Pastor Schroeder

Sermon text: James 2:1-13

Watch service video

This week, God’s Word directs us to take a good look at our church, to consider our identity as a congregation and the way we go about worship and fellowship and outreach and ministry in general.  So if you are a member of St. John’s, this ought to be something that you take very seriously.  Every member of this church has a responsibility as a shareholder in everything that goes on here. If you are not a member of St. John’s, please understand that you are not dismissed at this time; there are two ways that you can actively listen to our message today: first of all, if you not a member here, I’d ask that you don’t hesitate to give some feedback—your honest impressions of this congregation.  We always appreciate that perspective on our church and ministry that you can give as a visitor.   Second of all, if you are a member of a different church, you can certainly take the instruction we have from God’s Word today, and apply it to your own congregation as soon as you have the chance to return there. 

Pastor Leyrer

Sermon text: Romans 9:1-9

Watch service video

Dear Friends in Christ, What does it mean to follow Jesus Christ?  That’s the question we considered and used as the general theme for our sermons during the first 8 weeks of the summer. Last Sunday we shifted to another question that we’ll be talking about today and the next two weeks.  The new question is this:  Why is the Christian life hard? At first we might disagree with the implication of such a question.  Is the Christian life hard?  All depends upon how you look at it.

Pastor Bitter

Sermon text: Ephesians 6:10-20

Watch service video

If you’ve been watching Olympic swimming recently, you may have heard the name Cody Miller.  Not only is he one of the talented swimmers on our country’s national team, his story is pretty inspiring too – inspiring enough that NBC did a short piece on it in the lead-up to his competition earlier this week.  Cody Miller is not physically built like most swimmers.  For starters, he is several inches shorter than his competitors, and since height and arm length are often related, he is at a disadvantage.  But the worst part is a birth defect that makes his lung capacity about 15-20% less than it would be otherwise – one can only imagine how difficult breathing problems would be when competing at the Olympic level! 

Pastor Schroeder

Sermon text: Luke 12:32-40

Watch service video

The first treasure I can remember was my GI Joes.  Now that I have two girls, I realize that they were kind of like Barbies for boys.  I would get a dollar a week for an allowance, and each one cost three dollars, so every three weeks I would be able to buy a new one.  After that stage, I moved on to baseball cards, then fishing lures, then basketball shoes and the kind of clothes that everyone was wearing at the time.  Then it was a car to drive, then a computer for college, and on to the concerns of an adult. 

Pastor Schroeder

Sermon text: Luke 12:13-21

Watch service video

What does it mean to be rich?  Have you ever tried to nail down a definition in your own mind of what it takes to make a person rich? If we sat here a while, we’d probably come up with a wiser answer for what it means to be rich, but if we are like most people, our first thought is … rich people make more money than I do.  Rich people have more money than I do.  That means that rich people get to spend a whole lot more money than I do, and they get to have things and do things and see places that I don’t have or do or see.