A Time For Change

What a fickle fellow I am ! In a few short months, I have altered my future plans in a significant way. I woke up one day thinking, "this town doesn't even have a dry cleaners". Now, I don't even own anything that currently needs dry cleaning, but it became a symbol of the immense lack of goods and services in my locality. This then morphed into "what am I doing here"? My late sister's two sons and their families live here, but, honestly, I seldom see them. After my typical several days of brooding, I actually made a map of people in my life and it turned out to be a narrow strip running from Chicago to the Atlantic. I started investigating cities with the following criteria in mind: it must have a decent college or university, it must have decent public transport, and, of course, it must have a dry cleaners. After several weeks of looking, lo and behold, my choice became the place of my birth, Fort Wayne, Indiana. So, here I sit, closing in on a house and planning a move. My financial situation has improved and am now recieving both a pension and Social Security. Although I'm not, I feel quite rich!

In the midst of planning my move, I just put together a liturgy for Maundy Thursday and am halfway through a sermon for our last Wednesday night Lenten services. Since our pastor is less than full time, Wednesday services therefore are entirely run by the laity. I have spent much time in prayer and contemplation over this, which is good.

The liturgy class which started out trying to answer the question, "does liturgy shape doctrine or does doctrine shape liturgy?" I'm not sure we ever got a satisfactory answer, my gut feeling is both with a little more emphasis on the former, i.e. if Lutherans start to have services resembling the modern neo-evangelical mega-churches, it is my belief that they will eventually start to think like them. I find my self telling Lutherans who got on the Rick Warren bandwagon, "my problem isn't lack of purpose, my problem is sin". Is that a bit smug, I suppose so, but it is my gut. Tomorrow I will post my "sermon".