March, 2007
Let us pray…
Father, we love You.
We praise You as the prayer-hearing God. We thank You for giving us prayer as a way to live in loving
fellowship with You. Thank You, Jesus, for modeling prayer so clearly and perfectly
for us and for interceding for us before the Father’s throne. Please teach us
how to pray as You taught the disciples long ago. And
thank You, Holy Spirit, for living in our hearts and helping us know how to
pray. Give us the spirit of grace and supplication; and help us hear the
Father’s voice.
Fill us, Lord, with the knowledge of Your will. We especially want to know Your
will regarding prayer so that we may learn to love to pray as You loved to
pray. Help us to build a church that is truly “a house of prayer”. Give us a
clear sense of what our church will look like as it becomes a praying church.
Give us patience when things go slowly. Give us faith to believe that You are working even when we don’t see the results. Help us
to stand against every attempt of the evil one to diminish prayer in our
church.
Hear us Father as we come to You in the name of Your Son Jesus Christ and by the power of
the Spirit. Amen.
Keys
To Becoming A Praying Church
The prophet Samuel said to the people of
Here are some essentials for becoming
a prayer-devoted church:
·
Get
God’s guidance
·
Lay
a foundation of prayer
·
Do
a lot of teaching and training on prayer
·
Bathe
ministries and ministry leaders in prayer
·
Integrate
prayer into all the meetings of the church
·
Make
corporate prayer a high priority
·
Provide
a variety of opportunities for people to be involved in prayer
·
Constantly
communicate prayer needs, answers and opportunities to pray
·
Encourage
personal and family devotions
·
Balance
inward- and outward-directed prayer
·
Balance
reactive and proactive prayer
·
Move
forward one step at a time
selected
Donald Seitz had suffered through a
long day during a bad week at his office on
On his way home from a business call,
he drove past the Greater Pleasant View Baptist Church in
"He who kneels before God can
stand before anyone," it said, in black, movable letters inserted by hand
into slots on a plain white background.
Seitz pulled over and got out of his car to study the
sign. "It's all about timing,"
he said. "I've driven past thousands of church signs in my life, but this
was the right sign on the right day. It got me. That's the thing about these
signs. They grab you when you least expect it. They move you, somehow."
Before long, the president of Redbird
Music crossed the line between intrigued and somewhat obsessed.
Along with his wife and their young son, he packed their
car full of camera equipment and "lots of sippy
cups" and hit the road. His goal was to find as many of these old-fashioned
signs as possible -- the kind that say things like "Coincidence is when
God chooses to remain anonymous," "Exercise daily, walk with the
Lord," "God answers knee mail" and "Give God what is right,
not what is left."
They spread their trips over three
years and Seitz stopped keeping track of the miles after they passed the 20,000
mark. The result was "The Great American Book of Church Signs," which
contains 100 photographs taken in nearly 40 states. The pilgrimage, he said,
was like reading "one long American sermon."
Seitz did have questions. He wondered if these signs are
still common at rural churches, but rarely used by city megachurches.
Also, do some denominations embrace them, while others they are too simplistic?
Would he find a red-church vs. blue-church pattern?
Many of his preconceptions were based
on his experiences living and driving in the Bible Belt,
especially two-lane roads in the Southeast.
"This book could have been done
in
"Church signs are more common in
some places than others, but if you keep looking you'll find them at all kinds
of churches all over the country."
Thus, the Harmony Hill Church of God
in
The Tompkinsville
(Ken.)
Seitz said he was surprised that he
saw very few signs that included political themes, although it was easy to read
between the lines of one that said, "The Ten Commandments are still posted
here." It was also easy to interpret another marquee that stressed,
"God is not a Republican or a Democrat."
This is not advanced theology. The
message on a typical sign is only eight words long and is the product of a
volunteer's clever imagination, research in old church bulletins or, in the
digital age, a quick search on the World Wide Web. Most combine a chuckle with
a moral message that strives to appeal to strangers as well as members.
After all of his travels, Seitz
decided that the archetypal church-sign message was this one: "Life is
fragile. Handle with prayer."
"It's succinct, it has that
little pun in there and it's powerful, if you think about it for a
minute," he said. "That's the essence of a good church sign message.
That's what you're trying to do -- get people to stop and think for a
minute."
