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From Pastor Schulte’s Pen January 2010
Happy New Year! A Blessed New Year to each of you! We begin the New Year with much thanksgiving for all the blessings of the past and with great anticipation and thanksgiving for the hope and expectations of this New Year. But calendars are rather superficial for they do not really tell the whole story. Life is a gift of God. We receive it anew each day, give thanks for it, unwrap it and then spend and invest it in ways that are pleasing to God, bring benefit to those around us and bring glory to God. Whether the month or the year changes, life does not! We simply seek to live faithfully in the relationship that God established with us in our baptism, living out of that tub full of grace in which we stand.
As a congregation we also have much for which to be thankful. We have been blessed with a wonderful people of God! We have beautiful church facilities and we are debt free! We have a full staff of dedicated pastors and lay church staff persons who truly seeks to serve the Lord and this congregation! Even with the challenges of this year, and with a full staff, we will come close to meeting our budget for 2009! We have been blessed with dedicated lay leaders, always willing to provide leadership for the congregation and the various areas of ministry! We are blessed with a congregation of disciples who serve in so many ways as ambassadors of Jesus Christ within and beyond St. John Lutheran! We live in a fantastically beautiful part of God’s world, in the midst of great schools and wonderful people! For all of this and so much more, we give thanks unto the Lord! We begin the new year with the need to follow up on the November 15th vote by the congregation to leave the ELCA. This was a tough and painful time for many of us yet the congregation has remained committed to doing the most effective ministry that we can do here in our community, our area and around the world, regardless of which letters we have behind our name. The congregation had the opportunity to decide upon whether St. John wanted to continue to be a part of the ELCA and the theological direction that it has chosen.The first vote said that we are open to new Lutheran Church bodies and associations with whom we will do our ministry beyond the walls of St. John. According to the constitution, the first vote of 84.96% in favor of disaffiliating from the ELCA must be followed by a second vote of at least 2/3 majority for the decision to become final. The date for the Second Congregation Meeting to ratify the previous vote will be announced shortly after the first of the year. After that vote, decisions will need to be made, but the most important decision has been made for us by God, as God became flesh and dwelt among us, full of Grace, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten Son. God grant that our decisions will bring glory to God as we seek to serve all people in Jesus’ name while staying focused on our worship, witness and service.God grant that we may begin the New Year filled with HOPE, and that faithfulness will be our watch word and that compassion and kindness will be our tone, even when we might disagree on some things. God bless us and use and keep us as one for His Kingdom’s Sake. Happy New Year! Pastor Henry Schulte |
