Designer Babies

When I read Brave New World decades ago I wonder if these things could be. And then I read the news today. A woman who was able to conceive in natural ways used in-vitro fertilization in order to screen out a cancer gene from her off spring. Eleven embryos were created and any with the cancer gene were destroyed. The new eugenics. Soon children will be chosen and discarded on the basis of their hair colour. Embryos are simply "products of conception" and are chosen and discarded on the basis of their potential flaws or characteristics. Children offered to Molech.

The Closing of a Presbyterian Pulpit

Fellowship Canadian Reformed Church is in the community of Aldershot, in Burlington. It was 50 years ago that Aldershot village joined Burlington City. And as near as I can tell the Aldershot Presbyterian Church was built in 1957, the year before. The congregation had been formed a few years earlier: likely in 1954. The Canadian Reformed Church of Burlington South, now known as Fellowship Canadian Reformed Church rented the facilities for 17 years: fully 1/3 of the time since the inaugural service in January 1957. In January 2008, 51 years after the dedication of the building, the pulpit was closed, and the Presbyterian congregation merged with Knox Presbyterian in Waterdown.

The last times Fellowship congregation used this building was in April and June 2006. Rev. J.L. van Popta held his inaugural sermon there on the Sunday he was installed as the pastor of Fellowship church, and then in June, Rev. Chris Bosch led a Public Profession of Faith service there.

At the time we did not know that those two services would mark the passing of an era for Fellowship Church. The new pastor and the emeritus pastor both preaching there about six weeks apart.

In 2007 Fellowship congregation put an offer to purchase the building, but a developer was able to offer more.

Today the building is under the wrecking ball. One of our members who lives nearby told me that he could hear the excavator taking down the building, so I dashed over with my camera, to capture the closing of a chapter of Fellowship Canadian Reformed Church life.

It is a sad thing when Reformed and Protestant pulpits close. Fellowship Church hopes and prays that it can serve as that confessionally sound Reformed witness in Aldershot for many, many years.

Historic Photo

At a wedding in Burlington yesterday an historic photo was taken. You can find it at my brother George's blog. We just need to get someone to photoshop the missing pastor into the photo!

Summer Solstice

Today is the first day of summer. The solstice ("sun stand still" is what "solstice" means.) At 7:59 PM EDT the Sun reaches it's highest point with respect to the earth's latitudes. That will occur somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. It's remarkable that at UTC or Greenwich Mean Time as it was formerly known, it will happen at 23:59; one minute before June 21.

I remember when I was a young man, boarding with relatives in Edmonton, that my uncle was a "sun worshipper". He loved lying about and soaking up the rays. I used to tease him on the summer solstice that from here on in the days get shorter, the nights get longer: winter is coming!

I never cease to reflect how God has promised to Noah, and through him to us, that the seasons will come and go with regularity. Seedtime, harvest: Summer, winter. The solstice is a testimony to God's covenant faithfulness. Every word he has ever spoken is sure. And the "Amen" to those words are found in Jesus Christ. Even the solstice is "amen-ed" by Jesus. God is faithful

Liturgy PowerPoint Presentations

In Fellowship Church we use a projector for the liturgy song selections in the worship services. Some have asked how much work lies behind the Sunday presentation....

The power-point team (h/t Sandra, who has spent countless hours creating these slides) has generated a library of 1672 separate slides of the Psalms, Hymns and Augment. There is now a complete set for all (except the Augment, which is still a work in progress, as is placing newly revised Psalms, as they come available, into the library, replacing the old.) Typical Sunday services require a PowerPoint presentation with 70-80 slides (Lord's Supper services call for several more). The process is as follows.

jvp puts the Sunday liturgy into Foldershare (a filesharing program) by 8:00 PM Thursday (he strives for earlier in the day). He notifies the team. ss assembles the appropriate slides from the library into the power-point template and puts that into FS. She notifies the team. fl prepares slides for the liturgy and inserts that into the template at all the appropriate places and puts that into FS. He notifies the team. (By now it is late Friday night!)

jvp and cb and ss do a proof read of all the slides, looking for typos, wrong slides, missing slides, extra slides, etc. Inform fl of any errors which (we hope we're on time to) get corrected before Sunday AM for a flawless, seamless presentation by fl or svd.

Thanks Team!

Local CanRC Artist's Work on Canadian Coin

I learned from my friend, Pastor Jim Witteveen's blog, that Jason Bouwman of Burlington now has his art work on a new commemorative Silver Dollar. Congrats to Jason! It is very beautiful and unique. Reminds me a bit of MC Escher's work.

Pastors' Blogs

I found another pastor/missionaries blog. Jim Witteveen, missionary in Prince George blogs at Jim Witt. Stop by and check it out.

Balanced News?

Some weeks ago 8000 Pro Life marchers converged on Parliament Hill. The main stream media did not report it. I searched the internet for two days after, to find any report. There was only one that I could find on Canoe.com. But it was about a traffic cop who got hurt directing the traffic night-mare the march caused. Today however, 100 marchers show up on The Hill demanding safe injection sites for heroin addicts, and they get national attention! Like, what's with that?

Other Pastors' Blogs

You can read other Canadian Reformed Pastors' Blogs. My brother George can be found at vanpopta.ca


You can find my friend Rob Schouten of Aldergove blogging at Rev. Rob's Blog. Happy reading

A built in, interactive, sermon illustration

Here's a cute story.

In a sermon on Ask, Seek, Knock (Matthew 7:7ff) I said this
...
For Jesus teaches us to ask, for he who keeps on asking, (that's the force of the verb) he who keeps on asking, receives. And he who keeps on seeking, finds. And he who never relents on knocking on the door, will have it opened to him. But yet, the Father only gives good things to those who ask in faith. Just like sometimes your children will ask for that which is not good.

They don't only ask for bread, or fish or eggs. Sometimes they only want ice-cream, and you say, "That'll hurt your tummy!" Or they ask permission to do something dangerous, like bridge jumping or something. (I used to do that!) Or they want go out late. Or they want to skate on the pond when the ice is thin. "It'll be ok! Don't worry so much!" Or they want to go to a movie that they shouldn't.

And then father says, "No!"
"No, you can't have that!
"You can't do that!
"I'm not giving you that!

-------------

Just then, we heard some wailing from down the hall! A boy was escaping the nursery. 3 years old. It got louder. Louder! Screeching! It was so distracting, I stopped preaching. (The boy was from a family that had joined our church that very day!)

Then I said something like "Someone is saying "no" to that child." We all laughed! (The father told me later that he was just 1 second away from standing up and saying.... "That's what Pastor John means!" and then go out and get his boy!

Now, that's what you call "a built in, interactive sermon illustration!"

Public Profession of Faith

Rev. Rob Schouten of Aldergrove has an interesting piece here, on public profession of faith.

Chance and Power

I was reading the Financial Post's Canada's Top 500 Largest Corporations in the FP Business that came with the National Post this morning. In the listing of the Top 500, I noticed that the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp came in at # 68 and that Ontario Power Generation came in at # 73. Does it say something about Ontario's Citizens that gambling surpasses power generation? OPG has 3 Nuclear Power Stations, 5 Fossil Fuel Power Stations and 64 Hydro installations. Like, this is a really BIG company! But the Province run lotteries and casinos out perform OPG in revenue! Surely a sign of decadence.