Rev. Tucher

Here is a quote. See if you can figure out where it came from?

We must accept Jesus into our lives as our personal savior by permitting Him to make peace between God and us, by following His way of life as our way of life. Jesus is ready now to restore the full life to you. Are you ready now? Then ask Him to come into your life and personally accept Him. The next step is yours. Accepting Christ and finding the successful life in Him can be beautifully simple! Just admit to Him that life is incomplete, ask for His forgiveness, and request Him to begin a new life in you. You may speak to Him RIGHT NOW, for He is present and hears. Talk to Him in your own words, or use this prayer: “Lord, Jesus Christ, I ask for your help. Forgive my sins and give me peace with God. Then, dear Jesus, I ask that You make Your way of life become my way of life. Thank You for the new peace and happiness that You give me. Amen.”

Make your guess and find the answer after the jump. (more…)

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes from the Epistle, which was read earlier.

What is sin? “Sin is every thought, desire, word, and deed which is contrary to God’s Law.” That is one of the questions which comes from the Explanation of the Small Catechism. It makes a note: “Other names for sin are disobedience; debts; wickedness, rebellion; fault; trespass; wickedness; and wrong.” Sin has infected all of creation. That is just what it is, an infection. An infection spreads, taking something that is healthy and then passing on a disease. That disease which is passed on is death. That is what Paul tells us in our text. He says, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…” “Death” indicates an inclusive death, both the temporal and eternal results of sin. From the moment of Adam’s transgression, he was spiritually dead, and the germ of physical death was in his nature. Through that one man, death has now “come down” to all. Like each son in a family who is included in his father’s will and receives a share of the estate, we have received this damning legacy from Adam.

Sin is a real thing. It has affected all of us, whether we want to admit it or not. In the end, we will all succumb to the effect of sin: death. “For the wages of sin is death…” Death has come for many before us. Death is coming up for us. Death will come for many after us. It is inevitable. As a surgeon told some seminarians in a lecture on the progress of medical science, “Do not forget…that with all this advancement, the mortality rate remains at 100%.”

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I know that Ash Wednesday was yesterday. Needless to say, I was a bit busy with things to get anything posted.

As we were doing the imposition of ashes before the service, it was asked to a lady who was making a mad dash into the sanctuary whether or not she wanted ashes. Her reply: “Yeah, sure, I guess, why not.” For me, I was bothered by this. What kind of reply is that? You came to church for Ash Wednesday, yet could really care less whether or not you had ashes. Do you not know why we do ashes for Ash Wednesday? Here is an excerpt from our bulletin from Ash Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday in the life of the church is a solemn occasion when the people of God remember and contemplate the depth of humanity’s sin. On this day we wear the mark of human frailty and mortality as we are marked with the sign of the cross with ashes upon our foreheads. To dust and ashes we shall return. Just as we are mindful of our sin, this liturgy thrusts us into a vital remembrance of our Baptism, through which God has cleansed us from sin, marked us as His redeemed children, and granted us unmerited immortality.

May God grant us all His blessings during this Lententide.

A good friend and brother in the ministry wrote a recent post about “undressing” in a 7-11 convenience store.  When I say “undress,” I meant he removed his plastic tab collar of his clerical shirt.  A man there was practically offended at what he had done because my friend was a “holy man of God.”  In short, “his priest would never lower himself by taking off his Godly clothes while in public.”  Here are some questions for your pondering.

• What makes a pastor?  Is it the “Godly clothes” which anyone can buy online or is it the call by the Holy Spirit?

• What makes me a “holy man of God?”  Is it because I’m a pastor that I can call myself a “holy man of God?”

• Is a pastor the only “holy man of God?”  Does that mean that laity are not “holy people of God?

I don’t expect to get any answers, but that’s just my pondering right now.

This has appeared in our local newspaper at least twice now.  The church will be left anonymous but that doesn’t affect the article.

Eight reasons why you might try our Thursday Night Church Service

8.  You’re never in town on the weekends
7.  Thursday Night Church might not be as boring and irrelevant.
6.  Gillette’s best looking pastor.*
5.  You’re always watching football on Sunday.
4.  In at 7 p.m. - out by 8 p.m.
3.  Your kids will have a blast at Thursday Night Jam Time.
2.  Everybody just wears their work clothes.
1.  You like to sleep in on Sunday.

* An opinion held by almost nobody

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Ok, so let me discuss the following points.

8.  For Gillette, this is very common.  With traveling sports as well as intramural sports, people are traveling all weekend and playing games from Friday through Sunday.  By the time they get back in town, church is well done and over with.  For most sports travelers, there isn’t even time to go to church while traveling for sports because games are often held during church services to get all the games in.

7.  What does that say about your Sunday service?  That’s all I’m gonna say about that!

6.  This really isn’t even worth comment, joking or not.

5.  We have 2 services on Sunday: 8:30 and 10.  If you attend our 8:30 service, you will still be home before the early game kicks off.  Granted, you may miss some pregame interviews and what-not, but oh well!  Church is either important or it’s not.

4.  Wow, church in an hour.  We can do that too.  FYI, this church has two services on Sunday.  One lasts 60 minutes and the second lasts 70.  Question: what takes 10 more minutes in the second service?  Lord’s Supper?

3.  Obviously, you’re kids won’t have a blast during the Sunday service.  This tells me that worship isn’t a key point here but having fun.  As Higher Things says, “When we worship, we worship.  When we play, we play.  When we work, we work.”

