Pastor's Comments

There is so much to share from our Synod Assembly, it’s hard to know where to even begin.  Our speaker was Diana Butler Bass, who described for us what congregations that are thriving in the midst of a challenging world and

culture have discovered – that our friends, far from being uninterested in God, are looking for him desperately, but they want an authentic encounter with the living, breathing heart of God.  And if Church can’t show them the heart, they will (out of necessity!) go off and find it for themselves.  People are looking for a spirituality that gives them actual

practices, things to know and do to be closer to God.

She asked provocative questions like “What do we do here at Holy Trinity that transforms your life?  What do you do here that has changed your life in the past 5-10 years?”  And again, “What practices shape you?  What do we do to allow people to

experience Christ, and then act out goodness in the world?”  And again, “We’re not creating a church for a niche group we’ve targeted.  Who is in our neighborhood?  How can we be an authentic and faithful church where people will find community and nurture here?”

There is much to ponder, but for now I want to share with you a conversation with a friend.  Zach is a roommate from college, who has never to my knowledge had any interest in God.  We stayed with him for a few days this summer, and it took awhile for our conversation to get around to church.  When it finally did, he asked a question: “So do you think the church can reach people our age?

I think he was a bit surprised when I said “No.”  But then I went on: “I’m coming to realize you can’t ‘program’ to reach people our age.  Because other places with bigger resources can always ‘program’ bigger and better.  The truth is, the Church has failed our generation, and ‘programming’ is part.”

So I went on and described us here at Holy Trinity: “What we need is to have our attention where it should have been all along – on the living, breathing, challenging, profound experience of God and how he transforms our lives.  [We call that faith, by the way.]  We need to look to how we grow together – training ourselves to live faithfully.  We need to look to intentionally growing our selves, our community, our care, serving, helping, mentoring, souls.

“But that’s not all.  That’s UP and IN, but it also has to go OUT.  God is in the world to redeem it and transform it from this broken, evil-infested form into his dream.  If we want to really know God, we must be OUT there.  He is ready to help us stop hunger.  We are the ones to save the environment.  We are the ones to fight for justice for others, stop AIDS, save children, right wrongs, be the voice for the powerless.  We must, because that’s what God is doing, that’s where God is, that’s what God has blessed us for, that’s God’s great work in the world and we are people in passionate search for him, to know and be known, to be loved and transformed.

“People our age still have that hunger for meaning, for relevance, for truth, for wisdom, for being connected to something greater, for a life that matters and is worth living.  And when we are the people of God plugged in to his mission, growing in his love, practicing our way into transformed lives of personal and spiritual growth, then people will discover this is a place where they can find it, that this is where they can experience God and a new life that matters.”

And my friend, who has never had any experience or interest in God that I’ve ever seen in over 20 years, said: “I wish we lived closer so we can come to that kind of church.”

-Pastor Tim

It is an interesting time to be a congregation in Indiana and Kentucky!

The first weekend in June, approximately 1,000 of our brothers and sisters will gather in Covington, KY to worship, to pray, to study the Bible, to learn, and to discern together the calling of the Spirit for our shared and combined ministries in our area.  Two of our members and myself will be present there to listen, learn, study, and voice and vote their conscience.  We invite and covet your prayers for our shared time of being the Body of Christ, called and gathered on behalf of every congregation and ministry in Indiana and Kentucky.

The highlight for me at Assembly is always the worship.  When 1,000 people gather to sing together, pray together, and share the bread and cup of blessing, it shows in ways words cannot that we do not minister alone, but we are, together, the Body of Christ.  That Body, that beautiful, flawed, blessed vessel of Christ’s blessing to the world, isn’t just Holy Trinity and its limited resources.  It is all our brothers and sisters gathered together, ministering in their own language and ways, in their own places.  God’s plan for us is way too big for just one congregation.  It takes us all – together, we can bless almost incalculably more than we can alone.

