Email Verification
[email_verification]
Read More »ALC Lutefisk Dinner, November 2nd, 4pm-7pm
Fishin’ For Tradition? The Lutefisk Saga continues With our annual lutefisk & meatball supper. American Lutheran Church Stanley, ND Lutefisk Poster Supper includes: lutefisk, meatballs, potatoes, with gravy, cranberries, corn, lefsa, homemade pies. Excellent entertainment before, during and after supper. Back by request we will once again offer “take out” orders. Supplement funds have been applied for to the Thrivent Financial for Lutherans [ai1ec view=”agenda” post_id=”2086″]...
Read More »stew•ard n. 1. One who manages another’s property, finances, or other affairs.
Stewardship. It’s one of those words that can either mean so little, or mean so much. It’s an odd word, kind of an antiquated and “churchy” word. But the idea behind that word can go right to the heart of who we are as people. Now normally, I’m guessing when you hear “stewardship” you think, “giving money to the church”. And yet, while giving monetarily is how the term “stewardship” is usually understood, I personally feel that stewardship of time and work is more important than any financial giving. A small definition of financial giving relegates stewardship to just a small corner of our lives Stewardship is ultimately more than how much money you give to the church. It is also how you spend all of your money. It is more than giving your time or work to the church. It is also how you spend all of your time and work. Stewardship is an all-encompassing reality. I have slowly begun to see everything in life, from my money to my environment to my body to my very soul as a gift from God. And if everything is a gift, and stewardship involves how we use God’s gifts, then stewardship involves how we use everything. Stewardship can be broadened to include physical fitness, what we eat, where we shop, where we go on vacation, how much TV we watch, what careers we go into, everything. However, it is difficult to break out into the fullness of this understanding of stewardship. There is simply too much built up behind the definition of stewardship as the giving of money. It seems like every time we talk about stewardship, even in conversations that do address all areas of life, the “giving money” aspect somehow stands out a little more, takes a little more prominence. I know that I certainly project my limited practical understanding of stewardship onto all of my interactions with the term. You see, money is the primary way of giving value to something in our culture. If someone hurts you, the courts can make them pay you money. We rank people based on their net worth and we idolize those at the top. We look at our bank accounts to judge how well we’re doing in life. But you know what? One of the blessings of the Christian Gospel is that we do not receive our value based on money. This is a key counter-cultural issue for Jesus. Just open up the Gospels and chances are you’ll find him talking about the dangers of money, rather than its blessings. Can we as a community follow Jesus down this path, and come to see stewardship as something more than just financial giving?...
Read More »Vacation Bible School Photos 2013
...
Read More »Deep Deep Down
God has revealed these things to us through the Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, including the depths of God. – 1 Corinthians 2:10 At some point in my college experience, I encountered the thought of a man named Paul Tillich. Tillich changed a lot about the way I think about and recognize God in my life; or rather I shouldn’t say “changed” so much as “took the words right out of my mouth” or “finally put words to the way I felt”. One of the biggest things Tillich did was to say that it was alright to stop thinking about God as “up there” somewhere. God isn’t up beyond the clouds, hanging out in outer space somewhere. That old way of looking at creation as a three-part universe with Earth in the middle, Hell underneath, and Heaven above is dead. But if God isn’t “up there” somewhere, then is there a God at all? “OF COURSE THERE IS!” Tillich says. God is depth. God isn’t up. God is deep. God resides in the deep places of life and human experience, where words lose their ability to describe a reality too big for them. We all have experiences of this. We all know the tragedy of being “shallow” or “superficial”. I think it’s safe to say we all share a desire for and respect for integrity and depth. God is this depth, this quality, this truth of life. Jesus shows us the depths of God when he takes to that cross for us, when he enters into the depths of human sorrow and tragedy. Jesus does this to show us that it is in these depths when we are closest to God, because God loves us and cares for us deeply. “So what, Pastor? So you’ve replaced the word “up” with “deep”, what’s the big deal?” It’s a huge deal, dear people. This somewhat simple change of language can transform how you think about and experience God in your own life. Suddenly, God is not some distant super-being, but the delicious mystery at the center of our very lives. God is deep. And when we know the truth of God as something “deep” and not something “up” then we also can stop measuring the success of our lives on numbers that go “up” and start measuring success on qualities that go “deep”. Here’s one example: we all know that tired but true phrase “Money can’t buy happiness.” There is truth in that happiness is not based on the height of your wealth but the depth of your relationships with other people and with the world around you. And what of the success of the Church or of our congregations? Again, when we train our eyes for depth we see that true success in a congregation is not measured by the...
Read More »