Perhaps it was the promise of my parents' arrival, or perhaps it was the recording of Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols I downloaded from iTunes, but this Christmas came like a great catharsis.  All the preparation, all the making ready--everything was fulfilled.  I love looking out on the congregation and seeing all the faces of our community gathered together.  I love seeing the homecoming of children from far-flung places, the homecoming to the Lord's Table of those...

Dear Folks:
As you can see Harry Packman and Tyler were enjoying themselves at our Halloween Party.  I believe they were dancing with Elmo:




I think the church as a full of toddlers as it has been in a while:



See who you can recognize...

Many thanks to Peggy Pagan-Packman for organizing this wonderful event!  It was great to trick or treat through the church.

Dear Folks:
As you can see Harry Packman and Tyler were enjoying themselves at our Halloween Party.  I believe they were dancing with Elmo:




I think the church as a full of toddlers as it has been in a while:



See who you can recognize...

Many thanks to Peggy Pagan-Packman for organizing this wonderful event!  It was great to trick or treat through the church.

Thanks to the hard work of Roxanne Mahler, Cheri Stibrany, and Liz Holman, the green hymnals have been transferred downstairs and laid in alphabetical order on the tables.  They stacked the new red hymnals just in front of the chancel.  Here are some photos of their work...

The stack from the front...




Ain't no finer stack I'm a-thinkin'
You c'n keep...

As you all may already know, I lost my cell phone on the trip to the Statue of Liberty.  I have since got another--you all may call whenever you need... But I also thought I lost my camera.  That I discovered a few weeks later at the bottom of my backpack.  Here are some pictures from a great day with great people:


We had reserve tickets, and it was a relatively short wait for us when we got to Battery Park.  Look at the line behind the kids, stretching on...

When we gather on Sunday mornings, we gather to do something.  We gather to worship.  Another word for worship is liturgy: it is our work.  It is our sacrifice of thanks and praise to God for all of God's blessings to us.  Liturgy means work of the people, and liturgy, at its best, is the work of all the people of God--from the tiniest baby to the oldest grandpa.

I recently read a great article about children in worship.  A pastor was...

Dear friends,

After a hectic few weeks, we are looking forward to the summer ahead.

We had 6 members of our parish that confirmed their faith on June 12th.  Here is a photograph of them:

In many Easter services across the Lutheran clusters of our nation, there is a forced call-and-response to this refrain: He is risen!, the pastor will shout, with as much drama and gravitas he or she can muster.  And in reply the congregation will murmur, with one or two enthusiasts replying in like manner with the pastor, He is risen indeed, alleluia!  Then, often or not, that will be followed by a few repressed sighs or some giggles, depending on one feels...

As we have continued our weekly Bible Study and our Soup, Song, and Sacrament, one thing has become clear to me: the resurrection of Jesus was the foundation of the Christian movement.

I know that sounds silly, or even trite, but I have begun to wonder at how blithely I've treated that.  Think about it--Holy Communion is a sharing in Christ's body, alive--and it is also a celebration of his resurrection.  Our Baptism unites us with Christ's death and with his resurrected...

As we continue our study of worship this week at Soup, Song, and Sacrament, we're going to enter a strange period in the development of Christian worship--the reforms of Vatican II.  You might think, why do Lutherans care about Vatican II?  Wasn't that just a Catholic thing?

It wasn't just a Catholic thing.  It was a catholic thing.  That means it involved the whole church of Jesus Christ, Protestant, Roman, Orthodox.  It was an amazing event, a...