Terry
Mattingly (www.tmatt.net) directs the
Invite Someone To Church
In a research project that was
conducted among several hundred unchurched people, there were some surprising
results. One amazing finding was that among those unchurched people who were surveyed, ninety-six percent said that they are at least
somewhat likely to attend church if invited.
It is estimated that there are as
many as 160 million people in the
So be encouraged to invite people to come with you to
attend a church service or a Bible class. These are opportunities for people to
hear and learn about Jesus and the meaning of the Christian faith and life.
Find out the emphases for specific
Sundays and use them as invitational opportunities. You can say to a friend,
"Next Sunday is going to be an 'All About Prayer
Sunday.' Our pastor will answer such questions as: What is prayer? How can I be
sure God listens to my prayers? Can I change God's mind if he seems to be
saying 'no' to me?"
What should you do if people decline
an invitation or don't follow through on an invitation? Invite again - and
again - and again. There are many stories of people finally following through
and attending even after months and years of saying "no." Be
persistent in your inviting and patient with invitees. They are likely to come
eventually.
Let me tell you a true, but humorous and slightly
scandalous story that comes out of the early days of the church.
When
the father of Origen, a third century theologian, was arrested for being a
Christian, Origen, then only 17, was aflame with the desire to follow his dad
and share in glorious martyrdom. His mother pleaded with him not to go, but the
headstrong boy did not want to listen to reason. His quick thinking mother did
what she could. She hid his clothes. Though Origen stormed and protested, she
wouldn't reveal where they were hidden. He couldn't leave the house, and so he
was unable to volunteer for martyrdom.
Isn't
it interesting? Origen was brave enough to be martyred, but not brave enough to
go outside naked. Stepping outside without clothing would have sped up his
arrest and imprisonment, but it was a step he was unwilling to take.
In
a sense, I suspect that talking with a friend about our faith is, for many of
us, the equivalent of going outside naked. It makes us uncomfortable. We feel
exposed. We declare that we will give our lives for Christ if He should ask it,
but to risk a bit of embarrassment for Him seems to be beyond our level of
discipleship. How sad!
Under New Management
A certain Army man had been a heavy
drinker for 35 years. For all those years he had been angry - angry at everyone
and everything. Finally, he encountered Christ and his whole life changed.
He was speaking once before a group
of medical people. He told them of his personality change, how he was now sober
as he once had been drunk; considerate as he once had been severe; concerned
for others as once he had been selfish and self-serving.
A psychiatrist, who believed that
personalities are so firmly set in early life that no one can change, protested
to the Colonel that at his age a person could not have such a radical
transformation.
"Well," replied the
Colonel, "that may be true. But I am under new management - I answer to
another authority - the highest and truest there is."
God's
Three-Dimensional Purpose For Us
There's an old story about a pilot who
came over the intercom and said, “Good news, ladies and gentlemen: We've got a
very strong tailwind and are making excellent time. The bad news is that our
navigation equipment has gone down, so we have no idea where we are.” Perhaps this
is a fitting analogy for many of us. We're making great time on a road to
nowhere. We're on the fast track, but we don't really know where all of this is
headed. When we finally get what we've wanted all these years, we discover that
it wasn't really what we wanted after all. So, we hop on another treadmill, but
it leads to the same disillusionment. How far do we have to travel, before we
turn around, go back to that last intersection and ask for directions again?
It is interesting to go back to the
days of idealistic youth and recall the things we hoped for, the kind of person
we thought we might become. But such nostalgic recollections can be depressing.
We wonder where the years have gone and what happened. Could it be that we took
the wrong turn somewhere along the line? Is it too late to rectify an error in
judgment?
As followers of Jesus, we say that
the answer is, “No! It's never too late.” We always have the opportunity of
turning back and getting on the right track. Our source of direction is far
greater than the people who say, “You can't miss it.” There is a source that
can tell us what life is really about. Found in the pages of Scripture,
particularly the wisdom literature, are directions not just to “live and learn”
but to “learn and live.” The promise of skillful living is made to all those
who will “listen to advice and accept instruction” (Proverbs
Three Dimensions of God's Purpose for
Us
While Scripture provides us only glimpses of God's ultimate purposes in
creating the cosmos, the Word does reveal God's universal purpose for
believers. In short, this purpose is to know Christ and to make Him known. God
does not want anyone to perish, but desires that everyone come to repentance
and enter into a relationship with Him through the new birth in Christ (2 Peter
3:9). Once a person becomes a Christian, God wants that person to grow in
Christ and be “conformed to the likeness of His Son” (Romans
God also has a unique purpose for
each of us, and this relates to our distinctive temperaments, abilities,
experiences, spiritual gifts, education and spheres of influence. Why do you
get out of bed in the morning? What is your life purpose? Few people can
articulate a clear purpose statement for their lives. It is ironic that people
tend to put more effort into planning a two-week vacation than they do in
thinking about the destiny of their earthly journey.
