News

CRC Langwarrin Installation Service:

Langwarrin Christian Reformed Church is grateful to be able to introduce to you our new Pastor- elect who arrived on January 1st, this year. He is Lourens Nel, together with his wife Alet, and children Henco 12, Valerie 7 and Aletia 4 years old.

Lourens and Alet and family are from South Africa and Lourens has been an ordained minister in our sister church, the GKSA (Gereformerde Kerk of Suid Africa) since 2002, but answered our call and gracefully accepted the ministry in Langwarrin.

Lourens will be installed as Pastor of the Langwarrin congregation on the 5th February at 2.00 in the afternoon D.V. at the Langwarrin Christian Reformed Church, 10 Warrandyte Road, Langwarrin with Pastor Peter Mechielsen officiating and everyone is cordially invited to attend.

Following a review of his case by his neurosurgeon in September, Rev Geoff van Schie was diagnosed as not needing any further surgery.

Since then further complications have arisen mainly manifesting in symptoms of breathlessness and high blood pressure.

A respiratory specialist has informed him he has a lung disease which involves a reduced ability to convert the air he breathes into oxygen for the blood. This is what causes the breathlessness as his body wants more air to convert to oxygen, the lack of which reduces his physical and mental ability. At this time the specialist will see him mid next year and redo a round of tests to compare with the first set completed recently.

Thankfully he has been able to return to one day a week of work since the beginning of October and for now is concentrating on his preaching duties in the Wheatbelt on a weekly basis.

Due to the longer than expected recovery of Rev Geoff van Schie from spinal surgery in 2011, it was agreed by the Synodical Committee for Ecumenical Relationships to send Rev Leo Douma to the January Synod of the GKSA to be held at Potchefstrom, South Africa.

Of special interest to the CRCA as to the agenda are appeals concerning the latest decisions concerning women in office, as well as the unification process of the GKSA with its mission churches.

Rev Douma will extend fraternal greetings on behalf of the CRCA and as a formal international delegate, will have the privilege of taking the floor during synod discussions.

In November CRC Toowoomba extended a call to Rev Jim de Witte, now serving CRC Dandenong in Victoria.

The Toowoomba congregation has been served by emeritus minister Rev John Westendorp after Rev Werner Viljoen sadly needed to resign his post and has since moved into chaplaincy at a local school.

The 2012 Thy Kingdom Youth convention is starting only a matter of days from now. On 3 January 2012 around 300 young people from all around the CRCA and beyond will descend on Miginbil Hill, just outside of Uki, Northern NSW.

The churches of the CRCA have been informed that the dates for the 2012 synod are May 6-11th at the CRC Blacktown.

The Candidacy Committee informed the CRC churches that as of 1 January 2012, Mr. Ettiene de Wilzem will be commencing (Lord willing), his 12 months Vicariate.

The Candidacy Committee in its deliberations has seen fit to place Ettiene at Redlands C.R.C.

Candidate for the ministry of Word and Sacrament, Craig van Echten, successfully passed his final Classis exam in the Classis of WA at its November meeting.

His ordination will take place, the Lord willing, on Sunday 29th January 2012, during the morning service. We will then remain for a congregational luncheon, followed by an early afternoon service, led by Craig.

Several more positive responses have been received from either authors or websites of material previously published by T&S in its physical magazine.

These permissions to upload these items onto our website also extend to using new material in any future activity of T&S. This will save any new committee time in seeking these approvals once synod resolves how to proceed with T&S in the future.

The items previously published will soon be loaded up to the website as we begin to work through the previously published material from 2000 onwards.

Doctoral student, Rev Cor Vanderhorn, retired Presbyterian minister of Mt Evelyn, Victoria, is interested to hear from you.

He is studying these points about Kuyper’s - his Battle with Modernism, his Deep Spirituality and his Articulation of a Christian Worldview for a Ph D dissertation at the Free University in Amsterdam.

Work on uploading the 2010 feature articles into the back issues library is now complete. 36 items published from February to December 2010 are now available.

T&S has been receiving a positive response from various authors and website managers as to requests to upload articles and other items to its website.

Permissions have so far been received from Youth4him as well as 9marks. Not only have these organizations allowed us to upload items published in the physical version of T&S but we have also been granted permission to upload future items of interest for our stand alone publication.

We thank those who have been so generous and look forward to more positive responses.

At the moment we are concentrating on loading feature articles and will now move into 2010 before going back to 2000 and loading up all types of items to the end of 2010. After that Lord willing we will go to the 90s folders.

We have sent off emails today to various sources from which we gleaned articles for the physical magazine. Many requests have been lodged to both upload items already published in T&S as well as permission to upload new items in the future for the stand alone internet version of T&S.

