In this week’s blog post, two of the young adults on our mission trip with Appalachia Service Project (ASP) share some words about their experiences this week. You may remember Larkyn and Annabelle from last year’s ASP blog post. They’re back with more stories.
This past week on HGTV…
We can’t believe it has been five years since Lord of Life has participated in the Appalachia Service Project (ASP). ASP has been one of our favorite parts of summer and we look forward to each year. Every summer we get the honor of meeting new people, being in new environments, learning how to use new tools and construction equipment, and also growing closer as a church community.
This past week in Harlan KY, we worked with our group on removing rotting wood in several different aspects. This week has been a lot different from previous years because we are working the first week of the season. As the first-week crew, we are in charge of preparing the house for future work. It’s been a new experience since we are used to progressing significantly on a project or even revisiting a project from a previous week. But, this week we are discovering projects as we progress through the week.
We began our demolition by removing a back porch making it feel like real-life HGTV. We then moved on to removing things such as the band joist, fascia board, and soffit to prepare the house for future groups. After each layer was removed from one project, more projects were discovered, resulting in several delays. These delays are a blessing in disguise. Project delays allow us time to grow bonds with each other, the animals around us, and even the homeowners. This allows us to really get the full experience out of ASP because believe it or not, it’s not all about fixing houses.
Working with our homeowner has been a pleasure. This home was meant for our crew as there are at least 7 cats, 8 kittens, and 3 dogs. Playing with the animals is such a joy in our week and definitely helps to push through the long, heat-filled hours on the worksite. The homeowners are one of our favorite parts of ASP because it allows us to grow closer to the community and learn more about the county we are serving for the week. It also allows us to take time, reflect on our own lives, and be grateful for what we are blessed with.
Once again, we were paired with a new leader…Dean. He has supplied us with endless dad jokes, the best one so far being “Are you guys branching out or just going out on a limb” after a tree branch randomly fell right behind us. He also has an unbelievable amount of stories that he could tell for days, I don’t think there’s much he hasn’t done in life. He’s been so supportive in putting up with our uncontrollable laughter and love for pets. We couldn’t have asked for a better 5th-year leader.
At the end of the week, we couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to have been serving Central Appalachia Kentucky for half a decade now. The laughter, pets, and heart-filling repairs are something we will always look forward to each and every summer.
Larkyn Ripley and Annabelle King
ASP’s work is ongoing and inspirational. Don’t miss out on the progress and the stories throughout the summer.
To follow along with the Harlan County Projects that LOL started this week, follow the Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/ASPHarlan
Introducing ASP's Summer Blog Series!
This summer, we have two blog series by our Story Gathering Interns:
"Appalachian Honey" by Taylor Beam and "Aspire To Be" by Sarah Brassfield. These entries give a behind-the-scenes look into an ASP summer and give a glimpse into the power and magnitude of ASP's life-changing work!
Appalachian Honey Blog Series: https://asphome.org/2024/06/07/appalachian-honey-resilience/
"I hope to give y’all a taste of the honey this summer. I will work to translate the wondrous experiences, people, and quirks of Appalachia that are illuminated by a summer of service with ASP."
Aspire to Be Blog Series: https://asphome.org/2024/06/03/aspire-to-be-hellos-and-goodbyes/
"As I travel throughout Appalachia the next couple of months capturing moments and memories, I know I will hear many stories of people involved with ASP that will touch my heart and inspire me to become a better version of myself."
Recently, I’ve been meeting with Art Hupp about our plans for a new sign at our entrance on Tylersville. We’ve been talking about these plans for almost two years now, not just because designing a sign, getting permits and quotes, and building it is difficult; but because it has been so important to think about what our sign is there to do. Until a few years ago there were LED pixels displaying messages about upcoming activities. On really good days, all of those lights worked. When everything went according to plan, we counted on drivers catching as much information as they could as they sped by our campus. As the LED panels failed, the sign got more and more expensive to maintain, we resorted to putting up temporary worship times behind the yellowed plexiglass, and with the new addition on the front of the building, the old, battered sign looks especially out of date. It is time to change the way we show people we’re here.
