Calvin Student Service Raises Awareness, Dollars

September 12, 2005 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Student Service at Calvin College Raises Awareness and Over $6,000

The Sunday-evening worship service at Calvin College generally features a
packed house and joyful worship.

This past Sunday evening the tone of the service was a little different as
worship leaders at the college focused the LOFT (Living Our Faith Together) on
the impact of Hurricane Katrina on people in the Gulf Coast and beyond.

College chaplain Dale Cooper used as his sermon text the words of the New
Testament's book of Matthew as found in the fourteenth verse of the fourteenth
chapter.

In that verse Matthew notes that Jesus landed and saw a large crowd and that
"he had compassion on them and healed their sick."

That text was the centerpiece for a sermon and a service, says Cooper, that
had at its center simple yet profound goals.

"First," he says, "we were determined not to exploit others' suffering and
trouble, but rather to express our solidarity with them via lament and
stewardship. We also sought to encourage our own hope and trust in the Lord in
the face of an event which has potential to smother and kill faith and hope."

Cooper adds: "I experienced the service last evening as one of the most
anointed, energized and worshipful events that I have ever been a part of. The
students were so open and full-throated in their expression both of lament and
hope."

Calvin students also were generous.

The LOFT service included an offering to be split equally between the
Christian Reformed World Relief Committee and the American Red Cross.

Students gave $6,390.38 for the ongoing hurricane relief efforts of those two
organizations.

Paul Ryan, coordinator of Christian formation through worship for Calvin, says
simply: "Praise God for such a blessing."

Calvin is continuing to raise funds for hurricane relief at donation stations
across its campus, an effort that will continue through September 18, the day
Calvin counselor Dan VanderSteen is slated to return from Louisiana where he
will have spent two weeks doing counseling work with people displaced by
Katrina. There are more than a thousand people in the shelter where
VanderSteen is working, many of whom are medically ill, elderly, mentally ill
and addicted.

Contact Dale Cooper at 616-526-6244
Also see http://www.calvin.edu/news/events/hurricane-response/

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Received on Mon Sep 12 09:40:52 2005