Have you ever heard the old adage, “the quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?” Besides very overtly sexist, because I know many a female who enjoys a good meal, I don’t totally agree with the saying. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good meal! You can get me to do just about anything as long as I know a brisket, prime rib, or rack of ribs will be waiting for me at the end of the task. But bribing me with food is very different from showing me love. The way to show me love is through acts of service. 

In 1992, Gary Chapman wrote a book entitled “The Five Love Languages,” which was meant to show you “how to express heartfelt commitment to your mate” and share with you the “secret to love that lasts.” Those are pretty bold claims by the author, but the heart of the program, understanding the ways that people receive and give love through their actions, is something that everyone can benefit from. 

You can find out your love language by filling out the short, free assessment at www.5lovelanguages.com. I don’t totally agree with all of their theology, or their hetero-normative views on marriage, but the Five Love Languages tool can benefit married or single adults. The five love languages are Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. Each one of us defaults to one of these “languages” when we want to show love or care for another person. I typically give gifts when I want someone to know that I care for them. We also prefer one of these “languages” to be spoken to us when someone is showing us love. Nothing says “I care about you” more to me than when someone does something nice for me, an Act of Service. 

When you know your own way of showing love and your preferred way to receive love, it can help you in interactions with family and friends. Just because I love to give gifts doesn’t mean that’s what my wife or kids want; they prefer that I give them Words of Affirmation or Quality Time. As we move into the month of Hallmark-induced love, February, I encourage you to take the Five Love Languages assessment and share your results with your friends and family. Realize that sharing love with people does not come in a one-size-fits-all package and quite often we need to work at it. 

And as a fun exercise, look at all of the announcements in our bulletin throughout February and try to see how each activity or project at Lord of Life fits into one of these love languages. 

Feel free to wash my car,

Pastor Corey

We sat down to one of our recent holiday meals with Brian's family, including our triplet niece and nephews. After some typical back and forth about which holiday foods were and were not worth eating, I think there was as much food on the table and on faces as there was on plates or in stomachs. As a matter of crowd control, we started to sing songs and play games at the table (mostly so the adults could have a moment to eat instead of tending to the kids.)

Dinner wrapped up with an old-school game of "telephone," with phrases carefully selected and whispered by each of the kids. Most of them were cute. I'm pretty sure "poop" was the funniest, and also the first one that made it all the way around the table without any changes. The one that brought the game to a quick and awkward end came from Gabby. "I love you." We all complied and finished out the round, but it was apparent how uneasy the words were on the tongues of adult in-laws from various branches of the family who had never shared these words among each other. Of course it had never occured to a 5-year-old that there would be any reason to reserve those words to a select few people.

And why should there be? I know as well as anyone that life experience and social insecurities can make it difficult to express our feelings toward other people. It can be much easier to build walls around ourselves to protect our emotions than it is to make ourselves vulnerable by letting someone know we care about them. The problem is compounded when you know your feelings might be met with equal hesitation by the individual on the receiving end of your care. And perhaps at some level, we want to protect the meaning of the word "love" so it doesn't become tired from overuse, and instead we don't use any word at all to let people know we love them.

Jesus' command to love one another is first an edict to get over our biases against other people and treat everyone, even those who are different than us, the way we would want to be treated. As difficult as that can be to put into action, it is an easy enough concept to grasp. Another difficult idea that Jesus exemplifies is showing care and attention to people who are already in our circle; and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable to the love and affection we receive from others.

Some people are already better at this than others, but if you are one of us who can sometimes struggle to open up, maybe you could take baby steps toward loving your neighbor by allowing yourself to be vulnerable to letting people close to you know you love them, too.

Yours in Christ,

John Johns

I am a tree hugger. I grew up spending summer vacations at the Delaware shore, picking up trash in between bodysurfing and building sandcastles. On our way back to Ohio from the ocean, we would disappear into the woods of north-central Pennsylvania for an additional week or two at grandma and grandpa’s place, where we would climb trees, explore the mountains, and wander the banks of the Susquehanna River.