This Assembly, we will say farewell and Godspeed to Rev. James Stuck, who has served as our bishop now for 12 years.  During this time he has led us in a vision of “Every person a missionary; Every pastor a Mission Director; Every Congregation, Conference and Ministry a Mission Center.”  He has prayed over us, consulted with us, been a resource for us, shepherded us, and been the faithful pastor for the synod, its congregations, and all the pastors and other rostered leaders.  It has been my great privilege to know him these three years.

We will also be electing a new bishop, which is a time for intensive discernment and discussion.  What is the future of being a Synod in Indiana and Kentucky?  What is the future of doing ministry together?  How can a Bishop and staff best serve, lead, and shepherd the congregations of our Synod?  What gifts, talents, and skills should we look for?  Above all – who is the Holy Spirit moving in our midst to serve in this way?

I invite you to join us in praying over this important decision.  Pray that the Spirit will move strongly, and bring forward the right person to lead us in this way.  Pray that God will give us such a sense of vision that our shared ministry will be empowered and enhanced.  Pray that God’s will be done, in the Indiana-Kentucky Synod as in heaven.

On behalf of all the voting members of the Assembly, our members and especially myself I thank you for your prayers, and for our sharing in ministry and mission together with the whole Body of Christ.

In God’s amazing grace,

-Pastor Tim

“Whom are you looking for?”

These words were read at our Good Friday service, from John’s account of the Passion.  This is the moment that starts God’s plan for reclaiming our souls – a simple moment, an ordinary question, but the answer drops people to the dirt: “Whom are you looking for?”

I thought of this question related to our lives together at Holy Trinity.  Our community, the friendship and fellowship we share, is such an important part of all our lives.  So many times I’ve heard us say, “Without Holy Trinity my week feels lost.”  So many times I’ve heard and seen what a difference this place makes in your lives.  I’ve witnessed and been amazed by what God can do within people’s hearts through Holy Trinity.  And what an incredible blessing and joy that is!

It’s helpful for us all to ask ourselves Jesus’ question sometimes: when we come to Holy Trinity, whom are we looking for?  When we serve at Hope or Preschool Storytime or in Youth Group, whom are we seeking?  When we come to worship, what are we expecting?  Is it community and friendship?  In that case liturgy will be a boring framework because it’s not entertainment.  But if we’re expecting an experience of God, liturgy becomes a roadmap, a well-worn path handed down by millennia of faithful people who experienced God in this way.  Hopefully that’s why we here, but – whom are we looking for?

It’s clear the question is vital, because it informs and deepens absolutely everything we do.  Mission trips, quilting, youth group, worship, even Bread Breakers, we should ask ourselves: Whom are we looking for?  Are we expecting God to show up today?  What are we seeking?

This month we will have the chance to meet in Cottage Meetings to talk about God’s preferred future for us here at Holy Trinity.  Our Visioning committee has prayed much and talked long over these questions, and we’re incredibly excited about what God has been saying.  Now it’s our turn to include you in the conversation.  What is God up to here?  How can we remember to put him at the focus?  Whom are we looking for?

Blessings to us all in this exciting part of our lives together!  And may we continually ask ourselves: whom are we looking for?

Peace,

-Pastor Tim

Our Visioning group has been meeting now for several months, gathered around the conviction that God is up to something at Holy Trinity, that the Spirit is at work in our midst, and that God has a future in mind for us.  We’ve met and prayed together and separately, asking “God, what is on your heart and mind?”  We’ve sought inspiration about our ministries, about programs, about who we’re called to serve, about the shape of our lives here as servants of Christ at Brick and Mayflower Road.  And, we’ve often been surprised by the answers.

One of the convictions we share is that God has a plan, God is up to something in the world.   We share that conviction with all God’s faithful, because the Bible shows us through history God at work on that plan.  Our calling as Christians is not to invent a purpose for our lives, nor is it our job to invent a future for Holy Trinity.  God’s already doing all of that – God already has a purpose for your life.  Our task, our calling, our great privilege as people of faith is to watch for what God is already up to, and then to get on board.

The Visioning group has become more and more convinced that the place for us to start looking is in our own faith lives as a congregation.  We have come to believe the Lord is fashioning himself a people, shaping us by his mercy and his grace, transforming us by his presence.  God is forming you into his child, and that’s where we begin.

