THE TOWER NEWSTHE TOWER NEWSTHE TOWER NEWSTHE TOWER NEWS THE SECOND REFORMED CHURCH

✞ The Rev. Dennis B. Wilcox, Pastor

Church Telephone: 201-343-7550 ❖ Fax: 343-0590 Anderson, Union & Ward Streets, Hackensack, NJ 07601

Volume 50 June, July 2006

Afternoon Fellowship Met Tuesday, June 13 at Noon

The women of the Afternoon Fel-lowship held their last meeting for the spring season. This group does not meet over the summer. They plan to resume again in September.

It was a delicious covered dish luncheon which included dessert with all the trimmings. Members brought their “blessings bags” which when totaled amounted to $#xxxx. These little red bags are given to each member over the year and each time you had or have a blessing or spare change, the "blessing" bag awaits your deposit. It is amazing how it adds up. This year the money will be given to xxxxxxx.

The next meeting of the group will be September 12. Mark your calendar. Have a blessed summer.

Fellowship Committee Hosted

Farewell Party For The Losche Family

The Fellowship committee honored Cynthia and Kent Losche at their last meeting with a farewell party. The Lo-sche's will be moving to Connecticut as of July 1. The committee and all the church wish them well in their new home and surroundings. They and their family have been active members for many years. Serving on several com-mittees and on consistory. Kent served on the Classis also and was recognized with a plaque for all his accomplish-ments. We will miss them, and look forward to their visit when in the area.

OUR RUMMAGE SALE WAS A HUGE SUCCESS Thanks to all who helped and all

who purchased, almost $1400 was realized.

Mark your calendar for the next sale which is October 20 and 21. Carol Miller has graciously accepted to Chair Fall Sale with the help of the Fellow-ship Committee and members of the congregation who volunteer their help.

OUR CHURCH FAMILY We transferred with our good

wishes, Norma Violante, who was on our inactive list, to the Ponds Reformed Church in Oakland.

Our sincere sympathy is extended to the family of Jennie Brotherton who passed away on May 12. Jennie was a long time member on the Teaneck church before coming here. Jennie joined our church by letter of transfer from Faith Van Vorst church on De-cember 19, 1965. In recent years she lived in Newton, NJ.

Our Property Committee

in Action! Deacon John Gottschall and his

painting buddy, Frank Conley have just painted the music/Sunday school gath-ering room. It looks great. Thanks to John and Frank for their gift of time. They also purchased and hung a badly needed a new door in the Youth Room for the closet. It’s been very busy! The entrance hall by the Anderson St. door. ?????

BASEMENT “PURGE” HAPPENED!

We filled the dumpster! Take a trip down to see the spa-

cious room enjoy the pictures on the bulletin board of the progress. About twenty willing volunteers showed up for the event. THANK YOU!

It will now be possible for the Mission Committee to display the clothes and items for the homeless.

Book Discussion Group Update

The Book Discussion group will not meet in July and will meet on Mon-day, August 7 at 1:30 in the Library. The book they will be reviewing will be “Victoria's Daughters” by Jerrold M. Packard. New members are always welcome. Just read the book and come to the discussion.

The Chat and Craft Group contin-ues to meet over the summer.

GREETERS FOR JULY

2 Rhea, Paul and James Talbert 9 .Padma, Monish and Wilson Dhalwani 16 Dot and Ted Northrop 23 Art DeBlasio 30 Evelyn Huber

GREETERS FOR AUGUST 6 Lewis Willey 7 Shirine, Gary, Michele, Elissa

and Kathryn Hickey 20 Barbara Newland 27 Althea Quigley Remember if you cannot make the

date, please call someone who can and

alert the office of the change. Thanks. SUMMER WORSHIP

Summer Worship is at 10:00 a.m. and will be held in our comfortable air-conditioned lounge. If you have guests, invite them to worship with you.

If you are traveling over the sum-mer and attend other churches, bring your bulletins back. We will make a place on the bulletin board to display them. It is always fun to see other churches bulletins. See you at Summer Worship.

Have Your Served? Have you served refreshments

following worship? If not, please sign up on the Action Table for a date. If you have and would like to do it again, please sign up. The calendar is there. Forest and Grace Brown prepared the lemonade to be served. This is a great way to meet members and friends. It doesn't involve a lot of time, and you will be glad you did and encourage your friends to sign up also. You do not need to be a member of the congre-gation to volunteer.

Shifting the Focus Jesus teaches us above all to love

God with all our heart, soul and mind. Yet, too often we let the temp-tations and distractions of our world keep us from living up to that com-mandment. We are sometimes overly concerned with earthly pursuits and neglect the simple truth that our Fa-ther loves us and asks in return only that we love him back.

How can we rearrange our priori-ties and shift the focus of our lives back on God? Spiritual growth re-search gives us a list of six behaviors that can help us do just that: 1. Worship – Attend worship ser-

vices regularly. 2. 2. Prayer – Bring your concerns

to God; bring also your thanks- givings.

