And thank you, saints of St. Luke’s, for your generosity to ELCA World Hunger! Thank you for setting and working toward such generous goals – and thank you for consistently outdoing yourselves and exceeding your goals! What a difference you are making here and around the world, now and for generations to come.
I hope to name an Implementation Team for our Strategic Plan by the end of this week or the beginning of next. They will plan, with the staff, for a public and joyful launch of the Strategic Plan and all its recommendations this fall. When the plan has been launched, we will live into it, with the help of the Implementation Team. When we have evaluated the first hundred days of the launch, we will evaluate and begin to think and pray about the formation of a Call Committee for the next Lead Pastor of St. Luke’s. We need all of you to make our bold recommendations for mission a reality. It’s “all hands-on deck” time. I truly believe that the Holy Spirit is leading us into the next season of God’s mission among us in church and community.
We have sent out invitations to the Implementation Team, who will guide and coordinate the implementation of our Strategic Plan coming out of the Vision Process and unanimously adopted by the Church Council. This team will plan to roll out the entire plan and recommendations with a big launch this fall. The theme will center in what we heard from you in the Listening Season: Reconnecting in Christ. We have already shared a couple of Recommendations. . .
My deepest prayerful hope for us as we live into this plan for mission and ministry is that we would have a revival of our faith and a re-focus on Christ as the cornerstone of our church. As we reconnect may we also reshape our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In the place of intimations of divinity and immortality, this apprentice priest experienced the all-too-human emotions of vanity, vulnerability, and insecurity. Yet we have a parable here about the Call process and the ministry to which all of us have been called by our baptism. Ever since the Word became flesh, it is in the very vanity, vulnerability, and insecurity of human life that Call processes and ministry take place. The stuff of our humanity is where the Holy Spirit digs in, with wisdom and direction.
At the next Church Council Meeting a major item on the agenda will be receiving, discussing and adopting a final draft of the Strategic Plan, Implementation Process, and Implementation Team. We will then share this plan and implementation process with the entire congregation in a variety of communication platforms and opportunities for in-person and zoom discussion.
Last month there was a crisis in Park Ridge at the Bristol Court Apartments. Within a day of the fire, St Luke’s teamed with another Park Ridge Church and the local authorities to put together a clothing drive. An email went out to the congregation to donate within the next 24 hours to make an immediate impact in our community. And WOW, did people respond, both within the congregation and within the community.
The pastoral message this week will be a video which I made for both of the Saint Luke\St. Luke’s congregations together. As most of you know I am the interim pastor at both Saint Luke, Chicago and St. Luke’s, Park Ridge. We share common holy space every Thursday at noon when we have our online Bible Study. I want to share holy space about outreach to and with older adults (like me!) in my video to both beloved St. Luke communities.
Sunday was special. I arrived early and saw the care and love and work that went into providing a beautiful outdoor worship experience for St. Luke’s. The altar guild moved the flowers and elements to set up the altar at the front steps of the church for communion. The musicians practiced, working with the organ and a keyboard to produce the sound of God’s praise for the outside congregation. People carried chairs, set up the parking to leave space for children to roam, set up the welcome table in front of the office door. The sound system was checked out. The table for ice cream floats was prepared. People new to our congregation were welcomed. The intergenerational worshippers formed clusters of conversation and welcome. So many hands making this liturgy truly “the work of the people of God.”
Death is too much with us. War in Ukraine and Ethiopia and elsewhere on the globe. Mass shootings almost every day. Death invading our personal circle of friends, acquaintances, loved ones. Our own reminders that we are mortal, with death waiting for all of us. I am sharing a remembrance from long ago which may help us put death in the perspective of our faith.