I grew up in the era of the crying Native American “Keep America Beautiful” TV commercial and heard overtones of caring for the Earth in Bible verses from the early pages of Genesis on Sunday mornings. Our household was filled with crafts reclaiming newspaper, aluminum cans, and glass jars. When we couldn’t reuse them, we recycled them. We were what you might call early adopters. Some of my earliest childhood memories are sorting newspapers and magazines on sweaty autumn days for the Boy Scout troop fundraiser.

Throughout the years, I’ve been known to carry a cloth napkin with me, dry my hands on my shirt in a truck stop bathroom, and only frequent fast food places that would allow me to use my own reusable cup. This was part of my personal plan to reduce consumption.

Last year, I received an aluminum travel straw for Christmas and this year one of my gifts to myself was a set of bamboo toothbrushes. If I forget my reusable bag at the store, I’m the guy that carries 13 items in my arms, rather than using a plastic bag. These little things can make a difference throughout a lifetime.

Please don’t take my words as a self-righteous declaration that I have this all figured out and have mastered the “living green” lifestyle. Nope. I am still regularly possessed by the demon of convenience, as I grab a large drink in a single-use cup and drive to work, even though I live a short nine properties away.

Please know that I also do not write this in an effort to guilt or shame you and your choices – quite the opposite. I write to celebrate the small victories that I’ve enjoyed and to challenge us as a community of faith to make intentional decisions while we step further into caring for creation and loving our neighbor.

This needs to change. Sasha Adkins recently wrote “Reclaiming Life In A Disposable Culture” for Sojourners magazine. Her pointed words connected many dots for me. She contends, “[the] more we normalize short-term utility as the main criterion for evaluating the things around us, the more disconnected we become from a sense of the inherent worth of creation. The more we cultivate this habit of the heart of seeing things as disposable once they no longer serve us, the less able we are to find the beauty and value in our relationships with each other, or even the intrinsic value in ourselves once we are no longer “productive” (sojo.net).

Our attention to and care for creation is a crucial connection to the value we hold for ourselves and others. It is also wrapped up in the mandate in Genesis that we are to work and care for the earth (Genesis 2:15).

As you know, Lord of Life recycles. We don't do it perfectly, but we try to reduce, reuse, and recycle. We encourage you to bring your own cup and water bottle. These are a few small steps we can make toward being intentional as a community in caring for the earth.

As we step into this new year, we’re going to explore additional ways to be good stewards of creation. If you would like to be part of the conversation, please be in touch with me. Together, we can make a difference!

Looking forward with hope,

Pastor Lowell

Tree photo created by freepik - www.freepik.com

At the beginning of 2019, I made a New Year’s resolution to lose some weight. At the start of 2020, I weighed more than I did at any point within the last year. There were times in the past year when I had lost upwards of 25 pounds, but at some point, I packed them all back on, and then some. My New Year’s resolution was a complete failure. Why did this happen? Well, duh, it was because I ate more calories than I burned, but seriously, why was I not successful at achieving my resolution? I am nothing if not an achiever. I make daily to-do lists, weekly to-do lists, grocery shopping lists, and believe it or not, I have even made lists of which to-do list to tackle first. I should have easily been able to figure out a way to organize and achieve my way to dropping those last 30, *ahem*, 60 pounds. 

Don’t think that I didn’t try. I read up on several different diets. I found out that I could eat a diet of just meat and cheese and lose weight (huzzah!). I researched all of the correct supplements I should take if I started a keto diet. I ordered keto-friendly cookbooks. I signed up for a year-long membership to Planet Fitness. I bought a new pair of “running” sneakers (ha!) for when I started to go to Planet Fitness. Over the course of 2019, I had come up with the best possible health and fitness plan that would appeal to me. And yet, I still failed. Why?

I am reminded of a quote from Jesus: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). Jesus is quite literally talking about monetary treasures, but I think it can apply metaphorically to other aspects of our lives as well. I was trying to convince my mind and heart of how great losing weight could be. I figured if I could psych myself up enough about how great dieting and exercising could be, that I would be motivated to do it. I was working Jesus’ quote backward; if I could put my heart in the right place, the treasures would come. But often it does not work that way. What I needed to do was, quite literally, take the first step. I needed to just start exercising and eating better, and over time, I would have found out what I liked and needed to be successful. 

