July Newsletter Article - Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Summer is here, and that means it’s camp season! Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp is yet another of the important ministries we support with our benevolences at St. Petri, both as a congregation and as individuals. July is a great time to talk about the wonderful ministry we support just up the road to the north of Story City.
Riverside has been a camping presence in the Story City community for 75 years. “Riverside was established in 1943 thanks to the extraordinary vision of Pastor A.J. Bringle. Ever since then, Riverside has been a place of worship, rest, community, experiencing the Holy Spirit, and growing in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Tens of thousands of people have been impacted by the ministry here, along the banks of the Skunk River…” In 2017, Riverside welcomed over 2,500 campers, including local kids at day camps throughout the state, and approximately 7,500 people participated in some sort of event, retreat, or camp program hosted by or connected to Riverside throughout the year.
Riverside offers a variety of opportunities for people of all ages and abilities. There will also be a large shift in leadership in 2018 as longtime executive and equestrian directors Dave & Jan McDermott have announced their retirement, effective in October 2018. Riverside has already found its next executive director - Chris Dahl, current program coordinator, will step into that role this fall. Many of you know the years of dedicated service the McDermotts have given to Riverside and the Story City area - I’m sure an extra gift to Riverside in their honor would be appreciated.
As a longtime camper & staff veteran myself, I know firsthand how important camping ministries can be to the life of faith. There is something special about places set apart, like Riverside, where we can be invited to step out of our “boats” and into a new way of thinking or living the faith God has given us. I’m grateful that St. Petri supports Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp, and I look forward to a vibrant future for both our congregation and the camp just outside of town.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Scott

April 2018 Newsletter Article

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia! So goes the shout of the church in this Easter season. With Christ arisen, we, too, live again in the hope of resurrection and in life that extends far beyond the grave. The question before us, now that death no longer holds us captive, addresses a new hope for the future:  how shall we live? 

One of the marks of Christian life after Easter has always been generosity. In the days of the early church, believers often gathered together for communal meals, and some communities actually created a sort of communal society, where all goods were held in common and all shared freely from what God had entrusted to them. Two millennia later, we Christians of the 21st century still practice this generous sharing of what God has entrusted to us. Here at St. Petri, we share a beautiful, historic congregation with its own building and local ministries. We also share as a congregation to support ministries beyond our local community. Over the next few months, I’m going to share the stories of these ministries with you, so that you will be better informed about what happens to every dollar you return to God in thanksgiving for what God has given to you. 

The largest portion of our giving goes to the Northeastern Iowa Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In a newsletter article a few years ago, Pastor Mark Anderson of the NEIA Synod Staff shared a brief glimpse of the many ways the Synod partners with our congregation in the ministry of our church:

This is too short a space to review all the synodical ministries or narrate the budget, but here is a summary of what I think readers will care about the most.

Sharing Jesus and Supporting Congregations

Evangelism

• Use a strong social media presence to proclaim the Word, call the church to prayer, and lift up and encourage congregations’ witness.
• Consult with congregations who request assistance in renewal, stewardship, and evangelism.
• Accompany our new worshiping communities in Farley and Parkersburg.

Passing on the Faith from Our Generation to the Next

Youth, Family, & Young Adult Ministry

• Provide help for parents to teach the faith to their children.
• Support youth workers and youth ministry.
• Offer Christian leadership training for high school students.
• Support campus ministry.

Raising & Supporting Pastoral Leadership for Congregations

Leadership

• Walk with candidates through the process of becoming pastors and other rostered leaders.
• Secure funding to support Seminary Education.
• Train and coach new pastors.
• Guide congregations through the call process.
• Provide continuing education opportunities for rostered leaders.
• Help church leaders to prepare to retire.

Sharing Daily Bread & Working for Opportunity

Poverty & Justice

• Domestic Hunger Grants fund community and church gardens to grow food for food shelves, food banks and community meals.
• Barnabas Uplift provides job training for the unemployed.
• Provide funding to Lutheran Services in Iowa for the care of children, families, the elderly, and people with special needs.

In addition to undesignated “mission support,” (offerings received from congregations) the members of the Northeastern Iowa Synod last year gave:

• $177,000 to ELCA World Hunger
• $55,000 to support Lutheran World Relief
• $49,000 to support missionaries
• $48,000 to the ELCA Malaria Campaign
• $15,500 to Domestic Disaster Response

We give thanks for all those people and congregations who give to support the wider church and for all the ministries these gifts make possible.