It’s what I’ve recently been calling “thick faith” or “deep faith” – one of the joys of Holy Trinity, and the primary thing that has been drawing people into relationship with our community and with the Lord, is the vibrant, lively, transforming faith here.  This is a place where God changes lives, where being together changes and challenges and makes the rest of the week meaningful – and makes it go better.  Truly I tell you, I have heard story after story and have witnessed people being transformed by the work of the Spirit at Holy Trinity.  God has been changing lives within and through this community, because it’s a place that encourages and nurtures a thick, lively faith.

The interesting question then, is where that leads.  And that’s a question that can only be answered by all of us, by all of our eyes looking within our faith for what God is doing.  The Visioning group can’t answer that for us, we need your answers and listening as well.  That’s why, over the next couple months, we’re going to start a series of Cottage Meetings gathering in members’ homes to laugh and pray and listen together.  We want to listen together for what God is doing to your faith, what God is doing in your life, where your joy is, where your energy is, what gives you life.

So pray with us.  Laugh with us.  Grow with us.  Learn with us.  Listen and look with us for what God is already up to.  And join us in conversation at our Cottage Meetings, because God is up to something here.  Lives are being transformed by the Spirit here.  What a privilege to be part of God’s plan!

Peace,

-Pastor Tim

Last month we talked about prayer, the primary means of our communication with God.  This month we turn to the second major faith practice in our lives: worship.  Worship is our most public act as disciples: every week, we gather; every week, we come to a central location; every week, we greet and encourage and connect our lives together.  It is that necessary, repeating movement that fills our tanks and strengthens us at the start of the week.  I’ve heard from many of our members that worship is what gets them through the week, and without it, the week does not go nearly as well.

For us, worship is filled with the structure and language of the ancients, brought into our modern context.  We bring today’s energy and a sensitivity to what’s happening in our world and infuse them into ancient words, motions, movement, and mystery.  Our worship rings with the silence of the catacombs.  We thrill to the soaring chords of the cathedrals.  We are moved by the chants of the medieval monks.  We proclaim and echo the words of our ancestors, gathered through all time and space, in our shared Creeds.

Then we bring today’s world into this rich living faith of our ancestors.  We sing newly composed hymns and songs alongside familiar ones, because they speak to us in a language that resonates.  We plan worship texts to match the rhythms of the seasons and our own usage of language.  We utilize the best scholarship available in understanding what the Creeds and prayers meant to their authors, and what they mean in our world today.

As a liturgical tradition, worship for us becomes a well-worn path, a familiar route that brings us where we need to be: basking in the filling and fulfilling presence of God.  That familiarity is important because its structure can feed our soul and bring an expected peace.  But, there is also a danger of our path becoming a rut, and so as a congregation we watch for things to be too-familiar, too-comfortable, too-expected.  Worship should always have a sense of adventure, of the possibility and opportunity of being approached by God in a new way, of a new aspect of God’s grace breaking in like sunrise.

Above all, worship is when we know God is here, when the Spirit is available, when we are breathed into by God’s strength and presence and sent into the world.  Worship is the breathing in and breathing out of the body of Christ: brought into community, filled with his life, and then sent into the world.  What happens to you in worship is not for Sunday.  Worship is all about the rest of the week: encountering God changes how we meet the world.  It is Jesus who makes it possible for us to invite our friends and family members to come, to know the joy we have found in the Lord.

So come and worship, come and be filled, come and be connected across space and time to the words and motions of the ancients, to the new movement of the Spirit among composers and musicians, to the work and mission of God in the world today.  Come and see and be filled with God’s presence, that we can be sent into the world, so that everyone – your friends and neighbors and family members especially – can know his peace.

-Pastor Tim

It seems so early, but this month we enter into the solemn season of Lent.  Long a mournful season of reflection and repentance, it always feels like a journey through a landscape we’d probably prefer not to explore.  Faced with and reminded with our mortality at the beginning, we journey through seven weeks toward another death, the death of our beloved savior and master.  No wonder we shiver as it draws near!

