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Risen Savior
Lutheran Church and School |
“Changing
Lives by Proclaiming Our Risen Savior”
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Risen Savior Lutheran Church and School is a Member congregation of the Lutheran Church Missouri-Synod Listen to KFUO, the Voice of The Lutheran Church for The 20th Century
KFUO is a broadcast
What’s
a “Synod”? The word “synod” means “same road” and suggests “walking together”. Our Church body is not organized as a hierarchy, but neither are we completely independent, autonomous congregations. Instead, our congregations are organized as a “synod”, a group on a common road. |
Pastor’s
Page
“Those High Prices” By now gas prices have probably got you thinking the way they’ve got me thinking: What am I going to have to change about my travel and transportation habits so I don’t get hit so hard or so often at the pumps? Compared to a year ago, I’m spending a lot more, even though Lisa and I are driving a lot fewer miles. If gas prices go up again I’ll start considering more drastic changes than just cutting back or combining trips. (Don’t be surprised if you catch me with some bicycle helmet hair.) Isn’t it interesting how we do what have to make things work? Sometimes we do without; sometimes we look for home-grown alternatives. There’s no use complaining about how things are, and certainly no reason to throw up our hands and quit just because things which had been easier just got harder. Usually there’s a solution to practical daily problems if we just look for it long enough. As I mentioned at the beginning, often we can make adjustments to our habits and find we’re able to make things work in the new situation. When people are forced to be resourceful, it’s amazing what they’ll come up with. In fact, in one way we should be thankful for those high prices, and all the other practical challenges we face, because it’s chiefly in learning to grapple with the changing circumstances that we find out something about ourselves. We learn to use what we have, rather than wishing for what we don’t have. Now what’s true regarding practical, daily life problems, is not true at all when it comes to our deepest spiritual problems. No amount of resourcefulness can find a work-around to the problem of sin. No adjustments in our habits will finally make our lives “work” in the sight of God. And every time we’re faced with the price for our disobedience, we’re made aware again of the debt we owe but can never begin to pay. In the spiritual realm, there are no solutions we can come up with on our own. We have made problems for ourselves we can’t fix, and burned bridges we can’t rebuild. While every other religion optimistically offers a program to get one’s self right with God, Christianity is unique in its pessimism about what fallen humans are unable to do to address their gravest spiritual emergency. Such pessimism about our own inability to generate spiritual solutions is more than trumped by the joy and confidence we gain when we trust Christ’s solution for our problems. What we could not do for ourselves, Christ has done on our behalf. Spiritually, we’re simply the beneficiaries of a solution he worked out without consulting us. Now the interesting thing is that when we turn our attention to the problems of doing the work of the ministry, we don’t find just one kind of problem or the other; we find both. Some of the problems in ministry are essentially spiritual, and in such cases we rely entirely on the promises and solutions offered to us in the Gospel. Other challenges we face (we, meaning pastor and congregation together) are practical, and need to be addressed with all the resourcefulness we can muster. Certain aspects of our ministry which used to be easier have lately been getting harder. Churches are affected by higher energy costs the same as households. More demands on people in the workplace means fewer hours free for volunteer service. The old, habitual ways of doing things start feeling prohibitively expensive. We may wonder why God lets His Church struggle so. We may hope for miraculous solutions to current crunches to allow us to go on just as we had before, with no adjustments needed. But while God’s spiritual solution is complete and accomplished for us, these practical challenges are the hills He wants us to learn to climb. In other words, there are aspects of the ministry that require our resourcefulness. There is a society going through big changes all around us out there, and we may have to make new, and at first awkward, changes to adjust to the new situations. Sometimes we’re stumped for a while. The one thing we must never do is throw up our hands and call it quits. God hasn’t called us to be quitters. He hasn’t called us to be complainers. He has blessed us with talented people with creative ideas. He has given us a vision of what a tremendous impact we can make by proclaiming the Risen Savior. He has put the necessary material resources in this congregation for the ministry He has given it, if only we trust Him to show us how we may put them to work to meet the changing situation. God will see us through. He has already given us every spiritual blessing in Christ. Let’s have faith to thank God for higher prices and whatever else causes us to re-examine how the work gets done. Let’s even be thankful for times when we’re stumped, because it means we’re learning to tackle harder challenges than we have before. And by the way, anyone up for some bike ministry? God’ blessings for the journey ahead, Pastor Held July 2008 “Reconciliation” The word “reconciliation”
has weighed heavily on my mind lately. It means to restore a relationship,
and obviously assumes something has happened once between friends which
damaged their friendship or caused hostilities. The opposite of
reconciliation is estrangement. The cause of estrangement is sin, and because
we are all sinners, estrangement is not all that strange to us. Since
estrangement is familiar to us, reconciliation should also be familiar to us,
but sinful pride gets in the way far too often. Using my Bible concordance,
I found several occurrences of the word “reconcile” in its various forms in
the NIV Bible. Some passages (Matt. 5:23-24; Luke 12:57-59) explicitly
command believers to be reconciled with each other. In addition, other
narratives illustrate Biblical reconciliation and how it should work. Perhaps the most important passage on
reconciliation, however, doesn’t use the word at all. In Romans 12:18 the Apostle writes: “If it
is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” That’s good advice. That’s actually better than good, that’s
wise and godly exhortation to find ways to live peacefully with each
other. And as much as I can, I will
look for ways to make peace with those estranged from me. “If it is
possible”—although it may not always be possible, because someone may be
determined not live in peace with me, and then I have little choice in the
matter. “So far as it depends on you”
means I will own the problems I’ve created, and I will attempt to deal with
them responsibly. But I can’t control
what another person is thinking or feeling.
