Sermon by Pastor David Mojica, Ignite! Church.

Mark chose his words very carefully when he wrote his gospel. We don’t exactly know his process, but we know that Mark didn’t take dictation, nor watch Jesus and write a biography. Mark probably never met Jesus. We think Mark heard many stories about Jesus from Peter, a fisherman who may not have been able to write. Then he looked at the fiddling Nero’s persecution and chose just the right words to give hope.

Here’s what Mark saw in Rome. Nero had Christians dressed in wild animal skins and torn to pieces by dogs, or they were set on a stand to be lit as human torches for his gardens. Nero instigated the public to call believers, according to Roman historian Tacitus, “notoriously depraved, Christians.” So Mark likened their waves of persecution to the lake’s storm. In what words could the persecuted find God’s calm in their storm?

In what words do we find God’s calm in our storms? There are personal storms related to money today. The perfect storm of the average American debt (George Will sets it at 141% of debt to earnings), plus the housing crisis is sending us into recession.

Or for some there may be a church crisis: with a search for a new Minister of Music will all the current choirs continue? Will a contemporary service be forced upon us? Yes and no. Yes, current choirs will continue; no, a contemporary service will not be rushed into once a new person is hired, but there will be a process to discern God’s will regarding how best to begin a contemporary service. Waves of change.

Or for others there may be national crisis: is it better to elect John McCain to maintain troop strength in Iraq, or is it better to elect Hillobama to draw down our troops?

Like the early Roman Christians we’re all in that boat, but Jesus is snoring:
What words best describe our storm to God and what words does Jesus use back?

Let’s take that in parts: what words best describe our storm to God? This implies a golden nugget of truth. Our usual response to life’s storms is to complain to others. The Bible everywhere condemns complaining to others. Partially because the process of moaning to friends gets our minds more deeply stuck in the post-storm mud. Instead the Spirit lifts up the idea of complaining to God. The most common types of Psalms, fully 1/3, or about 50, are laments. For there is something about whining to God that helps us see Jesus with us. LORD, do you care?! Jesus woke up. For us, we wake up to God

Mark is telling his lion-bait friends and us today to speak our fears to Jesus, and then what happens? Jesus stands up and speaks words of faith: Silence! Be still! And the winds and the waves obey. All through Scripture God teaches us that words have power: the whole world was created by words, Let there be… and there was… In the same way, after complaining to God, there’s great power to speak words of faith: Peace..!

The fire had destroyed millions of dollars worth of Marv’s factory in 1984. It was one of the worst days of his life. So he gathered his management team in the basement of a local Zeeland, MI restaurant with a grief counselor. The counselor helped them process their feelings, in essence, their complaints to God. But finally Marv had had enough of the crying over spilled milk. He stood up, took control, and said, Enough already. Now Smith I want you to call the insurance. Jones, you call our competitors to ask for factory space. Billings, you get a crew to… We’re gonna make it! And they did. So in your storm: speak your fears to God and your faith in God, and you’ll find peace, Amen.

Reverend Todd Buurstra
Pastor of Worship and Witness

I don’t think that I’ve become very good at evangelism, but I do think that I’ve become better. I’ve read books on it. I’ve prayed to get better at it. And most recently I’ve watched David Mojica and other church planters in my work with the Classis in multiplying new churches.

So I am in my office and an unchurched Preschool Dad walks in. This guy and I have formed a growing friendship over his years in our school. We started out talking about politics, but lately we’ve been talking about the Bible. He just finished a Lee Strobel book called, The Case for the Creator. So he stopped by today to tell me how much he liked it. I thanked him for his recommendation and promptly ordered it off of Amazon. Now he is reading the Bible for the first time, and is having trouble making sense out of it. So I give him a book off my shelf to help explain it. Will we see his family in our church someday? I don’t know, but I do know that he, along with everyone I see every day, is on a spiritual journey. How can I help them take one more step along that journey toward Christ?

So as you follow Jesus in his mission of restoring people to God, let me tell you three steps that I, as a non-evangelist-but-friendly-guy, am learning:
First pray to see opportunities to help people along their spiritual journeys;
secondly, seize opportunities to talk about how Jesus helps you progress along your
path; and,
thirdly, stick with those opportunities by continuing to walk alongside those seeking.

Hope that’s helpful. For whether you think of yourself this way or not, you are an evangel; that is, someone who has good news to bring others.