I wonder if we might be surprised by Lent this time around.  It’s sort of a strange ironic season anyway – denial and seriousness when the days are getting longer and buds are starting to appear.  The readings this season are bursting with images of food – which seems odd for a season of fasting.  There is something here more complex than we might expect – even the word “Lent” comes from an Old English word for spring.  It reminds us that the purpose of repentance is the renewal of our lives – not “feeling sad,” but turning around and starting anew.

This season, however else you are accustomed to remembering Lent, I would propose a community-wide discipline.  Let us together take on a discipline, not just giving something up.  Together, we can come to know God more fully, come to experience the Spirit more deeply, and at the end of this season, compare notes – what did it do to us?

So this season, as a whole congregation, let’s take on the discipline of adding more time in prayer.  Even just 5 minutes more a day will do.  If you already have a lively prayer life, extend it.  If you’re an occasional pray-er, make it daily, at least 5 minutes.  And if prayer is foreign to you, take it up in some way – even just deliberately praying at mealtime (in restaurants too!) will do.  Wherever you are on your journey with Jesus, this season, take it another step: add some more time with him in prayer.

As we come into Holy Week and Eastertide (isn’t that a great old word?  Eastertide, like the ebbing and flowing of the sea…), as we draw to the end of our journey into renewed life, we’ll take stock and compare notes.  If you would like resources for prayer, check out the devotionals on the information booth by the front doors at church, or talk to me or any of our Prayer Team (always available for you after every worship service).  But above all, be prepared – spending time with God is liable to fill you in unexpected ways.  When we spend time talking with God, he is liable to answer in ways we didn’t know to look for.  When we devote ourselves together to him – why, he’s liable to fill our cups to overflowing with his Spirit.

Welcome to this blessed season of renewal, reflection, and repentance.  Join me in prayer, won’t you?  The Lord is waiting.

Peace,

-Pastor Tim

It’s been my habit, almost a ritual really, of using the January newsletter to talk about New Year’s resolutions.  I like to draw the connection between

remaking ourselves, whether through diet or exercise or manners or whatever, and the gift of new life and repentance we receive in God’s grace.  And this year, I had some great statistics to help make my point: Stephen Shapiro, with the help of Opinion Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey, recently said on his blog (www.steveshapiro.com/blog/) that 45% of Americans usually set New Year’s Resolutions.  Of these, eight percent are always successful.  Eight percent.

Instead, though, I want to talk about Amy’s grand-father, John Mateja.  Gramps, as we affectionately call him, turned 98 in January, lives alone in the house he built 50 years ago, bowls three times a week, raises pigeons, and in general is amazing.  I’ve always enjoyed sitting with him at family gatherings and hearing his stories – even if they’re repeats, which they often are.  And, we often talk about the church and the world and all that’s going on around us.

Over Christmas, as we gathered at his house, he and I talked about his church, one of several Catholic churches in Whiting, IN, which are closing and

combining.  Gramps was talking about generational differences: “Eh, young people, they don’t go to

confession anymore.  Do you have confession?” I said that yes, we do have a rite of individual confession, and for us the corporate confession Sunday morning is particularly meaningful.  “Come to think of it,” he went on, “I haven’t been to confession myself in 20 years.”  When I exclaimed and tried to tease him, he said, “Ah, at my age, what sins can I commit?”

But then the real story is what’s next: “Young people these days, they’re just not interested in the same kind of church we were.”  And I’ve had to think about that for a while.  Is it really true?  Sometimes we think so – younger generations listen to different music, entertain themselves differently, and definitely communicate in different ways (think Twitter, texting, Facebook, etc.).

But I have become convinced that all of us, young or old, new to faith or raised in it, are really looking for the same thing in a church: a place where we can grow in faith.  A community that can help us learn about God.  Opportunities to serve that will grow our souls.  Teaching and preaching that will help us live our days, equip us with a rudder and sails and the wind to get us through the decisions of the week.  I don’t care what age you are, we are after the same thing: someplace to nurture the growth of our souls.

