All Articles For Bruinsma, Wilbur G

Previous article in this series: September 1, 2016, p. 473. As promised in our last article, we now print in full the study committee’s report on defining the task of the Classical Home Mission Committee, presented to and adopted by the June 1, 1932 meeting of Classis (slightly edited). “Beloved Brethren in the Lord, Your committee had the mandate to present a definite delineation of the actual task of the Classical Home Mission Committee and to advise classis in regard to this matter. More than once complaints were raised about the labors of the existing committee. Yet the reason this...

Previous article in this series: December 1, 2015, p. 114. The decade of the 1930s ushered in the era known as the Great Depression. The Depression actually started already in 1929, when in October of that year the stock market crashed, causing millions of investors to lose all their money. Business and construction began to slow down, resulting in a large-scale firing of laborers. By 1932 twelve million, about 25% of the work force, were without work. The farmers had already been battling severe drought and falling food prices through the 1920s. This continued through the 1930s. Neither were God’s...

Previous article in this series: December 15, 2015, p. 130. This is the second article presented by the Domestic Mission Committee (DMC) encouraging local churches to be more involved in mission work in the area of their congregations. I was asked by the DMC to write because I have been involved personally in this type of work in our outreach in the Pittsburgh area. In this article I intend to set forth a few suggestions regarding the method of local mission work. Of course, what is suggested is not meant to be the sole way of performing this work. There...

Previous article in this series: August 2015, p. 446. The Classis of the Protestant Reformed Churches met in session on September 18, 1929. A number of recommendations were received at this Classis from the Committee on Home Missions made up of Elhart, Korhorn, and VanDellen. Among these recommendations, Classis considered one that was of unusual importance: “that our leaders put forth every effort to instruct our members thoroughly in the basic doctrines and in the Confessions, in order that our members who come in contact with brothers and sisters of other churches may try to win them in the spirit...

Previous article in this series: May 1, 2015, p. 352. During the early formative years of the Protestant Reformed Churches, certain methods of domestic mission work became well established. It is important that we take note of these methods and offer an evaluation of them. We begin, however, not with a method of missions, but with the historically established scope of our domestic mission work. At the very start the three ministers and the elders of the Protesting Christian Reformed Churches did not labor to expand the witness of these churches on the basis of a fixed set of mission...

Previous article in this series: March 15, 2015, p. 280. It was in the year 1928 that the Protestant Reformed Churches began to advance toward establishing a “Classical Mission Committee” in order to do the work of missions in this small denomination. In the three previous years, organization of churches was not regulated by the classis (combined consistories), but was left, for the most part, in the capable hands of Rev. H. Hoeksema. By the instigation of Fuller Ave. (First PRC of Grand Rapids), a motion was approved by classis to “work toward performing home mission work,” and to “appoint...

Three faithful ministers of the gospel banded together, forsaken and alone. We can only imagine what the Reverends Herman Hoeksema, Henry Danhof, and George Ophoff felt when the decisions made by Classis Grand Rapids East of the Christian Reformed Church (December 12, 1924) and Classis Grand Rapids West CRC ( January 22, 1925) stripped them of office in the Christian Reformed Church. Out of 247 ministers in the Christian Reformed denomination,1 only these three men with the majority of their elders and congregations had boldly maintained the truth of sovereign, particular grace over against the error of common grace. One...

Good families do not just happen. Many young men and women enter a rela­tionship and even marriage with­out ever giving that a thought. They have these romantic, fairy­tale expectations that they will sim­ply, without any effort, fall in love, marry, have a few children, and live happily ever after. They think that no matter whom they marry or what they do in dating and in marriage, life will somehow work out for the better and they will settle into a routine of happiness and bliss. Many find out later that this is not so! Good families do not just happen....

Previous article in this series: March 15, 2014, p. 278. The Form for the Ordination of Missionaries in the Protestant Reformed Churches is employed to ordain missionaries to be sent either to the heathen or to the dispersed. A mission work directed “to the heathen” has become synonymous with foreign mission work. A missionary sent “to the dispersed” labors in our own country or other Christianized lands. From the Form it is clear what is meant by those who are dispersed. They are the scattered (dispersed) sheep of Christ’s pasture. These sheep had ancestors that were faithful members of the...

Previous article in this series: March 1, 2014, p. 256. In this article we continue to examine one of the paragraphs of the preamble to the constitution of the Domestic Mission Committee of the Protestant Reformed Churches. That paragraph reads: We believe that this missionary activity includes the work of church extension and church reformation, as well as the task of carrying out the Gospel to the unchurched and heathen. However, we are convinced that our present duty lies primarily in the field of church extension and church reformation (1942 Acts of Synod, p. 26). In our last two articles...