Summer Worship Schedule

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

It was such a joy to utter those words with you on Easter Sunday. It felt so good to be able to worship with you at Greenmount Cemetery, and again inside our sanctuary, and again outside in our front yard! Thank you to all who made those worship services possible.

One of the most frequent comments I heard after Easter was whether we would consider having an outdoor worship service every week now that the weather is nicer. Many people feel more comfortable coming to worship outdoors than indoors, and we just happen to live in a gorgeous setting where the weather is pleasant more often than not. I’m happy to say that the answer is: YES! Beginning on Sunday, May 30, we will offer a weekly outdoor worship service in addition to our livestreamed, indoor worship service. This will enable more of our church family to gather (TO-GATHER!) in a way that is within more individuals’ margin of acceptable risk.

Starting May 30, we will have three weekly worship opportunities through the summer:

• Sundays at 9:00am, indoor, in-person AND LIVE-STREAMED (Note the slight change in time from what we’ve been doing.)
• Sundays at 10:30am, outdoor, in-person, but not live-streamed
• Wednesdays at 6:00pm, in-person, outside (weather-permitting). We will not have dinner with our Behold! worship service for the time being, and we’re still investigating how to make this worship service an effective hybrid experience – that is, in-person and online.

This is a pretty crazy time in terms of the pandemic in our little area of the world. Vaccination efforts have been going very well here in La Plata County, helping our adult population to feel safer when returning to more sociable activities. At the same time, the virus is still circulating in our community, and worrisome variants are here, too. The affected demographics have shifted, however, now to affect more children and youth, for whom the vaccine is not yet available. Thankfully, children and youth have not seen cases rise to the level of severity as happened with older adults; but it is still a serious sickness that can have lasting effects.

So, as we gather for worship and other activities, please be sure to do what you can to keep others safe. If you are not feeling well, or haven’t felt well over the past few days, please refrain from joining us in worship or other church activities in person. If you have been quarantined because of close contact with someone suspected of having COVID-19, please refrain from joining us in worship or other church activities in person. If you are healthy and would like to join us in person, please wear a mask (over your mouth and nose) – even if you have had a full course of the vaccine. And, finally, remember that – although you might feel as though physical distancing doesn’t matter, especially once you’ve been vaccinated – others may feel very differently; so, please maintain a safe distance between yourself and members of other households.

The day is coming when these precautions will not be needed, but we’re not there yet. Thank you for your understanding and integrity in following these rules in our life together. Stay tuned for further developments and updates!

Peace,

Pastor Tim

Discipleship

“If you make disciples, you always get the church. But if you make a church, you rarely get disciples.” So says pastor and author Mike Breen in his book Building a Discipleship Culture. That thought has stuck with me since I first read this book almost ten years ago. The point he was driving at was that churches – in their panic about what to do about dwindling membership at the global and local levels – found some refuge in becoming marketing machines. Churches found that they could attract some people with programs of all sorts – children’s and youth ministries, parenting classes, financial strategy courses, prayer circles, men’s Bible studies, and the like. To be clear, Breen didn’t say that these things were bad. They all serve a good purpose! His issue with these things is that they were born from the wrong premise. These programs were designed to grow a church, not in order to make disciples. As such, the church became more administrative, focused more on the technical nature of how to sustain these programs. As such, the people who came for these programs tended to stay and affiliate with the church insofar as the program existed. But when the program finished, or when they “aged out” in terms of youth groups, then the people just walked away without any second thought. So, Breen asks, what if, instead, the church focused less on the programs and more on the people? What if the church just distilled its programmatic ministry to the single task of making disciples – equipping them for a life of faith in a challenging, ever-changing world? What if the church spent its time and energy on helping people to listen for God in their everyday lives, and encouraged people to respond to God’s gracious voice? What if the church made disciples that understood the invitation and challenge associated with a life of faith and who strove every day to meet that challenge with the assurance of God’s mercy? This isn’t programmatic ministry. It’s just ministry. Beginning with questions like these brings our focus more to relationships, mentoring, teaching, and role-modeling, and less to checking worship or a church meeting off of our To-Do List. Make disciples, he says, and you will always get the church. It just may not look like what you thought it would.

I bring this up because earlier this week, a report from Gallup was released that showed that religious membership in the United States has dipped below 50% for the first time in its 80-year history of asking these questions. This is significant, but not surprising. Membership in churches along with other religious organizations has been decreasing for decades, and this is a trend that the church needs to pay attention to. Still, my reaction to this report was not so much panic as it was sorrow. Because it seems to indicate that we – the church – have done a poor job of making disciples. And reports like this one will probably trigger another surge of gimmicky programs instead of doing the harder, more necessary work of making disciples.

As Christ the King Lutheran Church and I both prepare for my upcoming Renewal Leave in the summer of 2022 we will be focusing on what discipleship looks like. We will be discovering what our individual spirituality types might mean for our life of faith. We will be revisiting and relearning about some of our religious roots and tending to them so that our faith might flourish. We will focus on building you and others up as disciples, as people who love and want to follow Jesus. I, for one, am excited to see how this kind of intentional focus might bear fruit in the years to come.

