Faith Lutheran Church

Trusting in the Promises of God

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Lent

February 16, 2021 by Pastor Hendrix Leave a Comment

What is Lent?

Lent is a 40-day season of an intentional Christ-centered return to our baptisms, where we daily die with our sins and rise with Christ to live a new life.  Between Ash Wednesday and the Paschal Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil), the church is again called to live a life of repentance. The practice of Lent has been observed by Christians around the world since the early centuries of the church.

Lent shows how much we need Christ.

Lent is an opportunity to follow Jesus who was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit for 40 days of prayer and fasting. This Lent at Faith, we are inviting the Spirit to lead us to God’s Word and be increasingly conformed to His image. This is particularly fitting this year, as throughout Scripture, plagues and pandemics were used by God to call His people to repentance and faith.  Through baptism, and by returning to our baptisms in confession and absolution, God provides us with renewal, refreshment, and a fresh start.

Lent shows how much we need each other.

We often think of our faith as something personal, and while many of the practices of Lent are things that can’t be done except by each person individually, however Christian faith is never practiced in solitude, but always in communion with fellow Christians.  Together, by meeting together around the Word of God, we encourage one another and fulfill a purpose of church: to carry each other’s burdens and to encourage them with the love of Christ.  May we encourage each other this Lent in our individual participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus.



As you participate in Lent, please read our guide, and feel free to share it with your friends.

Faith Lenten Guide

Here are all of our opportunities at Faith to participate in Lent:

Ash Wednesday

February 17, 6:30pm Divine Service

In Scripture, ashes serve both as a symbol of mortality and as a sign of mourning and repentance. In the Ash Wednesday service we are reminded of our mortality, we confess our sins, and we experience forgiveness through Christ’s death and resurrection. A central practice in the Ash Wednesday service is when those gathered physically embody what is in their hearts when they receive the “imposition of ashes” on our foreheads and hear the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Praise be to God that sin and death do not have the final word! We leave the service in confidence and gratitude: Christ has conquered death, and nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Register to attend here.


Vespers

Wednesdays at 6:30pm

Each Wednesday in Lent we gather together to be refocused around Christ’s passion. As it is customary for Vespers to be a catechetical service, this year we meditate on the 3 articles of the Creed.


Prayer

Daily

Pray the Catechism during the 40 days in Lent, using this booklet.

Pray the Catechism

Almsgiving (Charity & Acts of Mercy)

Mid-March

Spring Cleaning Drive: We will collect personal health and hygiene products from our community for the local food pantry.

Members who have been blessed financially by the Lord are encouraged to give to our church’s Faith In Action fund, which is set up to help families in need in our community.


Fasting

Throughout Lent

Fasting, or giving something up that is a regular part of life is to remind us how completely we depend on the Lord.  It is not dieting, as the focus of dieting often becomes my will-power.  Rather, the focus of fasting is the Lord Jesus.  The point is that when we give something up, we replace it with Jesus.  For example, if a person chooses to not eat a meal, the time normally spent in preparation and eating would be spent reading and meditating on God’s Word.


Bible Study

New Member Class: Wednesdays at 7:30pm

Women’s Bible Study: Every other Tuesday at 7:00pm on Google Meet

Men’s Bible Study: 6:30pm, 2nd Tuesday of the month

Young Adult Study: TBA

During Lent, our studies are perfect ways to focus on Jesus.

The new member, which meets on Wednesday after Vespers class goes through the Catechism using the structure of the Sunday Service.

The men’s study is on “Christ Have Mercy: Putting Your Faith in Action.”

The women’s study is “Enough for Now: Unpacking God’s Sufficiency.”

The young adult study is “On the Road with St. Augustine.”

Books are  available for purchase if you would like to own them, otherwise you may borrow from church, but please let Pastor know so we can have enough books.


Paschal Triduum

Maundy Thursday: April 1 6:30pm

Good Friday: April 2 6:30pm

Easter Vigil: April 3 7:27pm

Paschal = The Biblical word for “Easter”
Triduum = “The Three Days.”

After 40 Days of Lent, the Christian Year has now reached its climax. We have come to the celebration of the suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the celebration for which we have been preparing throughout Lent. Now we see what our Savior came to do. We see Him suffer and die for our sins and for the sins of the world. And we see Him rise triumphantly on Easter morning to assure us that our salvation is complete, the victory is won.

All three services are dramatic each in their own way and intimately connected to each other. The focus as always, is Christ.


