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We had a very busy April. It is good to be busy doing the Lord’s work. There is much to be done in May. Please see our schedule and join in.

As you can see, this month’s letter has a large amount of material submitted by others. Don’t be shy. Join in the fun and submit an article. It would be appreciated.

Speaking of helping – We are looking for people to join the motor pool to bring people to church who don’t have a ride.

A LARGE thank you goes out to all who helped with our Spring Buffet. This turned out to be a very successful event. We are looking for suggestions for similar events in the near future. Please let us have your ideas.

On April 27^th Sharon and Adrian VanHouten brought to our service an inspirational program of music and the spoken word. It was wonderful to see and hear them once again. We look forward to their next visit.

The following are some pictures of Sharon and Adrian including Adrian doing his Porky the Pig impression for the Children’s sermon.

Sharon and Adrian leading us in a song.

Adrian doing his Porky the Pig impression for the children’s sermon.

His point was that the Bible is not a cartoon, it is real!

A point well made!

Food Pantry

On May the 10^th we will once again be receiving much needed food for our pantry from the Postal Food Drive. Help will be needed to unload the trucks, sort the food to be sure none of it is outdated and to categorize it for storage. We will start our operation at 2:30 and will continue until? Let Barbara Banta know if you can help.

Sunday School

Our “Sunday School Singers” sang three selections during one of the services in April. The congregation joined in for the singing of “I am a C” which is one of the youngsters’ favorites. We completed our story of Joseph and reviewed the story of Moses, the plagues, and the Passover. We also discussed the relationship of the Passover, Last Suipper and Holy Communion. One Sunday we took the time to make LOVE GOD crosses to offer Food Pantry clients. In May we will have stories of David and will begin practicing for Children’s Day which will be in June.

This months activities

May 5 Rummage Sale setup @ 7:00 PM

May 6 Rummage Sale setup @ 7:00 PM

Consistory meeting @ 7:30 PM

May 7 Rummage Sale open 6 to 9 PM

May 8 Rummage Sale open 9 AM to 3 PM

May 9 Rummage Sale open 9 AM to 3 PM

May 10 Postal Food Drive 2:30 to ?

May 13 Women’s Guild meeting 7:30 PM

May 14 Food run to Hillside.

May 18 Sonrise will lead our service of worship.

Finances

Our problems have not gone away. We simply ask that you help us as much as you can and support our fund raising activities. We must trust that the Lord will bless our activities and see us through.

As we said last month we will be replacing the boiler in the parsonage to the tune of over $7000.00. Any donations toward this project would be appreciated. We will keep you posted regarding our financial conditions.

The following from Dave Phraner

Sharing RCA’s Church Herald Magazine:

As we all know, the Reformed Church in America’s (RCA) magazine Church Herald is no longer offered as a ”free subscription” by the denomination. Formerly, this almost monthly (11 times a year) publication was mailed to all members of each RCA congregation as a no cost benefit obtained through our individual annual Classis assessments. This past year, that all changed. The Church Herald became available only to those parishioners paying an extra individual magazine subscription fee. Some of you have continued to receive the Church Herald by paying that subscription, but we suspect that many members of our congregation have decided not to pay extra for it and dropped the Herald. Some wealthy RCA congregations can afford to pay for a subscription for each of their members but that option is beyond our means at First Reformed of Boonton. We already provide free issues of the Upper Room. We also make up the deficit in Classis assessments for some members unable to absorb that cost, now at $80.00 per member annually. Incidentally, please continue to pay your Classis assessment as before, using special envelopes for that purpose in your envelope boxes.

Mindful of this situation and in the interest of keeping our congregation informed on news of RCA and other denominations, of churches in our Classis and Regional Synod and news of various missions, we have a suggestion. If you continue to subscribe to the Church Herald, consider sharing your copy when you are finished reading it.

Let’s make it simple to share. A “Church Herald Box” will be placed near one of the bulletin boards or the vision board in Fellowship Hall. If you are a present Herald subscriber, please place your “used” Heralds in the box. In doing so you would be surrendering your copy, since there is no enforcement for returning copies to the original subscribers. Those who do not subscribe may borrow issues as they become available in the box. Borrowers should make an effort to return the issues to the box within a week or two so other borrowers may take an issue home and read.

