Lutheran Church of Providence
January, 2019 Newsletter

Pastor’s Corner

Another year is over and many people are looking for a new start in life. New Year’s resolutions are being made for things like losing weight, exercising more, spending less money, giving up smoking and many other things that will improve our life style. This comes as we close out the Christmas season and begin the year 2019.

Christmas has been a time not only for giving and receiving gifts but also for a new start in life. God becomes human by coming to earth as an innocent baby boy. After living a perfect sinless life, He willing gives up His life to put an end to sin, death and the devil. Satan has no more power over us and we get to start a new life. But what does it mean to start a “new life?” First of all it means that we rededicate ourselves to being the sons and daughters of God. This means that we strive to be obedient to all God says and that we aim to follow God’s will. Perhaps you’ve not been reading the Bible – now’s a good time to start with the Daily Walk Bible. Perhaps you have been sporadic in your worship of God – now is a good time to schedule in weekly worship of God instead of indulging in what temporally pleases US on any given Sunday. Perhaps we’ve been concerned about things on the earth instead of focusing on being with God here on earth and planning on a reunion with God when our life on earth ends. Perhaps we’ve taken our faith for granted and haven’t purposely thought about why we are here and what we are doing. Perhaps we try to guide our own life instead of coming to God in prayer and trusting Him to lead and guide us.

As you can tell there are many ways that we can have a new start in life if we choose to or we can just go on doing what we’ve done in the past even if we don’t feel complete or fulfilled.
This year can be a big one for the Lutheran Church of Providence. We are seeing many visitors at church who can help us reach out and expand our programs into the community. We can also plan towards calling a full time Pastor to be able to leading us as we serve the community.

We have had several people who experienced medical problems in the past year and have been blessed with the gift of healing. As their health returns we will have more resources to choose from and more programs we can restart.

One thing we need to do, however, is to follow the guidance of God and to build each other up in the church instead of criticizing and tearing down. When people work against what the church is doing Satan gets the upper hand and the work of the church comes to a standstill. If individuals don’t agree with the direction our Church Council is taking, then they need to take it to the Council. If Council makes a decision and some individuals don’t agree with it, perhaps they can find a church that agrees with their philosophy, theology and direction. It is better to change affiliations than to tear apart a worshiping community.

2019 can be the best year we’ve had yet. Let us rededicate ourselves to God and go forward in faith and love. Thank you for all your help and love in the past as I look forward to a year of growth and service.

In His service,
Pastor Weikart

Fellowship

Thank you to our many members who donated food over the Advent season for the Food Pantry. We give thanks to God for our generous and kind members.Many thanks to all those who helped over Christmas making the birth of our Savior a memorable experience for all. We thank those who participated in the gifts for the Angel Tree, and for the special music, the poinsettias, the beautiful chrismons on the new Christmas tree as well as those who did the regular tasks of the church such as ushering, greeting people, setting up Holy Communion and the distribution of the Eucharist.

​​​​ Epiphany January 6th