Biblically speaking, there are two
things on this planet that are going to endure: people and the Word of God. If
we take God's eternal Word and invest it in eternal people, then we're leveraging
the temporal for eternity. We're actually sending something ahead of us into
eternity. It's not what we leave behind that's important; it's what we send
ahead.
Our little piles of goods will fall
into someone else's hands after we're gone. Someone else will take our
possessions and our positions. The world will go on without us, and we will be
quickly forgotten. This might be a major cause of depression if it weren't for
the fact that God calls us to place our hope on that which lasts and to invest
in that which will endure. It's not enough for leaders to have purpose and
passion; they need to be passionate about the right things. Leaders must come
to view this world from eternity's perspective.
With this perspective, we will place
more value in people than in possessions. Rather than using people to gain
possessions, we will use our possessions to gain people. The marketplace
becomes an arena in which we can accomplish things that will last forever. Our
associations become areas of influence where we can alter a person's eternal
trajectory. There is no secular part of life. When we view others the way God
views them, every place becomes holy ground, a place where God is working in us
and through us to accomplish His universal purpose of bringing about the
abundant life of Christ in men and women. We become people who minister to
others by manifesting eternal values and by loving and serving people with
eternal things in mind.
Relationships are the currency of
heaven. Being rightly related to God and rightly related to others—this is true
righteousness. God, who loved us first, makes it possible for us to love Him.
Loving Him makes it possible for us to love others and dwell in a community of
believers, united in our love for Christ and one another.
What is your purpose for being on
this planet? If you have not developed a purpose statement for your life, ask
God to guide you in the process of creating one that fits with your passion and
gifts. A biblical purpose is an unchanging reason for being. Your purpose
statement must include something of the transcendent. Don't settle for a
purpose that only includes excellence in the temporal arena. This is something
that will animate you whether you're young or old, single or married, have
children or not. This is not something that ends in retirement or changes
according to circumstances or season of life. Put this purpose in a
transcendent context by adding a spiritual dimension to why you're doing what
you're doing. Then you can be sure you're embracing the things that are worth
embracing.
Do You Have Faith?
Ken Davis, a youth pastor, has a way
of discovering whether someone actually does have faith. In his book "How To Speak To Youth" he tells of a college lesson he had
to prepare for his speech class. He says, we were to
be graded on our creativity and ability to drive home a point in a memorable
way. The title of my talk, he says, was, "The Law of the Pendulum." I
spent 20 minutes carefully teaching the physical principle that governs a swinging
pendulum. The law of the pendulum is: A pendulum can never return to a point
higher than the point from which it was released. Because of friction and
gravity, when the pendulum returns, it will fall short of its original release
point. Each time it swings it makes less and less of an arc, until finally it
is at rest. This point of rest is called the state of equilibrium, where all
forces acting on the pendulum are equal.
He then attached a 3-foot string to a
child's toy top and secured it to the top of the blackboard with a thumbtack.
He pulled the top to one side and made a mark on the blackboard where he let it
go. Each time it swung back a new mark. It took less than a minute for the top
to complete its swinging and come to rest. When he finished the demonstration,
the markings on the blackboard had proved his thesis.
He says, I then asked how many people
in the room BELIEVED the law of the pendulum was true. All of my classmates
raised their hands, so did the teacher. He started to walk to the front of the
room thinking the class was over. In reality it had just begun. Hanging from
the steel ceiling beams in the middle of the room he had fashioned a large,
crude but functional pendulum (250 pounds of metal weights tied to four strands
of 500-pound test parachute cord.).
He then invited the instructor to
climb up on a table and sit in a chair with the back of his head against a
cement wall. He brought the 250 pounds of metal up to his nose. Holding the huge pendulum just a fraction of an inch from his face.
Once again he explained the law of the pendulum to the teacher who had
applauded only moments before, "If the law of the pendulum is true, then
when I release this mass of metal, it will swing across the room and return
short of the release point. Your nose will be in no danger."
