Covenant News

Grand Rapids Celebrates 125 Years - Mission Focus

GRAND RAPIDS, MI (October 28, 2005) - First Covenant Church always has been known for its commitment to missions. At times, 50 percent of its budget has been dedicated to missionary support.

"It is such a strong sense of the church's identity," Pastor Craig Swanson (accompanying photo) said Sunday following the service in which the church continued to celebrate its 125th anniversary. "It's been at the heart of the church."

In his sermon to the congregation, Evangelical Covenant Church President Glenn Palmberg said, "The challenges of today may be different as are the methods, but still the goal is the same - to live with Christ at the center."

Living from that center will enable the church to avoid temptations, he suggested. There is the temptation to lose the passion for worldwide mission and concentrate only on local concerns. The heart of Jesus is to go into all the world - and not just in word, but also in deed, Palmberg stressed. He painted a vivid picture of the scope of the challenge, observing that the number of children who die each day from poverty related disease, starvation and other problems is the equivalent of 200 fully loaded jumbo jets crashing each and every day.

Many people in today's world have become "consumers" of faith and church programs, and the temptation for churches is to develop a mentality in which they just deliver goods, Palmberg noted. "The call of the church is to give people what they need," he said, and not just what they want.

"As the church spreads the promise of eternal life, it will help the world to begin living the heavenly promise today by living by Christ's ways," he continued. "The church must be prepared to say and do things that shock the world because He (Christ) is shocking."

Swanson honored the congregation's commitment to those shared ministries to which the denomination gives leadership, saying it was vital to the past and the future of ministry. "We do not stand by ourselves," he said. "We don't know Christ individually. In the same way, we are part of a larger family of churches."

Following Sunday's service, Swanson said the church will "fully and creatively" meet the challenges of the future, even if all the challenges are not yet clearly defined.

The church has set up a history room with a rotating display of items to honor the congregation's past. Featured Sunday were pictures of all of the church's former pastors along with musical instruments that have been used over the years and copies of all the hymnals First Covenant has used.

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