The new sign will match the aesthetic of the front of the building. It won’t have any flashy messages or moving parts. It will serve the crucial function of marking us as Lord of Life Lutheran Church so people can see our name from the road and know they have arrived at the correct church as they pull into our parking lot. But the work of spreading our message has changed. There are a few ways this happens.
With our new addition, our building looks more like a church than it did before. When people see our 40-foot-tall new structure with a giant cross on top, they look us up online or on social media to find out who we are and more importantly, what we do. They watch our online worship, read about our outreach ministries, and often send us messages asking us what we believe about various topics. In some ways, this is the digital age equivalent of the flashing sign, and with more information than we could ever deliver before.
We spread the word in an even more meaningful way when we participate together in group outreach projects. People see us in the world being God’s hands and feet, which is a key component of our identity. They have a chance to interact with us together and individually and create relationships that offer another window into the love Lord of Life shines in the world.
As individuals, we are each influenced by God’s message we hear at church on Sunday mornings. As our hearts are changed and we’re filled with the light that recharges us, we go into the world with a renewed perspective and we share the light with everyone we meet. People notice that. Some of us are uncomfortable talking about our faith in our daily lives, but through our actions, we are being an example of God’s love, and on the off chance our faith home comes up in conversation, we are connecting more people to Lord of Life.
In last week’s blog, Pastor Lowell pointed to our rising attendance figures over the last five years. Not only has the work of spreading our message been effective, but our ability to share our light has grown exponentially. Each new face brings their own stories, gifts, viewpoints, and hearts full of and/or ready to accept and share God’s love.
What signs have you seen this week? How are you being a sign of God’s love?
Yours in Christ,
John Johns, Music Director
This June marks ten years since the Michelson family landed in West Chester and began ministry with the incredible people of Lord Of Life. What a wild ride it has been and continues to be as we live, share, and celebrate with all people in the name of Jesus!
As I reflect on this decade of love and ministry together in the 513, I could spend this blog totaling up the hours that we spent experiencing God in meaningful worship, transformational moments of serving, mind and heart-stretching learning moments, and focused prayer for one another, our community, and our world.
I could stun you with spreadsheets and data as we review the millions of dollars that you have generously given in offerings, tithes, gift cards, and fundraisers over the last ten years and highlight the hundreds of thousands of dollars we shared with dozens of ministries and community organizations that are changing the world for the better.
I could attempt to quantify the impact and joy of being a teaching parish for Lutheran seminaries. Still, there is no way to chart the mutual growth that has happened while we hosted five seminary intern pastors in our real-life ministry classroom of preaching, teaching, serving, and learning moments. We have been equally blessed by their time among us and the legacy of their love and leadership will pay dividends for generations to come here.
I could remind you of our shared vision to grow the staff, bring renewal to spaces in need of renovation and/or repurposing, and the building expansion through the Share the Light Capital Campaign, not to mention the essential leap into digital platforms when COVID unexpectedly shuttered our campus and onsite ministry.
I could thank you for the dozens of Bible and book studies, which challenged our thinking, strengthened our faith, and stirred us to greater love for God, our neighbors, and ourselves.
But rather than looking back, I want to focus on the beautiful moments unfolding around us right now!
Every single week, we experience a steady flow of people who come to see what is happening in this thriving community of faith. Since a year ago, 24 families have officially joined us in mission, serving alongside the countless others who call Lord of Life home and regularly find meaning and purpose in our life together. Worship attendance has sky-rocketed from 210 in 2019 to a weekly average of 455 so far this year! If you’ve been in worship over the last month, you may have also noticed that we have a handful of precious new little ones. Four babies have been born in our community over the past month!