After that final restatement of this
law, he looked him in the eye and asked, "Sir, do you believe this law is
true?" There was a long pause. Huge beads of sweat formed on the teacher's
upper lip and then weakly he nodded and whispered, "Yes." He released
the pendulum. It made a swishing sound as it arced across the room. At the far
end of its swing, it paused momentarily and started back. Ken Davis said he
never saw a man move so fast in my life. He literally dived from the table.
Deftly stepping around the still-swinging pendulum, Ken asked the class,
"Does he believe in the law of the pendulum?"
Do you?!
Many years ago the great explorer, Sir Francis
Drake, was attempting to recruit a number of young men for an upcoming
exploration. He gathered them around and told the group that if they came with
him they would see some of the most marvelous things their eyes could ever
behold. Sandy white beaches, juicy fruits, foreign peoples,
priceless treasures, and gorgeous landscapes. And he told them that this
wild adventure could be theirs if they came with him. Not one of them enlisted
for the journey.
The
next day a different group came out. Drake told them that if they came with him
they would encounter storms that would terrify them into tears. Tiger winds
would hammer them and blow them off course for months. Water would frequently
be scarce. At times they will be so thirsty that their very souls would cry out
for simply one drop of water. In short, danger would always be their constant
companion. Drake concluded by declaring that if they could handle these things,
the joys of exploration would exceed their wildest dreams. Every single one of
them in the group joined Sir Francis Drake that day, some did not even go home
to say goodbye to their families, they just boarded
the boat eager for the journey.
What
made the difference in these two groups? Why did the first group turn down the
mission and the second jump at the chance? Was the second group different and
more adventurous than the first?
The
answer is: No. It is not the men who had changed; it was the message. The first spoke of rewards; the second spoke of challenges.
The first offered comfort; the second promised suffering. The first tempted
them with things; the second seduced them with an experience unlike any other.
I
like to think that Sir Francis Drake discovered what Jesus knew all to well.
And that is this: The paths that are offered to us must promise to shape us,
build our character, change our world view, if they
are to have any appeal to us at all. If we are presented with a challenge that
will change, we will be eager for the journey.
Thomas Reeves in his book The Empty Church
describes this scenario. “Christianity in modern
Christianity
becomes a cultural Christianity when the faith is dominated by a culture to the
point that it loses much of its authenticity. What we now have might be labeled
as a Consumer Christianity. Millions of Americans today feel free to buy as
much of the Christian faith as seems desirable. The cost is low and customer
satisfaction is guaranteed.”
Irwin Shaw wrote a short story called The
Eighty-Yard Run. As a college freshman, at his first football practice, he
broke loose for an 80-yard touchdown run. His teammates looked at him with awe.
His coach said, “You’re going to have quite a future around here.” His
girlfriend awarded him with a kiss after the practice. Irwin Shaw has the
feeling that life is completely satisfying and rewarding.
But
nothing in the rest of his life ever lives up to that day again. His football
experience is equally disappointing. His marriage sours. The pain of failure is
even greater because he remembers thinking on a perfect day many years before
that life would always be that pleasant, satisfying and rewarding.
Life
does not stand still. There isn’t a once-for-all experience. It was Winston
Churchill who said, “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It is
courage that counts.”
There
are going to be bad days. Sometimes we are going to fall on our respective
faces. These failures don’t have to be endings. They can be the avenues to
experience God’s grace more widely and more deeply.
George Frederick Handel was dogged with misfortune.
He had debt upon debt, despair upon despair. He had a cerebral hemorrhage and
was paralyzed on his right side. For four years he could neither walk nor
write. The doctors gave up on him. He wrote several operas, but again he fell
in debt. At age 60 he thought his life was finished. Then he was challenged by
a friend to write a sacred oratorio. He read the Scriptures and decided to work
on the Messiah. For 24 days, without eating a crumb, he worked fanatically to
produce the Messiah, which many today consider the greatest oratorio ever
written.
Mt. Olive member, Missionary Terry Schultz, Lima,
Jose should never have gone with us on
that last jungle evangelism trip, - not in his condition. At his home the
day before the trip, Jose exhibited all the classic symptoms of what everyone
calls “jungle fever:” skyrocketed temperature, uncontrollable body shakes, the
chills (feeling like you’re freezing in 110 degree heat!), and, worst of all:
intermittent bleeding from the nose that no one could do anything about.
