Pastor’s Personal
Hi, I’m Theo
I was a little uncertain about preparing this introduction for our web page. The Pastor is not the church. Ministers come and go. If I were thinking of moving somewhere my search for a church would start with its written confessions and living convictions rather than a bio of their minister. Still, the minister’s bio will likely say something about the church itself. And anyone not raised in the church but by the Spirit’s leading searching for God may be helped by a little prior introduction to the preacher and what is important to him.
The Biblical personality I most identify with is the prophet Amos. Not that I have the personal courage and direct inspiration of the Old Testament prophets. But he tells us that he did not come to them as a professional prophet from the school of the prophets. He was a farmer from Tekoa who enjoyed what he was doing, but was moved by God to bring the Word of Life to his people.
I grew up on a dairy farm and very much enjoyed the planting and harvesting, the regularity of milking and feeding. Sure, sometimes it would have been nice to be free from chores, but there is something satisfying about working with our hands. There can be little doubt that except for his burning desire to be preaching instead, the apostle Paul actually enjoyed the time he spent making tents while bringing the gospel to the Gentiles.
I grew up without a father. My dad was killed in a tractor rollover when I was 7. There were 8 children, the oldest 12, the youngest just a few weeks. What was the formative influence of that event? Who’s to say. It meant we grew up with the example of a godly mother who knew what it meant to rely on the Lord. It meant many prayers from friends and relatives rose up to God on our behalf. It meant we saw the generous help of many people in the family of God.
At 30 the farm was left behind and academic preparation for ministry began. I call it academic preparation because the deeper personal preparation had been going on all along. History, Philosophy, English and Languages, were all interesting and helpful. Seminary was challenging and formative. Still glad when it was over.
Have to tell you about this lady who worked in the library at Redeemer College. Margaret Colyn was her name. She was always helpful and friendly. She often played the piano for chapel gatherings. Took a lot of persuasion, but she finally agreed to change her name to Hoekstra. Well, anyway, one thing leads to another and we have also been blessed with six children; Darrell (16), Katrina (15), Rosanne (13), Harrison (10), Joshua (7) and Grant (4). Our greatest pleasure is to see them grow up in the Lord.
So that’s about it for a bio. The first 15 years of my ministry were spent in a Reformed church in north-central Alberta (Neerlandia). We accepted the call to serve Grace Covenant Church on the Sunshine Coast of B.C. in June of 2005 and moved here in September. The church is small and I am looking for ways to begin working with my hands like Paul when he was making tents. But we share a concern to shed the light of the gospel in the world and make disciples as Christ commanded. And we do so from a Reformed understanding of the Bible that recognizes God’s gracious covenant with us in the blood of Christ as the unifying principle in theology, the rock solid foundation of our hope, and the motivation to love one another.
What are my Priorities?
Family is important to me :-). I could give the theological reason reminding everyone that the Spirit says one who does not govern his family well is not fit to serve in the church. But my family is important to me just because I love them and they love me, and we have learned to depend on each other and forgive each other.
People are important to me; members of the church who are the family of God, but also others. It’s possible to think of evangelism as if it were a matter of trying to save someone so you could notch your gun, or at least get a word about God in so that you could put a scratch on it. But that’s not what God intended. It is as we love our neighbours that the Lord saves those whom he has chosen; our neighbours being those we happen to come into contact with for whatever reason. I will still go door to door at times, but given our private society and the way the Jehovah’s Witnesses have given that a bad name it may not be the most effective work.
Preaching the word of God is important to me. I understand preaching to be the first task of the “preacher.” We are born again through the living and enduring word of God. We are sanctified by the word. We are guarded and kept in the way of truth and love by the word. “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
The peace of the church is important to me. Orthodox conservative Reformed people (among whom I count myself) are always ready to qualify the blessedness of peace by quickly adding “not at the cost of truth.” But too often our defence of the truth involves theological hair splitting that has more to do with being a so called follower of Peter against Paul than it does to bearing witness to the One who is Truth personified.
The growth of the church and the coming of the kingdom is important to me. We work for spiritual growth and increasing depth of understanding and commitment. We have weekly prayer meetings and study times. We want to learn how we can serve in the community. We also work for numerical growth through the spread of the gospel. If other Christians come to a Reformed understanding of the Word of God and want to worship with us, that’s great. But our greatest hope on this point is to reach those who do not know the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
The sacraments are important to me. The promises of God to us and to our children sealed in the sacrament of baptism are very precious. We are powerfully reminded each time we witness it that he has chosen us and covered our sins by the blood of the Son. At the same time we are reminded of our calling to love and serve him in thanksgiving. In the Lord’s Supper we receive the sign and seal of fellowship with God as we commune with him and he feeds us with his own body and blood spiritually. It has been a difficult struggle, but I have come to believe that the little children should come to the Table as well, both for the strengthening of their faith and for a witness to the unity of the whole body. For the benefit of some friends whom I thought were confused, I spent five years trying to prove from Scripture that the children should only come when they had matured and taken an oath of commitment to the Lord. But every line of Biblical argument fell flat in my own ears or wound up supporting their inclusion. It should not be a problem to serve in a church that includes the children only upon mature confession, but we are happy to have the freedom here to practice all that we believe.
Fun times and a healthy body are important to me too. Getting together with friends is always a blessing. Travel is exciting. I have played most sports and enjoyed them all, like to jog a couple of times a week, still play hockey sometimes, try to convince my family to get into hiking, take an occasional swallow of water with my coffee and donuts, drink a little wine with my meals (just for my stomach).
:-)If you want to know anything else you will have to call and ask. If you live on the coast and want to learn what the word of God teaches but are nervous about just walking into a worship service, give me a call and we can start wherever you want. If you are looking for a local church to join or coming to the Coast for a visit (It’s a great place!), do come and worship with us. We are small, but “do not despise the day of small things.” We are weak, but Jesus said “my power is made perfect in weakness” and “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit.”
