Oftentimes when we think about giving thanks to God and what we should give thanks to Him for, our minds leap to salvation—we give thanks to God because He has saved us through His dying and rising, and this is all well and good. It is...
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Pastors Brad, Owen, Paul, Merle, and myself wanted to take a moment to thank you for your service at Faith Lutheran Church, Naples, FL. We know how much time, energy and love you put into the ministry...
This month, on the weekend of October 18–19, the Old Testament reading that’s been assigned is from the book of Genesis, chapter 32, verses 22–30. The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his...
This September, one of the common features throughout all of the Gospel readings that we’re going to hear during worship these weekends is that each of these Gospel readings is a different teaching of Jesus. And I think this is very...
This month, our Gospel readings from the book of Luke center around Jesus’ teaching in chapters 12 and 13, and this teaching of Jesus really focuses on one core topic: our priorities. He encourages us to be aware of what we consider to be...
Just as part of being a responsible American citizen means voting, volunteering, paying your taxes, etc., so too part of being a responsible member congregation of the LCMS means voting, volunteering, financially supporting our district and...
In his Voice article, Pastor Treglown talks about funerals and memorial services, and so in my article I want to talk about another related service: the committal service. At this service, we look at the grave, where the deceased will be...
We ran into a bit of a conundrum this month with The Voice: usually people get their copy of The Voice around the 7th of the month, and this year Ash Wednesday (the beginning of Lent) falls on the 5th of March—which means that by the time...
In his article, Pastor Treglown talked about New Year’s traditions—things people do to usher in the new year. Whenever I read about these traditions, I’m always struck by the thing that so many of these traditions have in...
In this “Prayer Matters” article, I want to talk about something we encounter every week in our worship: the “collect form”. Now, you may already know that “Collect” (which we have every week in our service) is...
