October 2018 Newsletter Message

I’ll begin this month with some words of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, reflecting on the Lord’s Prayer: “In fact, God’s good and gracious will comes about without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come about in and among us.”

In that little sentence, Luther points out the obvious: that our infinitely good and powerful God can do whatever our infinitely good and powerful God wants to do. However, he also points out something much more bold about the intent of our praying the Lord’s prayer: that what God wants to do may be accomplished through human hands. In other words, God doesn’t need or require us or our effort to effect what God wants for the world...yet, God nonetheless pulls us into the mix anyway, using our imperfect human hands for holy work.

This surprising action of God--engaging human hands to effect God’s will in the world--is what we call God’s mission, and that is a frequent topic among us. As this month progresses, though, we will take September’s Mission Sundays a step further. Now that we have reflected on what the mission is to which God has called us, we can turn our attention to how God’s mission catches fire among us.

The fire of God’s mission is ignited by God’s own self--by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who moved over the waters of creation of the world (Genesis 1:2) and the divine spark of inspiration through all the ages. This spark finds kindling in the life of Holy Baptism as we each receive the Holy Spirit and discover the unique child of God we have been created to become, filled with gifts of the Spirit--raw materials for God to use and refine every day of our lives. Individually, then, we are embers of God’s work, smoldering in our own little spheres of influence.

Embers are indeed a good start, but there is one more ingredient needed for a full-fledged fire: fuel. Fuel helps God’s mission to catch fire among us and in the world, and it is the assortment of things we give to and employ in God’s work on earth--time, money, skills, goods, energy, possessions. All of these fuel sources make the fire of God’s mission shine brightly to the people around us through community service ministries, worship, Christian care ministry, education, and fellowship.

While we are the ones putting the fuel onto the Welcome, Nurture, Serve fire of God’s mission that is burning Trinity Lutheran Church, though, that fuel doesn’t belong to us. It is all given to us by God, as Martin Luther reminds us in the Small Catechism (Creed, First Article): “God daily and abundantly provides shoes and clothing, food and drink, house and farm, spouse and children, fields, livestock, and all property—along with all the necessities and nourishment for this body and life...and all this is done out of pure, fatherly, and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of mine at all! For all of this I owe it to God to thank and praise, serve and obey him.” God gives us all that we have, and we give it back to God as fuel for God’s mission...and we do so with joy because we delight in the eternal life God has secured for us through the most selfless gift of all--Jesus Christ crucified and risen.

We will share more about this throughout the fall season in our Mission Fuel-Up campaign that begins Oct. 21 with celebrating the Holy Baptism of Cara Elizabeth Timmons, granddaughter of Kent and Donna Charlesworth. We also will be introducing online giving through the new ELCA partner organization Tithe.ly this fall and offering a Thrivent Legacy & Estate Planning Workshop on Nov. 4 through our local Thrivent agent, Alex Lamprecht. I will also be throwing a new hymn into the mix this season that reflects on stewardship not as a fancy word for fundraising but rather as fueling the fire of God’s mission. If that sounds familiar, that’s great--writing this article for you helped me make sense of what I had been grasping at for the hymn!

Peace to you all as we work together to fuel God’s Welcome, Nurture, Serve mission for Trinity!​