Advent will soon be upon us and coming up is the last Sunday in the church year. Advent is a time of preparation, to get myself ready once again for the coming of our Lord to earth as a helpless baby. Each year brings new depth to this great remembering of that world changing event. Even though is a penitential season, as church, we are not fasting. Instead we are feasting and having fellowship on Thursday evenings. I am somewhat sad that we will stop celebrating Matins for a period, but thrilled that throughout Advent, we will have daily Eucharist services. It is daily confirmed that I made the right choice in joining Redeemer. I wish that I could close on this house so that I could buy furniture and really celebrate Christmas in the way my parents taught me. Next year for sure.

Home At Last

After forty-five years, I think I'm finally (back) where I belong. I took so much for granted growing up that I thought after seventeen years I was ready for the world away from my church cocoon. I was very wrong, not prepared at all and maybe I am one of those people who should never stray too far away from the influence of my church. I became convinced some time ago that I should have gone to a Lutheran college. Anyway, over the past years I have been edging back to where I started and it feels good.
I ran across a letter I started a year or so ago and think I should post it:
This is a plea to all the liturgical churches: stop hiding your light. Stop trying to be the mega-church around the corner. Recognize your rightful place within the bride of Christ. I am both sickened and saddened by the direction of modern Christianity. Its almost exclusive focus is on the self, the individual. It's in the sappy music. It's in the pap filled Christian book store around the corner. It's in thousands of Christian pulpits. And, it's driving me crazy. Not only have these churches co-opted the the historical term "evangelical", they have convinced the world that their often heretical brand of Christianity is the main stream of Christianity. This self-help style of Christianity is not only unbiblical, but often no Christianity at all.
I know, I know...other than that, how do you feel?

New Church

It's been since Easter that I've written anything to the blog and so much has happened that I should have posted. I left Oregon on a wild drive to Indiana that included almost running out of gas sixty miles from anywhere and a breakdown in Wyoming. My oldest son, Jeremy, came out to Oregon and drove back with me. So now I am in Fort Wayne, the city of my birth and first seventeen years. But it is forty-five years later and things have changed. I am in the house that I am buying, the closing keeps getting held up, so I am paying rent until the close. In the meantime, I have been holding off buying furniture, so the house is largely empty. On the other hand, it's warm and dry.
After some church shopping, I have joined Redeemer Lutheran, part of the English District of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church. It is a church I have been looking for for some time. I have long felt the LCMS was a liturgical jewel and couldn't figure out why they weren't touting that instead of chasing the church growth movement. Redeemer is a church that is all about liturgical worship in the Lutheran tradition. I have know about it for since I was in high school with "Liz" Lindemann, daughter Redeemer's pastor at that time. The current pastor, Rev. David Peterson is committed to Lutheran worship in it's finest form. I have started going to Morning Prayer daily at 7:10, which I assume we'll keep up until Advent, when we start having daily Eucharist at that time. I feel very blessed to be part of a church community that so honors the Lutheran tradition.
I haven't really made any friends, yet, but I think that is largely my fault. I tend to isolate, instead of joining groups of folk with similar interests. With God's help, I can change all that.