As we finish our first year I reflect on the adventure it has been so far to establish a ministry from scratch and to get to know many people. With the whole world in such flux right now it is hard to plan for the future, but we are praying about what our next year will be like. Here is what has been happening lately:

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En-Gedi Reaching out Through Churches and Schools

We are happy to have now had many opportunities to share with churches in the Holland area. We have been teaching a series of adult classes at Beechwood Reformed on "Images of Jesus" using PowerPoint® slides and objects from Israel. We also spoke at the "G@P" (Gathering at Providence) Christian Reformed Church, about the story of the wise men. We brought real myrrh and frankincense to share, and talked about what these gifts said about Jesus.

We have also had many requests to visit churches and Christian schools with our biblically correct, highly ornate high priest costume. (Left image: from "Come to the Feast!") (See the photos of the "Come to the Feast!" recap.)

Last week our executive director, Bruce Okkema, (above right) posed as the high priest, while I explaned the meaning of the costume's components for the 50+ first graders at South Side Christian Elementary.

Also, this next year we will be writing monthly commentaries and weekly emails to support Christ Memorial Church's Read Thru the Bible 2002 program. We hope that all of these "pictures" will deepen the impact of the Bible on people's lives.

Please feel welcome to invite us to your church or school. We really enjoy the ability to enrich people's love for the Bible in that way. Contact us by email or by phone.

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Buth Seminars A Success!

About a month ago, over 200 people got to hear Dr. Randall Buth, a Christian expert on Bible translation and Jesus' Jewish background, who gave a series of lectures sponsored by the En-Gedi Resource Center on understanding Jesus' teaching as his first listeners did. He discussed some of the difficult words of Jesus that have caused scholars to scratch their heads for ages, and put them back in context to reveal the insights we can gain from his culture. He showed us several beautiful wordplays and clever points that Jesus made that Christians have tended to miss without a knowledge of first century Judaism. Buth's take-home comment was that "Jesus was a master teacher - he is everything that you ever thought he was and much, much more!"

We are producing an audiotape set of 5 talks that Dr. Buth gave during this weekend series which will be available in a 3-cassette album, along with a booklet of the passages and references. If you are interested in ordering one of these, the cost is $20 + tax. You can email us your order by clicking on this link. Please provide a mailing address and phone number and we will contact you. The tapes will be available in January and will be announced on this website. We will include more information on the subjects of each talk at that time.

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Pastor's Breakfasts

Dr. Buth gave one of his seminars at our pastor's breakfast and it was enthusiastically received. In addition to explaining why Jesus gave the strange answer he did to the question "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"

He also gave the pastors a taste of his innovative Biblical Hebrew class that incorporates natural language learning and physical response.

We are excited that over 40 pastors have been involved in the series, and we are already lining up some outstanding speakers for the spring. The first will be on Thursday, January 17th when Rev. Bill Boersma, of Christ Memorial Reformed Church, will be presenting practical ways he has used these resources in his own preaching.

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Festivals for the Family Series

We held the final event in our festivals series last week called "Enriching Christmas Biblically". A few weeks before that, we had a seminar on the biblical feast of Thanksgiving, Sukkot. In both seminars we discussed ways of teaching biblical stories as part of our celebrations, and focusing on the richest and deepest meanings of the holidays. In November we discussed the concept of the Sukkah, a tabernacle to remind us of our frailty and God's sufficiency. Diane Walters demonstrated for us how she has taught this subject in her Christian school classroom. In our last presentation we discussed the real story of Christmas, the utter humility of Christ to be born in a filthy cave. Jayne Konynenbelt shared some beautiful activities she has done in children's worship and at home to celebrate Advent and Christmas, using concrete images and activities to talk about God's greatest gift to us. (We will soon have an article about that on in our "Articles" section.) We also included a little introduction to the festival of Hanukkah, which is what Jesus celebrated as the Feast of Dedication in John 10.

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EGRC in the News!

Recently there was an article about us in the Lakeshore Edition of the Grand Rapids Press. It is available at the following link:
          http://gr.mlive.com/news/gr_sections.ssf?/news/stories/20011130gengedi30105303.frm

We were happy for the publicity, and want to clarify a few things that may not have come across in the article. It is easy to get the impression that we intend to fill people's brains with facts, when our real purpose is to bring the Bible alive to fill people with a love for God. It also may have sounded like we don't want to be a ministry, but what we don't want is to be a church - a group that competes with other churches for supporters, rather than working with them. And, we do imagine opening a physical center someday when funding is available. Like many churches that start without a building, we are very much a living ministry and we are focusing on providing learning experiences and web resources right now.

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Once again we want to thank you for your support and interest this year as we have just gotten started. We have been amazed at the wonderful opportunities and blessed events that the Lord has given us. Still, the Lord seems to like to combine blessing and testing, and having our start during these tight economic times and in the wake of a national tragedy is really a trial. Please pray about supporting us as the year ends.

On Friday afternoons, at the end of the week, it is traditional to say -- Shabbat Shalom!

Lois Tverberg