By Judy Hill, Global Mission Team Member

​Christ the King’s Global Mission Team is excited to welcome Jason Bergmann as our 2021 Global Mission Sunday speaker. His global perspective is an important part of his role as the Executive Director of Operation Bootstrap Africa (OBA), a Minnesota-based non-profit foundation that has been working with Africans in educating their children since 1965.

Jason Bergmann is a Minnesota native and graduate of St. Mary’s University in Winona. He has found inspiration for his life in a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior: “What are you doing for others?” He previously worked at Mercy Nursing Home and was the executive director of their foundation for five years.

He came to Operation Bootstrap Africa in 2018, feeling called by their mission to build African partnerships and strengthen their future through education, healthcare, agriculture, and other long-term development. As their name suggests, OBA has a self-help philosophy, working with local groups, using local resources, and following local priorities. OBA has worked with partners in Kenya, Tanzania, and Madagascar and is interdenominational.

In October 2020 Jason Bergmann received a text with pictures from OBA schools in Southern Madagascar. He had known about the prolonged drought there, but had not realized that famine had set in. The pictures showed children with obvious signs of malnutrition. Because of the global pandemic, Madagascar had closed its borders to international travelers.  OBA did, however, get special permission from the Malagasy government to enter the country for humanitarian reasons. He will share some of his experiences from this and other African trips, both in the day’s sermon and in the 11 am adult education forum. Please join us in listening to Jason Bergmann’s stories.

By Pastor Peter Hanson

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Christ the King Lutheran Church, we have declared a year of Jubilee. This will be a year unlike any other before (and perhaps unlike any other to come). This will be a year to celebrate God’s faithfulness to us as a congregation, as well as the faith-filled ways CtK has responded to the call to love God and love our neighbors over the years. This will be a year to take stock of what is important to our ministry, as we continue to resurface and emerge from a year of shutdown, separation, and continued uncertainty This will be a year to focus on where God is calling us in the future, using our newly debt-free status (for example) to invest ourselves and our shared resources in some bold new ventures that prepare us to sustain our ministry presence for years to come.

One of the ways we want to mark this year of Jubilee is to hear from some of the many and varied voices of life at CtK. We want to hear from our remaining charter members—those who have been part of this congregation from the very beginning. We want to hear from those who chose to call CtK home at various times since 1961, those who have seen both the consistency and the change in our ministry over the years. We want to hear from new and new-er members, those who can see benefits of the firm foundation that has been laid by those who have gone before, and who respond “I want to be part of that, too!”

Beginning in the month of October, we’ll be sharing some of these voices and the stories in our Sunday morning “Life at CtK” blog. Here’s where you can help!

• Do you know of someone whose story we should all have a chance to hear? Let one of us on staff know (our email addresses can be found here).
• Do you have a story to tell from the 60 years of Jubilee that mark our congregation’s history? We’d love to hear it: please submit it to nate@lifeatctk.org to be included in one of the future blog posts.
  

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Do you need a little “prompt” to get you thinking about which of these stories you’d like to share? Consider the questions below:

1. In your experience at CtK, what is one good thing from our past church life that looks much different than it used to—but is still good and helpful now?
2. Starting from both a firm foundation and a relatively “clean slate,” how might God be calling us to ministry in the future and for what purpose?
3. What fellow member at CtK, or what ministry program or special event, from the past continues to impact your discipleship or ministry today?

Sound the trumpet! Blow the ram’s horn! Let this be a year of celebration and jubilee, a year to give thanks to God for 60 years of faithful ministry, and a year to commit ourselves to 60 plus years of continued ministry together.

By Pastor John Schwehn

Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud…And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family.
– Leviticus 25:9a-10

We are beginning our new program year at Christ the King by focusing on the biblical concept of Jubilee. With COVID continuing to rage, with violence and war throughout our world, with climate change reaping havoc on large swaths of the country, it is difficult to feel anything like jubilation.

But the year of Jubilee, laid out in Leviticus 25, is God’s way of calling us to start over, to begin again, and to let go of all that holds us captive. Every fifty years, God commands that all captives be released, all land returned, and all debts forgiven! It’s meant to disrupt cycles of generational poverty, allow the land to rest, and ensure that all people – and the earth – might live into the future with hope, equity, and mutual trust. Sadly, after Leviticus 25, the Bible is lacking in stories of God’s people actually following the command for Jubilee. Until, one day, Jesus of Nazareth stepped into the pulpit and read from the book of Isaiah, announcing that he had come to bring Jubilee to the earth:

“Jesus unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
- Luke 4:16b-19

In 2021, Christ the King has so much to celebrate. The generosity and faithfulness of this congregation over sixty years has freed us to engage in meaningful ministry for our neighbors, and for the land. Here are a few aspects of Jubilee springing up at CtK that we will think about together this year:

• In the middle of 2020, Christ the King quietly completed the payment of its mortgage! (Technically, we finished paying back an internal loan to ourselves. We’re debt-free!)
• Christ the King has had a Jubilee (50 years) plus 10 years of doing God’s work in New Brighton and beyond!
• Our Caring for Creation team has been focusing on ways to provide jubilee for the land, protecting our local watershed through the creation of a rain garden and supporting our Property Committee in its solar panel project. Switching over to solar power is a faithful move that will allows our earth to rest from additional carbon emissions while investing in the next 50 years of Christ the King.
• For many of us, we pray that this will also be a “year of return.” Coming back to our community after so much time away. Celebrating the simple fact that we are community together!