Our exploratory trip to a new native village had been planned for weeks.
However, had I known how seriously sick Jose was, I would have insisted that he
stay home. Not that that would have stopped him. Why? The reason is
simple:
Jose and I are as close as
brothers. Before Pastor Ronal and I started coming to Pelejo,
Jose was as “lost and condemned” a soul as you would ever meet: Drinking,
spouse abuse, filthy language, witchcraft (his dad was a part-time shaman),
were all a part of Jose’s life. For years Jose even supervised local teams that
processed coca leafs into coca pasta for the Columbians!
Jose didn’t wander into our church
one day and immediately find his Savior. Ronal and I wandered over to
Jose’s house one afternoon, after asking the villagers where we could find the
best jungle guide. Pelejo sits at the edge of
the Amazon jungle. I wanted to see the jungle at night. Jose was
happy to take us in, - for a price of course.
I still laugh at the thought of
Ronal’s and my first night hunt with Jose. You may recall my story:
We had agreed to set out around
Jose finished his preparations by
lighting up a huge, nasty, homemade cigar. With his hands he directed the
thick, pungent smoke all over his head, arms, and body, then, strangely, all
around Ronal and me. I turned to Ronal and knowingly commented that it
was a “natural insect repellent.” Years later Jose would admit that the
smoke had nothing to do with insects: He had in fact performed a mini
shamanic ritual over the three of us for nighttime protection against the evil
jungle spirits. (I guess the smoke was supposed to act as a “ghost
repellent!”) Crazy!!
I’ll never forget that first
all-nighter in the Amazon jungle with Jose. That deep swampy smell of rotting
vegetation, strange jungle sounds; monkey calls, frogs from all sides,
deafeningly loud insects… The sharply outlined shaft of your flashlight beam
playing upon twisted vines, colossal plants, huge flying insects, startled
bats, numerous tarantulas! It was pure sensory overload all night;
that sensational combination of the eerie, the scary, the spectacular.
Now the fact is Jose was pretty
intrigued by a couple pastors who loved running around with him in the jungle
at night. (O.K., Ronal doesn’t enjoy it that much but he always comes
along.) Ronal and I took every opportunity to talk about the Gospel with
Jose. It helped enormously that Jose’s wife Sandra began coming to
church. She was saved early on by the power of the Holy Spirit, along
with their two little children. It took some time, but the Spirit did get
to Jose and the startling transformation was on.
Nearly 8 years later, the people of Pelejo still can hardly believe how much Jose has
changed. No more drunkenness, abuse, foul language; a new creature has
indeed emerged. Jose went from being a child of the Devil to a child of
God. Amazingly, Sandra and Jose have been our Pelejo
Sunday School teachers for over five years! Every Saturday, Jose plays on
a giant plastic gasoline container like a conga (yours truly taught him some
rhythms) while Sandra leads the children in their Sunday School
songs.
Now one sign of a maturing Christian
is that growing deep-in-your-gut realization that had you died sooner, you
would have assuredly gone straight to hell. Jose came to that realization
a long time ago. He is convinced that if Ronal and I had not shown up in Pelejo, he and his whole family would have all been
eternally lost.
Of course, I always tell him it was
God who brought Ronal and me to Pelejo.
Through the Word, the Holy Spirit alone worked saving faith in Jose’s
heart. Jose understands that. However, Jose deeply appreciates that
part that I was blessed to play as a Gospel messenger. In a word, Jose
would do anything for me.
God has given Jose a crucial role on
our jungle evangelism team. He is one of the toughest men I have ever met
yet truly a humble servant of the Lord. I can hardly imagine the jungle
work without Jose.
On the other hand, Jose does not want
me out there in the jungle without him. (Is God good to me or
what?!) Jose has informed all our jungle team members that his main job
on our trips is to protect Pastor Terry. He believes God has given him
that responsibility. The way Jose carries out this responsibility is
incredible. You have often heard me mention that Jose simply stays up
every night during our jungle trips. That is no exaggeration. I
wake up repeatedly at night; maybe three, four times when we sleep on the
ground or in the boat. There is Jose, leaning against the boat, wide
awake, silhouetted in the moonlight, loaded shotgun beside him. He
immediately turns to look when he hears me rustling around.