3. Bible Study – Read the word of God and reflect on its meaning in your life.

4. Fellowship – Work, play, and socialize with other Christians. Peer relationships exert a power-ful life-shaping force among young and old alike.

5. Financial giving – Make good use of the blessings that God has bestowed upon you.

6. Service to others – When we find ways to help those around us in need, we are truly doing God’s work.

Which of these six behaviors is most important in your life right now?

Which behavior do you most need to add or strengthen?

Blood Drive

The May 6th Pints for Kids Blood Drive was a success. 27 pints were collected and many first time donors provided the blood bank with new re-ferrals.

A special thanks to Charlie Schneider for all his hard work in or-ganizing the drive and to his commit-ment to community outreach.

PASTOR’S PEN

Remember the snow, ice, and bad weather...and getting a call from an elder or deacon that worship was cancelled? It worked rather well. Most folks got the mes-sage, and everybody stayed safe. It worked so well we (the Consistory) decided to use it more and call it “the Care Chain” – that name being suggested by an elder.

Here’s how it works. When there is a special need to let the congregation know something – which can’t be announced on Sunday during the Church’s Life—use the Care Chain. For example: when the weather turns dangerous we will activate the Care Chain and put a special announcement on the church’s answering machine, when there’s a death and funeral or memorial service that happens between Sun-days, or when a special prayer request can’t wait until Sunday morning to be an-nounced.

To be a special need means it has to be special. That involves time constraints and church family membership. If we can announce it on a Sunday morning – we will. We won’t use the Care Chain as a bulletin board or a “sorry I forgot to get that in the bulletin or the Tower News.” And we have to have it limited to church family concerns. That is not to say that all prayer requests are not important. They are, cer-tainly to the people making them. However, all prayer requests are not concerning the whole church family. To be “special” they must be about or concerning our church family. Otherwise, the Care Chain gets weakened when we have to explain the link to the whole church family of the Second Reformed church.

This is going to involve a judgment call on my part as the pastor. It’s tempting to try to make everybody happy. However, that is not worth lessening the impor-tance of personal safety or church family concerns. When we activate the Care Chain, it’s for us or about us. We all know how that works in families. It’s the same in our church family. It’s what makes family special.

With and without apologies,

Dennis B. Wilcox Pastor

A Special Visit The YOUth Missions group visited

with Donna Abraham on June 4th to share their experiences working on the MS Walk for a Cure that took place on April 23rd. YOUth Missions raised over $3300.00 in donations. They presented Donna with a scrapbook that they made documenting their funding raising efforts and photos from the walk, as well as photos from other YOUth Missions activities

SAVE the DATE - September 4th

Missions Committee will be hosting their annal Labor Day BBQ for the homeless on September 4th in the church p a r k i n g l o t . Volunteers are needed to help serve and s h a r e t h e d e l i c i o u s f o o d . A sign up sheet can be found on the Ac-tion Table in the Church Lounge. Questions concerning the BBQ or any Missions project can be sent to mission-s o u t r e a c h @ f a s t m a i l . f m ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ SAVE the DATE - October 15th - 19th F A M I L Y S H E L T E R W E E K Volunteer HOSTS and Cooks are needed to fill the week of October 15th -19th. The Family Shelter has housed, nour-ished and provided support services for 376 families who are not served by or eligible for any other sheltering pro-grams for homeless families in Bergen County. Lack of affordable housing con-tinues to be the primary reason that our families must endure the indignity of h o m e l e s s n e s s . These five days are a very important part of the Second Reformed Church out-r e a c h t o t h e c o m m u n i t y . Please be a part of this effort. A sign up sheet can be found on the Ac-tion Table in the Church Lounge. Questions concerning the Family Shelter or any Missions project can be sent to m i s s i o n s o u t r e a c h @ f a s t m a i l . f m

Afternoon Fellowship and YOUth

M i s s i o n s T e a m U P The Afternoon Fellowship and YOUth Missions groups are teaming up to help the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans Child Development Program (CDP) collect ART SUPPLIES. The CDP is rated highly in New Orleans and will be a necessary resource to those returning to the city. Enough work has been completed so the education wing was able to open on January 17th. But s u p p l i e s a r e s t i l l n e e d e d . Your help is greatly needed during these troublesome times and will be greatly a p p r e c i a t e d . A collection box can be found near the Action Table in the Church Lounge A r t S u p p l i e s N e e d e d Construction Paper - Large and Small s i z e W a s h a b l e M a r k e r s W a s h a b l e P a i n t A p r o n s S c i s s o r s - B l u n t E d g e C r a y o n s - 2 4 C o u n t C o l o r e d P e n c i l s # 2 P e n c i l s Erasers - Rub Clean Preferred E l m e r s G l u e 12” Rulers

THE TOWER NEWS

Audrey F. Michel

Editor

Phyllis Hall Layout & Design

Marie Grumbrecht

Circulation

Sunday School 10:00 A.M. Worship Service 10:00 A.M. Adult Education 11:15 A.M.

Web Address:

churches.rca.org/secondreformed E-mail:

secondreformedchurch@hotmail.net

Mailing Address: 436 Union St., Hackensack, NJ 07601