Peace and joy,
Pastor Todd Buurstra

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Did the flood cover the whole earth or just a part of it? so asked a fellow pastor whom I knew immediately was checking my orthodoxy. If I failed the test he might not cooperate with me in a ministry important to one of our members. So I hedged: the whole then-known earth, I said. Honestly? I don’t think it matters whether you believe the flood actually happened or not. That answer would have sunk my ark.

Here’s what I mean. (more…)

If you have trouble playing the video, click here instead.

Ignite! Church proudly presents:

Traveling Light

A contemporary play of Mark’s Gospel in two acts
by Lawrence G. Enscoe

Date: Saturday, April 19th, 2008

Time: Performance starts at 7:30pm.

Location: Bridgewater-Raritan High School Auditorium

Reserve your seats today. Click here for complete details and order information.

Proceeds to benefit Samaritan Homeless Interim Program (SHIP).

If you can’t attend, could you help by forwarding this to a friend? Thank you.

About Us: Ignite! Church is supported by North Branch Reformed Church. Ignite! is a contemporary church seeking to build meaningful relationships among it’s members and Jesus Christ. Are you in your twenties or thirties and desire a spiritual connection? Do you want to influence change in a broken world? Learn more at Jerseyignite.com

Ignite! Church proudly presents:

Traveling Light

A contemporary play of Mark’s Gospel in two acts
by Lawrence G. Enscoe

Date: Saturday, April 19th, 2008

Time: Performance starts at 7:30pm.

Location: Bridgewater-Raritan High School Auditorium

Reserve your seats today. Click here for complete details and order information.

Proceeds to benefit Samaritan Homeless Interim Program (SHIP).

If you can’t attend, could you help by forwarding this to a friend? Thank you.

About Us: Ignite! Church is supported by North Branch Reformed Church. Ignite! is a contemporary church seeking to build meaningful relationships among it’s members and Jesus Christ. Are you in your twenties or thirties and desire a spiritual connection? Do you want to influence change in a broken world? Learn more at Jerseyignite.com

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-18, 31, 32

Where do we find God’s calm in the swirling storms of complaints? Moses had had it! He was as hot and bothered as the rest of the Hebrew people trudging from the Si-nai oasis through that desert. He didn’t need to hear them grouse for quail! Why did you take us out of Egypt? We may have been slaves there, but at least we had fish! Yeah, I’m all dried up out here under the hot, desert sun! Blah, blah. Waa waa Moan, moan.

Now, it was Moses’ turn to complain to the LORD: Why do I have to carry this people? What am I, their mother?! Where am I supposed to get meat?! If you’re going to treat me like this, you might as well kill me, `cause it’s killin’ me anyway! Blah, wah…

Now we could relate this story to any number of complaints today: from kids to parents, from employee to boss, from congregation to consistory, but verse 4 helps us to apply it… Rabble is the motley crew, couldn’t resist, that went along for the freedom ride from Egypt to the Promised Land. From Egypt, Midian, Edom… they instigated the meat complaints. So how does God calm the storm of racial complaints?

Obama’s pastor, and my seminary professor, Jeremiah Wright’s sermon soundbytes about America KKK… Not God bless America, but G d America!… have un-leashed a storm of racial complaints. Can we find God’s calm in the storm’s center?

Before I try, let me share my limited qualifications to speak about race as a privileged, white male, and I mean limited. I lived as a minority, albeit a privileged minority, for 2.6 years in Japan. I strive for equality in a bi-racial marriage within my culture. I strive for equality in a bi-racial staff in my culture. Lastly, Jeremiah Wright was an all-time favorite professor who taught me more about racial inequality than anyone.

There’s a racial storm so how does God calm it? God calmed Moses’ storm of complaints in two ways: by allowing Moses to let off his steam of complaints to God, which we already saw, and, once his blood pressure lowered, to give Moses the idea to involve other leaders by delegating authority. With the load lifted Moses calmed.

How will God calm the storm of our racial complaints? In the same ways. First, God allows us to let off the steam of our racial complaints: how could Pastor Wright say Gd America?! If Obama is a racial healer why didn’t he choose another church?! Etc. And then I think that God would have us involve others. I want to suggest a specific way that you might do that. Ask a minority person, preferable an African American, what they think of Pastor Wright’s comments. Don’t you comment; just listen to learn.