Your financial generosity continues to fuel ministry here in powerful ways. Please continue to give throughout the summer months to sustain our momentum. If you haven’t given, please consider a reoccurring or one-time gift to Lord of Life. If you have questions about how or why to give, I would be thrilled to share about the countless ways your gifts strengthen the church and alter your life.
As we assembled the Lifeline newsletter for June, I was captivated by the many ways God is leveraging our gifts and energies for serving this summer. Page after page is filled with moments of us using our hands and voices to be about the work of God. Over the next few months, Lord of Life people will help make homes warmer, safer, and drier with Appalachia Service Project (ASP), share a free hot meal on Tuesday evenings with Stepping Forward, make sure hungry school kids are fed during the summer months through Summer Lunch, and senior high youth will party down in New Orleans as they sing, sweat, and serve alongside 15,000 other youth at the ELCA National Youth Gathering! This Saturday, we’ll kick off a month of Pride activities in Hamilton reminding the LGBTQIA+ community—and everyone we encounter—of their innate value as children of God.
We don't do any of these things to earn God’s favor or to brag about how incredible we are. Instead, “We love because God first loved us.” (1 John 4:19). It really is that simple. There is One who calls each of us by name and loves us with an unconditional and eternal love. How can we keep that Good News to ourselves?
I praise God for you!
Pastor Lowell
It's the end of the school year! For a lot of us, that means our lives change because so much of our family schedule revolves around what our family members are doing in their classes, music, arts, and sports activities. For some of us, it happens to coincide with a change of season that means we can finally plant our gardens and enjoy the outdoors after nine months of not knowing what Ohio weather is going to look like. And for some, not much changes at all - we just keep doing what we always do, chipping away at the work at our job, the never-ending tasks of keeping and maintaining our homes, or, if we have found ourselves in difficult times because of medical, economic, or mental situations, the continuous cycle of trying to get help. Some of these repetitive tasks feel so daunting that I can’t help but wonder, “what’s the point?”
Part of my job follows the school year - many of my rehearsals and studies and things go on hiatus during the summer. At my last meeting today with one of my choirs, someone gave me a jar of honey from one of their own hives. Without any deep thought about it I felt it was a lovely gift, but as I reflected, I couldn’t help but wonder how few jars of honey he gets from each of his hives and that he gave me one of them! Then I thought about it from the bees’ perspective. They have the never-ending job of going out to find flowers and bringing pollen back to the hive so they can produce honey, all so someone can steal most of it away. They could easily do less work, live off of a smaller amount of honey, and then the beekeeper wouldn’t have any to take. But that isn’t who they are.
Ministry is like this, too. Our work doesn’t end. The needs of the world and God’s people don’t end. Spreading Jesus’ message doesn’t end. And sometimes we do a whole bunch of work and we’ve made a lot of people feel loved, only for some person or situation to come along and make them feel unloved again. We might boost someone up on Sunday morning and they go into a meeting on Monday morning and get yelled at, or they fail a school project and it tanks their self-esteem, or a classmate dies, or their friends drift away from them, or … the list goes on. It is so disheartening and it would be so easy to throw our hands up and say it is too hard and it isn’t worth doing so much work and having so little of the result last. We could just be happy to know God loves us and leave it at that and stop doing all the things we do every day to let everyone else know that God loves them, too. But that isn’t who we are.
At our Baptism we are given the name Christian, and we Affirm our Baptismal vows later during Confirmation. We not only promise that we are going to continue to do God’s work, but we affirm that being a Christian is who we are. Luckily, we find ourselves among many generations of Christians who have walked the same path and faced similar struggles, starting with the very first followers of Christ. Most of Paul’s letters are to people overcoming struggles that are difficult to imagine from our first-world, 21st century perspective. He reminded them to “... encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11) and “... be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
What does being a Christian mean to you?