If you have any questions about my upcoming Renewal Leave, please feel free to reach out to me. I’d love to chat with you about it.

Peace,

Pastor Tim

Turning Corners. . .

It sure feels like we’re turning a corner, doesn’t it? Although we’re still firmly in the middle of winter, the sun’s light is starting to shift and change its tone. Songbirds are becoming more numerous and vocal. The days are lengthening. And mud – rather than snow – is once again becoming the natural wonder that we need to tame.

Oh, yeah… and then there are the vaccines!

While we’re still some time away from the vaccines being available to everyone in the general public, the mere fact that many people in Durango have received at least their first dose of the vaccine is cause for tears of joy and a welling up of hope. This is quite a change from where we were just a year ago, when panic about this unknown virus first started to cause an uneasy sense of dread and foreboding.

Here at Christ the King Lutheran Church we have been busy in these last several months getting things prepared for the eventuality of having people be able to gather in person once again for worship in our Sanctuary. Thanks to a gift from the estate of Roger and Shirley Buslee, we were able to upgrade the audio-visual components in our Sanctuary to allow us to continue to livestream our services for an online audience and project the words for liturgy and song on high-definition screens for those worshipping in the room. Now that our staff and some volunteers are trained in how to use these components most effectively, and now that COVID-19 rates in La Plata County have been generally trending downward, and now that we have a good plan in place to promote the safety of those present through public health recommendations and guidance, we are excited to begin offering the chance for people to gather inside our Sanctuary for worship once again.

Those who wish to join us for our worship service at 9:15am on Sunday mornings must sign up in advance. You can do so by navigating to our sign-up hub on our website (https://www.ctkdurango.org/signup/). If you do not have access to a computer, tablet or smartphone to sign up on your own, please notify Pastor Tim or the Church Office. At this time, we can accommodate up to 30 people in the Sanctuary. Masks are required to be worn at all times, and physical distancing between households is required.

Of course, we’re not really out of the woods with COVID-19 yet. Things can very quickly change in terms of transmission rates in our area; and, if that should happen, we will adjust this plan accordingly. So, for the sake of all in our community, please do your part to follow public health guidance in your everyday life, too. This is the best way to ensure a steady reopening process, not only for CtK, but for many other businesses and organizations in our area.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

Be safe, everyone. And I look forward to the time when we can all see each other in person again… soon!

Peace,

Pastor Tim

I Miss Being a Pastor. . .

A few weeks ago, I woke up with a sudden and sad thought: I miss being a pastor.

Oh, sure, I’ve been preaching online for a while. But it’s nowhere near the same as being in a room together with real people, being able to see smiles and nodding heads. For the most part these days, I just hope that my sermon makes coherent sense. I miss being a pastor.

And, yes, we’ve been able to conduct meetings and the business of the church through the wonder of Zoom; but I don’t feel nearly as productive, and I don’t feel like our conversations have the energy and flexibility that comes when we’re able to talk quickly or even over one another. I miss being a pastor.

And, true, worship has not really stopped since we went online. But I have to admit that worshipping at home has lost its earlier novelty; and now I stress about production value, and technology woes; and what to do about all of those people who cannot or will not navigate an online church world. I miss being a pastor.

And, I have to admit, the phone does work in a pinch to connect with people. As does email. Or socially-distanced visits. But it’s nowhere near the same as sitting in someone’s living room and holding their hand as they grieve. I miss being a pastor.

I don’t have a solution to all of this yet. And I don’t mean for this article to get you down. But I want to let you know that you’re not alone in your exhaustion from all that has happened in this past year. Nor are you alone in your eager desire to return to something resembling normal. Please know we’re working on it. We’re getting things ready, and getting plans in place for us to be able to start resuming things in as safe a way as possible. And we will keep you posted on those plans as soon as they are actionable.

Until then, know that I’m praying for you from afar for your health, your safety, and your peace of mind. That, at least, is one thing that this pastor can still do!

Peace,

Pastor Tim

Special Congregational Meeting

Mark your calendars now for a Special Congregational Meeting to be held on Sunday, January 24, 2021 immediately following our 9:15am worship service for the purpose of voting to call Mandy Gardner as a Deacon to serve at Christ the King Lutheran Church.

This past year has been remarkable. Not always in good ways, but also not always in bad. I have been proud of the ways that we here at Christ the King Lutheran Church have adapted, pivoted, re-evaluated, and re-thunk (ha!) the ways that we have always done things in the face of the obstacles that 2020 has thrown at us. These last several months have forced CtK and every other church around the world to figure out how to do ministry in an online environment, whether ready or not. To that end, our digital presence has skyrocketed, and new emphasis has been placed on making our website easy to navigate and functional, ensuring that worship can still be accessed reliably on a regular basis, investing more time and resources toward electronic and social-media communications, and so on. For many of these adaptations, Mandy Gardner has been at the helm and deftly navigating these challenges. As we approach a congregational meeting in January on whether to transition Mandy from a hired employee to a called Deacon at Christ the King Lutheran Church, I thought I would re-post my verbal report from November. It outlines very well the responsibilities she has taken on.

