General Scaparrotti Takes NATO Command

Mike Scaparrotti, who grew up in Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where I pastored for six years, is a great leader and a fine man.

Saint Matthew, Logan, and the Scaparrotti family are justly proud of him!

Despite misinformed talk from the campaign trail this year, NATO and other similar alliances and arrangements remain important not just or even primarily for others' security, but for the security of the people of the United States. General Scaparrotti is a wonderful choice for this command.

Please keep him in your prayers, asking God to give him wisdom and safety. Please also pray for his wife Cindy, who is a great person in her own right.



[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

"Mike" Scaparrotti, a Great Nomination by President Obama

President Obama has made a great decision in nominating General Curtis "Mike" Scaparrotti to serve as NATO commander.

General Scaparrotti is a son of Logan, Ohio and of St. Matthew Lutheran Church there, where I served as pastor for six years.

He is a great man of integrity, the kind of leader who never asks those he leads to do things he doesn't. He's smart, wise, and humble.

This is a great appointment.

Ordination Anniversary and the Importance of Blue Butterflies

On October 19, the folks of Living Water Lutheran Church, the congregation I serve as pastor, remembered the thirtieth anniversary of my ordination. I didn't know until this morning that the display pictured above was around on that day. It means a lot to me.

The butterfly, of course, is a symbol of resurrection. But the blue butterfly is especially important for me and more than a few friends in the parish I last served, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. It was a favorite of Sarah, a young woman from Saint Matthew, who was always an example of faithfulness, grit, determination, fun, and good humor, a saint I look forward to seeing again one day in eternity.

Reasons for Thanks

This morning was humbling.

The congregation I serve, Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, decided to mark the thirtieth anniversary of my ordination.

I was talking with someone the other day and mentioned that the chief significance of this anniversary is that it shows how God has put up with me for thirty years. "No," this church member said, "He's put up with you a lot longer than that."

 True. Thanks, praise, honor, and glory belong alone to the God made known in Jesus Christ for His grace, love, and patience with a sinner like me. In light of this, it seemed appropriate to keep the entire day low-key.

During worship, Dan Mershon, with whom I work here, gave a thought-provoking sermon on the Gospel lesson, Matthew 22:15-22.

Folks from previous parishes were in attendance and it was so nice visiting with them during the luncheon.

Thanks to the people of Bethlehem Lutheran Church (Okolona, Ohio), Friendship Lutheran Church (Amelia, Ohio), and Saint Matthew Lutheran Church (Logan, Ohio) for sharing this journey with my family and me, for the inspiration you have given to me, for forgiving my faults, and for living your faith in Jesus.

And thanks to the people of Living Water, who made this a special day of honoring God and thanking Him for His goodness.

What Does It Mean to Be a Lutheran Christian? The Augsburg Confession Series So Far

What does it mean to be a Lutheran Christian?

It's all about faith in Christ, trusting in His grace rather than in my performance as a human being or my conformity to religious or social norms.

That is the pervasive theme of the series of sermons inspired by The Augsburg Confession, a basic statement of the Lutheran understanding of Biblical, Christian faith, in which we've been involved over the past few weeks at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church.

Below are links to all of the sermons in the series so far, grammatical errors, missing words (usually infinitives or articles), and all. There are a few installments to go. But if you're new to the blog, you might want to check things out. I hope that you find them helpful. God bless!

The Three-in-One God
What is 'Original Sin'?
The Son of God
What is 'Justification'?
The Ministry of the Church
What About Good Works?
What Makes a Church a Church?
Holy Baptism
Holy Communion
Confession of Sin
Repentance
Are Governments Necessary?

Worth Remembering: Saint Matthew Youth Mission Trip, 2012

We served others in Jesus' Name, sweated, worshiped God with ninety of our closest friends from other states (and Logan, too), sweated, showed off our talent, sweated, prayed together, sweated, studied the Bible together, sweated, served one another breakfast and dinner, and we also sweated.

Ready to Celebrate

Snapped this picture of the Saint Matthew Senior Choir awaiting the arrival of the first group of celebrants for 'Follow the Light' last Saturday evening, December 15. Groups of people walked to seven different downtown Logan churches, each helping guests to celebrate Advent and Christmas. All proceeds from the sale of tickets for the event went to support the new Inspire Shelter, a place for the homeless in our community.

By the way, if you're going to be in southeastern Ohio this evening, you're invited to celebrate Christ's birth with us during our 11:00 PM candlelight worship service. For more details on our location, go to the church web site, here.