Yours in Christ,
John
Our daughter, Eden, recently graduated from the University of Dayton. As part of the commencement address, President Eric Spina riffed on the university’s mission statement: Learn. Lead. Serve. He spoke about the importance of their continuing to learn and grow in knowledge and compassion, challenged them to use what they have learned at Dayton to become the next generation of leaders, and how crucial it will be for them to use their gifts and talents to serve one another, their communities, and the world.
These were good words for an arena full of graduates on the brink of new adventures and discoveries, and equally important imperatives for family and friends in the room. Humans are wired to be in a continuous cycle of learning, leading, and serving. Maya Angelou famously said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
One of the misconceptions we often stumble into is when we reach certain milestones in our journey—confirmation, bar and bat mitzvah, graduation, vocational success, and retirement—and we think we are done learning, leading, and serving. But these are not occasions to matriculate out of learning and growing in faith, hope, and love. Rather, they are steps across a threshold into a new territory in the house of Love!
If you haven’t noticed, many of our weekly Bible study sessions are wrapping up for the spring and will be on hiatus for the summer. This isn’t because we believe that learning stops with the school calendar—quite the opposite! Instead, we hope these summer months will provide fresh opportunities for all of us to encounter God’s activity in a variety of alternate ways. Get outside. Read a book. Attend a concert. Jump into an online Bible study. Nap. Journal. Travel. Meet a friend for a delicious beverage. Each of these moments provides occasions for self-care, as well as instances to learn something new, create new patterns, and care for others.
I stumbled on a poem/prayer from Meta Herrick Carlson some weeks ago and I can’t stop reflecting on the power of her words. It is intended for graduates but has encouragement and fuel for us all.
You have been shaped by the requirements of progress and adolescent freedom,
but these statistics and awards are not all of who you are. Not even close.
Whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not,
we are helping God keep the promises that extend beyond what you can do and earn in this world.
We remember your first and forever name: Beloved Child of God.
No matter how far you wander in any direction, we will remember what is already and always true.
You are already and always enough. You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
You are more than one thing to God and to us. So graduate from some things, but not everything. Not this.
Dear friend, wherever you find yourself during this season, I pray that you continue learning, lean into leading, and seek ways to be a servant. Not only are these at the heart of the Christian story and call, but this is also where we discover our deepest joys as we encounter the living God.
Even more than that, I hope you can join the generations in saying, “I praise you God because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Psalm 139:14.
Leaning into whatever is next,
Pastor Lowell
May always comes roaring in and doesn’t stop. Graduation ceremonies, graduation parties, last concerts of the year, end-of-the-year pizza parties, field days, bring a special lunch, wear your class shirt, prom, teacher gifts, end-of-year photo sessions, Mother’s Day events, moving out college students, Memorial Day weekend activities and the list goes on…
May is the month that feels as crazy as December without the reminders that we need to rest in the stillness and peace that the good news of Jesus' birth brings. Someone referred to it as Maycember this past Sunday. Wow, does that capture the frenzy that many of us feel.
Sometimes the frenzy doesn’t allow us to see the blessings of this season or rest in the transitional journeys that are happening for our kids or families. We have expectations of the perfect photo or event; we run late or forget something that seemed so important at the time which causes us to become frustrated or angry. We meet our teenagers, toddlers, or young adults’ angst with equal energy instead of empathy and calm.
Next Sunday we celebrate the Confirmation of some of our 8th graders. Yes, we add to the busyness of May, but it is a beautiful way to invite the Holy Spirit to work in our lives and be reminded of our Baptismal promises along with the students.
Do you intend to continue in the covenant God made with you in holy baptism:
to live among God’s faithful people;
to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper;
to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed;
to serve all people following the example of Jesus;
and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth?”
What can we do in this season to reflect this covenant with God in this time when we are stretched thin? Can we take life events and find how we are serving in the example of Jesus or striving for peace?
God has taught me a lot about humility in the busy seasons of my life. I tend to be prideful and think I can do it on my own. We need our community of faithful people to remind us of God’s unending grace and love. They push us to rest in God’s presence and peace.
