Sermon for The Funeral of Lyle Curtis Aarsvold, 1932-2009 (November 20, 2009)
“A Place at the Feast!”Isaiah 25:6-9; Matthew 25:1-13INIGrace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.1. All of our Scripture passages so far in today’s service have a common theme. We read together Psalm 23 where the Lord, our Shepherd, “prepares a table before me.” Then you and I heard the words of Isaiah 25: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.” In Revelation 19, an angel says to St. John, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Worshipers or Customers? (Cont.)
As a continuation of my earlier post, I'd like to make clear that my chief complaint in this is not the expectations of the worshiper. I'm much more disenfranchised with the pastors and churches who are adopting this business model of ministry and feeding "Christian consumerism."I recently attended a church planting conference where the key speaker was someone with LCMS World Mission. The phrase he continually used in this conference was "critical mass"--in terms of "You launch your church when you have a critical mass of 150-200 people there for your launch." After all, studies showed that this amount of people was needed to start a "viable congregation." This is

Sermon for The Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (November 15, 2009)
“Time to Shake the Dust Off of the Church!”Daniel 12:1-3INIGrace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.1. The most underutilized teaching in the entire Christian Church on earth is the teaching of the resurrection. I firmly believe this. If you poll a room of 100 random Christians and ask them what they believe about eternity…probably all 100 of them will tell you something to the effect of, “I believe that when I die I will go to heaven and live with Jesus forever.” I don’t doubt that many of you here would give the same answer! Sorry to burst your bubble, but that’s a C+ answer…B- at b

Worshipers or Customers?
As I've spent the past few years "pastorally tangling" with the issue of closed communion in the Lutheran parish, there's one question I haven't been able to wrap my brain around until recently, "Why are some people under the impression that when they visit a church to which they have no affiliation whatsoever, that congregation is compelled to admit them to the Sacrament?" I think the answer to that question is the old business axiom: "The customer is always right."When you walk into a clothing store...a grocery store...a car dealership...a realty office...you--the customer--are the center of the universe. You are the focus of the clerk. Your needs are most impor

A Pastoral Response to H1N1 from Lutheran Church-Canada
I found this letter from the Lutheran Church-Canada website to be very timely and well written.The letter is written by Rev. Robert Bugbee, the President of Lutheran Church-Canada. I appreciate the way that he tackles this issue with the heart of a pastor, recognizing the challenges that are present in congregations regarding use of the chalice, sharing of the peace, and pastoral greetings. And yet at the same time he clearly states that the Lord's Supper is not a normal meal but, in his words, "a supernatural meal."