Welcome to Heritage Reformed Church
Greetings in the name of the Lord!
We would be grateful for the opportunity to meet you in person and worship our glorious God together. In the meantime, let us tell you who we are. We are a church, which means that we worship and serve God as we are guided by the Bible and live in fellowship with believers as the body of Christ. More specifically we are a Reformed Church, indicating the branch of Christianity to which we belong. ‘Reformed’ means that we follow the teachings of the Protestant Reformation, a recovery of the biblical Gospel (“Good News”). Most centrally is the declaration that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ. Lastly, we are Heritage Reformed, our specific group of churches with whom we have kindred spirits, support common causes, share a specific history, and receive support in many different ways.
Please look around, learn more about us, listen to sermons and hopefully God will give us opportunity to meet and serve together for His Kingdom’s growth.
Summary Beliefs
Our beliefs are summarized in Creeds and Confessions. We believe the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed are faithful statements of the basic beliefs of Christians universally. These Ecumenical Creeds set forth the biblical teaching of the Trinity, which means that the one God is three distinct Persons.
As a Reformed Church we also subscribe to “The Three Forms of Unity.” The Belgic Confession of Faith, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort comprise the Three Forms of Unity. These set forth more thoroughly the distinctively Reformed teachings in different ways. The Heidelberg Catechism serves as a doctrinal guide in “Catechism Sermons” seeking to strengthen us in our understanding of Reformed basic beliefs. Its three parts faithfully summarize the whole of the Christian life, “Misery, Deliverance, Gratitude.”
Grace
Grace can be defined as “unmerited favor.” It answers the question, “how can a sinner, be accepted by a holy God.” The Son of God has earned the acceptance of His people by living perfectly in their place and bearing their sins on the cross. What is distinctive about the Heritage Reformed Congregations, is our emphasis that grace isn’t just a theory to be understood, but exerts a power to change hearts and lives. This is what we call “experiential religion” which is truth moved from the realm of the mind to changing lives. The Person and work of the Holy Spirit is indispensable to the working in and working out of Christian holiness and service.
Worship and Evangelism
Jesus calls us to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” and to “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:37,39). It is our desire that our public life be oriented to God and to others. To do that we begin our weeks with Sunday worship services (9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.) and have a Prayer Meeting and a Bible Study on alternating Tuesdays. Daily personal devotions and family worship are emphasized as non-negotiable for Christian growth and usefulness.
Evangelism flows from worship, more than the reality of our small size. We know that our God is glorious and would seek others to know that too. We want to be good and caring neighbors, involved in lives while being explicitly oriented toward spiritual needs and opportunities. The Word of God calls us to “do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10). This is followed by the stance, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Galatians 6:14).
Our Pastor
Reverend Don Overbeek has been our pastor since October 2007. He, his wife Jodi, and their five children come from Grand Rapids, MI in the United States. Pastor Overbeek graduated from Hope College (B.A.) and Puritan Reformed Seminary (M.Div.) in preparation for sacred ministry. His theological areas of interest include the doctrine of the Trinity and biblical theology in the line of Geerhardus Vos.