Zion E-News (8-27-2020)

During the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia, many atrocities were committed by the Communists to gain and keep power. As many as 500,000 Russians were killed in an effort to stop any dissensions or rebellion against the revolutionaries. One story passed down from this time has stuck with me. A very abbreviated version follows.

One day a young man on horseback came into a small village and asked to meet with the village leaders. he told them he wanted to throw a party celebrated all the story tellers of the region. In a oral culture, story telling formed their common identity, gave them purpose, and helped them make sense of the world. They had many story tellers.

On the day of the party, the young man returned with some friends and gathered all the story tellers into the town hall. The young man stood at the front and his friends at the back. Then he announced they had to get one more thing to start the celebration. He and his friends left the building, locking the doors from the outside, and burned the town hall to the ground. Every story teller in the region was killed and the oral history of their people was gone.

Events similar to this happened in villages across the country. The Soviets knew the power of story. Without story we no longer know who we are or where we are going.

This is really important when we think about evangelism. We need to tell the story of God in a way that makes sense to people in our culture who did not grow up in church and do not already know the story of scripture.

Often, I fear, we tell a true story that does not address the questions of our day. The story we tell of the wrath of God and the substitutionary death of Jesus is absolutely true and offers a great answer to the questions people asked in the 1500s and 1600s when most people grew up in a church that taught them to fear the wrath of God and to live in constant fear of not being good enough for God. To hear that you are saved by faith alone was great news. And, is great news.

But, in a culture where most people do not worry about God’s anger, do not think they have sinned in any big way, and are not living in fear of letting God down, this story does not connect with the same power. But this is the story the church most often tells to the world. 

This situation reminds me of a joke. Once a pilot got disoriented in the fog around Seattle. Being lost, he saw a tall building through the fog and yelled out the window asking where he was. A person yelled back, “You’re in a plane.” The pilot calmed down and flew right to the airport. When his only passenger asked how that answer could have helped him, the pilot answered, “I know where the airport is relative to Microsoft headquarters. And, I knew the building must be Microsoft headquarters because his answer was true, but completely unhelpful. Just like their help desk.” When we tell people the story of God in a way that fails to answer their questions, we become like the Microsoft help desk, completely true, but unhelpful.

We long to be helpful in our community because we want people to meet the God we love. Thankfully, we know the story of God answers the key questions of every culture and every life, but we have to learn to tell the right story. In a culture of isolation, the gospel tells us there is a God who longs for relationship with us and invites into relationship with his family, the church. In a culture of family estrangements, abuse, and divorce, the gospel tells us of a God who is always faithful and never gives up on his family. In a world of suffering and injustice, the gospel tells a story of a God who stands with the poor and oppressed and promises to bring his perfect justice to our world. In a world whose only answer to death is to fight it to the end and that some people may remember us, the gospel tells the story of a God who defeats death and offers a new life even after death. In a culture that values us for our productivity, the gospel reminds us we have inherent value as image bearers of God. In a culture that divides along ethnic, national, and political lines, we have a God who crosses every cultural barrier to for a new community open to every person.

As you think of the people you know who do not yet know God, what are the questions of their life? What are the longings you see in them? How might you tell the story of God so that they can see how God is the answer to all their questions?

Connect to God
This Sunday we will gather for worship both in person and online. We will gather by the playground for an outdoor service at 9 am. If there is a likelihood of rain, we will cancel our 9 am service. We will try to announce any change in venue by Saturday night on our Facebook page.

If you are not able to join us in person or would simply prefer to not gather in a large crowd yet, you can still join us for online worship. Our 11 am service will be livestreamed and you are welcome to attend worship at 11, though the focus will be on the livestream participants. We will be live streaming our 11 am service at zionreformed.online.church and Zion’s Facebook Page. We will also rebroadcast the service on WCET at noon on Friday and 4pm next Sunday.

This week, we concede our series entitled 20 Minute Theology as we think through what happens when we die. The day is coming for all of us when life will end, what happens next? Do we go to float on a cloud? Spend eternity singing praise songs? This week we consider the hope we have in Christ of eternal life and we imagine what this new life might be like.

Next week Sunday, on September 6, we will be joining the Reformed Church in America for a denomination-wide worship event. Because we cannot all physically gather from across the US and Canada in one place, the event will be live streamed. We will participate in this event at 11 am at zionreformed.online.church. This is the exact same place you can watch our service every Sunday. We will also include the service on Facebook and intend to rebroadcast it on WCET later in the week. The message will be offered by the Rev. Dr. Eddy Aleman, the General Secretary of the RCA. He will be preaching on Psalm 46 and how we find our rest in the Lord. This will be a great opportunity to hear from Eddy and worship with brothers and sisters across the continent. Please join me next Sunday at 11. (There will be no outdoor service on the 6th due to this joint event.)

Grow in Community
If you are in a small group and are looking for a study for the fall, I have a few recommendations from RightNow Media. These video teachings can either be watched physically together or stream synchronously to your whole group so you watch in real time together.
1. Get Out of Your Head by Jennie Allen. During anxious times, many of us can struggle with controlling our thought patterns and these patterns often lead to depression and negative thought patterns. Through a study of Philippians, Jennie offers wise counsel on redirecting our thought lives in ways that lead to health and honor God.
2. The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby. If you are curious to think more about racial issues in the US and the role of the church. Jemar offers a great look at the church’s response to slavery, Jim Crow laws, and racism through our history. I personally found sessions 6, 7 and 9 on Reconstruction, the Complicity of the North after the Civil War, and the rise of the religious Right in the latter half of the 20th century to be challenging and informative.
3. This one is not on RightNow Media, but it is free through the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism. This have a great small group curriculum on personal evangelism entitled Our Gospel Story. If you are unsure how to share your faith, need some encouragement or vision for sharing your faith, or want a refresher on the importance of evangelism, this is a great study.

We have recently started a closed Zion group on Facebook to create a place to discuss sermons, share prayer requests, and stay connected asynchronously when direct face-to-face connections are more challenging. If you want to join the group, you can request to join at this link: www.facebook.com/groups/ziongrandville/

Beginning on September 27, we will hold worship at 9 am indoors. This service will also be live-streamed. We also hope to begin holding Children’s Ministry for kids ages 3 through 5th grade during worship. We will not hold a large group gather for children and will instead have them go immediately to their classrooms. They will be in 3 classrooms and we will practice social distancing by requiring masks for children in K-5th and attempting to keep unrelated children 6 feet apart. We intend to follow the recommendations in MI Safe Start for Schools documentation.

Serve the World
Hope Eriks, through the Girl Scouts, was distributing personal care items to people through Dégagé Ministries. Through this week, she learned many homeless people in Grand Rapids are in need of warmer clothes as the summer ends. To help meet this need, we need your help. Do you have gently used sweatshirts or t-shirts you don’t need? If so, beginning Sunday, we will have two boxes in the lobby of church to accept your clothing donations.

If you need help, either with food, personal care items, help grocery shopping, or with financial needs, please contact Chip Harkes, our chair of deacons, and he can help connect you with the appropriate resources at Zion. His e-mail is chip@harkeslandscape.com and his phone number is 616-299-4804.

Administration
We continue to thank God for his provision of all of our needs and for the generous support of our congregation with their time, talent, and treasures. We are especially grateful this week for all those who have adjusted their means of giving to give online, through the mail, and via text.

Fiscal Year to Date Budget:$126,075.36
Fiscal Year to Date Contribution: $109,455.17
Giving Last Week: $10,353.03
Cash on Hand: $162,894.76