Monthly Message | May

Grace and peace to you friends.

May is a month when most colleges and universities are wrapping up their academic years, and grade schools are winding down and sprinting to the June finish. It seems like a good month to write about education — Christian Education and the Christian Education we have at St. Mark, to be specific.

When Christian education is mentioned, I would guess most people think of kids and Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. And, at St. Mark, we have that. I can’t thank enough those who have taken time to lead Sunday morning classes, Vacation Bible School, and other activities. This has truly been a grassroots and team effort!

Learning about our faith and what it means to be a follower of Jesus, however, is for everyone — all ages! As part of being a pastor, I am asked to do a certain number of hours for continuing education to help me continue learning. Maybe where you work or worked you have done trainings and attended conferences to help you learn something new about your job so you can bring it back to where you work and apply it. Why should our faith lives be any different?

Through discussions, reading, listening, and more, we are better able to walk together in this faith life and discern God’s Word, see God’s work in the world, and understand God’s call in our lives.

The wonderful part of learning today is we have more options and a variety of ways to learn. This month, we are starting a Bible study on mental health on Zoom, which means you can stay in the comfort of your home and gather with people to talk about this important issue and what our faith has to say about it. While I will always believe that meeting in-person is a better way to gather, I realize that people have kids that can’t be left home alone, don’t like to drive in the evening, or other reasons that make doing a group study from home and online more preferable. I invite you to this study on mental health and share your perspective in a safe environment.

We also use other media to learn. At St. Mark, we have been doing a study the past few years on the series, The Chosen, which is a multiseason show about Jesus and his followers. At each gathering, we watch an episode and then have a discussion around it. We will be watching season 5 in the fall. If you wish to watch the previous seasons before then, let me know.

As St. Mark celebrates 200 years as a Lutheran congregation, the church has a treasured history of education that continues today. Did you know that Sunday School classes once began with everyone singing hymns before people went to their different classes?

Let us walk together and dig deeper into learning about God, each other, and our communities as we follow Jesus.

Go in peace. Christ is risen and in Christ you are made new!

Pastor David