I have a stack of books by my favorite chair in our home. I’m reading all of them at once—sort of. The pages are filled with poetry, music history, fictional characters and stories, theology, leadership, magazines, journals, and whatever else lands on the pile. I dip in a little here and there, depending on my mood and attention span. It is a delight to be able to slide back into a story with characters I already know or dive into new material that expands my mind.

I also have a stack on my desk at church, too, well…maybe several stacks. There are books I’m using for preparing book and Bible studies, commentaries for sermon reflection, biographies and memoirs, graphic novels, as well as authors writing about leadership, discipleship, best ministry practices, stewardship, and more. 

I haven’t read all of these volumes and may not ever get to some of them, but it is the possibility of encountering people, places, and stories in these pages that brings me joy. It is comforting to have my tsundoku—a Japanese word for a stack of books that you have purchased but not yet read—close at hand.

Kevin Mims, writing about this unread heap, offers, “A person’s library is often a symbolic representation of his or her mind…The [person] with an ever-expanding library understands the importance of remaining curious, open to new ideas, and voices” (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/books/review/personal-libraries.html).

One of my goals for our seminary interns is to encourage them to be lifelong learners. Even though their divinity school coursework might be wrapping up, that doesn’t mean that their learning is complete—quite the opposite! A steady diet of both fiction and nonfiction are essential in helping one grow in knowledge and understanding, while also stretching one’s ability to think, dream, and grow a vocabulary.

This applies to our journey with Jesus, too. We should be curious disciples, eager to spend a lifetime stockpiling language and stories that lead us deeper into loving relationships with God and those around us. Our faith journey doesn’t end with singing “Jesus Loves Me” in Sunday School, reciting a few Bible verses, and memorizing the Lord’s Prayer. While these are good to have in your spiritual library, God offers so much more material to help us grow in faith, hope, and love. 

This year, we are going to sink deeply into these three words: faith, hope, and love. We’ll wrestle with how they’ve been used to manipulate and control, and celebrate the ways they have offered liberation and freedom. We’ll place them front and center as we strive to live, share and celebrate with all people, God’s love in Jesus Christ. Faith, hope, and love will anchor our times together in worship, learning, serving, prayer, and discernment.

Sometimes, we become so accustomed to hearing, saying, and using these churchy words, we forget the transformational, otherworldly power that they hold. Collectively, these three building blocks of a Christian life show up more than one thousand times in the Bible. 1 Corinthians 13 reminds us that all kinds of things come and go throughout our lives, but when everything else fades away, “faith, hope, and love remain” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

So let’s pull these off of the shelf and explore where God might be leading us. Join me in savoring the incredible story of a love that will not let us go. Let’s see how faith, hope, and love might direct our days and deeds as we follow Jesus into the great unknown. Hopefully, we’ll learn something new about ourselves, our neighbors, God, and the world at every turn.

Learning and loving,
Pastor Lowell Michelson

If you have ever been around preschoolers, then you know that their heads are filled with their own important information that they can’t wait to share. In circle time when you ask a question pertaining to the book you are reading, you may get answers ranging from “it’s my birthday” to “I have blue shoes.” Their ‘listening ears’ are not turned on (even though we pretended to click them on).

For young children, this is developmentally age appropriate and usually adorable. However, for us as adults, we should have this skill fully formed, but isn’t it something we always struggle with? Our heads are loaded with our own important thoughts, problems, or priorities. It’s hard to hear those around us or God leading us. There is always other noise that draws our attention away from Jesus.

As we enter a new season of faith formation together, how can we hear and process how we are being called? How can we guide ourselves or our families into a rhythm of listening? What is one small step we could make? It is incredibly freeing when we don’t have to do all the talking or be right.

Clicking on our “listening ears” to hear messages of understanding, love, trust, direction, and life-giving priorities will lead us to where God is calling us and could even be more exciting than blue shoes or birthdays.

Pastor Lowell prayed this prayer from Walter Brueggemann as part of our weekly staff meeting devotion. It spoke to me. I pray it does the same for you.

Ears but do not hear

“…So we pray for ears,
open, unwaxed, attentive, circumcised.

Call us by name…so that we know,
Call us to you…so that we live,
Call us into the world…so that we care,
Call us to risk…so that we trust beyond ourselves.

