Tell me, have you noticed even though we are at the very end of July, our lawns are still green and growing? I mean, there are some years when after a week of vacation, my lawn looked exactly the same as when I left it, only a little browner. But not this year. First thing…
Download Life Guide I recently attended a workshop by MLC Professor Mark Paustian called “Communicating Christ in the 21st Century.” One of Prof. Paustian’s phrases stuck with me. “Our current cultural narrative strives to reach a point where no one is condemned for who they are or what they do.” Basically, society wants to establish…
Download Life Guide Sometimes you see it in the headlines. Sometimes you don’t. In Libya, 21 Christians are put to the sword by ISIS fighters. In Egypt, Palm Sunday services are shattered by a bomb that kills dozens of Coptic Christians. In North Korea, hundreds, if not thousands, of Christian men, women and children are…
Download Life Guide In their most recent study the Pew Research Center reported that of the over 7 billion people on earth roughly 30 % of them are Christian. The most recent estimates put the number of total deaths on this planet at about 150,000 people per day… or an average of 2 people each…
Download Life Guide In my work as a member of our synod’s Assignment Committee, I have the great privilege of helping to assign young pastors to their first congregation. It’s a responsibility that no one on the committee takes lightly. We study the needs of each congregation requesting a pastor and then we pore over…
I expect you saw the news this week. In our nation’s capital, a man tries to turn a baseball practice into a killing field. On the other end of the country, another man leaves three dead at a UPS facility. I don’t have to tell you that the world we live in is a dangerous…
Download Life Guide Dear fellow children of the Reformation: 3400 years ago an 80 year old man armed with a wooden staff stood on the banks of the Red Sea with water in front of him and an army behind him. The Israelites and the promised of the line of the Savior were threatened by an angry Pharaoh and his army. A…
Download Life Guide Today, we’ll be taking a Catechism pop quiz. Maybe some of you had an anxious flashback from adolescence. But don’t worry, this quiz won’t be graded. It will be important for your faith, though. I’ll give you some examples, and you tell me if they broke the First Commandment. If you don’t remember, God’s First Commandment for us is,…
Download Life Guide When introducing his study of the Lord’s Prayer, Martin Luther writes: “Our Father in heaven. What does this mean? With these words God tenderly invites us to believe that he is our true Father and that we are his true children, so that we may pray to him as boldly and confidently as dear children ask their dear…