Sunday, February 26, 2012

Heritage Presbyterian Church

Today we worshiped at Heritage Presbyterian Church, 2262 Rochester Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15237, 412.366.1338, www.heritagepcusa.org, Rev. Brian Janssen, Pastor.

Bob’s thoughts:

We received a warm welcome, were reunited with some friends, and joined by our daughter and husband with their twins, so we had a lot of greetings.

This church makes good use of their projection screen by displaying most of the service on the screen (very useful if you are holding infants). The screen is then raised for the sermon and the large cross is revealed.

The building is modern style with a good social area and kitchen. We don’t normally get to visit the child care areas but needed to make use of the changing table. We were familiar with the building, but noticed minimal directional signage.

The congregational meeting was scheduled for after worship and a pot luck brunch…good Presbyterian dogma – feed them and they will come. I had an opportunity to skim over the Annual Report and was encouraged with how the church is being led.

The sermon was the first in a series, “The Struggle of Faith.” Having delivered a few babies and been at my wife’s side for delivery of our five, I can attest as much as a male can that birthing is a struggle. I agree that we make being “born again” sound like less of a struggle. My coming to Christ was all God: I was completely overwhelmed and came to Christ in a whirlwind, but there were plenty of struggles that came later.

I think God puts us in those grief situations with unbelievers to stifle our smugness over being saved.

I met the pastor before his trip to Malawi, Africa, and think he is a changed man.


Jan’s thoughts:

In spite of our history with this church, it has been some time since we worshiped here.

There is an excellent parking lot; the building is handicapped-accessible, neat, and orderly. There is no stained glass: the design is simple, pretty, clean, and well kept. It also was very good to see some old friends.

Fellowship Hall used to have an echo, but the acoustics have been fixed and it is now a very pleasant space in which to carry on conversations.

The bulletin is an 11 x 17 sheet folded in thirds, clear, easy to read, and attractively laid out.

The Prayer for Illumination was just that and placed appropriately, immediately prior to the Scripture readings.

The pastor is preaching a Lenten series dubbed “Our Life of Faith.” This first entry is called “The Struggle of Faith” and is based on Isaiah 6:1-8 and John 3:1-9.

He spoke about struggle as a part of life. He commented that many people who claim the title “born again Christian” like to look and act like they have it all together. People think a born again Christian has only peace, love, and comfort in their life, but that’s just not true. When storms enter the lives of those who don’t know Jesus, those people tend to seek out people who do know Him. That’s when those who know Him sometimes pretend to have all the answers and sometimes so simplify their response that it makes no sense and is ineffective.

 He pointed out that being born physically is not easy (for the baby or the mom), so why would we think that being born again would be easy? God calls us into struggle, and we need to embrace the suffering that leads to glory.

This message spoke loudly to me. I have been in the midst of storms and I have been the one someone turned to for answers, and I don’t know which is more difficult. (And I have humiliating memories of my failures at those times, too.) I believe one really must have that foundational relationship with Christ when the storm arrives; trying to build the foundation during the storm just does not work.

I can identify with the concept of being born again as a result of a storm, and I have recently wondered how long my storm will last. This message reminded me that the storm will end and when it does I will be a different person, hopefully one molded by God.

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