Pastoral Musings

“O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the
words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in
parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of
old—what we have heard and known, what our
fathers have told us. We will not hide them from
their children; we will tell the next generation the
praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the
wonders he has done.” Psalm 78:1-4

These and other similar exhortations in the Psalms
(22:30, 31; 45:17; 79:13; 89:1; 102:18; 145:4) have
been our congregation’s motto and mantra over
the past six years; and we have diligently worked
at putting it into practice over the last two years –
establishing worship themes and services, bible
studies, confirmation classes and a marriage
ministry around this very idea that FAITH STARTS
AND IS NURTURED AND NOURISHED IN THE HOME.
Parents, and according to the Psalmist in the text
shared at the start of this article, fathers in
particular, are to share the faith, the Lord, with
their children. Yet, we gladly acknowledge that
the entire congregation is involved in the effort to
bring a child up in the Lord, to introduce them to
Him, to help them get to know Him and His great
love for them.

To that end St. John’s invests a lot of resources into
our childhood education ministry. We run a
preschool and day school to inundate our children
in the Christian faith. We have a Vacation Bible
School every summer (which by the way was
blessed with 85 children and 44 staff this past July,
a 60% increase over 2010). We hold Sunday School
classes during every school year (September –
May) in order to share Jesus Christ and His gospel
with children and adults alike. We thank God for
Mrs. Kim Tullock’s leadership in this ministry over the
last several years. We continue to seek and pray for
her replacement for this coming school year.

We are thrilled over the Fireproof film that will be
shared at our date night (September 9) and the
small group and Sunday morning bible studies that
will flow from it. We rejoice over the Lord’s working
in this area as the movie Courageous will run at the
Grand Haven Nine during the last week of
September. Courageous is a follow-up to Fireproof
and deals with being a godly father. We would
highly recommend everyone seeing it. Perhaps we
can even go as a group and help sell the place
out one night as a strong Christian witness to our
community and the staff at the Grand Haven
Nine.

It is thrilling to see how all the pieces are falling into
place as God blesses our ministry in His name. It
seems He continues to give us more and more
materials and mechanisms to put our Faith at
Home ministry emphasis into practice. We should
not be surprised for it is thoroughly Biblical, based
on His premises and promises.

Let me encourage each saint of the Lord here at
St. John’s to become involved in some if not all
aspects of this ministry. A bible study could be an
excellent place to start – or perhaps a date night –
or Sunday School or….

Yours for Him,
Pastor Dieter Haupt, dhaupt@sjlcs.org

P.S. Our preschool is filled except for 2 or 3 in the
three year old class and our day school has sixty-two
students enrolled (an increase of ten or 20%)
to date. PTL!