Affirmation of Welcome
Reformation, a congregation of Christ's Church, welcomes everyone to join with us in a journey of faith. We are committed to providing worship, programs, ministries and pastoral care to all, regardless of religious background, age, color, ability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, economic status, or national origin. Everyone is welcome in this place, where the love of God is the foundation of all that we say and do!
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Mid - March 2021 Newsletter |
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The Reporter
Reformation Lutheran Church
ALL Are Welcome & Affirmed Here!
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Worship Service Update
Every Sunday we offer two worship options. We are worshipping IN PERSON FROM OUR CARS in our parking lot - with Communion! - every Sunday at 11:30 AM. In order to ensure the health and safety of our congregation, we will continue our online church service at 10:00 as well. Please join us for worship online HERE.
More information about online activities is described below. Stay tuned for updates.
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The Mustard Seed Project
During this time of divisive political rhetoric and religious exclusiveness, we will begin a reboot of the Mustard Seed Project with a refresher of what that
means, and why it is scriptural. The Mustard Seed Project is a yearning to realize how the wonderfully faithful invasive teachings of Jesus was meant to be in our lives. How Jesus’ teachings on selfless love, that is agape, was to be so invasive as if it was written upon our hearts and not just on stone cold tablets, as told by the prophets, “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt — a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts...” [Jeremiah 31:31-33]
Jesus will remind his followers that this new covenant of a coming kingdom will be like a mustard seed, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade." [Mark 4:30-32] When one realizes that the Mustard Seed of Jesus’ time was not domesticated as the mustard plant we know today, but was unruly and intrusive, and in some areas, outlawed for the common gardens. Yes, it was a wanted spice, but it was best to be left in the wilderness where it would not invade and dominate a garden, much like mint can do. So, what is God telling Israel through the prophets, and what is Jesus telling his disciples? What are they telling us?
The kingdom, the Word of God is to be invasive, as if etched upon our hearts, and cannot be contained or restrained; neither by the humans or the laws. For Jesus that meant not being restrained by the levitical laws. That was the crux of the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus at night.
Nicodemus wanted to talk about systematic theology with Jesus. He wanted to know what in the religiosity of 1st century Judaism gave Jesus the authority to do what he had done, his cleansing of the Temple of its religious trappings of offerings? Jesus came back not with responses from the Tanakh, but with talk of wombs and weather, birth and meteorology that left Nic’s theological head spinning and him proclaiming, “How can this be?” When Jesus did go to the Tanakh it was to lift up when Moses was commanded by God to raise a graven image of the fiery serpent in the wilderness in the book of Numbers. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. [John 3;14-16]
Nic had to know this was not too long after God gave the Commandment not to make any graven images. Why did Jesus go there?
Jesus knew that God was not restrained by God’s own law-theology and could move beyond it to created room for reconciliation with a people who had destroyed their relationship with God with their toxic behavior. If God would have remained in the law God created, the children of Israel would have to be destroyed. So God stepped beyond the law with the graven image to restore their faith.
Jesus knew the only way he was going to be lifted up on his pole to finish the old covenant was if he stepped beyond the law too, but as he also told Nic, it was going to be with selfless love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” [John 3:16-17]
That’s a Mustard Seed kingdom! A kingdom the love of God ushered into the world through Jesus. Sharing God’s scriptural selfless love is the goal of the Mustard Seed Project. We will do so in the midst of our societal context, while juxtaposing various scripture text that helps us address such context. The Mustard Seed Project will celebrate the wonderfully faithful invasive selfless love of God.
Peace,
Pastor Tim
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About the Mid - March Newsletter |
As a means of streamlining the information conveyed to you in our monthly newsletter, The Reporter, we are beginning the practice of issuing a newsletter twice a month. We’ll continue with the “first of the month” issue as we have for several years; however, the length will be shorter and the amount of content in the issue will be less. About halfway through each month we will issue another newsletter. Again, this will be a shorter version of the newsletter we are all accustomed to seeing. The second one will be referred to as the “mid-month” issue.
The intent of this change of pace is to reach out to you more often and also to try and make the newsletter a “quicker read” for you. All of the information we have included historically will be contained within the two issues; we are just trying to provide it in smaller bites.
The newsletter is one of several means of providing pertinent information about Reformation Lutheran Church to you on a regular basis. We invite you and highly encourage you to provide input to the publications. If there is a story, a need, a request, or any other item we need to consider, please let us know. Also, if you have any suggestions for improving the newsletter, please contact the church office and offer your ideas, suggestions or comments. Thank you.