Listening in on an Apostle's Prayers

This is a rather faint and scratchy recording of this Saint Matthew's Chapel Holy Communion worship service, held at 8:30 this morning. The Bible lesson was Ephesians 3:14-21.

Mission Trip 2012 Video

From June 24 to 29, five youth and three adults from Saint Matthew participated in Group Workcamps' Week of Hope in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Along with 58 other Christian youth and adults, we served others in Jesus' Name in Grand Rapids. We also worshiped together, prayed together, studied God's Word together, sweated a lot, and had tons of fun. We slept in sleeping bags on hard floors and church youth groups took turns fixing breakfasts and dinners and cleaning up the facility in which we stayed through the week, the church building of Zion Reformed Church in Grandville.

We had no idea before we left Logan, but when we arrived we learned that a group from Immanuel United Methodist Church, whose building is located just a few blocks from Saint Matthew's facilities, also were participants. It was great being in Grand Rapids with them!

Group Workcamps puts on lots of these camps across the country every year.

This video gives a flavor of what the week was like. The video portion was taken on my cell phone and the stills were taken by Week of Hope staffers.

Soul Man by Sam and Dave is the song to which one member of our group, along with friends from Logan, pantomimed during a talent show.

Get Down by Audio Adrenaline is a song with which we sang and danced during the programs each day. "Ev'rytime I'm down the Lord lifts me up, yeah!"

The theme of the week was Made and refers to Revelation 21:5, in which the risen and ascended Jesus proclaims, "See, I am making all things new!"

Audio of 'Read the New Testament in a Year' Discussion (John 19 to 21)

The people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio are reading the New Testament together in a year's time. On Wednesdays, participants who are interested gather for weekly discussion groups at either 11AM or 7PM. This is audio of this past Wednesday evening's discussion (July 25). We discussed John, chapters 19 through 21, an account of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.

A source from which I read here is Craig Keener's outstanding reference book, The IVP Background Commentary: New Testament.

During the discussion of John 21:11, I mentioned that my seminary professor, the late Pastor Bruce Schein, said that the 153 fish of the miraculous catch was "the perfect catch." I couldn't then remember why Schein had said this. But this is what he says in in his wonderful book, Following the Way: The Setting of John's Gospel:

"There are 153 fish in the net, a perfect catch fishermen would say--a third always goes to the boat, a third to fishermen, and a third to the provider of nets."

Shepherd for the Harassed and Helpless

Here's the somewhat scratchy and hard-to-hear audio of this past Sunday's 8:30 AM Chapel Holy Communion Service at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.

The Biblical text used is Mark 6:30-34, 53-56:

³⁰The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. ³²And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. ³³Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. ³⁴As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
⁵³When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. ⁵⁴When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, ⁵⁵and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. ⁵⁶And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Wednesday Evening's 'Read the New Testament in a Year' Discussion at Saint Matthew

This is our oft-interrupted discussion of John 8 through 11 in 'Read the New Testament in a Year,
from the evening of July 11.

Hot Kindness Outreach Fun!

Eleven Saint Matthew folks turned out today to give away 200 bottles of water to thirsty drivers and passengers for this week's Kindness Outreach.

Thanks to each one of them!

It was funny: As hot as it is today (we're at 93 degrees as I write this), a higher number of people than usual seemed to refuse the water today. The hot weather can make us all cranky, of course. It apparently can even cause sweaty people to turn down free cold water!

On the other hand, those who took our free gift were more enthusiastic in expressing their thanks than usually seems to be the case!

As I handed the free water to one man, he couldn't believe it. "Are you serious? This is great! Thanks a million!"

One woman, driving alone, told me, "We don't usually don't let water in the car. But I'll make an exception today. Thanks!"

Initially, one man, whose little girl was riding in her seat in the back of their vehicle, refused our offer. But a few moments later, he honked and lowered the front passenger window. "Did you have a change of heart?" I asked. Pointing to his little girl, he said with a smile, "She did." As I handed both of them bottles of water, he said, "Thanks!"

Sheila, a member of our Saint Matthew congregation, reported that one person said that she would just take the card and we could keep the water. Sheila gave the water to her anyway.

Despite the heat, we had fun sharing the love of Jesus Christ through this simple act of service to our neighbors.