Here’s what I learned listening to Jeremiah Wright 23 years ago. Today’s racism isn’t as blatant as white water fountains and colored water fountains; its more subtle about pulpit talk. We judge Jeremiah’s sound byte sermon by white preaching standards. Jeremiah taught us that black preaching starts low, builds slow, waxes warm, and sits down in the storm. In other words black preaching builds to a rhetorical and emotional storm—G d America! That lends itself to exaggeration. Just like Jesus who said if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Preaching should be judged within its culture.

What is the result of bringing God our complaints and involving others by listening to them? It may not be that quail migrate on past, but it may be that when whites pause to judge blacks by our standards the black pulpit will need less divisive rhetoric so that our racial complaints may be calmed. That’s what I hear, what do you?

Reverend Todd Buurstra
Pastor of Worship and Witness

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Now while you and I may especially enjoy the seasonal change from winter to spring, I have to admit that I enjoy fall to winter as well. Seasonal change is good. Having said that I want to acknowledge those
who struggle more at the change of seasons.

So whether you enjoy seasonal change like me, or struggle with it like my mother, we all have to admit that God has ordained nature so. In the same way God has ordained the nature of life so. In our church life seasons are changing with: the expected purchase of the Lawrence House for some service mission; the church plant as they move from one to four cell groups and launch their biggest outreach event on Saturday, April 19 (cf. later advertisement:, and the music ministry changes.

Seasonal changes like these bring struggle, sadness and excitement. And, they are part of the way the Creator has made life to be. So let us live them together with the God who promised Noah:

Peace and joy,
Pastor Todd Buurstra

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Simply download this flier (PDF) for available ad sizes, contact information and pricing. The deadline has been extended to Friday, April 4th, 2008.

If you don’t have anything to advertise, perhaps purchase tickets to the play. You could bring a friend or give them away.

Thank you again for your consideration.

There you were stopped last night at a Manhattan red light on the way back from a show. Peering through the cab’s window you were taking in the architecture. Look! There’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral! one of you exclaimed. Isn’t it majestic? But wait, what’s going on down front? I don’t know. You heard an angry chant and saw signs wa-ving as the faithful climbed the steps for the Holy Saturday Vigil. Can you read a sign? I can just make one out: Jesus? Yes! The Church No! Whoa! NS What do you think they’re mad about: clergy scandals? DaVinci Code stuff? I don’t know but that’s what I don’t like about organized religion. Yeah, I mean Jesus’ words like forgive your debtors, and his actions to heal, and even the power of his resurrection is wonderful. It’s the church that screws it up with the Crusades, the 100 Year War, or the 10-year war be-tween my Protestant mother and her Catholic son-in-law. Do you believe that last Easter dinner my mother actually asked Andy: So, do crucifix- wearing Catholics believe in the resurrection? Jesus could have appeared and we wouldn’t have noticed for the argument.

Is your story at all like that? (more…)

Traveling Light

A contemporary play of Mark’s Gospel in two acts
by Lawrence G. Enscoe

Date: Saturday, April 19th, 2008

Time: Performance starts at 7:30pm.

Location: Bridgewater-Raritan High School Auditorium

Reserve your seats today. Click here for complete details and order information.

Proceeds to benefit Samaritan Homeless Interim Program (SHIP).

If you can’t attend, could you help by forwarding this to a friend? Thank you.

About Us: Ignite! Church is supported by North Branch Reformed Church. Ignite! is a contemporary church seeking to build meaningful relationships among it’s members and Jesus Christ. Are you in your twenties or thirties and desire a spiritual connection? Do you want to influence change in a broken world? Learn more at Jerseyignite.com

GOOD FRIDAY, March 21st:
The Sanctuary of NBRC will be open all day for prayer and meditation.

Cross processional starting at 1:15 PM. Please arrange carpools to help you get back as we process behind the cross from NBRC to St. Bernards.

The choirs will present “Song of the Shadows” at 7:30 PM. Let’s walk together for a while in the shadow of the cross. It is not an easy sojourn, but we will not walk alone. As we confront the “dark night of the soul”, we can always find comfort in that wherever there are shadows, there is also light!

EASTER SUNDAY, March 23rd:
Worship services at 9:00 and 10:15 AM. Bring cut flowers to decorate the cross before the service begins.

