About Our Church
Mission Statement
The Blawenburg Reformed Church is a family of God’s people united in Christ through the Holy Spirit. We commit our gifts to worship, hospitality, life-long learning, serving those in need, and proclaiming the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.
We are a family, a group of people with a common identity, children of the same parent, who is God. Through a miraculous revelation, we have been chosen to know who God is in the person of Jesus Christ. We did nothing to deserve this incomparable gift. It was simply God’s good pleasure to give it to us. This gift from God is called Grace.
Through our faith in Jesus Christ we know that God loves every human being who walks on the earth; that God loves us even when we are most troubled in heart or actions; that God is love itself. We know that we have been forgiven for the wrongs we have committed and that we are promised a great reward, which is eternal life in heaven if we hold fast to our faith.
It is our mission to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with anyone who is willing to hear it. Gospel means “good news.” We share the gospel with one another through worship, song, celebration, shared mourning, and fun. We have unlimited love to share and plenty of room to grow.
We Are Family
We Are Reformed
The Reformed Church is the second great reformed church after the Lutheran, and the Reformed Church in America is the oldest Protestant denomination in the United States with a continuing history. Founded by John Calvin in the mid-16th century in Geneva, Switzerland, the Reformed Church is so named because of its identity with the revolution of faith sweeping Europe.
Until recently, the Reformed Church motto was “reformed and reforming”; but the 2013 General Synod adopted a new motto that looks to the future—”transformed and transforming.” We do not and never will believe we are perfect, but always in need of improvement with God’s help. Like every major Christian denomination, our history has seen its share of disagreements and divisions, most of which have centered on heartfelt interpretations of scripture and the policies built upon them.
We continue to lead and adapt when conditions call for it. In the 1950s, the Reformed Church proclaimed its American identity by finally dropping the “Dutch” prefix. In the 1980s, we officially severed our ties (which have since been restored) with the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa to protest its complicity in the system of apartheid, although Reformed Church ministers in that nation played a dynamic role in the peaceful revolution of the late 20th Century.