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Treasurer Report for February 2021
February Income $13,001.79
February Operating Expenses $(25,623.27)
Monthly Operating Deficit $(12,621.48)
As always, thank you for your continuing support of the church and its mission.
Sharon Baldwin, Treasurer
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Council Report
In our council meetings, for the next several months, we are reading and discussing Kelly Fryer’s book Reclaiming the “L” Word: Renewing the Church from Its Lutheran Core. We are using this as a devotional to help us explore how we, as a congregation, can stay true to our Lutheran foundation in our modern day. Pastor Tim lead the February discussion by focusing on the Preface, Forward and Introduction. Each month, a different council member will discuss a new chapter. Hopefully, by the end of the book, we will all know how we can continue to make Martin Luther proud.
Following our devotional, Sharon B. Turner gave us a Treasurer update. At the time of her report, the books for January 2021 were still being closed. Sharon was able to share that our offerings for the month were approximately $14,000 and our expenses were about $23,000. She also shared that she had been able to track down some of our out of state on-line donors to give them our thanks and send them a donation letter. She encountered a few who were very excited for the opportunity to chat about what Reformation Lutheran has meant to them. It’s always good to hear about the positive changes we are making in people’s lives.
We also had a report, from Frosty Lohr, about our newly created finance committee. Frosty says this committee will assist the treasurer, create the budget, and review financial records for reports to the church council. We are looking for one additional committee member and a permanent Committee Chair so, if numbers are your thing, please let a Frosty or council president Ginny Eiwen know you’re interested.
As you can imagine, there was a great deal of discussion surrounding (You guessed it) Covid-19. As we begin to come out of our pandemic slumber, it seems like almost everything has changed. Because this is so, your church council is examining the need for new job descriptions, goals, and evaluation plans. We will also be seeking your feedback about your vision for the future of our congregation. If you haven’t heard from us already, be on the lookout. We will be seeking your input.
One last thing, and I may have buried the lead here, but Council decided it was time to reconvene the Transition Team. As you may know, it is the duty of this team to determine IF and HOW we resume in person worship and any other gatherings on church property. We look forward to our March council meeting to review their report on what the ongoing decline in Covid-19 infection rates may mean. Pray for God’s guidance for this team as they determine the safest course for the church service and ministries.
Mike Watson, Council Secretary
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Reformation's
Holy Week Schedule
Sunday, March 28
Our Palm Sunday Worship service will be our usual Live-streamed on Facebook at 10:00 AM with our Parking Lot Gathering service at 11:30 AM. Palms will be available outside the sanctuary all day, and will be distributed at our 11:30 am Parking Lot service. After the 11:30 service, we invite those who gathered in their cars to drive through our Earlewood neighborhood with our windows down and our radios blasting the Easter hymns being transmitted on our 99.9 FM station - which can broadcast of 300 yards from the transmitter - to celebrate Jesus' entry into Jerusalem.
Thursday, April 1 and Friday, April 2
Maundy Thursday and Good Friday will be live-streamed on Facebook at 7:00 PM each evening.
Sunday, April 4
For Easter, we will begin with a sunrise livestream from an undisclosed destination (exact time and further details to be determined & announced.) We will then Livestream our (pre-recorded) 10:00 AM Easter Worship on Facebook & You Tube; and finally gather at 11:30 AM for our Parking Lot Easter Service.
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News from the ELCA
Questions & Answers About Faith and Science
A Resource from the ELCA
ASK A SCIENTIST
Question 1: What is the ELCA official position concerning the origin of life and evolution?
The ELCA has not officially taken a position about evolution. The ELCA teaches that the scriptures witness that all of life is a gift of God. However, the scriptures do not say, for example, how God's creating word, "Let there be...," brings creatures into being. Lutheran tradition has respected the work of the natural sciences in investigating phenomena in the natural world and explaining how they work and how they originated. Because our knowledge both of God and of other things is partial (I Corinthians 13:9), what is accepted at any one time as valid scientific knowledge and theory can be either added to or corrected by further scientific investigation and better theories to explain the phenomena we see in the world.
Question 2: I read that photosynthesis means "to put together with light." Then I read that God created light and then "separated the light from the darkness." Is there any scientific principle concerning the separation of the light from the dark?