This Morning's Discussion of Luke, chapters 7 to 11 (Read the New Testament in a Year)

The people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, are currently taking a year to read the New Testament. We read five chapters each week. On Wednesdays, we get together for discussions of the week's readings. People can choose to come either in the mornings or the evenings.

Here is this morning's discussion of Luke, chapters 7 through 11.

"Bold Lutheran" Need Not Be an Oxymoron!

[This is from my devotions for the Saint Matthew Church Council this evening.]

Tonight, I'd like to look at three passages of Scripture. The first is John 14:1. It comes from the same section of John as our gospel lessons for the past few Sundays have come. It's what scholars call the Farewell Discourse, words spoken by Jesus in the presence of the twelve apostles on the night of His arrest. In John 14:1, Jesus says:

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me."

Martin Luther had some especially important things for Lutherans to hear about these words of Jesus.

First, Luther said:

...if we Christians stay close to [Christ], we know that He speaks to us.

Those who trust that Jesus is God and Savior and is risen and is living, seated at the right hand of God the Father, know that, to this day, Jesus speaks to us.

• Jesus, first of all and most assuredly speaks to us in the only book in the world the contents of which were breathed into its writers by the Holy Spirit: the Bible. 
• And, Jesus speaks to us in what one pastor calls "whispers," bits of guidance, messages to the heart, that the Holy Spirit speaks to the minds of those who follow Jesus. (Those "whispers" will always be consistent with what we know of Jesus from the Bible, by the way. Whispers that urge us to sin aren't from God!)
• Jesus also speaks to us through the Sacraments: Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, the "visible words" that have been instituted by Christ, involve physical elements (bread and wine or water), and bring the forgiveness of sins. 

Luther then says this of Jesus' words in John 14:1:

We can be sure of this: a sorrowful, timid, and frightened heart doesn't come from Christ.

Wow! We Lutherans need to especially latch onto the truth in those words. That's because when it comes to living our faith out loud or sharing the Good News of new life that can belong to anyone who turns from sin and believes in Jesus, we Lutherans tend to be timid.

Words on a T-shirt I saw not long ago give a good characterization of we Lutherans:

I'm proud to be a Lutheran...but not too proud.

I want to tell you that our hesitation about letting the light of Jesus shine from us and about telling others the Good News about Jesus does not come from Jesus or from the Holy Spirit.

Our hesitation is learned and cultural, not spiritual. It's not of God!

A second passage of Scripture I want to look at underscores this fact. It's 2 Timothy 1:6-7. These verses come from the second letter we have in the New Testament that was written by the apostle Paul to a young pastor named Timothy. Paul writes:

For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. 

All Christians have the Holy Spirit living within them. The Spirit is sometimes portrayed in Scripture as a burning flame. Paul says that we need to rekindle this flame, stoke the fire of passion and belief in Christ within us.

We do this by daily contact with God, especially by praying throughout our days about anything and everything, seeking God's help and guidance and praising Him, along with regularly reading and studying God's Word.

The Holy Spirit is not "a spirit of cowardice." The more we Christians rely on God, the more the Holy Spirit ignites and sustains our passion and makes us bold in sharing our faith with others.

We need to seek the help of God's Holy Spirit so that we can live with the same boldness and conviction shown by Paul in the book of Romans:

...I am not ashamed of the gospel [Paul writes]; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek [or Gentile, the non-Jew]. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, "The one who is righteous will live by faith."

May God's Holy Spirit fill us with boldness as we spread the good news of new life that belongs to those (and only to those) with faith in Jesus Christ!

Read the New Testament with Us This Year!

Yesterday, our congregation finished reading the entire Bible in a year at a pace of three chapters a day, twenty-one chapters a week. Both as a Christian and as a pastor, it's been an exhilarating experience!

People who have hung in there for the full year and participated in our weekly one-hour discussions of the readings are saying that, as a result of the experience, they feel "more centered" and confident in their faith, closer to God, and more appreciative of the deep connections between the Old and New Testaments. I feel he same way.

All of which is why today, I'm excited that we've started to read just the New Testament in the same way in the coming year. At this slower pace, we'll be able to delve more deeply into God's Word and get to know the God revealed to the whole world ultimately in Jesus, better.

It should be a great journey!

You might want to join along, wherever you are. It's simple: Just read five chapters of the New Testament--from Matthew to Revelation--each week over the coming year. You can use Saturdays and Sundays either to "take a break" or, more likely, to catch up.