If you were Jesus’ campaign manager what advice would you give? After all, things were going really well! You had expertly choreographed his entrance into Jerusalem surrounded by the pilgrim crowds of Passover. News of his healings and prophetic words had spread like wildfire so that people were spreading their cloaks like a red carpet, tearing palms off the trees, waving them feverishly at him while yelling Hosanna in the highest! His poll numbers were in the Obamasphere. I mean the yahoo and msn homepages and the Jerusalem Times all carried a version of the headline: COULD THIS MAN BE THE KING OF THE JEWS?! The historical memory of the event in Matthew 21:10 records the whole city was in an uproar.

How would you have advised Jesus to ride this wave? (more…)

Change and decay in all around I see. You may feel as destabilized by much change as I feel. Our moorings get lost. We can’t tell if we’re going north or south. To change the metaphor, we don’t know where change’s sweeping wave will eventually wash us ashore.

And the older we get the more that change feels like decay. At 48 I am surprised to find myself a little more skeptical about new things and fonder of the old. Not only that, I become more and more convinced that the new is throwing the baby out with the bathwater! Some of that may be true; a lot of it may simply be the difference between 28, 38, and 48.

O Thou who changest not, abide with me. The greatest stabilizing factor in a world that changes at increasing speed is the abiding presence of the Changeless One. Someone said to me recently, why does the church need to change at all?! Can’t anything stay the same? Yes, God stays the same. While the church may need to change her methods to stay relevant to the culture in order to remain vital, our LORD never changes. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

So the trick in change management is twofold:

1. acknowledge the disorientation that you feel; and
2. find your security in the Changeless One.

I pray that for you and I as we go through the changes in life.

Peace and joy,
Pastor Todd Buurstra

Your generation couldn’t hack a depression and a world war! So said obaachan to her daughter a couple of decades ago. Indeed obaachan was born into wealth to the extent that her house had servant’s quarters, but she was born in the middle of the Great Depression. After money became so tight that it threatened her father’s business, our WW II bombs began falling upon Tokyo. Obaachan tells of walking home from school in junior high dodging the flames of the wooden city on fire. By that time her family and entire country were so poor that only the rich could eat Japanese flag lunches: rice with a red plum in the middle. Her family could no longer afford the plum so they became malnourished to the point that her two brothers died of TB leaving her as the only child. I agree with her. I don’t think that my generation, or those younger than me, having lived our whole life with quarter pounders on demand, could hack her youth.
In our day of hi-indulgence and low-sacrifice, why fast?

First off, because God blesses the faster. Having said that, God does not bless every faster. In Jesus’ day fasting was “cool” because, unlike today, people valued godly sacrifice. So some religious leaders treated fasting as the anti-Oscar red carpet. They appeared before the crowd on market day with their hair mussed up, their clothes dirty, and their faces painted pale while probably moaning: I’m hungry, but I’m fasting for God. Thinking of the people’s rolling eyes, Jesus replies: That’s their reward.
Jesus teaches that God blesses the sacrifice of the faster who looks for a reward, not from people, but from the Almighty. But what is that reward? I find three rewards:

1. Fasting is good for most people’s health, unless you’re already sick. I notice that I feel purified after fasting. Constant feasting is unhealthy. Our stomachs need a break
2. Fasting is good for your self-discipline. What obaachan is saying is that since my generation and younger has rarely had to face hardship, we’re undisciplined. So we must choose to master our appetites, lest they master us. America is being mastered.
3. Fasting makes you appreciate the feast. I look forward to the meal that breaks my monthly fast. It’s one of my favorite meals of the month! When’s supper?! I ask.

Secondly God blesses others through the faster. Read the prophet’s words with me… Isaiah 58:5-7… God intends the sacrifice of fasting to bless us, and others.
The hunger that we choose can remind us of the hunger that others are forced into. My hunger pangs remind me of the almost 1 billion who live on less than $1 a day. A few times in my 30-year history with fasting I was inspired to write a letter to my congress people regarding hunger issues. Currently the US has made little pro-gress on our Millennium Development Goals set in 2000. Show Congress you care.

Thirdly, God is blessed by our sacrifice of fasting. Another prophet Zechariah preaches to the exiles holding regular fasts to remember Israel…
Often we are with God like a college kid with his parents. The parent complains: He just comes home when he needs money or his laundry done! God wants to be more than a bell-hop, but a loved parent. Fasting reminds me of my hunger for God.

So this Lent the pastoral staff is asking the healthy adults among us to commit to a 24 hour fast from food, not liquids, during Lent, preferably on Good Friday. Will you become acquainted with the blessings of this sacrifice for God this Lent? Amen.

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