Thoughts For The Upcoming Year

Grace and Peace to you all in Christ Jesus,

As many of you know the council and I have spent a great deal time considering how to
better grow our congregation in 2019.  Much of the upcoming year will include ways we
have begun to work through this process. One element in the process of growing our
congregation has been to shift our focus to address the question of how we can help our
members grow and deepen in their faith to be better disciples. The concept being that if we
want more people to come to our congregation we need to have more to offer than just good
youth programming and snappy worship.  We need to be a place that has our faith in Christ
as our focus, our discipleship as a priority, and Biblical values as our guiding principles. 

One element that will be coming just after Easter will be that our Elevate Worship will go
from having the same sermon as the Traditional Worship service to having a study focused
presentation on the scriptures for the day.  So you could worship upstairs, listen to the sermon,
then come downstairs, worship with the Elevate worship team, and participate in an interactive
study on the day’s text.  

 Another focus that the council has addressed is the question of leadership.  For quite some time
now it seems that the ELCA has been faltering as a denomination.  The rate of church closures
has been at an historic high.  Just in the time that I have been here our conference has gone from
being a viable and active conference of many congregations and full time pastors to a conference
with only a few full time ordained clergy and a handful of active congregations.  At the same time,
while the national church has not been able to support growth in our congregations, it has spent
much time, money, and ink pursuing questionable political and theological goals.  

Last summer we did not take our kids to the national youth assembly because two of the key
speakers were so distasteful.  One speaker, Tuhina Verma Rasche, authored a couple of books... called
“F*ck this Sh*t” and "Shut the H@#$ Up" (I have censored the title, she certainly did not). One can
imagine having people who swear as a ministry is a poor choice around kids. 

The other was Nadia Bolz-Weber, a darling and frequent spokesperson of the ELCA, who told the
kids to have all the premarital sex they wanted and that abortion was fine.  She even went so far
as to encourage teen girls to mail her their purity rings (which girls wear as a sign that they
have vowed to stay virgin till they marry).  Ms. Bolz-Weber, who still practices witchcraft, 

then melted the rings down into a literal golden vagina idol to give to Gloria Steinem (you can’t make
this stuff up...seriously….Google it).  This is hardly surprising behavior from our national church,
who in 2011 invited a High Priestess of the Egyptian Goddess Isis to be the worship leader at the
“Faith and Feminism Conference”.  Considering that our National Presiding Bishop does not believe
hell exists, “or if it does, that it is empty” perhaps this is unsurprising.  This is all just a narrow snapshot
of all the ways the ELCA has diverged from our values (I could go on and on from baptizing dogs,
to denying that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to supporting the HerChurch...an actual ELCA
church in California that worships a Goddess of their own invention).  

Myself and our council will be asking you to join with us as we discuss what other forms of leadership
we might consider as the year goes on; leadership that is more in keeping with our shared Biblical
values.  We have considered several alternatives, but a few, like the association Lutheran

Congregations in Mission for Christ, come to mind and discussion frequently.  Council, in fact,
has voted to endorse the LCMC and its guiding principles, goals, and missional focus. 
Much conversation will be happening as the year goes on, and we hope you will take prayerful part in it. 




Blessings, 



Pastor Rus