Jose should not have gone on our last
trip in his condition, with a hard jungle fever coming on. But he told
everyone that he had to go, to protect Pastor Terry.
That last trip turned into an
exhausting, jungle marathon: Hours on the trail, drenched to the skin,
then sweltering heat, then drenched again. And that final straw:
Climbing into the outboard on the last night; drenched from one last torrential
downpour, out of dry clothes, racing back down the river in the cold
midnight air to get home. For over 4 hours everyone sat there freezing in
the boat. Jose took his shoes off. I should have. My feet
were actually immersed in water inside my boots which I didn’t bother to take
off and pour out. Loco! Jose strapped on a life jacket backwards,
(the only dry thing he could find), to add a layer of padding on his wet chest
against the wind. We arrived in Yurimaguas in
the middle of the night. I gave Jose money to buy dry clothes but nothing
was open. It was one long, dark, soggy night. No wonder the jungle
fever came onto Jose with a vengeance.
The next sequence of events wasn’t
all that surprising, though in the end horrifying: Jose took a six-hour
public boat back to his village the next day and staggered home. He
collapsed into bed. Fever, the chills, uncontrollable shakes… With
this type of jungle fever the head congestion is simply off the scale.
Your nose never stops running! I’m told that is the reason the
delicate lining of the nose and nasal passages weakens. The final dreaded
symptom may then appear: Uncontrollable nosebleeds from a broken vessel
somewhere deep inside. It is not uncommon for villagers to
die from nosebleeds during a jungle fever bout! The village nurse has
no way of handling it. No one has any way to stop the bleeding.
It was late that first night back,
and sweat-drenched Jose was unable to sleep. Sandra sat at his side,
intermittently administering wet rags and one-after-another dry
handkerchiefs. Jose was in a delirious state, exhausted, feverish, freezing. Suddenly, the inevitable happened:
Blood began to slowly stream out of Jose’s nose.
Sandra quickly tried pouring warm
saltwater into Jose’s nose: Hopefully the rupture wasn’t that bad.
But the bleeding didn’t stop. She then tried stuffing a huge amount of
handkerchief up into his nose. However, that simply sent the blood down
into his throat. Jose started gagging and spitting out blood, so Sandra
had to pull the cloth back out. At that point already, Sandra had run out of
options. What else could she do?
How can one describe such a
moment? It would be like a couple in one of those car accidents where the
driver ends up with internal bleeding. The wife cradles her injured
husband’s head in her lap, helplessly watching his life drain away right before
her eyes. Such a moment had come to Sandra. What could she do? What
would you do at such a moment? What Sandra decided to do next simply takes my breath away:
Sandra gently set Jose’s head down, then bolted for the bedroom of the two small children.
The children were in a deep sleep, but quickly came to their senses as Sandra
grabbed them, told them Dad was dying, and that they all needed to pray.
The kids raced to the parent’s bedroom and nearly froze at the sight: Blood
covered Jose’s face, down to his neck, even his shirt. Jose was no longer
conscious. The kids had no time to be shocked.
Sandra again cradled Jose’s head in
her lap, wiping at the small steady stream of blood. Sandra, Dandy, and Evie, all three began wailing away each in their own words,
pleading to God to save Dad. The tears running down the children’s faces,
mixed with their simple, loud, desperate words, showed that they clearly knew
Dad was slipping away. It was just like the others who had died: He
just kept bleeding.
Sandra doesn’t know how much time
passed. It wasn’t a lot. The 3 just kept crying and praying.
And, the bleeding came to a complete stop.
It would be five more days before
Jose could get out of bed. They certainly don’t do blood transfusions in Pelejo. Sandra can’t even guess how many liters of
blood Jose lost that night. Needless to say, the story of Jose’s return
from the brink of death and the Sunday School
teacher’s
Last week at dinner with the two of
them in Tarapoto during
I thank the Lord for letting me have
my dear brother a little longer. Again, I can hardly imagine doing the jungle
work without Jose. Obviously, Jose still has kingdom work to do!
Praise God for that. As I’ve told Mary many times, if we ever get out of
this crazy country, I don’t know who I would miss more than Jose.
Until next time amigos,
Terry
At the December 2006 board meeting of
“This transition is going to be
tough, but it’s not all gloom and doom,” says Rich Carver, school principal.