After a year of complete separation, may we keep stumbling our way into the future to which God is calling us. With a heightened appreciation of our mortality and for the gift of life that God gives us each day, we return in order to begin again with a clean slate, rejoicing in one another’s presence, and leaning fully onto the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

So blow the trumpet! God is with us.

Hear from Deb and Amity about where they noticed faith being nurtured this summer at Christ the King Lutheran Church.

Nurturing Faith // We value preparing all ages to live out their faith in daily life, offering hope and encouragement.

Read more about Christ the King's four core values, here.

By Pastor Peter Hanson

Thanks to everyone who completed our recent online survey regarding our initial plans for Sunday morning worship, beginning this fall.

With over 135 responses, we feel well equipped to move forward in this coming season, recognizing that while the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet over, we can continue to make the adjustments we need to engage in worship, nurture faith, build community, and grow in compassion in the coming months. While far from being set in stone, what has emerged from this survey is a workable plan for the foreseeable future.

On Rally Sunday, September 12, we will begin living into this new Sunday schedule. Worship will begin at 9:30 am, as it has been since the earliest days of our move to online worship in March 2020. We will continue to livestream this service, as we continue to hear what a blessing this is to elder members, members with young children, members with particular health concerns, as well as those who wish to engage in worship even when they are not nearby on a given Sunday. As conditions allow, we will reintroduce Coffee Hour at around 10:30 am or so with various options for faith formation, community-building, service projects, and even committee work beginning within the following half-hour or so. At noon, Cristo Rey will offer weekly worship in Spanish, providing a more regular gathering time for the Latinx faith community growing among us.

It is great to have had such good participation, and your staff and other leaders appreciate the input and feedback you offered. Of course, a survey is more nuanced than any sort of “up or down” vote might be. It reflects a sort of “snapshot” in time, with some issues already resolved by the time feedback is shared, while other unforeseen concerns arise even after the survey is completed. There is always room for different interpretations of the results, and those called to serve and to lead are still charged with making and implementing decisions that go beyond what can be gleaned from a handful of multiple choice and open-ended questions.

Moreover, there remains a certain level of uncertainty woven into any planning process we undertake these days, no matter how participatory, no matter how conclusive. The Delta Variant is proving to be both persistent and fast-changing, meaning that we will certainly have to set aside some of the plans we have so carefully made. If we’ve learned anything over the course of the past eighteen months or so, we’ve learned to be flexible, understanding, and patient with regard to making any plans!

The link below gives a more thorough commentary on the results of the survey itself. As these also rely on context and can be open to a variety of interpretations, we’ve scheduled a time to discuss some this survey in-person: Sunday, August 29th after worship (about 10:45 or so). Please take a look at this commentary here, and bring your questions and further insights to CtK in two weeks’ time!

Together in God’s mission,

Pastor Peter

Click here to download complete survey responses

By Diane Shallue
 
Nurturing Faith is the focus this month. It is one of the four core values of the congregation identified during the congregational listening sessions back in spring 2019. Nurturing faith is like gardening. We plant seeds of faith and prepare a good environment for faith to grow. Then we trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to sprout the seeds.  When the process is so invisible, it is hard to know how to nurture faith.

​Frequently, we think of faith formation as being for children and youth but faith grows and changes throughout our lives. Adults need to be nurtured in their faith more than children because the seeds of faith in children and youth are planted by adults. All adults in a congregation nurture the faith of all the young people. When a child is baptized, the members of the congregation promise to support and pray for the child. The parents need lots of help in nurturing that child’s faith. And all of us adults need lots of help in nurturing our faith too! 

​Classes and Bible studies and adult forums are formal ways of encouraging growth in adult faith. But there are informal yet effective practices to support faith which involve service projects, worship and conversations with other faithful adults. Another informal way of nurturing faith is demonstrating faithful living to others. I find the fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22 helpful to me when I reflect on how my actions and speech prepare a good environment for faith to grow in me and in others. Am I producing the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control? Am I quick to listen and slow to anger? Can I forgive myself and others when not producing these fruits? Can I be confident that God loves me and trust in God’s gift of grace? How can I nurture the faith of my grandchildren? These types of questions keep me searching and growing as I continue to participate in the life of the Christian community that meets at CtK.