Dr Steve Voorwinde will be retiring from the College at the end of this year. Steve has held the position of New Testament and Greek lecturer (professor) for the past 27 years, skilfully and faithfully serving the Lord Jesus in training and preparing others for Christian Ministry throughout our nations and beyond. Steve also served the church in USA (OPC) and Australia as a Pastor; leading CRCA congregations in Sydney and Kingston.

The CRC Blacktown has been pleased to announce its call to Rev. Brian Vaatstra has been accepted. Brian recently advised the churches he would be retiring from his work in the Kingston CRC towards the middle of 2012 and was open to the Lord's leading as to where to go from there.

We give thanks to the Lord for this acceptance of Blacktown's call as it now ends a two year search for a new pastor.

After 12 1/2 year as minister of Langwarrin, Pastor Peter Mechielsen will have his farewell service on Sunday 6 Nov. at 2.30pm at the Christian Reformed Church of Langwarrin.

The Rev. Lourens Nel from the Gereformerde Kerk in Elandskraal, Suid Africa has accepted the call from the Langwarrin Christian Reformed Church to become their new Pastor, after Pastor Peter Mechielsen's retirement, later on this year.
Lourens, Alet and their children Henco 11, Valerie 6 and Aletia 4 hope to be able to arrive in Langwarrin at the end of October this year.

In the past week new developments have taken place as to the presence of T&S in the CRCA and on the internet.

Synod 2009 had decided to direct the editorial committee to move toward a internet version and from 2011 to end all subsidization of the denominational flagship. This in the end led to the printed version of the magazine coming to an end after 56 years of publication and the standing down of the WA editorial team.

To this time the Synodical Interim Committee (SIC) has not been able to find a new editor to lead a new team for the internet version of T&S and it looked as though there would be no version of T&S until at least Synod 2012 made some decision as to its long term future.

Seeing there was no development towards the internet version, the SIC accepted an offer from the former editor (Rev Geoff van Schie) to bring the old and existing website up to date and to also load appropriate material from the issues of 2002 to 2010. An honorarium of $2,000 would be paid covering the 20 weeks to January 1st 2012 when this would be reviewed. This honorarium will be paid into the account of the Wheatbelt Christian Fellowship which is a church planting mission of CRC Perth. It will go towards running expenses of that ministry exclusive of stipend.

Even though the site has been unattended for the entire year, it is amazing as to the continuing amount of traffic it is attracting. Read on and consider the following statistics as to our website:

Individual Visits: January to June 2011 Note: These are not hits (see below) but individual people coming onto our site. Each visit looks at one page or more.	37,906
Individual Visits: January to August 26th 1pm WST	52,928
Hits: January to June 2011 Note: 'Hits' relate to page elements. A person looking at one page may see a banner, a picture and read an item = 3 hits that page. A visitor reading multiple pages would score many hits	177,162
Hits: January to August 26th 1pm WST	233,416

Search wording	Filter	Result
Australian Christian magazine	Web	Page 1, Number 5
Australian Christian magazine	Aus	Page 1, Number 4
Christian magazine	Web	Page 1, Number 5
Christian magazine	Aus	Page 1, Number 3
Christian magazine Australia	Web	Page 1, Number 3
Christian magazine Australia	Aus	Page 1, Number 2

Even as the Australia High Court deliberates on the legality of chaplains in State Schools the Oakey High School on the Darling Downs in Queensland has a new Chaplain.

Werner Viljoen is a minister of the CRCA but after serving the Toowoomba congregation for a little over a year he had to step down in 2009 due to his marriage coming to grief. After some time out Werner was invited to return to the Ministry of the Toowoomba CRC on a part-time basis at the beginning of 2011. However, due to Werner being the main caregiver of his five children he found it increasingly difficult to juggle family commitments and the demands of pastoral ministry.

In July this year Werner applied through Scripture Union for a position as a Schools chaplain. He began his work at Oakey High School in mid August on a four days a week basis.

Dan served his vicariate with the CRC Redlands in Brisbane and is currently assisting the Willetton congregation in Perth while Rev Tony van Drimmelen is on six months leave.

Oliver Heggers Passes Final Classis Exam

Oliver Heggers returned to Classis WA on Saturday, August 20th to present his sermon for the final Classis exam prior to his ordination in the CRC Willetton. At the previous Classis meeting in June, Oliver had passed the other subjects but due to a misunderstanding, his sermon was held over till the August meeting.

We are happy to report that the sermon was sustained and now Oliver is free to be ordained as he continues his work as a church planter out of Willetton in the suburb of Forrestfield.

Oliver had been trained at Trinity College in Perth before finishing off his training for one year at the Reformed Theological College as per synodical stipulations.