So if we as a faith community were to make a New Year’s Resolution – wouldn’t that be an amazing one?  Each of us, child or retired, could resolve to practice our faith this year just a little more.  Each of us, whether new to the community or a life-long member, could resolve to encourage each other, ask the interesting questions (“How are you with God this week?”), watch for what God is up to in our life and have the courage to jump in.  How amazing would that be?

And I’m convinced – I know for a fact – that with God as a part of this kind of resolution, our faith will grow beyond imagining.

-Pastor Tim

“Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come.”

Throughout this season of waiting, this season of preparing, this season of expectation and anticipation, that is our prayer.  Every Sunday our Prayer of the Day will begin with a plea: “Stir up, O Lord.”  Stir up our wills.  Stir up our hearts.  Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come.

It’s such a strange season, Advent, if you think about it.  It’s the season of preparation, when we prepare to remember and celebrate again the long-ago giving of the gift of priceless worth, God’s own Son, given as God-With-Us.  We prepare to remember the past and celebrate again what is so well-known, and happened so long ago.

What makes this season strange – and hard to hold on to – is that it’s also our season of preparing for what is yet to come.  We will hear Jesus, near the end of his ministry – which is odd in itself, as we anticipate hearing again the story of his birth – as, at the end of his ministry, he taught his friends and followers about what is still yet to come.  Throughout Advent we will hear predictions, not of a quiet night in Bethlehem, but of a grand Day that will be filled with trumpets and marching angel armies and Jesus, showing himself – finally! – in power, to sit on the throne that has been his since before time.

That’s such odd imagery for us, isn’t it?  Most of us have no, none, zip, zilch experience living under a monarch.  We have no experience with the imagery of coronation, ruling, triumph.  And for people who, for the most part, are pretty comfortable, and for whom, for the most part, change is uncomfortable, calling for things to be “stirred up” seems an unusual, even un-understandable, even unpleasant and undesirable, thing to do.

And yet, every Advent, that is our prayer.  “Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come.”  Not to Bethlehem, that has happened once for all time.  Not to the cross, which was, as the book of Hebrews has reminded us throughout November, salvation that does not need to be repeated.  We do not pray for another baby, another Silent Night, shepherds, magi, a star.  No, we pray for what is yet to come – that there will come a day when God will win.  When all the forces that are arrayed against him, and against us becoming what he intends for us, will be destroyed.  Not defeated, mind you, but destroyed.  And when faith will become so obvious, obedience become so natural, that it will be as if God’s will and God’s law and God’s plan is written, carved, tattooed, right on our hearts.

Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come.  Give us such a vision of your promise that we long for it, not for what we know.  Let us fall so in love with you, and with your plan for all Creation, that we can’t help but invite others to share Life as you’ve given us.  Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come.  This is our season of preparing.  May it be one of preparing our very hearts and minds and souls for Christ, who is to come.

-Pastor Tim

It was just as I was sitting down to write this article that I came across a headline on the news: “The 5 secrets of happy families”.[†] Of course, being a parent, I immediately was intrigued and wanted to know the secret.  And do you know, not one of them had to do with the amount of toys in the toyroom, much to my boys’ chagrin.

The article was based on recent research into the science of happiness (who knew there was such a thing?), and talked about what families – and individuals – can learn from this science of happiness, amidst a life that swirls with chaos and uncertainty, an economy that experts say is showing glimmers of life but none of us are seeing, and far too much bad news on the television.  And based on these findings, it gives some basic habits that inoculate ourselves against setbacks large and small.

What I found most striking was the #1 tip.  Let me quote the article directly:

Give thanks – no matter what: Research consistently finds that regularly expressing gratitude is good for our overall well-being: People who do so are healthier, more successful at reaching their goals, more optimistic, and more inclined to help others.

And I immediately of November 8^th, and the celebration we’re going to share.

