Lord Of Grace

Rally Day 2010

Last Sunday we had our “Rally Day” – the day Lutherans traditionally kick off the Sunday School and educational programs for the school year. We had a great combined service with a full house, followed by a potluck (overflowing onto the patio) and activities for kids. This year we were able to get a great balloon artist for the kids, who made some pretty impressive creations, as well as a little train and a jumping castle. Great day was had by all.

Some pictures from our festivities.

Open Thank You Letter to East Valley Lutheran Thrift Store

In February of this year, barely a month into my tenure at Lord of Grace, I met with our tech team here at church, Dino Revie and Charlie Motzko, and we talked about being able to upgrade our church web site. After some discussion, I applied for a grant to the East Valley Lutheran Thrift Store in Mesa, AZ to pay for this site.  The store, run by members and congregations of our local Grand Canyon Synod of churches, uses the profits from its sales to fund mission endeavors throughout Arizona and Las Vegas (our Synod’s territory). While I was expecting a response to take several months, allowing for review processes, I was pleased to get the full request in a month. I can’t say enough about the great work that’s done at the store, and all the support they gave us and other congregations over the years. A special thanks to director Sue Vogel-Herrera.

The store requested a picture for their files, of who they’d helped, so a hard copy is coming. But, here’s the photo of me, Dino, and Charlie at Lord of Grace looking over web site ideas. From all of us at Lord of Grace, a big Thank You Sue.

Lars

Fourth of July at LOG

Had our annual fourth of July BBQ/potluck and fireworks show at LOG. What a great way to spend the holiday. So often I end up not knowing where to go, with kids, because the best viewing spots for fireworks are crazy. But we have a great view from the church parking lot of the Marana fireworks show.

I have the full collection of photos on flickr.com

The Leap – Song written for Lord of Grace

My friend Jacob Acosta, of the bands Race You There and Roll Acosta, wrote this song for us at Lord of Grace.

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Roll Acosta

Lyrics:

Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah-a-a
Oh

Fallen upon our feet
Begging the world can be simple
Take it upon myself to tell the truth
And not, just mince words

Cause I bet you know
When I’m choked up, and cold
I don’t mean it,
look at me now
You will see what I am, and believe it
Believe it

Crashing across every doubt in this heart
And, just feel alive
Feel everything that we wanted to touch
And just look deep inside
You want the real me,
Open your eyes
And see

Now won’t deny that your conscience has tried, to reach out
Loyalty sings from the actions you bring, you take me
To places, I never thought, I could be

Vision Team timeline

People had asked about the visioning process for Lord of Grace. In my previous post I talked a little about the reasoning behind it. Here’s the timeline, also taken from the July newsletter.

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We are excited to give you initial information about the Visioning Process that will take place during the next 6 months at Lord of Grace.  Pastor Lars has initiated this process as part of his Interim Pastor responsibilities.  This will provide an opportunity for our congregation to pause and evaluate our ministries, become aware of what we can do to outreach into our community, and set forward our church on the path to growth.

This process will be accomplished in 4 phases:

Phase 1: Reflect as a congregation on our hopes, dreams, visions for the future and to look at our strengths and assets.

To begin, we will be sending a survey out at the end of July to all members.  We will
have house gatherings to share our stories of faith and hopes for our church.  We
also hope to have special forums led by guest pastors.

Phase 2: Study our surrounding community and mission field to discover the unmet physical, social and spiritual needs.

We will assess the demographics of our community and interview people in our mission field. In addition, we will be reviewing other local church ministries.

Phase 3: Study and reflect on the larger trends in religion/spirituality and church in our wider culture and how that might impact our mission as Lord of Grace church

This will be accomplished by reading books/articles on future trends in religion. We will also offer forums with cutting-edge church developers including Rev. Charles Newman of the Grand Canyon Synod.

Phase 4: Synthesis: Council and congregation reviews the information gathered and reflections are made to determine future goals and vision

During the final phase, results of the process will be posted  for the congregation to review.  The council will meet to review the process and the results. Finally, the council will recommend to the congregation a vision for future growth and a call for a permanent pastor.

The Vision Team, along with the entire congregation will be helping Pastor Lars facilitate this process.   By the end of the month all LOG members will receive a survey. That will be our initial gathering of data mentioned in Phase 1. It is our hope that through this process we will discover a clear picture of who we are, and where we are needed to do God’s work. We ask that you pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance throughout the process. Thank you for being an active member of this community!  If you have any questions, please contact any member of the team or Pastor Lars.

Peace and Grace,

Vision Team-Pastor Lars, Jim De Girolamo, Lynda Reeves, Jeff Fitch and Phyllis Teager

Visioning Process

Here’s from my July 2010 pastor’s column for the newsletter:

For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’
Luke 14:28-30

These last few months have been a fun time for us as a church. We finished up our Sunday School year with growth, and had another great vacation Bible school with almost 90 kids. Our worship services are still above last year’s numbers, even figuring in for winter visitors going back to the Midwest, and we took in 25 new members. Now that things are getting back on track towards growth, we’re going to start the first steps of a visioning/strategic planning process, to help us figure out where God is calling us as a church, and our general direction for the future. Our vision team, comprised of Jim DeGirolamo, Phyllis Teager, Lynda Reeves and Jeff Fitch, met this month to get the process going.

The plan is to spend this year doing mostly assessments and information gathering in three areas: our church (our hopes, dreams, strengths, gifts, passions), our community (their needs, wants, struggles), and the trends in the larger culture that affect religion and churches. To accomplish this, we will be doing surveys and getting feedback from within our congregation, doing research in the community, and having forums to hear speakers, have discussions, and share ideas. There will be lots of information gathering, and regular feedback to the council and the congregation. Not long into the process, we should begin to see some patterns emerging with all this data that should give us some good ideas of the general direction God is calling us to go. This will be completed by the congregational meeting in early December.

All this is only the first phase, where we start to see directions. No decisions or changes are made at this point. The second phase, what I call the how phase, where we brainstorm specific actions and potential changes (new programs etc.), comes next year, and is a somewhat different process. More specifics are inside, and a regular column will be in this newsletter to keep everyone updated on events and progress. If anyone is interested in helping out with the vision team, just let me know. There’s plenty to do.

Palm Sunday pictures

Palm Sunday the Sunday School did a Christ Walk around the church, going from station to station as they got to meet people reenacting scenes from the last days of Jesus. Here’s a few pictures.

Choir of Christ Chapel – Gustavus Adolphus College

The Choir of Christ Chapel, from my alma matter Gustavus Adolphus College, came down to Lord of Grace on April 18th and sang at both services. Having sung in this choir myself for two years, it was a lot of fun to have them come down.

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