Forrestdale Church Plant:
We've been meeting as a core group of 13 (including kids) in Forrestdale since January. Our model is very much along the lines of The Crowded House with the focus being on sharing life together as church throughout the week and not just Sundays. We meet for dinner, fellowship and prayer Monday and Wednesday nights. We meet three times a week a 6am for morning prayer. Along with these organized get togethers we have a lot of informal contact throughout the week. Because the bulk of the core group live in and around Forrestdale this model works extremely well.

Sundays are characterized by coffee for an hour at 10am. After that the adults spend 30-45 minutes in the Word (I've been preaching through John) and the kids go off to Sunday school. This is followed by prayer and singing and then lunch around 12:30. Most Sundays we end up spending the afternoon together either relaxing and enjoying each other's company or we work together in someone's yard as an act of serving together. The idea is for this to become a ministry to many others in the community.

In the last month and a half, we've consistently had around 30 people present at both our Wednesday night and Sunday gatherings. About half of those are non-christians with their kids. We've seen one man come to Christ. He was baptized a few weeks ago. One lady has come back to Jesus after a long lapse in her walk. Two other ladies and one man are currently exploring the Christian faith and coming very close to giving their lives to Jesus.

Rev David Groenenboom accepted into Classis WA

Having accepted a call from the CRC Gateway in Western Australia, Rev David Groenenboom had his papers presented to the Classis of WA on Saturday, August 20th. He was welcomed by the Classis and his installation into the ministry at Gateway will take place Lord willing on Sunday, August 28th at 2.30pm.

The two ministers will be sharing the work, basically a 3.5/1.5 split of 70%/30% with David having the larger portion of the 'in house' duties. The stipend will likewise be split with CRC gateway responsible for just the one stipend.

David will be doing the bulk of the preaching and general pastoral, strategic development, training and mentoring; while Peter does some preaching, BILD, and some general pastoral duties.

On the days Peter is not available for Gateway he will be giving himself to chaplaincy work. When David is not officially rostered on with Gateway, he will be using this time to develop contacts within the community.

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CRC Australind has call accepted

The congregation of Australind in Western Australia has just received news that vicar Craig van Echten has accepted the call they had extended to him.

Craig graduated from the Reformed Theological College in 2009 and served his vicariate at the Reformed Church of Bucklands Beach in New Zealand.

The Australind congregation are looking forward to Craig's arrival at the beginning of 2012.

Rev Peter Kossen, also of the Australind congregation, will continue his 'tent' ministry working as a full time prison officer. As an associate pastor Rev Kossen will remain available to work alongside of Craig.

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Rev Ben Murphy begins his work at Willetton as an ordained Minister

After graduating from the Reformed Theological College in 2009, Ben Murphy served his vicariate with the CRC Willetton and having passed his final classis exam in the Classis of Western Australia, was ordained in the Willetton.

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Rev Tony van Drimmelen on Long Service Leave and then three month Sabbatical

Willetton CRC has granted Tony time away from the routine of ministry to be revitalized and challenged about ministry. A six months absence from the pulpit (July through to December 2011) will be make it possible to do some very exciting things.

One of the highlights will be at trip to Israel. On 6 September Tony and Regiena leave Aus to participate in a study tour through the Israel, Jordan and Egypt (www.underthefigtree.org). It promises to be a wonderful opportunity to retrace some of the foot steps of our Lord as well as visit some of the scenes of the great stories in the Bible. The plan is to visit Europe after that.

In order to make the most of his time on Sabbatical Tony has enrolled in two units of study at Trinity Theological College as an audit student, Pastoral Leadership and a unit on exegeting 1 Corinthians.

After 26 years in ministry this is entirely an act of grace on the part of the church council and a wonderful opportunity to be refreshed in the Word. Dan Kroon (candidate for ministry) has a six month appointment to assist Ben Murphy with preaching and teaching commitments in Tony’s absence.

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The Recovery continues for Rev Geoff van Schie

Since returning from holidays in February this year, Rev Geoff van Schie has been disabled by a severe back complaint which result in surgery on a ruptured disc in early March. This became complicated with a staph infection of that disc and as a consequence he has been off work till now. At this time his condition remains painful and is controlled by heavy pain killers. However there is real progress in his recovery with one hour walks now possible as part of his occupational therapy.

The next major development will be a further MRI scan on September 5th followed by a visit to the neurosurgeon on September 13th. This is to determine if the large disc remnant requires further surgery and to double check the infection is not starting up again.

Lord willing it is hoped that with a green light from the neurosurgeon, Geoff will be able to begin partial duties (preaching to begin with) from September 20th.

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