You speak/we listen/and comes life,
abundant,
beyond all that we ask or think…
Our ears to hear your word of life.
Amen.”

Learning to listen with you,
Angie Seiller, Director of Faith Formation

If you were able to be part of Tam Weik’s celebration of life this week, then you experienced a Love Fest! Hundreds of people gathered from many parts of her life to pay tribute to this gifted and compassionate woman who touched so many lives. They connected in the gathering space, fellowship hall, front entry, sanctuary, and even pulled together for conversations in the hallways and by the drinking fountain. The building was packed for hours with hugs, tears, and laughter.

For some, it was a trip down memory lane as stories were shared from raising kids together, women’s retreats, Al-Anon meetings, creative projects, and other places where Tam’s life intersected theirs. We also confronted the realities of our present sorrow. We know that our acute pain won’t last forever, but these days are difficult as we face the gaping hole her death leaves in our lives. Tam’s legacy of beauty, love, compassion, and joy will continue to fuel us as we move forward and celebrate her legacy of hope.

Isn’t it interesting how we are always simultaneously living in three tenses: past, present, and future? Everything we do and everywhere we go is connected to where and who we’ve been, where and who we are, and where and who we will be. Our experiences and relationships are like the constantly shifting mosaic we see when we peer into a kaleidoscope.

We encounter something similar each week when we assemble around the communion table to share a holy meal in the name of Jesus. As we gather, we take a trip to the past, recalling how God showed up throughout history to bring liberation and freedom to God’s people. We retell the story of Jesus gathering around a table with his disciples, sharing this meal, and saying, “When you are together, eat and drink to remember me.”

Landing in our current time, we remember that Christ is present here and now, Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus, the host of the communion meal, invites everyone to the table. As we pass the bread and the wine around, we join countless other communities of Christian faith all around the world who are also savoring this meal of grace.

As we eat and drink, we also look forward to a time when we will share in the great feast that is to come. There will be a day when we’ll sit down at the heavenly banquet for what Canadian singer, Bruce Cockburn, calls the “Festival of Friends.” In that place, Revelation 21:4 promises that, “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

I am reminded of one of my favorite prayers from our Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW) resource and offer it here as a reminder of who God is, has been, and continues to be. 

O God, you have called me to ventures of which I cannot see the ending,
by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.
Give me faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where I go, 
but only that your hand is leading me and your love supporting me; 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

God has been faithful. God is with us now. God promises to guide and accompany us into all that is ahead. May you step forward in confidence and hope, trusting that God’s hand is leading you and God’s love is supporting you.

In hope and expectation!
Pastor Lowell Michelson

This summer I worked at Ewalu Bible Camp in Strawberry Point, Iowa. During our musical each week, we would sing a song called “Be Bold.” The lyrics were “Be bold, be strong, for the Lord thy God is with you.” This song is based on the scripture Joshua 1:9, which says "I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” The Lord gives Joshua this message when he is commissioned after Moses’ death.

As I told some of you last Sunday, I have moved a lot in the last three years. I have lived in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa. At times, it has been hard because there have been so many life transitions, but it also has been rewarding because of all the great experiences and people I have gotten the chance to meet along the way.  

This summer “Be Bold” was one of the many songs in the musical I grew to love. I was reminded of it again this Sunday at the blessing of the backpacks when I read the verse on the backpack from Psalm 139:7 that says, “Everywhere I go, I go with you.” God going with us is hard to believe at times, but God’s word reminds us of it over and over. 

No matter where we are in this big world, no matter what we are feeling or experiencing, God goes with us. Knowing that God goes with me has brought me a lot of comfort these last three years as I have made so many different moves. I have been reminded that we do not have to be bold and strong on our own, we have each other to lean on, especially when it gets difficult, and we need support. To see so many people at Lord of Life surrounding me in love, prayers, and support as I make my transition to West Chester is a reminder of how God is with us and gives us strength and boldness. 

I pray that wherever you are in life's journey, you are reminded of God's presence. How is God helping you to be bold and strong?