Some subscribers may already be informally passing their copies of the Herald to others in the congregation. That is fine to continue, if you have such an arrangement. If you are now discarding your old Herald copies, please bring them to church for sharing the news.

And while we are on the subject, if any of you would like to write a story of a notable event in the life of your church for the Church Herald to consider publishing, please submit your copy (preferably in MS Word) to one of the members of Consistory. We think that our Youth Group sleep over in appliance boxes for a cause in the church yard would make a great article and picture for Boonton First Reformed to appear in the Church Herald.

Mission Myths and Revelations:

The most recent (April 2008) issue of RCA’s The Church Herald is devoted almost entirely to “Missions Evolving World: Outreach and Our Call.” We also get an inset for our church bulletin called “Mission Today” on RCA Global Missions. The subject of mission is very broad and comprehensive…..far too much so to cover in this short article. The denomination’s global mission will not be addressed here, at least not in this issue of our newsletter. We’d like to focus instead on the global mission call for us at the Boonton First Reformed Church. Each of us may have a different view of mission and how we accomplish it. There are probably some myths out there that need to be revealed and we certainly need to better reveal and commonly understand our mission call as a Christian congregation.

Myth #1: We, as an unwealthy congregation, cannot afford to fund other worthy charities because our own financial situation is too perilous. – Wrong!

Issue: Our church budget has many categories of cost, but for purposes of this article, let’s divide it into two main categories: mission and operating expense. Our church treasury similarly can be divided into benevolence (our name for “mission”) and everything else. Our benevolence mission typically includes: Our own Food Pantry, RCA Mission of the Month, Safe Haven (Trinity Church - Newark), Homeless Solutions, Morristown/Market St. Mission, Bessy Green Community, North Reformed Church (Newark), Crop Walk, Chosen People Ministries, Our Place (Baptist Church - Morristown), Hope House (Haiti), Gift of Life, Our Children International (about 15 in total).

Revelation #1: The answer is that our meager endowments are mostly dedicated by the original donors exclusively to benevolence. The yield and the principal of these endowments and the food pantry fund cannot be spent for even the most critical operating or capital needs of the church. Our budget for operating and capital expense is definitely in serious trouble, but our dedicated endowments permit us to fulfill our Christian mission of helping those less fortunate.

Myth #2: At First Reformed Boonton, we cannot and do not sponsor global (foreign) missionaries. – Wrong!

Issue: About 195 RCA congregations can afford and do sponsor foreign missionaries and their families. Clearly we could not alone afford to sponsor a missionary annually at about $72,000 each. That is the approximate size of our entire annual budget! For a missionary family, the annual cost rises to nearly $300,000. Some 600 RCA congregations who cannot afford to sponsor a missionary exclusively, contribute to RCA’s “Partnership-in-Mission” program. The projected cost per share in 2009 is $6,000. Clearly, this too is beyond our means at Boonton First Reformed. So can we contribute to foreign missions, and if so how?

Revelation #2: While we do donate to RCA’s mission of the month, our congregation’s foreign mission contribution is different and dramatic, but subtle. Reverend Topp, our Pastor Andy, through his dedication to Rotary’s Gift of Life, Father Marc’s Hope House, and Overseas medical missions is our global missionary. While our direct contribution to these missions as a congregation is modest, because we support Andy in his Christian outreach we thereby leverage an investment in a few Sundays a year loss of his sermon into a multi-national, three-continent outreach far beyond what most RCA contributions could afford. In the last 12 months alone, Pastor Andy has visited Haiti twice, Ghana and Honduras. Each of Andy’s humane trips inspire us with a pastoral perspective on Christian example and charity while carrying the message of Jesus as the world’s great savior and redeemer.

Your Consistory Visits Classis (or how We are organized as a Church):

As most of you know our First Reformed of Boonton Church is one among 40 congregations belonging to the Passaic Valley Classis. Classis is the next step up in RCA ecclesiastical hierarchy. The RCA denomination organizes itself into such assemblies to carry on the traditions of the church and furnish administrative and spiritual support to its individual churches like us. Seven members of your Consistory including Pastor Andy and Don Sikes (our Senior elder delegate to the Classis) attended this unique Classis meeting on April 23rd. It was unique because for the first time, all members of the all forty Consistories were invited to attend. We estimate that over one-hundred Consistory members attended. For most of us, this was the first Classis meeting that we ever witnessed.

