Better Together

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. - Romans 15: 5-6

Reality is that collaboration takes planning, hard work, humility, and congregational support. It would be much easier for our three congregations to just keep doing our own thing. We are, after all, three very different congregations in spite of the reality that we come from a common tradition, share a similar theological framework and are members of the same denomination. When we do things individually, we don’t have to worry about changing traditions that are dear to us, we don’t have to worry about if we might need to drive further to another facility, we don’t have to worry about having to listen to that other pastor that we just don’t like quite as much. There are cultural differences between our congregations, there are worship style differences, there are facility differences, and believe me each of our pot-lucks are very different. So why not just continue each of us on our own way?

There are of course practical reasons. The cost of being a congregation are going up dramatically, and maybe we need to find ways to share that cost. None of our congregations have a large number of active youth, so if we do things together we get a large group. None of our congregations can afford more than one pastor and our pastors have different gifts, it can make life easier for pastors to share some responsibilities. Our three congregations are experiencing realities that are shaping churches around the country: expenses are going up, income and participation is going down, reliance on technology is increasing, our congregations are aging, and we don’t have the fleet of volunteers we used to have, even when our staffs were bigger. Maybe if we collaborate we get by with less? The truth is that these practical forces are what are causing us to take a more serious look at collaborating, but they really are the less important reasons for collaborating.

When we read about congregations in the New Testament, there really is no concept of one congregation going it alone. There really was only ONE church and it may have met in different houses, in different cities, speaking different languages, and worship may have looked different from place to place, but all those meetings of Christians were part of ONE Church. They supported each other financially, they sent leaders to help one another, they critiqued one another’s teaching and practices, and they were blessed to be very interdependent with one another. In multiple letters to the Church, Paul emphasizes that if we are to experience the fullness of what in means to be the people of God, we need to be working in community with greater diversity.

Most famously Paul uses the image of the Body of Christ in several letters but the metaphor is most fully developed in Chapter 12 of his first letter to the Corinthians. Here Paul argues that accepting that we are more complete when we recognize that our differences make us stronger leads us to better live out God’s “More excellent way,” which is Love (1 Corinthians 13). Calvary on its own is less equipped to love our neighbors than we are when we are collaborating with others. Trinity, though it’s history in the community is longer, can not love this community as well on its own as it can in collaboration. Lutheran Church of the Master’s impact on Kootenai county is well documented, but its gifts are incomplete.

As I am writing this newsletter Kootenai county has made the national news again because of hate related incidents aimed at a women’s basketball team. As I am writing this there are thousands living in our community who are convinced that disciples of Jesus, if not God himself, believe that they are unwelcome, untouchable, unlovable. If we are to love this community with the fullness of Christs love, we must recognize that going it alone isn’t going to cut it anymore, and perhaps it never really did.

-Pastor Matt Erickson

Lent

I recall my first Religion Class in college which was both liberating and terrifying. Having been raised in a small town in rural Minnesota, in a small church, I arrived with my own version of the Bible, God, Jesus, the Church. With my Sunday School level understanding of things, I sat in the front row of the class that day, eager to have everything I believed confirmed and reinforced. After all, I attended a Church college. Quickly, I surmised, that this professor didn’t believe in the same Bible I did. He so nonchalantly began “looking behind” things for explanation and meaning. I felt he did so without permission from God. Was he messing with me?

I wanted to know what he believed. At the end of the semester, much of what I believed had been seriously challenged. I felt like I had nothing to hold onto.

Jesus, when he started preaching and teaching in Galilee, he started to “look behind” the Old Testament (the Bible of the day). With uncanny authority and wisdom, he told stories that uncovered God’s Word, God’s hope. For the good Jews in the synagogue that day, I bet they wondered if Jesus was playing with them. I am certain his words both terrified and liberated them. Who is this guy, they asked. A rabbi who preaches and teaches with such authority. They had to decide what to hang on to.

Most of you understand what is going on in both settings. What once worked in terms of faith and belief will often give way to new understandings. I have learned it to be a healthy process. Some call it the “deconstruction” of something in the anticipation of something new. Others describe this process as God’s transforming Spirit taking one’s “ordering” of things into a period of “disorder” when things fall apart, to the Spirit’s leading to the “reordering” of life and faith. Of course, waiting for some clarity about the new can feel like you have nothing to hold onto.

I listened to a podcast this morning about two different views of anchors. One promoted an understanding of anchor like the firm foundation of a building. The other suggested the anchor that we associate with a boat. LCM can utilize both views of course, but when the challenges of this transition time get intense, I suggest we get into the boat, flow to wherever God is leading, maybe even enjoy being adrift together and anchor only when we have done our best to hold onto each other with love and kindness. I wish for you a confidence that God, at this very moment, is reordering your future. Lent is a wonderful time to be in a boat together.

Blessings! Pastor Kirk

Forty days of Lent

The forty days of Lent will begin soon, circle February 14. (Note to self: Deliver roses and chocolate to wife on the 13th!) Ash Wednesday service at LCM will be at 5pm. There is no soup supper scheduled for Ash Wednesday. The five Lenten Wednesdays to follow will also begin at 5om and include a soup supper.

On the 14th, we will have ashes “imposed” on our foreheads and hear the words, “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We heard “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” at recent memorial services for Lucille and Effie. We hear them again on Ash Wednesday as a reminder of our mortality too. Then to confess: Isn’t it amazing what the Holy One can do with dust!

Wednesday Lenten Services will feature the Biblical notion of “Binding and Loosing.” Mt. 16:18-20 tells of Jesus giving to Peter, and the church, the authority to exercise a prayer discipline called Binding and Loosing.

• To bind usually means to forbid, to prohibit. When you bind something, you put it in chains. But it can also mean holding it close.

• To loose means to set something free. When you loose something, you have untied it from a previous bondage.

In some situations, Jesus got upset when the Pharisees “bound” believers to rigid Interpretations of the Law. Better to “unbind” the believers, set them free from the overuse or burden of the Law. On the other hand, Jesus encouraged believers to bind themselves to care for one’s neighbor and to loosen one’s grip on their possessions.

We are all constantly binding and loosing, although you might not think of it that way. When you think of what really matters to you at LCM, those are things you’ve bound to yourself. Might be the way we worship, might be making repairs in the attic, might be cleaning out kitchen cabinets. Different things matter to each of us; together, we make a congregation serving God and neighbor.

Binding and loosing can be both an individual and a communal practice. As followers of Jesus, it is our challenge to discern what to bind ourselves to and what to untangle ourselves from. It can be a helpful discipline as we examine – and repent from - mindsets, habits, possessions, and relationships that separate us from God. Our Lenten service will be 30 minutes (maybe a bit longer) to read from scripture, listen for the Spirit, and sing some prayers. Then we’ll have soup!

Sundays are not considered part of the 40 days of Lent & will follow the assigned texts.

Blessings! Pastor Kirk