I realized that, with days like these, First Reformed Church and its friends contribute, in however humble ways, to the establishment of peace between three great religions.

But then I had to face the preparation time, and I asked myself whose race this was: three meetings with volunteers from our four collegiate churches, a master calendar for four classes with changing locations every half hour, a contact list with follow-up calls to 18 volunteers from four churches, the organization of a reception desk and a drama group, the design of the daily opening and closing sessions, and arrangements with the New Brunswick Fire Department for medical assistance.

All the while, Susan and Lillian Kramer-Mills studied the new VBS songs, as well as the corresponding hand motions according to modern sign language. Throughout the week of VBS, they led the four music classes each day. Supported by Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale from Highland Park, Susan also led the music sections of the daily opening and closing ceremonies.In addition, I found it necessary to gather information on the country of Ethiopia, its culture and the life of the Christians there, in order to have background for the VBS fund-raising campaign. This campaign was designed to support the Reformed Church of Metuchen in their effort to purchase an electricity-producing windmill that would power water pumps in one of the drier zones of Ethiopia.

All in all, it was a very successful week that was thus prepared. And the amazing thing was to see how many kids and youth from our church and its neighborhood were attending: Ahjani, Ahyanna, Allison, Lillian, Walter, Kathleen, Daphne, Theo, Claire, Grace, Andrew, Alicia, Stephen, Sara and Emmy. The other three churches had similar strong numbers, so you can imagine how lively a week it was.

And here is a list of the volunteers from our church: Joan Fekete helped with the reception desk and the snack crew in the kitchen, Erie Beemsterboer, Lauren Bernhofer and Cindy Betancourt ran four daily crafts classes; Sandy Boyles had each of the four daily games classes. Freshly certified baby-sitter Allison Kramer-Mills was responsible for the Nursery. We are so grateful for the time and energy all our volunteers spent, and the love they showed the children.

Teachers from other churches included Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale from Highland Park taught Appropriating the Bible Story, and Phyllis Beals from Second Reformed Church led and taught a fantastic drama class with daily productions. Liz Estes from Highland Park organized the crafts for the informal morning gatherings. She also made a great picture of our future windmill in Ethiopia. Nikki Lebron from Highland Park helped with the crafts, and Ginnie Previte and Mary Davila from the church on Suydam Street cooperated with Joan in the kitchen. Group shepherds were: Cathy Proctor, Liz Estes, Jacqueline Juricic, Jennifer Lord and Rev. Stephanie Kaper-Dale (all Highland Park), Meehyun Park (Second Reformed Church), and Irma Flores (Suydam Street Reformed Church). What a great crew they were.
We also want to thank our staff: our church secretary, Aurea Vega, who organized all registrations and so much more, and our sexton, Robert Longo, who made everything neat and clean when the daily hurricane was over.

The Van Wickel House, located off Easton Avenue (just next to Rutgers Prep School), with its shade and nice stoned porch, has offered us a wonderful place for worship and fellowship. Usually we have about 70 people, which is a great way to see and meet other members of our local Reformed Churches.

Thankfully, chairs are available, so you don’t need to schlepp any from home. We are asked to bring either a salad or dessert to share, and we’ll announce which. For directions to the Van Wickel House, call the church office.

Please note, though, that we will be celebrating the close of our church school year at Rutgers Gardens on Father’s Day – June 17th.
As usual, we will gather on the patio of the Holly House, which is located just inside the gardens.
Please bring salads, desserts, sodas, and lawn chairs. Sandwiches, paper products and plastic utensils will be provided. Worship will start at 10:30 a.m.

It was a remarkable lecture in many ways, because it helped us representatives from the church to extrapolate some of the problems of daily life and put them into a larger perspective. Small membership numbers, growing pains on the road to greater inclusiveness, the dichotomy between what is academic standard and what we believe as lay people in the pews – all this was reflected in David’s account of a lifetime as professor within the Reformed Church in America.

Especially moving among many signs of appreciation was the witness from Korean students who enjoyed David’s openness towards other cultures and ethnic backgrounds very much. This witness provided a great outlook for the future, as our world seem to shrink rapidly, and we find ourselves ever more in situations that require compassion and sensitivity towards members of different cultures.

We wish David the very best for his retirement. We are grateful for the many moments during which he has applied his wider experience in our particular church setting, and we look forward to many more such moments in the years to come.