Some interesting data came out of this meeting. Of the forty (40) Passaic Valley Classis congregations, thirty-two (32) have 50 or fewer people at worship each Sunday. We in Boonton place right at the top of this category averaging between 45-55 each Sunday service. Only eight churches of the Passaic Valley Classis, attract more than 100 and only two churches have more than 200 attendees at worship service. Think of the Classis as 40 pieces of real estate and 3,800 worshipers clustered along New Jersey’s Passaic River.

Several Classes (46 in total in North America) assemble to form a regional Synod (we are in the Northeast Regional Synod). The eight regional Synods are organized into the General Synod which is the largest assembly of RCA, meeting once annually on a national (US and Canada) basis. Several other Protestant denominations have similar democratic types of Presbyter-type organization as RCA, but using different names. In contrast, Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran, Roman and Eastern denominations use a more monarchical hierarchy of church government with individual or groups of officials (bishops, cardinals, etc) rather than assemblies heading the various levels.

One of the attendees asked the question, “What is the relevance of the Classis.” That question has occurred to us as well. The answer we got made sense if one understands the functions of the Classis in support of its congregations. We will be reporting on the functions of our Classis as it relates to us in Boonton in the next newsletter. Stay tuned…

From Jerry Vogt

You Took My Place

One day a man went to visit a church. He got there early, parked his car and got out. Another car pulled up near him. The driver got out and said, “I always park there! You took my place.”

The visitor went inside for Sunday School, found an empty seat and sat down. A young lady from the church approached him and stated, “That’s my seat! You took my place!” The visitor was somewhat distressed by this rude welcome, but said nothing.

After Sunday School, the visitor went into the sanctuary and sat down. Another member walked up to him and said, “That’s where I always sit! You took my place!” The visitor was even more troubled by this treatment, but still He said nothing.

Later as the congregation was praying for Christ to dwell among them, the visitor stood up, and his appearance began to change. Horrible scars became visible on his hands and on his sandaled feet. Someone from the congregation noticed him and called out, “What happened to you?” The visitor replied, as his hat became a crown of thorns, and a tear fell from his eyes, “ I took your place.”

Here are some interesting facts regarding Easter from the Pequannock Reformed Church thanks to Pastor Ron.

“Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox which fell on March 20^th this year. This dating of Easter, based on the same lunar calendar that is used to identify Passover, makes Easter a movable feast day. Easter can actually be one day earlier than it was this year, but that is pretty rare. This year Easter was the earliest many of us will ever see. And only those 95 or older have ever seen it on March 23^rd before. Here are the facts: The next time Easter will be this early will be 220 years from now or in 2228! The last time it was on March 23^rd was 1913. And the next time it will be earlier than this year will be 277 years from now in 2285. The last time it was on March 22^nd was in 1918. Looking back this Easter was very significant for all of us.”

Here is some information that just came in before we went to press.

Boonton Kiwanis First Aid Squad

celebrates

70 years of service.

The Boonton Kiwanis First Aid Squad is celebrating it’s seventieth anniversary this year. In celebration there will be an open house at their building which is located at 150 Lathrop Ave in Boonton. This event will take place on May 26^th from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

Come on out, meet squad members, see their equipment and enjoy some refreshments. Show your support for a group of trained people who are ready 24 hours a day, 7 days a week all year long to respond to any emergency medical situation in Boonton, Boonton Township and Mountain Lakes. The squad also responds to our neighboring towns on a mutual aid basis when requested.

Now that’s what you call a full newsletter. Many thanks for all who contributed. It makes the job of the editor much easier.

It won’t be long before we are in June. Right after Children’s Day we will change our hour for Morning Worship to 10:00 AM.

Vacation will be starting for many. We encourage you to continue your giving during the Summer even if you are away. Just like yours, our bills don’t go on vacation. Your help will be appreciated.

That’s about it for this month. Look for an abbreviated newsletter for the summer months.

Don’t forget to “Reach Out and Touch!!”