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The Pastor's Corner
Tue, 11/13/2012 - 8:17am — MaryBeth
From the latest issue of "The Good News"
Dear Friends, It’s time to get serious about evangelism. We all know that this is the Achilles heel for most mainline church groups—Lutherans included. We do many things well (especially worship and music), but not evangelism. Usually we put it in the “Baptist” category (but in recent years even they are struggling). I’ve written about evangelism often—perhaps too much so. But this is a congregational issue, not just one for your staff. I know that you know this, but we often want someone else to deal with those things which make us uncomfortable. On Facebook this past week an assistant to the Lutheran bishop in Texas posted a comment on how many Lutheran congregations in Texas want him to find them a young pastor eager to recruit young families, but they don’t want to change anything in their (older) congregations to make them more meaningful to the younger potential members. As a result the congregations stay stuck—and they continue to get older. This posting hit a real nerve. He put in on an ELCA clergy-only Facebook group. This means that only pastors are allowed to read it. In a few hours he had almost 200 responses. Pastors all over the country knew he was not alone in frustration. Evangelism is not just inviting. It is also making the churches to which newcomers are invited as meaningful as possible for the newcomers. In our rapidly-changing world this is a tremendously difficult task. But we are called to wrestle with it and do our best. At RELC we are trying. And we need to keep vigilant in seeking ways to be responsive to the needs around us—not just our own. Last month your church council heard a presentation on this issue from a friend of mine. They were so impressed and inspired that they insisted that he present this to the whole congregation. Pastor Tim Thompson will return on Thursday, May 9, at 10 a.m. to speak to anyone who can get here. (Since he serves a congregation in St. Paul his ability to get here on weekends is limited.) Please make every effort to attend. In August he will also preach here and repeat his presentation. But we want to get the conversation going in earnest. Every member needs to hear his message. Our future is tied to how we deal with our neighbors, how we reach out, as well as how we shape some of our attitudes. I look forward to working with you to share the good news of Jesus in meaningful ways with our neighborhood. Pastor Rolf Olson
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Dear Friends,
What do Ash Wednesday, asteroids, funerals, and prayer all have to do with each other? Answer: they tie us to the God of the Universe who is much bigger that we can imagine. This past week I experienced all four of these seemingly separate events, yet from the perspective of faith they all are related.
- Ash Wednesday declares that “we are dust and to dust we shall return.” The ashes remind us of our fragility and temporal nature, yet the God of eternity holds us in the promise of new life through Christ.
- Our recent funerals remind us of the same.
- On Thursday I watched the news about that asteroid that blew up over Russia. The anxiety with which it was reported reflected our impotence in the face of galactic forces. Reporters were actually asking questions about whether we should be looking up at the skies in order to dodge future asteroids. My guess is that since they fly at 33,000 miles per hour we’d have no chance to react even if we saw one.
Because of all these different experiences I am so glad that we Christians are given an eternal perspective, a view into which we are invited to see all Creation from God’s perspective. That is the view we have in prayer. In prayer God lifts us into a new view that sees our world and our lives from an eternal cosmic perspective—from God’s perspective. That is the view that says “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8). Wow.
Yes, life is fragile. Our lives will end. But as children of the living God we are privileged to know the promise that if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s (Romans 14:8). That’s the promise that frames our whole lives.
Thanks be to God.
Pastor Rolf Olson