Magyar Egyház, 2010 (89. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
2010-10-01 / 4. szám
8. oldal MAGYAR EGYHÁZ HUNGARIAN REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA GENERAL ASSEMBLY MEETING LIGONIER, PA November 19, 2010 BISHOP’S REPORT Bishop Demeter, Chief Elder Beke, Deans, Pastors, Chief Elders, Members of the General Assembly, Gests! Greetings to the members of the Bishop’s Council of the Hungarian Reformed Church in America and those in attendance. On behalf of the congregations of the Hungarian Reformed Church in America, 1 ask God's blessing on the labor and service of the General Assembly meeting. I especially thank the Bethlen Home for its continued support, so that we can hold our meeting here, where as always we gathered as brothers. We thank the Reverend Imre A. Bertalan, Pastor and Executive Director for his service and true Hungarian hospitality and those Bethlen employees who provided help for this event. It is my pleasure to greet everybody at this very important meeting of the Hungarian Reformed Church in America. In the last four years I was honored to be the leader of our Synod with Chief Elder Beke. 1 would like to greet everyone with the words of the Apostle Paul from the 2.Corinthians 5:14-15: “We are ruled by the love of Christ, now that we recognize that one man died for everyone, which means that they all, share in his death. He died for all, so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but only for him who died and was raised to life for their sake. ” 1 put this word on to your heart to say always: “We are ruled by the love of Christ... " I want your hearts to be encouraged and united in love for our beloved denomination by the Lord Jesus Christ. At the General Assembly of the Hungarian Reformed Church in America, Rt. Rev. Andor Demeter, Honorary Bishop greets the meeting Our progress is determined in part by our past. In the last 85 years, we Hungarian Reformed congregations have lived out of a truth: in Christ Jesus we are one. Since the beginning we have voiced the validity of our mission, to pass the Word of God to our Hungarian brethren. Today one description of our way of sharing that good news is: we are Hungarian Reformed, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. God is calling us to him, in this broken and injured world, we do have to option to choose life. Choosing life is attitude. It’s prayerfully focusing on God’s blessings; it’s deciding to live according to God’s will. Choosing life is also action. It’s caring for the body. For individuals, this means attention to exercise the faith. For church, caring for the body, means attention to the covenant by which we are related to God and each other. This is our mission and our duty as Hungarian Reformed Churches. In recent decades many pastors have seen their congregations decline precipitously. This has occacioned a great deal of hand-wringing at church council meetings as well as at denominational meetings. We are always talking about church growth. The church growth is also a movement in the last two-three decades, but this movement was not making churches larger but planting more churches. Over time the emphasis moved toward providing technical solutions to the problem of congregational decline. One of the biggest theologian Bonhoeffer found his American colleagues distressingly cavalier about the gospel and overly impressed with technique. If there is a common American failing, it is this. Pastors, lay leaders, members, all find themselves looking for the “quick fix” the “silver bullet” to address whatever crisis the church faces. America’s strogly pragmatic, problem-solving orientation is impatient of theological reflection and unwilling to endure long-term solutions. We heard about “exiting new programs” “the latest expertise” “running the church more like a business” are popular phrases in the mind of every church leader. As resources dwindle and congregational grumbling increases, pastors are tempted to try anything to make things better. As you know my vision is church planting. In this bed situation, when we are witnessing of weak congragations, I am convinced that one of the most effective ways of extending the Good News of Jesus Christ is the rapid planting of new mission congregations in the big cities around our churches in the Hungarian communities. New churches require a great deal of effort and investment of time, energy, love and faith from pastors and lay persons alike. This is a wonderful school of discipleship for all involved. The most serious problem with declining churches is not lack of resources, a changing neighborhood, or even incompetent leadership. The most serious problem is lack of clarity on mission. For many churches the mission was established years ago when Christendom was fully operational and one could assume that a large percentage of people in any given community were churchgoers. The mission then was to provide these people opportunities to worship, learn, and serve the community. These are good things. But what happens when Christendom is over? What happens when a smaller percentage of people attend church? What happens when the mission to serve the already churched is outdated? We have to know that religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, - worship by discipline, - love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless. We can no longer assume that everybody is a Christian and the community is living out values derive from the Gospel. We need to return to one of the features of the Apostolic Age wher the front door of the church is a door into mission territory. The Christian church has always been a missionary organization. It has always had good news to proclaim and to live. The mission is obscured when the church is “at ease in Zion”. But when the mission is clarified and vigorously pursued, growth, health, life are possible. The Good News, of course, is about Jesus Christ. It is about the early church’s insistence that something powerful had been set loose on the earth through his death and resurrection. To proclaime the Good News of Jesus Christ is not just to seek adherents to a