Oh my goodness. Folks, I don’t know if I can tell you everything that Mandy has done and continues to do for this congregation. From being our congregation’s webmistress to build and sustain our digital ministries, to taking on the role of Sunday School teacher for our kids, to working with me to learn and implement new audio-visual technologies in the Sanctuary, to brainstorming with me about how to “be church” in this age of COVID, to taking on the responsibilities of Youth Director… dear church, I am dead serious when I say that this congregation is absolutely BLESSED to have her, and we would not be anywhere NEAR as healthy as we are these days without her. Mandy’s humor, and theological training, and administrative skills, and creativity, and passion, and get-it-done-ness is vital to our ministry and witness at CtK.

In some ways, the pandemic and the ensuing quarantine have really put a spotlight on Mandy’s role. If you’ve been to our website at all in the last eight months, you have seen first-hand her work in building beautiful websites that are intuitive, informative, interactive. And lest you think that that kind of thing isn’t really ‘church work,’ think again. These days, the digital presence we have online through our website, social media, and communications campaigns are every bit as important – if not MORE so – to bringing people into this community as anything else. Just over the summer, I had at least 5 out-of-town visitors who specifically wrote to me to thank me for our website. They found it easy to navigate and playful. And one couple even visited the church, investigating it for an upcoming wedding, just because they liked the website! This work of building and maintaining a good, clean, enjoyable website is all done behind-the-scenes, but it is the new evangelism. And Mandy is the one doing it all.

In August, the Spirit called and Mandy responded by stepping up to take on the role of Director of Youth Ministries here at Christ the King Lutheran Church. Actually, I guess it was the Spirit talking through Becca Awe – a former youth at this congregation who convinced Mandy that she was the perfect person for this job right now. In any case, Mandy has been meeting with the youth weekly lately, and has filled them with energy and enthusiasm for the ELCA National Youth Gathering to be held in 2022. While this is a long way away, these events are expensive and fundraising needs to start NOW. So, let me encourage you to go to our website, and under the ministries tab you’ll see a page for the Youth Fundraiser. These pages will tell you all about the Gathering, all about our Youth, and will give you ample ways to support them financially as they seek to raise money for this incredible event.

In September, Mandy also tackled once-again the juggernaut of what to do with our younger kids. Through the pandemic, churches around the world have reported that young children are the ones who are being most left-behind in terms of attendance and participation. Online worship services just cannot keep their attention and do nothing to satisfy their primary reason for coming to church in the first place: social support and interaction. But these are also crucial years for children to learn the basics of faith – about prayer, about worship, about service, and about the Bible. So, in September, Mandy began creating videos for our younger youth that are sent to them weekly. They are not Zoom meetings – they don’t have to log in at a specific time to watch them – but they are videos that the kids can watch when they have a few minutes to spare during the week to hear a Bible story, to hear a short sermon aimed at the children each week, and to be given some sort of activity or challenge to do for the week ahead. These videos that Mandy has been creating have been AMAZING. (If you’d like to see any of them for yourself, just go to https://www.ctkdurango.org/faith-formation-at-home/.)

Dear Church, my thankfulness for Mandy and her work for Christ’s church is beyond words. I quite frankly could not do the work of being a pastor here without her. And it is for this reason that I am strongly advocating for us to officially call Mandy as a Deacon at Christ the King Lutheran Church in 2021. The impacts on our budget to do this are negligible. And I strongly feel that it is the right thing to do. Christ the King Lutheran Church paid, after all, for sending Mandy through seminary education. She has been duly interviewed and approved by the Candidacy Committee of the Rocky Mountain Synod as a qualified candidate for a call in the church. And at this point it sure feels like NOT following through on our investment, not to mention our desire for her to do this, sure feels like we are robbing her of the opportunity that this work has prepared her for. But beyond the benefits that we receive at CtK for moving her from a hired employee to a called Deacon of the ELCA, a huge benefit is that we give the church at large a well-qualified Deacon who loves Jesus and loves leading other people to love Jesus. I cannot think of a better qualification than that.

The transition to calling Mandy as a Deacon at CtK will involve a congregational meeting to officially call her, which will take place at a Special Congregational Meeting after worship on January 24, 2021. Transitioning her to a position of Deacon will not change her job responsibilities tremendously, but there will be some additional expectations including: a more regular opportunity to preach, every six weeks or so; a voice and vote at Council meetings; and Synodical and Churchwide expectations.

If you have any additional questions about what it will mean to call Mandy as a Deacon at Christ the King Lutheran Church, please do not hesitate to contact me or Ann Duft.

And, when you have a chance, please take a moment to express your gratitude to Mandy for the work she does here on your behalf.

Peace,

Pastor Tim