To give you an example, the last Friday through Sunday of March our buildings were almost never empty. It started with the Eric B. Chandler Health Center of UMDNJ holding a luncheon in Fellowship Hall. Also, Lisanne Finston dropped off dishes, bowls, and cups for the House of Manna. Of course, the Youth Empowerment Services were in the Music Office during the day. On Friday night, two congregations celebrated worship here.

Saturday morning, while a group of 20+ women and girl scouts cleaned the downstairs, a music doctoral student practiced on our organ, and the Young Life group moved into the Music Office, too. Yes, we have three groups using the Music Office: Ben Berman and Erie Beemsterboer for our music program,
Youth Empowerment Services, and Young Life (which is a campus ministry organization). Phew! Can you imagine that they are all able to work at different times in that space?

Also on Saturday, the Stoney Mae Productions held a concert, which was visited by over 200 people. Robert finished cleaning up at 2:00 a.m. And then Sunday we were all here again: First Reformed Church, Calvary Chapel, Word of Life, and Triumphant Covenant House of God, as well as the Dutch Dancers.

That’s right, the buildings were hardly ever empty. Can you believe it? In fact, on a regular basis we have diverse groups using our buildings: local theatre and arts group, weddings, concerts, songwriters, karate classes, choral ensembles, and so forth.

Our greatest difficulty at present is figuring out where to put things; hence, the ‘no room in the inn’ dilemma. Some of you have seen the beautiful chairs which were donated to us from Vien, a Vietnamese refugee whom our church sponsored many, many years ago. There are 70 chairs, which are too fine to use for regular use and are now stacked in the Randolph Room.

And then we have other ‘space’ issues. The House of Manna wants to hand out clothing, which is now hanging in Fellowship Hall, next to the wonderfully cleaned up choir robes. What can we do with these items? How can we accommodate the needs? Yikes! We are running out of space. Is that possible in this
huge place?

As your building usage coordinator (some of you might not have known this), I have often enough reported to the consistory that I receive about two building requests per week; however, recently requests have increased. I think it can best be explained that folks have heard about our church, since so many people are using it, and people know that we try to make accommodations; thus, we have become a community church, because our in space there is room for all.

Blessings,

Pastor Susan

The Invitation and Outreach Committee is looking into such a sign, but they are far from cheap. It will be a little longer until we have a sign there, so bear with us. We will keep you apprised of our plans and how the congregation can be included in this project.

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.

The accompanying pictures give a true sense of our table talk that day:
“God and the world, and Pastor Susan holding up the specials.” Yet it is true, if there is one group in our church that tries to be informed about everything, from the Sunday School curriculum to the seriousness of brick-and-mortar, it is our Seniors’ Club. A church within the church, they hardly allow any item to escape their attention, and many of their reflections have had an impact on the ministry of our church. Thank you, Free Spirits, for yet another year of faithful caring for God’s church!

On Jun 11th we brought in a rich harvest! Approximately 90 children and youth from the Livingston School here in New Brunswick provided us with an unforgettable Lunchtime Recital, and The Star-Ledger even covered the event.

It was a meaningful endeavor, right along our lines of inclusive ministry, although this time without religious undertones. Why inclusive? Because, at least from the students’ standpoint, the concert had a lot to do with integration. The overwhelming majority is of Latino background, first or second generation. Anybody who has ever moved to another country knows how much gets lost in the translation. Immigrant children, therefore, have to reclaim a lot.

Yet it does not stop there, because we do not live in a monoculture. Consequently, the children of immigrants to our culture do not just have to reclaim their own heritage. Rather, they are also challenged with negotiating a place for their heritage in the midst of this potpourri of traditions, languages and cultures we call Central Jersey. This makes integration a twofold process.

Usually, our lunchtime concerts feature pieces of western origin. But there have been increasingly composers and musicians from an African or Caribbean background. On Jun 11 , the Livingston students th took their place. May the experience guide them into a future worthy of their families’
dreams!

We wish to thank especially school principal Mr. Jeremiah Clifford and music teachers Mrs. Agnes Crespo-Helmstedt (Livingston School Band) and Ms. Clayde (Livingston School String Orchestra) for their leadership, encouragement and support.

Unfortunately, the task proved more difficult than anticipated, and we ended up with Plan B – for which Consistory had wisely prepared. The tank will now be excavated, and we’ll have to deal with some remediation costs. At the same time, however, we hope for support from a program funded by the State. But be this as it may – the end of our oil tank marks the end of an era. It is clear that we now have left behind so much more than a mere heating method. We have left behind the Modern Age that was built on oil.

What do I mean by that? Very simply, from the moment the Industrial Revolution took off, it required oil, first as lubrication for the new steam engines, and later as fuel for all sorts of gas-guzzlers. Oil was a staple of Modernity even before we tapped into the planet’s reservoir of fossil oil – think of the whaling industry, Nantucket, and Moby Dick, and you realize what we did before we could exploit the oil fields in Texas or the Middle East.

