Pastor's Blog

If you ask me, everyone, at every age, is looking for a place where they belong. But perhaps this statement is most obvious when it comes to kids (and especially teens!). They want to know: Do I have a place here? Is anyone glad that I showed up?

We are so excited for Kick Off Sunday this weekend, September 13. It is time to crank up this multi-faceted ministry of Christ Lutheran and welcome our church family back home.

Let me tell you something I have noticed about high schoolers. They are busy. They are pulled in seventeen directions at once — sports, academics, jobs, social lives, family obligations, and the very serious business of figuring out their next steps in life. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, the question of where they belong in a faith community can quietly get lost.

What is the sound of a healthy congregation? A Sanctuary that is filled with the melody of a pipe organ? Maybe for you it is better to hear the wale of an electric guitar in time with a kick drum? Maybe, the measure of a healthy church is both?!

Have you ever, after witnessing something incredible, come up short for words as you try to describe it to your friends? A common expression that describes this phenomenon is, “you had to be there!” The only way you can fully understand it is if you were there to have witnessed it yourself.

Picture it. It’s Wednesday night, right in the middle of the school year. My husband and I are sitting in the Fellowship Hall, eating dinner and trying to figure out what to do with our four-month-old.

One of the things I love most about Christ Lutheran is that we don't believe church ends when worship is over. Every Sunday, we gather to be renewed by worship and then sent back into the world to be the hands and feet of Christ.

I love seeing boys usher with their fathers. There is so much right with that. I was talking with a member the other Sunday, and she was relating about the excitement of her son to go and usher with his father.

Last week I spent three days in Minnesota at a beautiful Airbnb with eight other seminary classmates of mine.  We haven’t been together for forty years!  About half of us were retired and the others still in ministry.  We had a lot of catching up to do!

I just returned from a great week of camp! There is something about a week at Lutheridge that is hard to put into words. There are beautiful mountains, the campfires, the songs, the games, the worship, and the friendships that form, but those things only tell part of the story. As our Area Director put it this year, camp changes you. You are not the same person as when you came.

Just recently the New York Knicks won the NBA championship. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m a football guy, not that there’s anything wrong with basketball. I just wasn’t looking. But something caught my eye.  There was a fan, who, after the win, on her way home decided that she was going to steal a trash bin the city of New York had bought specifically for the event.

I wanted to follow up on the sermon and presentation on Sunday by Lutheran Services of the Carolinas (LSC).  LSC does so many things from independent senior living to nursing homes to traumatic brain injury to adoption to immigration/refugee resettlement. It was concerning this last ministry, refugee resettlement, that Seth Hershberger and Emily Dubay spoke on Sunday about their program called, “New Americans.”

There’s something about summertime that exposes what’s been hidden beneath the surface. Maybe it’s the longer days. The busier schedules. The constant movement. The heat. The pressure to make memories, attend every event, go on the trip, chase the goals, or somehow make this season feel meaningful.

We have all been lost before. I used to like getting lost; it helps with learning my way around.  These days I tend to have kids in the car and getting lost is less of a priority. And less likely. We have Apple maps, Waze, etc.  

No, I’m not talking about The Masters, but rather the tradition here at Christ Lutheran that we have been celebrating for over 25 years. QUILLOWS!