Where are the places in your life where you know you need to get moving, but you keep delaying yourself worrying about the details and motivation? Rather than resolving to do something by the end of the year, just start doing it. Figure it out as you go and try to enjoy the journey, even when you take a step back. All of this can apply to our lives of faith as well, it doesn’t all have to be about our bodies. Are you thinking of wanting to deepen your faith this year? Just stop by a Bible study and check it out. Lord of Life currently has seven of them for you to check out.

It might seem a little awkward at first if you aren’t a “Bible study type of person,” but give it some time and you may see your heart begin to follow and your faith begin to grow. If it ultimately isn’t for you, don’t give up, check out another way to plug into the community at Lord of Life. 

Resolving to shorten my blog posts,

Pastor Corey

Little kids want to be big. They play dress up and put on Grandpa’s shoes. Young ones attempt to ride a bigger bike. They pretend to be teachers, firefighters, doctors, and Olympians. Children stretch and stand on tiptoes, hoping to extend their reach.

This time of year, I’m always reminded – my kids are bigger. As we gather with family for holiday celebrations, many of them comment on how tall they’ve become or ask about college plans. As they try on winter clothes from last year, they don’t fit! They’ve grown. I should have noticed from the marks on our wall.

In our home, we make pencil marks on the wall separating the living room and dining room. It’s a homemade growth chart, one of the many ways to measure how we grow. Every couple of months, our kids stand tall and we mark their height.

Even big kids, like us, want to grow. We want to be smarter, stronger, and more disciplined. We strive to be more emotionally and financially stable. But it isn’t so easy to track our progress. There must be more than our bank accounts and degrees to help us calculate our maturation.

It becomes even more difficult for church congregations. All too often, we tend to chart our progress by looking at membership and budgets. It is important to have an eye on these gauges, but what if we measured our growth beyond viewing the numbers? What if we looked past attendance and the annual budget as signals of health? What if we recognized the Church as the living organism that it is, rather than only brick and mortar?

Frank Viola is quick to point out, “In the minds of the early Christians, the people – not the architecture – constituted a sacred space…nowhere in the New Testament do we find the terms church (ekklesia), temple, or house of God used to refer to a building. To the ears of a first-century Christian, calling an ekklesia (church) a building would have been like calling your wife a condominium or your mother a skyscraper… ekklesia always refers to an assembly of people, not a place.”

So when we talk about growth in the Church, we are speaking of so much more than bodies in the pews or dollars in the plate. We’re talking about the people of God. We are pointing toward the ways that the Holy Spirit helps us expand our knowledge and interaction with all of God’s creatures and creation.

As you look to the New Year, how would you like to grow and what does it look like? Maybe you hope to spend more time grounded in the pages of the Bible or wish that you could greet a little one by name. Make it happen! How often do you see someone leaving church alone, while you head to lunch with friends? Invite them to join you. What about filling an empty notebook with names of loved ones as you pray for them or serving in a new capacity once a month?

Ephesians 2 says, “You are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God…In [Christ] the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.”

How would you like to grow spiritually and how will you chart your growth? How can we encourage and support each other as we reach for a new height? When we grow in God, we grow together in Christ.

Growing with you,

Pastor Lowell

We are so grateful for the many ways you have served and participated in life and ministry at Lord of Life throughout the past year. We thank God for each of you and the numerous ways that you generously share your lives for God’s mission here, in our community, and throughout the world. Thank you also for your Christmas gifts.

As we jump into a new year of growing in faith, we pray that the Spirit of God will continue to bring us health, joy, and peace as we remain rooted in the promises of Jesus.

The Lord of Life Staff

(l to r) Pastor Lowell Michelson, Paula Drake, Pastor Corey Wagonfield, Cara Hasselbeck, John Johns, Donna Harvey, Ava Fiebig, Pastora Carmen Colon-Brown