Pastor Kyle Bitter - The First Sunday After Christmas - Sunday, December 27, 2020

Text: Luke 2:25-40

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How do you think people responded to the shepherds? The familiar Christmas story ends with the shepherds going to Bethlehem, seeing the baby Jesus, and then “they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.” (Luke 2:17b-18 – NIV84). In their joy, I wonder how far the shepherds ranged? The town of Bethlehem? The surrounding country? Did they go door to door, or just meet people on the streets? Did they make it to nearby Jerusalem? Most of those questions are ones that we can only speculate about, but there were some who shared the shepherds' joy, and perhaps some of them even went to see for themselves. I wonder how many other visitors there were to the stable that night and in the following days, all in response to the shepherds' frantic excitement?

Pastor Joel Leyrer - Christmas Day - Friday, December 25, 2020

Text: Luke 2:13-14

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Dear Friends in newborn King, Christ, the Lord: In a book of personal memories collected from those who served in World War II, a soldier from Massachusetts wrote about his first Christmas away from home. He doesn’t say how old he was, but we could guess he was probably 19 or 20.

Pastor Eric Schroeder - The Fourth Sunday in Advent - Sunday December 20, 2020

Text: Revelation 3:14-22

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We all know someone who likes to drink coffee. It is the third-most consumed drink in America, after water and carbonated soft drinks. So whether you drink coffee yourself or not, I’m sure you are all well aware that there are two main ways that coffee is served. The vast majority is brewed steaming hot, quite often hotter than you’d want to drink right away, but you can also order iced coffee. Same ingredients, just ground up coffee beans and water—along with whatever flavors or sweeteners you’d like added in. But you either get it hot or cold. What you don’t typically see is the option to order lukewarm coffee, and there’s a scientific reason for that: it has to do with how your taste buds work. You see, at either end of the temperature spectrum, the taste buds on your tongue that detect bitter (and often unpleasant) flavors don’t work as well. But when you eat or drink something right around room temperature, those same taste buds kick in, and coffee doesn’t end up tasting as good, whether it’s hot coffee that has cooled down or iced coffee that has warmed up. It’s not just coffee, either. It’s the same reason that cold drinks are served over ice—so they stay cold and taste better longer. You get the picture.

Pastor Joel Leyrer - Midweek Advent 3 - Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Text: Revelation 3:7-13

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Dear Friends in Christ, If you did a little detective work, you would discover that somewhere you can find a Christian church today of one denomination or another named after every one of the seven churches listed in the Book of Revelation. That’s actually a bit surprising because, as we’ve learned through our examination of each of them in this sermon series, in some of his letters Jesus is pretty critical of what’s going on in a particular congregation and issues very strong warnings. We might think a church today may not want to be identified with a church that is mostly exposed for its flaws.

Pastor Kyle Bitter - The Third Sunday in Advent - Sunday, December 13, 2020

Text: Revelation 3:1-6

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What you wear on the outside sometimes covers up what’s on the inside. I saw that truth illustrated in a humorous way a couple of years ago when I was coming back from a wilderness camping trip with my brother and some friends. What you wear on the outside sometimes covers up what’s on the inside. We were really close to being back to our vehicles, and we crossed paths with a young couple who were on their way in. It was their honeymoon, they said, and they seemed really excited. And had they ever dressed for the part! The latest in brand new, light weight, camping friendly clothing. Shiny new equipment. Not a speck of dirt or mud, and a big fluffy white dog following closely behind. It looked like a photo-op for an outdoors magazine…but one didn’t have to watch them tiptoe around the puddles for long to start wondering if they were as ready on the inside as they appeared to be on the outside! As you can probably imagine, wilderness areas of our country are some of the most beautiful places to visit, but they can be harsh. Sometimes it’s cold. Often it’s wet. Usually it’s dirty. Rain was in the forecast on that day, and our group wondered how that young couple’s trip ended up turning out!

Pastor Eric Schroeder - Midweek Advent 2 - Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Text: Revelation 2:18-29

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Today’s sermon marks the midpoint of our Advent series. The fourth letter of the seven is addressed to the church in the city of Thyatira. We don’t know a whole lot about this city or its inhabitants, but it may sound familiar to a few of us. For bible readers who have traveled with St. Paul on his missionary journeys in the book of Acts, you may remember that when Paul arrived at the Macedonian city of Philippi, he met a woman named Lydia; she was the dealer of purple cloth who happened to be from the city of Thyatira. Other than that, as I said, we don’t hear about this city again until St. John writes to them in Revelation.

Pastor Joel Leyrer - Advent 2 - Sunday, December 6, 2020

Text: Revelation 2:12-17

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Dear Friends in Christ, Would you agree that because of email and word processing and text messages and all the various forms of social media available to us today, letter writing has pretty much become a lost art? Around this time of the year, we may receive some Christmas form letters with an additional hand-written line or two, but the days of regularly corresponding with one another through long, hand-written, multi-page, newsy letters are about over – at least for most of us.

Pastor Kyle Bitter - Midweek Advent 1 - Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Text: Revelation: 2:8-11

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The year was about 95 AD. The small group of Christians in the city of Smyrna, located in modern day Turkey, were feeling besieged on every side. The roots of their struggle go back a couple of decades to a time when the Roman emperors started claiming to be gods as a way of solidifying their power. They then expected their subjects to honor them as gods. From a human perspective, they weren’t asking anything too huge. A pinch of incense burned before a statue of the emperor, an occasional sacrifice offered at his altar, or some other simple demonstration of commitment to the state and the emperor is what was expected. But Christians were unable to participate in such worship acts in good conscience, so they walked past the statues and didn’t visit the altars. And maybe it could have just stayed like that. Quiet religious objection, but not making much fuss, were it not for their enemies. This group of enemies seems to trace their background into Judaism. These were people who had wanted nothing to do with Jesus, and they also wanted nothing to do with his followers, and they saw in this an opportunity to get the Christians in trouble with the Roman authorities. Rumors started to circulate. The Christians were religious objectors (true) and because of that, they were trying to undermine the emperor’s authority and the whole empire itself! Such slander had about the effect one might expect as Christian beliefs foreign to the Romans were dragged out into the public sphere and grossly misinterpreted. Damage had been done to their status in society, to their income, and even at times to their physical health and well-being! What were they supposed to do?