For example, an arrangement has been made so students can attend Michigan
Lutheran Seminary,
“Even though change can be hard and
painful, we’re trying to look at this the way God would want us to look at it,”
says Carver. “Instead of focusing on the negative, we’re looking at new
opportunities and ways of reinventing our ministry. There is some good that’s
coming out of this.”
We continue with our midweek Lenten services under the theme, "Behold
the Hidden Glory of the Cross" Join us each
Wednesday in March.
Each Wednesday service will be
preceded by a Lenten Supper served by our Limbs. The (revised) Limb Supper schedule is as
follows:
Thank you in advance for your help in
serving the meals and your eagerness to worship at the foot of the cross during
the Lenten season.
The women from Salem Lutheran in
The theme for the Retreat is taken
from Proverbs 31:29-30: "A woman who fears the Lord is to be
praised."
In addition to three speakers, we are
offering music, prayer, entertainment, and of course food and shopping. What
woman can turn her back on these incentives?
Raising a Healthy Preschooler
for parents of 2 to 4 year-olds
Date:
or:
Time:
Cost: $12 per person
(materials, lunch, snacks, and
beverages included)
This past December, the students of
We collected these items and then
sent them via DHL to Mr. Fredrich in
The students of
We are now into the third and final
quarter of Sunday School for this year. We will be
studying the Passion of our Lord and Savior as well as His resurrection and
ascension in the next few weeks.
I would urge all of you to strive for
regular attendance each Sunday as we study these important lessons about the
life of our Savior. If your child will not be in Sunday school, our teachers
would appreciate a call from you excusing your child. They will be happy to
send you the materials that your child missed on the Sunday that they were
absent. With such small classes, it is unfair for our teachers to spend hours
in preparation only to have no students for a particular Sunday. Thank you for your co-operation.
The Sunday school children will be
singing for the last Lenten service on March 28th. Please join us
for a Lenten supper at
We will also be singing for the
Easter Sunday service on April 8th. We will be learning the hymn His
Battle Ended There from the hymnal. There will be no Sunday School that Sunday but you are all invited to the Easter
breakfast that will precede the service. Watch the Parent Page for more
information.
I would urge all of you to bring your
family to our weekly Lenten services which are held each Wednesday evening in
March. Our services are preceded by supper which begins at
Jesus hug
you and yours close to Himself.
Every year, hundreds of men and women
gather at
Participants will be welcome to attend
a choice of three out of ten stimulating workshops. A delicious
Plan to attend and bring a carload of
friends with you. You may register
online at http://seelsorger.us
The Twin Cities Chapter of WELS Kingdom Workers invites you
to join us for the second annual Festival of Foods, Saturday March 10, from
All ladies of the congregation are
invited to a bridal shower for Trisha Wright, fiancée of Ryan Jacobs. The shower will be held in the Fireside Room
on
7th Annual English Tea
The Outreach Committee would like to
invite you to the 7th Annual English Tea. It will be held on March 24th at
The tea will be three courses of food
and beverage with a program interspersed.
Plan to be well fed and enjoy being pampered, as some men of the
congregation have again volunteered to help serve the tea.
There is a Tea sign up sheet on the
bulletin board. Plan to attend!
It’s that time again. Those Mission Box offerings for Lutheran
Women’s Missionary Society that you have been filling with change are due. Please give to Mae Schmidt, LWMS Reporter, to
ensure being counted before the Spring Rally.
New boxes are available in the narthex.
Thanks!
Message from the Master radio
broadcast every
Sunday at
Time of Grace TV broadcast (Sundays at
The cash flow report for January shows
more outflows than receipts. This is
largely explained by an Excel Energy bill of just over $1,500 and six month’s
property insurance paid of $2,500. The
commitments to synod,
The offerings for January were
actually higher than one year ago. It is
always encouraging to start the year in such a positive manner.
Because the Special Funds Report has a
small amount of activity, it is reported every six months. Note that the High School Scholarship Fund
received some substantial receipts and is now just under $4,000. Sarah Schuyler and Emily Meier each received
scholarships to SCLHS at the start of the school year. The $400 from the College Scholarship Fund
was sent to the WELS Student Assistance Fund.
The Building Fund debt was reduced by $8,825 for the year, most of that
occurring in this six month period.
These funds are held in two places. Church Extension Fund certificates hold about
$40,000, and the balance is in a money market checking/savings account with
Premier Bank.