Pastor Eric Schroeder - The Second Sunday After Pentecost - Sunday, June 23, 2019

Text: Luke 11:11-13

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At a certain point in your life experience, it suddenly occurred to you that not everyone is good at his or her job.  For a long time, all the teachers that you had were smarter than you, so it was hard to tell early on.  But not all teachers are good at what they do.  Your doctors seemed fine as long as you were healthy, but then you got really sick, and maybe they had a hard time figuring out what was really wrong with you.  The police in the community have your respect, but every now and then an officer gets caught breaking the law instead of serving and protecting the citizens. 

Pastor Joel Leyrer - Trinity Sunday - Sunday, June 16, 2019

Text: 2 Corinthians 13:14

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Dear Friends in Christ, The story is told of how, at the Fountain Abbey in the north of England, medieval monks heard a sermon from their spiritual leader on every Sunday of the year except one.  On Trinity Sunday there was no sermon delivered “owing to the difficulty of the subject.”

Pastor Kyle Bitter - Pentecost Sunday - Sunday, June 9, 2019

Text: Genesis 11:1-9

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Over the years, I’ve had a number of friends who have traveled abroad do some foreign language immersion work in the hopes of becoming fluent.  As you might guess, such experiences are most effective if the person has minimal contact with their native language, and that means it can be kind of a lonely and isolating experience at times.  Thanks to some of the modern technology available in the interne age, that’s starting to change.  Online tools like google translate and other similar services have become available – allowing users to type what they want to say in English and then see Spanish or German or whatever other language you want come out the other end, and it works in reverse too.  I think it’s a fascinating piece of technology, and it does allow communication to take place where it otherwise might not be possible, but at the same time you don’t have to use it very long to realize that it’s not quite the same as speaking the same language.  Usually you can understand what’s being said, but idioms and words with multiple meanings tend to be confusing and sometimes you find yourself wondering if you’re actually saying what you think you’re saying.  There’s just no substitute for two people speaking a common language. 

Pastor Joel Leyrer - The Seventh Sunday of Easter - June 2, 2019

Text:  Acts 16:6-10

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Dear Friends in Christ,  At one time in his life he was an arch enemy of the Christian faith.  He considered Christians to be dangerous heretics, and like a spiritual exterminator he spent his time and energy trying to rid the world of them.  He was smart.  He was zealous.  And he was committed to his cause. But everything changed one day as he was traveling to the city of Damascus on one of his seek-and-destroy campaigns.