To help you to better understand what you're reading, I'd suggest that you get a readable commentary on the New Testament. There are lots of good ones out there. But let me recommend two:

Eerdmans Companion to the Bible
The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament

Both are a tad pricey. But, after all, you're investing in your development as a Christian and at Amazon, you can snag both for reasonable prices. I found the second one at Half Price Books for $17.49.

If you have a good study Bible, you may want to forgo buying a commentary. The good ones won't provide you with as much great background information as a good commentary, but they will help you understand what you read. I would suggest you consider buying one of these two:

Life Application Bible
Study Bible

Dig into God's Word. You will not regret it!

Audio of This Morning's 'Read the Bible in a Year' Discussion Group

We're reading the Bible together in a year at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. Each Wednesday, we have two discussion groups, one in the morning and one in the evening, of the week's readings. This week's readings were Acts 16 through Roman 9.

A few points:

1. Von Staupitz told Luther to not come back to him with "puppy sins," not "baby sins," as I erroneously said here.

2. The question was raised as to whether Martin Luther suffered from epilepsy. No, he didn't. But he may have had Meniere's Disease, "an inner ear disorder that affects balance and hearing."

For your information: My favorite biography of Martin Luther originally written in English is Here I Stand by Roland Bainton.

"I Want to Believe in God, But Find It Hard"

"I want to believe in God, but find it hard. What can I do to believe?"

I got this question this past Sunday after we'd invited listeners to our church radio broadcast to text us. 

I understand how hard it can be to believe. For a decade, I considered myself an atheist. I scoffed at the notion of God. A superficial understanding of science and its discoveries of the mechanics of life had led me to conclude that God was a fiction. After all, nobody had seen God while peering into the depths of space, the oceans, or subatomic particles.

This was silly on my part, of course. because there isn't a conflict between believing in God and being engaged in--or appreciating--science. As someone has said, "Science is largely, thinking God's thoughts after God."

The Bible and Science each ask different questions about the universe in which we live.

Science asks: What? When? How? These questions are important in helping us to understand the mechanics of the universe and how we can harness or "co-conspire" with them to do useful things.

But the Bible asks other questions, ones that science is incompetent to answer: Why? Who? The religions of the world show that human beings have considered these two questions and come up with all sorts of creative answers to them. But the Bible is the testimony of thousands of people over thousands of years who weren't speculating about why life exists or who made it, but reporting their encounters with the One Who created the universe and revealed His will for humanity and creation.

The Bible claims that over time, God has revealed Himself to the human race and ultimately, in the person we Christians call God the Son, Jesus. In Jesus, a man in Whom the full deity of God lived, we see a God of infinite love and rectitude.

According to the Bible, faith in God isn't something we claw to attain. It's God's gift to those who are willing to believe. The Bible also says that it's God's Holy Spirit, the third Person of the one God, Who persuades us to trust in God as revealed in the crucified and risen Jesus.

"God," we might tell the Lord, "there are lots of things I don't understand. I have many questions. And so much in the world is untrustworthy. But I want to trust in You. If Jesus displays Who You are, then I want to believe in You."

If you want to believe, God will build up faith in Him within You. You may feel that your faith is only, as Jesus once put it, the size of a small mustard seed. But that's OK. God doesn't judge us on the size of our faith, only on the One in Whom we place our faith.

As Jesus told Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

A little faith in the big God we meet in Jesus, Who gave His life for us and then rose to open up eternity to those who trust in Him, is all you need. And if you want to believe, then I would say, you already do believe.

But your question indicates that you want your faith to grow. God wants the same thing.

That's part of why God has given you the Church.

Find a congregation where the Bible is preached and Jesus is exalted as the only pathway to knowing God.

Then get involved in that church's Sunday School and Bible studies and service projects.

You will learn more of God and you will see up close and personal, ordinary people like you and me, who wrestle with life's troubles and tragedies, yet trust in God. Your faith will grow in the process.

God bless you as you grow!

Audio of Wednesday Morning's 'Read the Bible in a Year' Discussion

At Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, we're reading the Bible together in a year, about three chapters at a time. Once a week, we get together to discuss the readings. This week's readings have been John 19 through Acts 15. Today's discussion mostly focused on Acts.

Audio of Yesterday Morning's 'Read the Bible in a Year' Discussion

We're reading the Bible together in a year at Saint Matthew. Each week since last March, when we began, we've been discussing the week's readings from the Scriptures. Yesterday, we discussed readings from Mark, chapter 13 through Luke, chapter 18.

I hope that you find it helpful.