Faith Lenten Guide

Filed Under: News, Uncategorized

Annual Voters’ Meeting Reports

January 23, 2021 by Pastor Hendrix Leave a Comment

Constitution and Order for Meeting

Faith-Lutheran-ConstitutionDownload

Agenda and Previous Minutes

Annual Meeting Agenda 01-24-21Download
February 16 2020 Minutes annual meeting revisedDownload

Reports

Pastors-Message-2020Download
2021-TrusteeDownload

Financial Information

2020 Monthly SheetsDownload
Memorials-2020-eoyDownload
2021-Proposed-Budget-Faith-LutheranDownload
Faith-StatementofActivitybyMonth-1Download

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Study Group Interest Survey

January 11, 2021 by Pastor Hendrix Leave a Comment

After a year of going to the essentials (Ie., Sunday worship and catechesis), it’s time to come together again to build one another up in the Word of God. Groups will hopefully start later this month. Please help me by taking this survey. – Pastor Hendrix

Study Groups

Interest Survey
  • Note that we will abide by any county/state mandates that may be in-effect at the time.

Filed Under: News, Uncategorized

On Not Being Home for the Holidays

November 30, 2020 by Pastor Hendrix Leave a Comment

My first Christmas not “at home” was a few years ago. It was the first Christmas my wife and I celebrated while serving at a parish. I’m a pastor, who for the short length of my ministry, has served some distance away from my relatives. It comes with the vocation that any holiday, not just Christmas, will be away from family. One of the things that also happens for a pastor and his family is that during the most celebratory aspect of the holiday, you are distant from each other: My wife was in a pew alone by herself, and I was in the tiny chancel by myself. We were in the same room, but separate, in a congregation smaller than many families, whom we were still getting to know.

The most difficult part of the whole festival was the slow realization just how different this was for each of us. For as long as either of us could remember, we had always been together with parents, siblings, cousins, and/or grandparents at this time. We couldn’t help but think of what everyone else was doing. We missed even the most mundane things – for me, it was my family’s tradition of pizza after all attending the Christmas Eve service together. For my wife it was singing Christmas hymns on Christmas Eve in a pew full of family. Despite the objective joy of the holiday, subjectively, our happiness was difficult to find.

My purpose of this post is not to compare the vocation of pastor during the holidays with any other vocation. There are many others who have to serve away from family at the holidays – military, first responders, doctors, snow truck drivers, delivery drivers, and the list could go on and on. I have also seen too many posts on social media saying tactless sentiments like, “[so and so essential worker] always stays home, so don’t complain, stay home!!” This article is not that.

I also don’t write this to shame anyone who chooses to go home or not go home to family. We are complex beings with more than just physical needs. It is true that going home could mean helping our neighbors (family) keep his or her life. As Martin Luther once told this simple, yet profound advice to Christians during the Black Death Epidemic: “If my neighbor needs me…I shall not avoid any place or person but will go freely.”1 It is also true that this may not be possible for everyone.

Rather, what I hope to do is give some comfort to those who find themselves in a situation where they can’t be home this year, especially because of the pandemic. And this is a challenge.

Our society is not quiet about what we should be doing, or how we should celebrate the holidays. For a few weeks now, I have seen or heard sayings like “A Zoom Thanksgiving is better than an ICU Christmas.” However, platitudes like this are useless in a culture in which the whole idea of the holidays is togetherness. For secular culture, Christmas is all about family. So now, when you turn on the radio and hear, “I’ll be home for Christmas,” “Oh, Baby all I want for Christmas is you,” “There’ll be much mistletoeing And hearts will be glowing When loved ones are near…” it’s hard not to cringe. At best, the cultural themes of Christmas distract us from the real hope of Christmas. At worst, the idea of Christmas=family turns family into an idol. And, as idols will do, they take everything and give nothing back.

There is no tradition at Christmas that can fill an empty heart. Our hearts yearn to be filled, and even all the family in the world can only fill a little imperfectly.

To be sure, there’s a reason why we have holiday traditions. We are creatures who need repetition (whether we realize it or not). There is a reason we have families. Families, properly understood not as an idol but as a gift from God, are a way God preserves you and gives you “all that [you] need to support this body and life.”2

But even without these, Christmas is no less Christmas. Christmas hasn’t lost its hope or comfort. It’s actually in these hardships, these crosses, that the glory of Christmas shines.

My first year in a parish away from home for Christmas, I borrowed some words of my former pastor for my Christmas Day sermon, words that I think ring truer this year than even back then:

“We could take away the poinsettias, the trees, the lights, and everything else, and still have a Christmas celebration.  All you need are two or three poor, miserable sinners huddled around Christ’s Word, and you have everything of Christmas.  ‘In him was life, and that life was the light of men’ (John 1:4).”3

Christmas means that Christ became your brother. To be with you. Emmanuel. God with you. To literally share your flesh and blood. To become a part of your family. To never leave you nor forsake you. To dwell with you in your loss to take it upon Himself and give you all the riches of His grace. God gave up His son, literally separating Himself from His Son on the cross, so that He may be joined to you through His Son.