This is just a snapshot of the many ways we congregations of the Northeastern Iowa Synod provide support to one another through the offerings we pass on in mission support. Individual congregations could not do this on their own, but together we support and encourage one another, and the sum of what we can do together is much larger than the parts each individual church offers. I join Pastor Anderson in thanking you for your generous support of our ministries, and I encourage you to grow in that generosity in 2018!

Yours in Christ, 

Pastor Scott

Pop Culture Monday: Living Biblically

Beloved is a fan of a lot of CBS shows: NCIS, Madam Secretary, and Hawaii Five-O being her big favorites. I've trended recently more toward the sci-fi/horror genre since there's been a ton of quality offerings over the past few years: The Walking Dead, The Expanse, Taboo, Into the Badlands, Game of Thrones, American Gods, etc. So we haven't been watching a lot of television together over the past few years. Recently this changed because of two shows: Star Trek: Discovery and Living Biblically. I'm not going to do a review of ST:D until the 2nd season drops, but given that Living Biblically is a recent addition, this seemed a good opportunity to critique something with which I'm familiar: a show about religion.

February 2018 Newsletter Article

The new year has come and gone and most of us, for better or for worse, have discovered which resolutions we’ll keep and which ones were just wishful thinking (almost all of mine fall in the latter category every year). I’d like to invite you to add a resolution to your list that should be a lot easier to keep than a gym schedule. I invite you to reshape the way you think about the ministry of St. Petri Lutheran Church. Give me a minute to explain what I’m proposing.

As a congregation, we are really, really good at special offerings, and that’s something to celebrate. When our youth are raising funds to pay for their mission trips, they don’t have to beg and plead. When the Council decided it was time to finally replace that worn out carpet in the Fellowship Hall, the committee in charge of overseeing the project had what we needed in just a few weeks. Even when you determined it was time for a major renovation of the parsonage, a project which required a significant investment of time and resources by a lot of St. Petri members, it was done in plenty of time for us to move in and feel cherished by this congregation (which we do - we’ve told churches around the synod that St. Petri is a model congregation when it comes to maintaining and managing a parsonage). 

At the same time, our general operating budget at St. Petri has consistently been a source of concern for the Council over these past five years. In 2017, we’ve been in a deficit at the end of every month, even though our actual spending as a congregation has been below budget, finishing the year just over 96% of what we projected at the annual meeting last January. Financially, St. Petri runs a very tight ship which is well-managed and properly overseen by our Council and through an annual Audit Committee. For 2018, the Property and Trustees Committee is proposing a general budget which is actually lower than 2017, but includes salary raises for staff which are in line with the minimum guidelines established by the Northeastern Iowa Synod every year. 

My proposal in relation to all this is quite simple: everything is special. It’s wonderful to be able to see our special gifts installing new carpet in the Fellowship Hall, but the Bible Study which meets in that Fellowship Hall is also special, right? How about the electricity which allows us to run the lights for social hour after worship every Sunday morning? The heat which keeps the building warm in the winter? The piano tuner who keeps our instruments sounding good all year round? The cleaning supplies our custodians use to keep the building looking nice every week? The copier which prints the weekly bulletin? The internet connection that helps us stay connected in a digital age? All these things are indeed a special part of the ministry of St. Petri Evangelical Lutheran Church, and without your support of the general operating fund, those special parts of who we are and what we do will be limited. Sure, fixing a toilet or making sure all the light fixtures have bulbs that work might not feel as special as sending a kid to Puerto Rico for a mission trip or building a new sign out front of the building, but if it’s part of what we do as a church, you know it’s special and it’s critical that we support it with our prayers and our offerings. 

So that’s my proposal for a new resolution for you, members of St. Petri Lutheran Church: everything is special. I’m asking you to support the special work our church is doing in the Story City area with the sort of generosity you’ve given the other special offerings in the past. I’m asking you to help us move forward as a congregation in 2018 and unleash a bit more of the special potential this congregation has to be a force for God’s kingdom this year. I hope to do more of it myself, and I invite you to join me on that journey. God bless you all in this new year. 

Yours in Christ,
Pastor Scott