I can only resolve to do what I can do to restore and heal damaged
relationships. We were all estranged from
God because of our sin. The
estrangement of sin is severe, making us God’s enemies. Living in peace with God was not possible
because we had no idea how deep was the damage we had caused, and we had no
way on our own to restore the relationship.
But we are reconciled to God through the death of His Son, Jesus, and
it is Jesus who has made us friends again with God. He endured the punishment
for our sins so God is no longer angry over them, and the effect of Christ’s
reconciliation is that we have peace with God now through his blood. Because of Christ’s
reconciliation, If there is
anyone in our congregation that you’ve perhaps felt estranged from, or any
situation that has robbed you of the peace and fellowship you once enjoyed
with your brothers or sisters in Christ, I urge you to seek
reconciliation. “If it is possible, as
far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” God doesn’t say it’s optional. That may also mean foregoing a cool,
distant, merely superficial peace, in order to go to a brother or sister in
Christ and really address the damaged relationship, especially so we might
own our part of the problem and ask for forgiveness. Because of
Christ, we can offer and receive forgiveness.
Refusing to look at people and situations from worldly points of view,
we can start to look at things from God’s point of view. And we just may find, from His point of
view, our words and actions may not
always have been as innocent and righteous as we’d supposed. God grant mercy on us all, and deepen our
fellowship we share, for Jesus’ sake.
Peace be with you. Pastor Held June 2008 “Good to Be in the Red?” Usually no one wants to hear “we’re in the red.” Too quickly we interpret it in investor’s
terms as expressing deficit or loss—not exactly good news! But this month I am happy to announce we are going to be in the red one
Sunday, and I hope you’ll be as excited about it as I am. May 11th is the Day of Pentecost, for which the
liturgical color of the day is red. I
would encourage the women especially to wear red to church that Sunday,
although the invitation is open to the guys too. Why red? Certainly one reason
for the color is to remind us of the tongues of fire that once separated and
then remained over the heads of the disciples on the day the Spirit descended
on them. God’s Spirit was poured out
on the Church to equip the believers for ministry. We also remember, however, that red is the
color of blood, and in this case the blood we have in mind is not Christ’s
blood shed on the cross, but the blood of the martyrs who courageously went
to their deaths before they’d renounce their faith in Christ. The sacrifice of the martyrs may also be one reason why red is often
associated with the rite of confirmation.
The confirmands are asked at one point in the rite if they are willing
to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from their confession of
faith. A similar connection may also
be reflected in the red associated with Reformation Day. It’s good for us remember that our church
and our confession continue to this day because many during the Reformation
were committed to its preservation, even when it cost them everything. Red helps us remember the price others have
paid that the Gospel might not be compromised. For me personally, red also puts me in mind of my ordination. I made vows at that time to be a proclaimer
of the Gospel, to uphold the inerrant Word of God and our Lutheran
Confessions in all my teaching and preaching, and to care for God’s
people. Likewise, at every ordination
or installation of a pastor, the colors of the stoles and banners have been
red, pointing to the commencement of new ministry. How are all these themes tied to each other and to the color red? In a word, passion. There is passion in the color, and it is
associated with a burning passion for the Gospel, and for the ministry Christ
has given us. The Spirit descended at
Pentecost, and the apostles were transformed into people passionate about
witnessing for Christ. The blood of
the martyrs was a crimson witness to their faith and their passion. There is passion in the heart of a newly ordained confirmand, and
passion in the heart of a newly ordained pastor. There is passion in the hearts of
congregation members when they install a new pastor and realize it means the
Gospel will now go forth again with power.
There is passion when the fall Reformation Day service begins or ends
with “A Mighty Fortress and passion when Pentecost is filled with praises and
thanksgivings for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Let’s get excited in the month of May.
Let’s get passionate about the ministry we’ve been given. Let’s not only be in the red this month,
let’s make it our aim to stay in the red!
Thanks be to God! Pentecost blessings to you all. Pastor Gary Held May 2008 Radical Grace You can hear Pastor Held on “Radical Grace” on AM 1510 WWBC (Cocoa, FL) on Sundays at 2pm or by visiting www.Radical-Grace.com. |
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Pastor Gary Held came to Risen Savior in May of 2004. He previously served for four years as pastor in southern Indiana. He is a 2000 graduate of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. Pastor Held entered the ministry after an earlier career as a software engineer, which included positions at Rockwell-Collins, Texas Instruments, and Chrysler Technologies. He met his wife, Lisa, when they were both undergraduates at Iowa State University. Lisa has a degree in journalism and is also a certified Montessori elementary teacher. Pastor Gary and Lisa have four children, Grace, Joseph, Anna, and Faith. The Held family lives in Palm Bay. |
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Risen Savior Lutheran Church and School 2220 Port Malabar Blvd. NE, Palm Bay FL 32905 phone:
321-984-8987 fax: 321-984-0132 e-mail: risensavior@rslcms.org |
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