Be Bold,
Pastor Nicole

On a brisk winter afternoon in 1980, my family, including my grandma, my parents, and two family friends, gathered around the font of a small neo-gothic Catholic church for a brief private baptism. The family friends would become my godparents, but I have no memory of them having any role in my life. I’m not even sure if my parents knew them well, or if they were acquaintances who were part of the parish and therefore met the requirements to put their name on my certificate. Looking back, so many parts of my Roman Catholic upbringing felt like a list of checkboxes to be crossed off, and this was the first:

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ll know I struggled with my faith, largely due to what I felt were inconsistencies between my childhood church’s teachings and Jesus’s call to love each other. I won’t rehash all of that here, but to sum it up, I’m pretty sure it was my ancestral Protestant heritage breaking through. In the case of baptism, the Lutheran practice feels more authentic to me because, rather than checking off boxes, baptism is a two-way commitment between us (or our families speaking for us) and the community in which we are baptized. It is the beginning of a faith journey in which we choose to learn and grow, and the community who stood with us at our baptism chooses to be part of that formation of our faith.

Now that I’m older, I’m able to appreciate some of the finer details of being part of a community that is willing to walk this path with each other. Volunteers spend countless hours leading programs that form our learning, outreach, and worship. Their individual commitments range from every week to once in a while, and that is the beauty of being part of a faith community. You don’t have to do the work of figuring out what it means to live into our baptismal covenant alone.

You might be thinking, “but sometimes kids are baptized here and then go somewhere else. And they almost always grow up and leave us. If this is supposed to be a life-long commitment, how are we supposed to be responsible for them?” Here is how I think about it:

I am blessed to work with a lot of adult musicians who learned and grew from other music teachers and music directors at other churches. I also teach young musicians who I am devastated to lose as soon as they leave for college. When my students leave, I know that someone else is picking up their music education journey, just like I’ve taken over at least part of the music formation of the adults I work with from wherever they started their music journey.

We do the same thing with our baptismal covenant to walk with each other in faith. Our commitment isn’t just to the individual being baptized. Every time we repeat those vows (and we’ve been saying them a lot lately), we renew our commitment to support each other - all of us - wherever we are on our paths. 

Who are some of the people who have walked along your faith formation journey with you?

What opportunities do you have to help others along their path of faith?

On the journey with you,

John

I’m watching the Olympics in complete awe of the endurance, strength, mental fortitude, teamwork or individual grit, and the incredible amount of time devoted to becoming an elite athlete. The stories of training routines and overcoming adversities are impressive and heartwarming. Win or lose, it’s evident their community of supporting family and friends is key to their well-being.

I admit, I love the idea of being an athlete, but the reality is that I don’t like to sweat or breathe heavily in front of people. I was in sports when I was younger and always felt the pull that I should take up running, swimming, or tennis as I was getting older. I tried some running programs, swam laps for a few weeks, and bought a tennis rack. However, with faith, community, and the gift of time, the more okay I am with who I am. I was created to be a walker. A walker that finds support in walking with friends or alone, is happy to stop to chat with a neighbor or linger to admire nature. I’m still moving my body but in a way that gives me peace and acceptance.

At the ELCA Youth Gathering this summer, the daily themes were “Created to be… Brave, Authentic, Free, Disruptive, Disciples.” I was so proud of our youth who were stretching themselves to find who they were created to be and also digging into who they have already been created to be. They mustered the courage to sing and dance in public, passed out our rainbow LOL love stickers to strangers, and drew from their innate goodness in sharing hugs, laughter, and empathy. The community in NOLA that was grounded in the teachings of Jesus gave them strength and courage.

Those of us with age and experience on our side know how difficult it is to figure out who we are created to be and it can change depending on life circumstances. They are just beginning their journey. What a gift it is to be able to walk with our youth and children in our Lord of Life community. 

Who are you created to be? Who are we created to be together? It feels like a really big question, but what if we broke it down to being a child of God? Psalm 139 says, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” When we trust in this, it is the foundation for growing in our ability to be brave, authentic, free, disruptive, disciples with Jesus lighting our way.

While I might be walking the path of who I was created to be instead of running like an Olympian, it gives me joy to admire others that have chosen different paths that draw on their own unique abilities and journey. I am continually grateful for the colorful variety that we are created to be and the community that surrounds us and reaches out into the world in God’s love.

In Christ’s love,

Angie Seiller, Director of Faith Formation