Reformation Day is a tough one for me. The Roman Catholic Church needed some serious correction, but some unity lost was the cost.
My Sermon on Audio, Listen HERE
OSLC's full Sunday worship service, CLICK HERE
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Reformation Sunday
Sunday, October 18, 2020
Render unto Caesar....
Sunday, October 4, 2020
Numbers are so important, there is a book of the Bible named after them.
We've obviously been doing a lot online at Our Saviour Lutheran. To what ends? My October newsletter article may shed some light on that question.
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Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord
Jesus Christ!
“I wonder what Pastor Lance does these days?’
No one has asked me that directly, but it IS a valid
question a congregation should ask of its pastor during these weird
times. Of course, I’m spending a LOT of time working on
online work. If you have been getting your Grapevine issues
over the past few months, you should know that. But a second question
is—is it worth is it?
Well, let’s look at some numbers. For a few
decades, the media and academy around the church has been pretty dim on the
notion of numbers. They have said things like “American churches
are too focused on the number of rumps they are putting in the pews and how
many bucks are going in the offering plate. They OUGHT to be
focusing on _____!” You can fill in the blank with a thousand
different things—social justice, discipleship, you name it.
But I’ll disagree. As Pastor Mel from the
bishop’s office told a bunch of us seminarians heading out to calls.
“Numbers ARE important. So important that God named a book of the
Bible after them!” Cute, but also true. Numbers aren’t the be
all, end all. But they tell us important things. Would
you be impressed if the name of the story“ was Jesus feeds a bunch of people”
rather than “Jesus feeds the 5000”? Why does Luke write that after Peter
preached three thousand were baptized (Acts 2) and that about 5000 came to
believe some time later (Acts 4)? Numbers are important in telling
a story.
So let us consider the story of this congregation and how it
touches the hearts and minds of people in our proclamation of the Good
News. And let’s roll the clocks back to this time last year in 2019
or even 2018.
Avg Worship attendance per week = 60
Avg Bible Study attendance per week= 12
Now let us say (even though we know there is some overlap in
the actual people) that those events are called “touches”. So this
congregation was making an average of 72 touches per week.
Now let’s come up to
date. September of 2020—yikes, the COVID Crisis Era!
Avg Worship
attendance = 35 per week
Avg number of listeners to PL’s sermon on Soundcloud = 12 per week
Avg number of people watching OSLC’s worship (live or recorded) = 33
per week
Avg number watching Daily Prayer with Pastor Lance = 100 per week
(5 days, ~20 per day)
That is a number of weekly touches that totals
180. And that…is an increase of 150% in just 6
months. That is enormous. A 150% increase
in six months means that—right about the time of Holy Week 2021—we would
(could? will? be making 450 touches a week!
Is this the work of the Kingdom of God? Maybe. I remember some guy telling his disciples about the Kingdom of God being like a mustard seed.
Pastor
Lance
Whose IS this?
A story about a landowner sending his servants first and finally his Son to retrieve what is owed him is the basis of this sermon (Matthew 21:-33-46) . If you want to see the entire service on our YouTube channel, click HERE
If you are looking for just the audio of the sermon, click HERE
Today's photo is me preaching from behind my pulpit with its COVID protective screen. I think it looks like I am preaching from an aquarium.
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