From the Pastor

Welcome to October! Fall may very well be my favorite season of the year. The football season is in full effect, the weather starts to cool off a bit, and programing at the church gets back into motion! New things continue to happen throughout the fall, as the leaves change colors and drift down to the ground, we know something new is happening by continuing the flow of the seasons. It’s new and old at the same time!

As a Detroit Lions fan, I may know this saying better than most (if you are not a football fan, hang with me just a moment!). Every fall the Lions take the field with new players and coaches I’ve never heard of and that brings new expectations. Maybe this will be the year we have a winning record! Maybe we will even make the playoffs! I am always full of excitement of what might be, only to be disappointed yet again by the time the season ends. It’s new and old, all at the same time. (But this year’s new! This is our year!)

Something else that is new and old all at the same time, is our celebration of the Reformation at the end of the month. Every year, we remember the work of the reformers from over 500 years ago, yet they never wanted to create a new denomination or a new movement. They wanted to call back the church to the free gifts of God. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). We receive these good, life giving, gifts of God only by the work of God alone! We are saved by grace alone! This is a proclamation that is brought to us new and old every day of our lives as the church. And, unlike my Lions, they are gifts that will never disappoint.

Throughout this month, we will celebrate several different Temple Talks. These are times set aside at the beginning of the worship service where we highlight areas of service that Resurrection is involved in. This is where we see and here the Temple, God’s church at work. St. Peter, in his first letter, says that we, as the church, are “like living stones being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (2:5). As the church, we are all the holy priesthood in the temple of God. It is with great joy that we are empowered by God to live out our faith through our family at Resurrection!

While some of the service opportunities in our newsletter are old, some are new, and they are all ways for us to live life together as the church. One area that is new is the way that we will celebrate the Reformation. October 31 falls on a Sunday this year, so we will be putting together a big worship service. We will be partnering with our brothers and sisters of the Ethiopian churches, Oromo Lutheran and Mekane Yesus Lutheran (both of whom worship at Resurrection on Sunday afternoons) to praise and serve our Lord in an exciting outdoor service at Ritter Park! After the service, you can stick around and decorate your cars for our trunk-or-treat in the church parking lot later that afternoon.

As the church, we constantly get to celebrate the new and old all at the same time. The church itself is something very old, “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) that reaches back all the way to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. While at the same time, the gifts of God grace and love, come to us new every day. Throughout this month, may we find joy in the old and comfortable ways to serve with the church, as we also celebrate in the new and exciting callings that God places before us!

Your brother in Christ,
Pastor Zach Sarrault