Sermon for Thanksgiving Eve (November 25, 2009)
“The ‘Who’ and ‘How’ of Thanksgiving”Luke 17:11-19INIGrace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.1. Our good friends to the north in Canada celebrated Thanksgiving back in the middle of October, but I want to draw from something that the Lutheran Church-Canada said on its website back last month. They produced a video that asked the question, “Who are you thanking at Thanksgiving?” The LCC’s director of communications, Ian Adnams, said about the video, “At this time of year, we hear people giving thanks for everything. I have often wondered who they are thanking. So I

Sermon for The Last Sunday of the Church Year (November 22, 2009)
“Are You Building Up or Tearing Down?”Jude 20-25INIGrace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.1. Do you like to build? Or do you like to tear down? If you’ve ever seen the show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” there are two key elements to the program: the building and the tearing down. On this show, ABC helps a family in need by building them a brand new home that will help them in a set of dire circumstances. Over the span of one week, this crew goes in and builds some of the neatest houses that you will ever see…with all of the coolest gadgets, features, whatever. The bu

Sermon for The Funeral of Lyle Curtis Aarsvold, 1932-2009 (November 20, 2009)
“A Place at the Feast!”Isaiah 25:6-9; Matthew 25:1-13INIGrace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.1. All of our Scripture passages so far in today’s service have a common theme. We read together Psalm 23 where the Lord, our Shepherd, “prepares a table before me.” Then you and I heard the words of Isaiah 25: “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.” In Revelation 19, an angel says to St. John, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Worshipers or Customers? (Cont.)
As a continuation of my earlier post, I'd like to make clear that my chief complaint in this is not the expectations of the worshiper. I'm much more disenfranchised with the pastors and churches who are adopting this business model of ministry and feeding "Christian consumerism."I recently attended a church planting conference where the key speaker was someone with LCMS World Mission. The phrase he continually used in this conference was "critical mass"--in terms of "You launch your church when you have a critical mass of 150-200 people there for your launch." After all, studies showed that this amount of people was needed to start a "viable congregation." This is

Sermon for The Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (November 15, 2009)
“Time to Shake the Dust Off of the Church!”Daniel 12:1-3INIGrace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.1. The most underutilized teaching in the entire Christian Church on earth is the teaching of the resurrection. I firmly believe this. If you poll a room of 100 random Christians and ask them what they believe about eternity…probably all 100 of them will tell you something to the effect of, “I believe that when I die I will go to heaven and live with Jesus forever.” I don’t doubt that many of you here would give the same answer! Sorry to burst your bubble, but that’s a C+ answer…B- at b