The scientific view of the separation of light from darkness is primarily a study of shadows. The original force of the statement in Genesis about separating light from darkness is an attempt to understand why day and night are so different. Sure enough, in science we say that when it is nighttime, we are in the shadow that the earth makes, and the sunlight is blocked out. Please note that in climates that are far from the equator and where there is a lot of humidity in the air, we have appreciable twilight and dawn, where the separation of light from darkness is less absolute than you would get in a dry climate nearer the equator.
Answer Written by Dr. John Albright, a physicist who is also Visiting Professor of religion and science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and affiliated with the Zygon Center for Religion and Science.
Question 3: Free will vs. determinism: Is there any scientific proof of determinism?
Great question, and one that has been at the center of philosophical and scientific discussions of human nature for centuries. As scientific explanations grew to encompass more and more of the natural world, it was natural to question whether our deepest sense of self, our consciousness, could ever be explained as the product of physical processes occurring in our bodies. One solution was the belief that the physical and mental worlds were entirely distinct from one another. In this dualistic world view espoused by philosopher Rene Descartes, the mind exists completely separately from the body. Thus the mind is not controlled by the brain, but this only raised the thorny question of what, then, is responsible for the fact that our mental and physical worlds are perfectly coordinated (i.e., the idea in your mind of wanting your hand to reach for a pen is conveniently coupled with your hand moving to do so). During the twentieth century, advances in the neurosciences (a wide array of related disciplines ranging from psychology and cognitive science to neuroanatomy), convinced many people that ultimately our experience of consciousness, including our thoughts, emotions, and ability to choose and perform actions, are explainable as the product of physical processes occurring in our brains (and bodies). Remarkable progress has been made toward this ambition’s objective, but much of our interior world still remains mysterious. It should be noted, though, that other advances in research areas such as quantum physics and chaos theory have revealed that complex non-living systems (like the atmosphere), though determined entirely by physical laws and forces, may be in principle unpredictable. Such systems are remarkably sensitive to initial conditions, so that a tiny, unmeasurable change in the initial state may give rise to a vastly different result. Such systems are governed by physical laws, but their observed behavior depends on so many factors as to be effectively indeterminate. In other words, we can understand how weather evolves without being able to fully predict it! The human brain may well be said to be the most complex object in the known universe. Even if our consciousness is the product of physical processes (neurons firing, chemicals being released) in our brains, those processes are themselves at every moment sensitively dependent on our environment (including other people), our previous choices, and many random influences. In short, our brain state is itself influenced by our actions, which in turn are determined by our brain state in a ceaseless feedback loop. No one factor, be it our genetic composition, our past, our social setting, is entirely responsible for our brain state and our choices, though all of them are influences. A widely-held view of the mind and its relationship to the brain that I favor is called nonreductive physicalism. What this mouthful means is that, while we believe the mind to be the result of physical and biological process, the human mind and consciousness cannot be reduced to – fully described in terms of – these processes. In this view there is no need to postulate a separate, nonmaterial realm in which our minds exist literally disembodied from our brains. Our minds are believed to be located in our biological selves, but we are not mere automatons obeying blind physical laws. Rather, we are constrained and influenced by biology, by our genes, our heritage, our environment, but we are still free to make choices within these constraints. I could cite some of the fascinating evidence for this view, but that would take us into deeper waters. Suffice it to say that this view is strikingly like our theological, biblically-based view of ourselves. We acknowledge certain constraints to our behavior, called original sin, that we cannot transcend by conscious choice. St. Paul writes: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Romans 7:19) And yet, he rejects the idea that since we are bound to sin we are not responsible for our sinful actions. While acknowledging our bad choices, we find that only in God’s grace do we transcend our innate human tendency toward sin. In summary, as Lutherans we don’t accept the old line, “the devil made me do it,” though we acknowledge that we are subject to devilish influences from within and without. But as God’s children, created in God’s image, we are still free to choose our actions. Those exceptional circumstances in which disease or damage to a person’s brain constrains their human behavior and actions (like causing them to forget their loved ones, to hear voices others don’t, or to act irrationally), only offer further evidence of the intimate connection between our minds and our brains, and the gift of God in the freedom we enjoy in their normal functioning.
Answer written by the Rev. Dr. Patrick Russell, chairman of the ELCA Alliance for Faith, Science, and
Technology, and former Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, CA.
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1118 Union St. Columbia, SC 29201
803-252-1507
Tim Bupp, Pastor
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