Can we take moments to hear the word of God that comforts and turns our busyness over to Jesus and the love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:7)?
Praying along with you that the light of Jesus enters our Maycember in ways that join us together to live, share, and celebrate with all people God’s love in Jesus Christ.
Peace always,
Angie Seiller, Director of Faith Formation
I woke up this morning in a sweat from a nightmare. I dreamt I had a huge fight with my best friend Emily. I had to calm myself down and remind myself that everything’s ok, it’s just been a few weeks since we connected. She’s been busy and so have I, making it difficult to talk like we’re used to doing. I want to share with her what’s going on in my life and hear the things that are happening in hers. Monday mornings used to be our time but something popped up and then another and now I’m out of that routine I had built. Getting back into a habit that we’ve fallen out of can be difficult. It’s not that talking to Emily is a chore, in fact I love it, but it’s the intentionality of saying “no” to certain distractions in order to say “yes” to maintaining this cherished friendship.
You can imagine that if I’m having trouble connecting with someone I love so much, I’m also having trouble keeping up with other habits like healthy eating, exercising, and most importantly, praying. These things all slide to the back burner when more “pressing” matters come about. And now my relationship with God is suffering. I’m feeling shame and guilt around not praying like I feel like I should, like I want to, and so I’ve been avoiding it even when I do have the time. Carrying around this shame and guilt is keeping me from living the life I feel called by God to lead.
This theme of the importance of prayer has really been hounding me the last few weeks. It was the message I took with me after the three retreats I attended in April. At one retreat, we read a poem called “Now is the Time” by Hafiz that talked about creating a truce with God and reflecting on the impossibility that God is anything other than grace. If God is grace, then I should have grace with myself as I would other people. That doesn’t mean to me that it’s ok to continue on in avoiding prayer time with God. Rather, it is critical to take this reflection and act on it. It’s time to talk to God about my shame and guilt and how I want to move forward in prioritizing my “God time.”
The first Thursday in May is America’s National Day of Prayer. It’s intended as a time to turn to God in prayer for our country. While our country could use prayers, I’m using it also as a day to refresh my habits of connecting with God. I am reflecting on my daily schedule and how I can prioritize prayer as a way to strengthen my relationship with God. Just like my relationship with Emily gets dusty without phone calls and FaceTimes, my relationship with God suffers when I’m not praying.
So what will this “God time” look like? For me, I like to hold a quiet minute or two to shake off the day’s distractions. Then I’ll use a daily devotion book like the little ones we have in the Gathering Space to read some Scripture and a reflection. I usually journal any thoughts I have from what I’ve read before moving into intentional prayer. In that moment, I bring to God my worries and fears, my joys and celebrations. It’s a time to really talk to God about what’s going on with me and how God would have me respond to life. And then I close with some more time in silence. This provides an opportunity to hear God through the reflections and realizations that come to mind. All in all, this process, sometimes referred to as the daily office, takes about fifteen minutes.
When I have a larger chunk of time to devote to God, I love to really dive into the Bible and learn more about God through the Word. My favorite way to do that is called Lectio Divina. It’s a process where you read a particular text from Scripture multiple times, sometimes using various translations, hearing what sticks out to you. But it is far from the only way to strengthen your relationship with God. God calls to us through the Holy Spirit into this beautiful friendship. Perhaps you prefer to listen to some music, read the Bible, journal, sing, meditate, walk, or volunteer. There are innumerable ways we can encounter the Holy One. From my perspective, it hasn’t seemed to matter what avenue I use to connect with God, but rather that I am taking the time and dedicating myself to exploring and maintaining such an important bond.
How will you be spending the National Day of Prayer? Who will you be reaching out to? How will you be connecting with God? I pray that you find a moment to turn to God. May you sense God’s calling to you. May you answer and feel the sparkle of a renewed and deliberate relationship with the one that loves you so, the one that is grace.
Peace be with you,
Laura