All Are Welcome!WORSHIP TIMES
10:30 AM Sunday Worship w/Communion Fellowship following worship All are Welcome! CONTACT US:Pastor Kari Pancoast
EMAIL: pastorkari@brainerd.net How To Find Us:Immanuel Lutheran Church of Hillman is located at the intersection of County Hwy 27 and County Hwy 47. It is one mile west of County 8.
Contact Us
|
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
I have been here with you as your pastor for a year now. (My official start date was April 1, which last year was both Maundy Thursday and of course April Fool’s Day—I take that as a little reminder that God has a sense of humor! Haha!) As I reflect back on this past year, I am so thankful for our time in worship together and for your continued faithfulness. It has been quite a year! When I started serving as your pastor, we were still in the middle of the navigating the pandemic. A small number of you had just started to worship together again but were still cautiously (and smartly) wearing masks, not singing, and avoiding close contact with each other. Covid numbers went down, allowing us to let our guard down a little, spiked again, so we resumed some of our precautions and now, thankfully, we seem to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel that has been a long and trying time of Covid. And our worship services continue to slowly grow. While we hope the pandemic will soon be a distant memory, we can’t deny that it has had some lasting effects on the church as a whole and on our congregation specifically. There are still some people who are hesitant to come back to worship due to health concerns. There are also people who have just gotten out of the habit of going to church. There are even those who no longer see the value in being part of a congregation. I am so thankful for those of you who have continued to be connected to our congregation and who faithfully worship and serve. I believe with all my heart that we need each other, and the world needs us. As people of faith, people who know the Risen Christ, we are sent out to be the good news of God’s grace, mercy, and love in the world. But in order for us to share the love of Jesus in the world we must continually be filled with God’s love in Jesus for us. So, it is critical that we continue to gather in worship because it is in worship is that God promises to come to us. Of course, we can and do encounter God in a variety of places and experiences. But God promises that he will always come to us through Word and Sacrament and the Community of Believers that is the Body of Christ as we gather in worship. In worship God comes to us as we experience God’s Word read and sung and prayed and preached. We hear the stories of his faithfulness to his people in all times and situations, no matter how faithful or faithless his people are. We hear ourselves in those stories and know God’s faithfulness to us. We experience the teachings of Jesus and witness the example of his gracious love in the world and know this love is for us and is a model for us in how we live with and care for others. In worship God comes to us as we experience the ongoing gift of our baptism. We gather around baptismal font, confess our sins, and hear the promise of forgiveness and new life. No matter what we have done or not done, believe or don’t believe, we belong to a God who loves us and who continues to give us life. In worship God comes to us as we receive the real presence of this God of love with us and for us in the bread and wine of communion that is the body of blood of Jesus. As we eat and drink, we are filled with the presence of God’s merciful love, and we are nourished for our lives of faith. And in worship God comes to us as we gather together with our sisters and brothers in faith, the community of believers. As we love and support each other, we are the presence of God’s merciful love for each other. Together we are the Body of Christ in the world. As we gather in worship week in and week out, God continues to come to us and fill us with his merciful love. And God sends us out into his precious but broken world to bring life and love and healing and hope. Our lives of faith are not just about us individually but are lived as a part of the whole creation. So, we continue to gather together in worship to be where God promises to come to us, to be together in the joy of our Christian fellowship, and to be readied to be sent back out into the world to be the presence of the Risen Christ in the lives of others. See you in worship! Pastor Kari |