First Reformed Church seems to have had enough of that! We now heat with natural gas. This is cleaner, cheaper, and a clear sign that we have made it, finally, into the 21st Century!

A big thank you goes out to Julius Fekete, Ellen Hamilton and Jim Hance, and many others who have all helped with the transition.

Even though there were not many people available for the Women’s Guild meeting, we did accomplish a lot.  The Tea Party is almost completely planned.  It will be on June 22nd (see invitation).  Let Erie know if you can help by providing a teapot and/or some food.

We talked about the planning of the Advent Breakfast.  It seems far away, but with all the other things on the calendar, this was a good time to start.  We are still in need of a theme for the breakfast.  Let Erie know if you have an idea we can work around.

And we planned our Annual Retreat.  This year Janet has invited us to their house in the Poconos.  We will be going for two days, leaving on Friday morning and returning on Saturday before dinner during the weekend of September 5th – 6th.  If you can not come two days, consider coming Friday evening and Saturday or even just for the Saturday.  We have a nice program in the works; it looks to be very promising.  If you need to bring your children, please contact Janet first as the house is surrounded by lots of water.

We are still working on our prayer shawls and our next meeting for the shawls will be June 11th.  After that, we will not meet during the summer, but please keep them growing as there are always people who will benefit from a shawl.  As for our regular meeting, June 15th will not work since other meetings are planned for that day.  I hope to see everybody at our tea party on June 22nd!

 

The Fund-raising Committee and the Invitation & Outreach Committee have joined forces! We have been hard at work these past few months brainstorming fund raising events and ways to raise funds for the Preservation Project. We will be planning a lecture series for Fall 2009, which will explore spirituality today. We hope that this will be reflective of the times we are in and address people’s need to understand spirituality.

You may wonder how you can help raise money for the Preservation Project. Well, the answer is you can participate or help promote Dining for Donation at Applebee’s Restaurant on Ryders Lane in Milltown. Applebee’s will partner with us to help us raise money by donating a portion of the bill from every diner we bring in. So the more people we can bring in, the more we will raise. Please save the dates for Dining for Donation at Applebee’s on Sunday, August 3rd and Sunday, October 24th from 11:00 a.m. to closing. We will soon be distributing the flyers, which are to be handed to the wait-staff at the restaurant that day.

Recently, First Reformed Church received two grant awards from private foundations for the Preservation Project. We received $15,000 from the J. Seward Johnson, Sr. 1963 Charitable Trust and $2,500 from the Freylinghuysen Foundation. This, indeed, is wonderful news and sends a positive message to the community and potential funders.

On behalf of the Fund Raising Committee and Invitation & Outreach Committee, thank you for supporting us by your thoughts and prayers. We ask you to continue to keep us in your prayers.

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.

I joked with the congregation that day, that it was not a day to worship if you do not enjoy singing, because we sang a lot. And the songs were more difficult, if not more up-lifting, than they have been in previous years. At times, parts of the choir sang like cantors leading the congregation through song. At other times. we all sat in the pews singing while others came forward to offer prayers and to light tea candles on the temporary Holy Table where Maria Owen’s Pentecost painting, Tongues of Fire, was displayed on an easel.

The worship was moving and very much un-like our traditional service. However, the moments of chanting, praying, silence and singing were powerful reminders that worship is a deep transformative and completely different sort of‘state of mind; one which we often avoid or are unable to reach. And yet, the church of Jesus Christ was founded on this powerful practice of waiting and praying. The very day of Pentecost was the waiting for the Holy Spirit to be poured out. So we practice that event once a year. We sing, and pray, and wait for those to come forward, those to offer prayers, those to light candles. And we sing for the Jesus who was and is our blessing.

Naturally, this included a lot of singing for us: as Pastor Susan pointed out in her introduction (see accompanying article), if you had not been in church in a while and didn’t like singing, this was the wrong Sunday to pick! Thanks to organist Viktoriya’s enthusiasm, we were able to turn much of the liturgy into a responsory between the choir, the congregation, and us pastors.

Other elements of our service included the use of an altar, votive candles, and a Pentecost painting by Maria Owens that she had kindly lend us for the occasion. Following the customs of Taizé, we used it as an icon during the “Prayer Around the Cross”. This was a special prayer time during which we were invited, in small groups or alone, to come to the altar table and to offer a special prayer for someone else.

All in all, our worship offered a different way of being in the presence of God. It provided a good supplement to what we normally do, and it helped us appreciate the diversity of ways in which people praise God.

With this, Maria gave great testimony to the fact that God did not mean the human spirit to end curved into itself but to continue on its life-long journey of exploration, adventure, and expanding the limits.

We are proud of her, and we are blessed to be a congregation that nourishes Maria’s view of life. May God bestow her now with many years of special ministry through her art, her praying and reading!