2.  We have people who wear their works clothes here as well.  We have people just coming out of the mines, we have people on their way to the mines.  We have people on their way to the hospital.  They wear what they wear.  As long as it is appropriate clothing, we don’t say anything.

1.  Who doesn’t like to sleep in on Sunday?  I like to sleep in too, but I’m up and at church.  Granted, it is my vocation as pastor that requires me to be at church on Sunday morning.  But we have 200+ people every Sunday who, given the chance to sleep in or come to church, choose the latter. 

Now, I’m sure that this particular church isn’t holding up their Thursday night service as something better than their Sunday services.  This is just a way of advertising their service on Thursday.  Couldn’t they have done something different than this, making up a list of reasons why Thursday church might be better for you than Sunday?  Just by putting in a little ad highlighting their various services and indicating that Thursday is a more “relaxed” setting would have sufficed, but I guess this is more appealing to people.

I meant to get this up earlier, but I’ve been a bit busy since Saturday.

One of the presentations on Saturday afternoon was by Dr. Jan Lohmeyer entitled, “Train a Child in the Way He Should Go….” This comes from Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Below are some nuggets gleamed from his presentation.

• Children’s ministry begins with adult instruction.
• “The best education is where church, parents, and schools are teaching the same thing.”

His presentation dealt with educating your children from birth to adulthood and how to do that at all ages in between.

When he spoke about confirmation, he made some excellent points which people had neglected over the years: confirmation is NOT a graduation from the faith! We see all too often 8th graders, after the first or second Sunday after their confirmation, who never return to the Church. Confirmation meant nothing other than a rite of passage which you begin in the 7th grade and complete in 8th grade. The only time we may see that person again is when they want to get married (and then you’ll never see them again) or at their death when the family wants to have them buried in the Church. What happened to all those years in between 8th grade and their marriage or their death? Did they not sin during those years? Did they not need to hear the Word of God or receive His Sacraments?

The final point he left us with was this: The Church can never replace. We can only (and are meant to) supplement. Let’s ask the good Lutheran question: What does this mean?

It means that we cannot be expected to teach every bit of doctrine, every bit of Scripture, every bit of Christian teaching. We supplement what is taught in the home by the parents, namely the father, as it is his responsibility as the spiritual head of the family.

That was the main focus by banquet speaker, Rev. Todd Wilken. He spoke about thoughts on the vocation of father and mother. Being a parent of a 16-year-old, he concluded that last summer was the “summer from hell.” After all was said and done, he gave up. He didn’t give up parenting. He didn’t give up on his children. He gave up on himself. While that sounds bad, it really wasn’t in his words. For as much as he loved his children, for as much as he cared for his children, God loves them more than he ever could. He said that if something should ever happen to him, he would hold God accountable to the promise which He made at the baptism of his children.

In Holy Baptism, we are not dedicated as some denominations would say. We are given to God in Holy Baptism. We are given over to God and we become God’s children, forever united with Him through water and the Word of God. From that moment, God loves us more than our parents ever could. God does for us more than our parents ever could. We say that we would do anything, give everything for our children. If pressed, we would do anything and give everything. However, what we have to do and give is not enough. It may be enough for this world, but it is not enough. There is only one thing that is good enough and that is what God did for us through His Son, Jesus Christ. It is through Christ that we have life because of His life, death, and resurrection. It is through Christ that God loves us more. God loves us more than anything in this world, and because of that love, willingly sent His one and only begotten Son into this world so that He may live a sinless life, die a death that we ourselves could not die so that you and I might live through His death. It is through Christ’s death that all sin in us dies. It is through His death that you and I are given new life, life everlasting.

Yes, parents love their children and are willing to die for them if necessary. However, the death of a parent cannot equal that which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died. Through Christ’s death on the cross, we know that God loves us more.

Right now we’re in Casper for the 7th Annual Tell the Good News About Jesus convocation. We began with an interview conducted by Rev. Todd Wilken with Rev. Dr. Ronald Garwood and Dr. David Menton. The topic of this year’s convocation is “Raising Christian Children to be Christian Parents.” Tonight, Rev. Wilken will be the banquet speaker. His topic is “God Loves Them More—frank thoughts on the vocation of Mother and Father. More to follow possibly tonight or tomorrow when we get home.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes from the Epistle, which was read earlier.

Divisions. We find them everywhere. We see them in sports. It’s the AFC versus the NFC in football. It’s the American League versus the National League in baseball. In politics, it’s Republican against Democrat. We have male and we have female. We have ethnic divisions: black and white. We have age divisions: young and old. Wherever you look, there you will find divisions.

In the Church, it’s no different. You have Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, Reformed, Orthodox and the list goes on. Even the Church during the time of Paul faced divisions. Here in our text for today, Paul asks a question which needs asking: “Is Christ divided?”

No one familiar with the New Testament can escape the conclusion that God intends those who are drawn to Him by faith and life within His grace shall live in unity with each other. Jesus understood that His disciples would have problems with this, and in His heart-to-heart talk with them the night before He died, He declared, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” When that memorable evening in the upper room concluded with His prayer of intercession, He laid before the Father the plea that “they may be one” even as He and the Father were one. Unity of mind and purpose, living in love and harmony, oneness in Christ, are God’s intention for His family. Our love for each other identifies us as disciples of Jesus.

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