Every year, we take this time to pray intensively over our worship of God with our offerings, and to reflect not on what we’re giving away, but how much the Lord has given in the first place.  It’s one of the most important ways we have of loosening the grip that our possessions have over us – giving away is the only way of proving to ourselves that we really do have enough and don’t need more.  But more than that, it’s also the only way of showing God through action and not just words how grateful we are, how thankful we are for how he is taking care of us.  That’s why we do a Stewardship Emphasis every year – not for the budget, but for ourselves.  Not because the church needs money, but because we need to give.  Each of us needs desperately to give to God.

And so, November 8^th, we’re giving ourselves the opportunity to write on a piece of paper our gratefulness to God, and to make a commitment to him and what he has in mind for ministry in our corner of the world.  We will “Walk the Walk” that Jesus showed us by giving thanks – in action and in words.

The article also had good news for us if this all seems a little crazy: But what if your family is struggling, say with a job loss, and no one is feeling like they have much to be thankful for?  “There’s nothing wrong with faking it,” says Robert Emmons, Ph.D… “Act grateful, and you’ll soon start feeling it.”

And I thought to myself, that’s exactly right.  Tithing seems crazy.  Giving first-fruits away (i.e. giving off the top, rather than what’s left) seems crazy.  Saying “thanks” by giving away seems crazy.  But sometimes, that’s the walk of a disciple: even if we don’t get it, we try it – we fake it – until we discover that it’s exactly right.

See you at our celebration November 8!

I find it interesting how the timing of coincidence can sometimes work.  We’re here at the beginning of the school year, which matches up to our programming year – Sunday School, Confirmation, and Bible Studies have started back up; our Young Couples’ Ministry is beginning; our Stewardship Emphasis time is approaching; and our Hospitality, Fellowship, and Service group has lots of ideas up their sleeves.

At the same time, of course, we’re dealing with some difficult questions in the wake of the recent decisions at the Churchwide Assembly.  While some authors I’ve been reading have been quick to point out that what happened in Minneapolis simply puts a name to the reality in which we’ve been ministering for 15-20 years, and others have decried that this is the final straw in a long slide into heresy, there is an underlying question that we need to ask, that remains the same: how are we to minister to the corner of God’s creation that he has given us?  How are we to serve our neighbors and Make Christ Known?  Are we able to be in ministry together?

What I find interesting is the juxtaposition that, with our September calendar, Holy Trinity hit a turning point of sorts that I knew was coming someday, but arrived sooner than I expected: all of a sudden, there is so much that the Spirit is up to in our midst, we are finding it difficult – sometimes impossible – to schedule things the way we always have, that counts on the same people being at everything.  It’s

impossible for a single person to be at everything happening at Holy Trinity, and I for one find that very exciting!

What this means, is that we’re continuing to grow into our mission to Make Christ Known.  Our

passion to share the love of God that we’ve found with and among each other is getting stronger.  We’re looking in new ways to reach out to the lonely, connect to the hurting, feed the hungry,

protect the vulnerable.  In short, we’re focusing ever more on our mission to share what God is up to in our lives: Making Christ Known.

I recently heard our Bishop, Jim Stuck, describe our ELCA in a way that helped me put things in context.  There has never been a church organized in quite the way we are, Bishop Stuck said, no one has ever tried this before.  We are one Church, the ELCA, in three expressions: congregation, synod, and national church.  And just as Jesus said “Wherever two or three are gathered…”, whenever any of those expressions is gathered, that is the Church – not the complete Church, but the Church nonetheless.  I suppose it’s like our committee meetings at Holy Trinity – when Worship and Music or Council meets, that’s our church – not the complete Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, but our church gathered in that place nonetheless.

It’s the same for our national church and our synod.  Each of them is the Church too, but not the complete Church.  And just as our congregation has no right to tell the Churchwide Assembly what to do, neither do they have the right to tell us what to do.  Each of us is a separate expression, gathered together into ministry that the others simply cannot accomplish on their own, yet fully dependent on each other.

I find it interesting to hold what is happening in the wider Church up against the evidence that our mission to Make Christ Known is alive and well.  What the Spirit is up to here is so exciting, so vibrant, so absolutely necessary, it’s fascinating to wonder what’s next.  I’m looking forward to what God has in store for us as we, together, look to Make Christ Known.

-Pastor Tim