All Articles For Bekkering, Wayne

Rev. Bekkering is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Pella, Iowa. The mutual supervision and the mutual censure of all the officebearers is a necessary and desirable thing. If it is lacking, some serious consequences will result. The first danger is that nothing will be done with respect to the question of faithfulness in carrying out the duties of the offices. This is the natural direction of things and this is the general trend that we see in the church world today. We as Protestant Reformed Churches are not immune to laxity in this area, and therefore need to...

Rev. Bekkering is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Pella, Iowa. Grief is the keen suffering that one goes through because of an affliction or loss. It can be looked at as God’s way of healing a broken heart. Grief is universal and natural. Sooner or later everyone has a time of grief in his life. We want to explore the pattern in grief, our dealing with grief as Christians, and God’s work in our grief. Most people who are hurting, no matter what the cause, go through a similar grieving pattern. On the other hand, each person’s loss...

Rev. Bekkering is pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of Pella, Iowa. The mission field is a very difficult place on which to work because the missionary may encounter people from many different backgrounds and with many different theological presuppositions and views. The missionary must be as open and undefensive as possible. That is not easy because people may throw all sorts of questions at him, which may cause him to feel threatened, vulnerable, and insecure. The missionary must be very sure of the foundation upon which he stands, so that if someone asks a question for which he has...

Rev. Bekkering is a minister of the Word of God in the Protestant Reformed Churches in America. Once a year a committee from Classis West arranges an office bearers conference to be held in connection with the meeting of Classis. On February 28, 1989 such a conference was held in South Holland, Illinois. Two worthwhile papers were presented. The morning session dealt with a paper presented by Rev. Ken Hanko on The Psalms, Metrical Psalmody, and The Psalter, and the afternoon session dealt with a paper written by Rev. Dale Kuiper entitled, The Congregational Prayer. These conferences provide not only spiritually...

We say that the Reformation was a return to preaching, and so it was; but that is true because God used the preaching to effect the Reformation. Often we think that the Reformation began on October 31, 1517 when Martin Luther nailed the 95,Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. But the foundation was already laid, for Luther had been preaching the Word for seven years in Wittenberg. Luther was above all a preacher.

The attack of Satan upon the Christian home and family is nothing new, only now it has become more bold. Always have the home and family been of prime concern for Satan, because they are two of the foundation stones of society — that is, society defined loosely as the sphere in which the church functions or the circle in which God’s people live and move in connection with all other men and things. Society as we know it depends on the home and family. All of our life and activity stem out of the home and family. 

Do you witness? Are you a witness? These are questions that are often asked in many churches in our day. Oftentimes these questions are asked from a wrong point of view. They are asked from the point of view that the decision to witness or not to witness depends on man. Whether or not a man witnesses is not the question. All men witness of the life that is in them. They are either witnesses of God or of the devil. All men have not the ability to witness of God because all have not the works of God’s grace...

We have been reminded of the solemn calling and responsibilities of the office-bearer of the church of Christ as we have only a short time ago witnessed the installation of the elders and deacons. This is a good time, in the first place, further to reflect upon their position in the church as those who are lawfully called of God’s church and consequently of God Himself and, secondly, to consider our calling and responsibility with respect to them.

Does the subject of the title strike you as a strange question? Do we really have a need for such an institution? Do you really understand what it takes to be a Protestant Reformed teacher? I think that there is more involved than we may first think. I had not given the subject much thought until I had opportunity to visit with a young man from one of our congregations who was considering going into Christian Education. This young man related to me some of the soul vexing experiences that he had gone through at one of the existing Christian...

ture that it is Moses’ understanding of the truth or Matthew’s interpretation of the truth or Paul’s reaction to the truth but never the truth per se. You see, cultural and historical circumstances that surround a statement of the Bible determine how it is to be understood. The new hermeneutic insists that one give full due to the human side as well as the divine side of the Scripture.  We could go on and on to show how the new hermeneutic manifests itself in the churches, but let this serve to show the very seriousness of this error.