So don’t look for your Christmas hope or joy in some “uplifting” feelings.  “Go to the baby in the manger, as the shepherds did.  Go to the young child in the house, as the magi did.  Go to man on the cross.  And since you can’t literally do any of those things, go to the Word, the Baptism, and the Supper, where the Light shines to give you life!” And where these things are, is another family: Your church family; people who need you (and you need) no less than your blood family. Even if you are still getting to know them, like my wife and I were, they are your family in Jesus.4

Every Christmas, together with my church family, I am sure to plan to sing “O Jesus Christ, Thy Manger Is.” Rarely can I or my wife make it through without sobbing, not so much at the sadness of being away from our families, but at the deeper joy of the implications of Christ’s birth so beautifully explored in this hymn.

The hymn is tragically not very well known, likely because it sings of everything our culture doesn’t want Christmas to be. But it should be the theme hymn for Christmas 2020. It was written by a Lutheran Pastor named Paul Gerhardt. Gerhardt could sympathize with the worst of our crosses. He lived during a severe plague in the 1600’s as well as the 30 Years War. He lost his job as a pastor because he refused to preach false doctrine, and it was during this period that his wife died.  Only one of his five children outlived him.  Undoubtedly, the majority of his Christmases were spent missing family.

Hear Gerhardt’s confession of the fulfillment of his heart’s emptiness with the fulness of Christ in these verses (2, 4, 5, 6 – especially note verse 4…):

2. He whom the sea And wind obey
Doth come to serve the sinner in great meekness.
Thou, God’s own Son,
With us art one,
Dost join us and our children in our weakness.

4. Thou Christian heart, Whoe’er thou art,
Be of good cheer and let no sorrow move thee.
For God’s own Child,
In mercy mild,
Joins thee to Him—how greatly God must love thee!

5. Remember thou What glory now
The Lord prepared thee for all earthly sadness.
The angel host
Can never boast
Of greater glory, greater bliss or gladness.

6. The world may hold Her wealth and gold;
But thou, my heart, keep Christ as thy true Treasure.
To Him hold fast
Until at last
A crown be thine and honor in full measure.


Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary | 161
O Jesu Christ, dein Kripplein ist
P. Gerhardt, 1607-76
Tr. The Lutheran Hymnal, St. Louis, 1941

(You can listen to the above chorale here, performed by the choirs of Martin Luther College.)

This Christmas, if you are away from family, be sad for what you are missing and who you are not with. But rejoice in Who is with you and what you have been given. You are not alone. God is truly with you, with all His gifts of peace, forgiveness, and life.

Filed Under: News, Uncategorized

Holiday Service Schedule

November 25, 2020 by Pastor Hendrix Leave a Comment

Please go here to register for our Christmas services.

Wednesdays in Advent (Dec. 2, 9, 16) | 6:30pm – Advent Vespers. An evening service, focusing on prayer and catechesis on the Lord’s return.

Christmas Eve Vespers | 6:30pm – Dec. 24. An evening service of preparation for Christmas, with singing and prayer. This service is more reflective than Christmas morning and has historically been seen as the “warm-up” to the next morning’s service.
After the service, join us for hot cocoa and roasted marshmallows.

Christmas Eve Midnight Mass (by Candlelight) | 11:00pm – Dec. 24.

Christ’s Mass Divine Service | 9:00am Christmas Morning, Dec. 25. Don’t forget the Mass in Christmas. This is the main service for Christians, complete with the celebration of the incarnate Christ in Holy Communion. This is where Christ is born for us today.

First Sunday in Christmas – Feast of St. John | 9:00am, Dec. 27. The apostle and evangelist who wrote that Christ is the Light of the World is commemorated on this day.

Second Sunday in Christmas | 9:00am, Jan. 3. There are 12 days of Christmas, and they begin on the 25th. There’s so much more to Christmas, and so we keep our eyes on the events which happened after Christ’s birth this Sunday.

12th Day of Christmas Party | 4-5:30pm, Jan. 5. Join us for a party with wassail, drinks, treats, and singing as we celebrate the final night of Christmas. Held OUTSIDE around a bonfire this year at the Parsonage. Contact Pastor for address.

Feast of Epiphany Evening Service | 6:30pm, Jan. 6. Epiphany, the celebration of the wise men visiting the young boy Jesus, is always January 6.

Filed Under: News, Uncategorized

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Contact

143 Washington St.
Oregon, WI 53575
Email us
Pastor’s cell: 608-405-9522

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Service Times

Divine Service | 9:00 am Sundays
Bible Study | 10:15am Sundays
Vespers | 6:30pm Wednesdays in Advent & Lent

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