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Burr Ridge Seventh-day Adventist Church 725 75th St |
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 June 2007 June 30, 2007 You never know when tragedy is going to strike, and when it hits close to home, you are never prepared to deal with it. On Sunday evening I received word that a friend and mentor of mine passed away suddenly of a heart attack. Pastor Lenny Atkins was 59 and in great shape by all appearances. Ironically, he and his wife, Ann, were attending a conference health screening event. After finishing his screening and receiving a cardiac health rating of “Very Low Risk,” Lenny collapsed. The four doctors who were participating in the screening immediately began CPR and the paramedics continued it all the way to the hospital. They finally gave up after 45 minutes. Lenny is survived by his wife Ann and his adult children Shane and Tonya. I will be attending his memorial service this afternoon at 2:00pm in Because of my unexpected trip to On a happier note, today the Outreach Committee has the pleasure of unveiling a new event that will take place in August. We have decided to host an Education Sabbath for the purpose of celebrating all our students. It is also intended to be an opportunity for us to invite our family, friends, and neighbors to a special event so that they can get to know us and receive a blessing for the up coming school year. We are asking each of you to think about those you are going to invite to celebrate their “young scholars” with us. Education Sabbath will take August the 18th. I would like to invite each of you to join us at Prayermeeting on Wednesday evenings at 7:00pm. Our group has gotten bigger in recent weeks and each of us are fed during our time spend in prayer. So if you have a few minutes on Wednesday, join us in the discipline of prayer. June 23, 2007 Thursday was the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. At 6:06pm the sun reached its highest point north and made the turn south. This means that we have already begun the long slide back toward winter! On December 20, at 6:08pm, the sun will reach its furthest point south and begin again the journey north. While the Earth is in perpetual cyclical change, we know from scripture that our spiritual winter solstice has taken place once and for all. Christ, on the cross, marked the turn from the dark cold captivity of evil and toward a collision with the warmth of summer—His 2nd coming. Let us by God’s grace endeavor to live with the joy of spring and look forward earnestly to everlasting life! Yesterday, the Joint Venture Committee (JVC) met again to do more work on our land development project. It is very encouraging to see some movement! We are getting very close to putting the Madison Street property in Burr Ridge up for sale. We are also starting to lay the ground work for the overall development of our Lemont property which will lead eventually to our church building project. Please continue to pray that God will bless our endeavors. Next Sabbath, June 30, we will have our quarterly communion service. Adventist traditionally celebrate communion once a quarter. Last year the church board decided that in addition to our Candlelight Communion services at Easter and Christmas, we will have in church communion at the end of the spring and summer quarters (June and September. Please ready your hearts and minds to celebrate the Lord’s Supper next week. Special thanks to Pastor Frederick and is family for coming to share with us this week! We thank you for allowing God to use you to bring us the bread of life. Appointments to remember: Our Church Board will be held this Monday at 7:00pm followed by an Elders’ meeting. Prayer meeting, Wednesday at 7:00pm. June 16, 2007 It has been a very hot and dry week. The tiny patch of grass in front of my town house has had it. I water it every evening, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. Without rain, there is little hope for my grass. This is a metaphor for the spiritual life. Sometimes we get dry and parched and are in need of a downpour. If you feel like this, don’t hesitate to take some time to reconnect with the giver of living water. In the Word and on your knees, ask God to open the flood gates of heaven and quench your thirst. It is a request he can’t refuse! The social committee met last Sabbath after potluck to hammer out a schedule of events. Debby Davis has agreed to chair this committee this year and is providing crucial leadership. Her idea: start by scheduling one main social event every month. Some of the suggested events are Tea and Tee, a Pool Party, and another Cookie Swap. The first event is being planned for July. Some of you may still be unclear about who all the kids where who came to church last Sabbath. We introduced them briefly but probably not adequately. They are a group of colporteurs who are staying at HAA over the summer. Their job: to sell MagaBooks door-to-door every afternoon Sunday through Thursday. Talk about a tough job! Please keep them in your prayers as they sweat their way through the summer. I have invited them back to do a full program for us in July. Please pray for Donna K. who underwent serious surgery yesterday. May her recovery be swift and complete! Appointments to Remember: Outreach Committee, Tuesday 6:00pm at Lord of Life. Prayer Meeting, Wednesday 7:00pm at Lord of Life. Joint Venture Committee, Friday 7:30am. Next Sabbath: Pastor Danaran Fredrick from HAA will be our speaker.
Surrender: a word that can either be an exclamation of triumph or an admission of loss. It is a word that we seek from our adversaries… I surrender. I give up. Sometimes we prize those who never give up, and sometimes we loath them. At its core, Christianity is a call to surrender—to give up. In different ways, we have all avoided surrender, preferring to “stay the course” in spite of all the consequences. In our stubbornness, we fail to see that until we surrender entirely to God, we cannot have the peace He wants to give us. One of the themes that I have been stressing in meetings with the Elders and the Outreach Committee is the need to minister to those who are close to us. It is much easier, and more profitable, to extend God’s grace to those who already know and respect us. Sometimes we are called to minister to strangers, but more often than not, we are called to reach out to those who are already close to us. Keep thinking and praying for the family members, coworkers, and friends with whom you can share God’s grace. Some of you are wondering, “What is our Church doing to reach out to our community?” One of the events we are planning is a Back-to-School Sabbath that will take place in August. It will be special program that will be designed for our broader community. It will include a time when we can pray a prayer of blessing for all the kids (and adults) going back to school. The hope is that each of you will invite your friends and family, and anyone who would like to be blessed. More on this to follow. Please continue to support our church website. I have been keeping The Pastor’s Blog updated. We also invite you to post your prayer requests online. For those who have more private prayer requests, there is the option of limiting who gets to see the request. You can choose to have only the pastor or the prayer team view your request. “When we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son.” –Romans 5:10 For many of us who have been Adventist all our lives the words of the Scriptures can become mundane. We’ve heard it all. Thousands of sermons in our lifetime—seemingly hundreds about the prodigal son, for example. In our over exposure it is easy to ignore the pages of Scripture that we have heard so many times. Ever so often I will find I have neglected a book like Romans, which I’ve studied over and over. Months later I will come back to it and be astonished by the power and hope I receive from reading it again. There truly is power in the pages of Scripture! What a blessing we have. I hope that you had some time on Memorial Day to spend with friends and family. Hadassah and I had the pleasure of spending Monday with friends visiting from Congratulations HAA graduands! Especially to our very own Nik Koutavas! If you want to attend the commencement ceremony to celebrate with Nik and his classmates, it will be held tomorrow 10:00am at the Last week I told you about the NEW START plan for healthy living (Nutrition, Exercise, Water, Sun, Temperance, Air, Rest, and Trust). Today we will zero in on the first letter, Nutrition. There is a basic principle that will help you eat and feel healthier: the more whole, natural, unrefined food you eat, the better. Aim for whole grains, fruits, and veggies. Limit you intake of refined foods as much as possible, especially you intake of the worst of all refined foods: soft drinks.
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