Next month the Board of Deacons is going to post a long list of St. Paul’s members on a bulletin board with a request to the congregation to help us to know their situation and/or contact information. I’d like to explain why we’re doing that so as to avoid misunderstanding, confusion, or embarrassment. 

Pastor simply means “shepherd” and refers to the one who shepherds souls with the Word of God and being the Holy Spirit’s instrument in calling people to repentance and faith. But in this era we pastors have a harder and harder time even knowing where anyone is, much less the state of their faith. 

The number one reason people are getting harder to shepherd these days is that the typical church member comes to church less often. Pew Research says that one generation ago people who considered themselves regular church-goers attended their church 3-4 times per month on average. Today that number is down to 1.6 times per month. This trend, of course, is contrary to the 3rd Commandment, terrible for people’s spiritual lives, and probably also bad for society generally. But it is an unmistakable trend nonetheless. 

Another reason the pastoring task is growing harder is that people are far busier, far more mobile, and far more protective of their time and privacy. My grandfather pastors could walk around the neighborhood during the week “making calls” on church members who had missed church. Today there is an issue with even having up to date and reliable contact information for those people, even assuming we could coordinate our schedules for a visit. It’s a different world. 

At St. Paul’s we do our very best to pastor/shepherd all the members of the flock/family. Members of the Board of Deacons assist the pastors by each taking a portion of the alphabet and attempt to contact anyone who has not been in church for a full month to find out if there is some problem the church can be helping with, a conflict that needs to be resolved, or perhaps simply the need for a little encouragement to get back into good habits. At every monthly meeting each deacon reports on his efforts from the previous month and gets a new list of people to contact. And each deacon makes contacts in his own way. Some write cards, some use email and Facebook, some call on the phone (often simply leaving messages) and some try to make personal visits. 

The individual deacons do have some successes in tracking people down and encouraging them to come back to church or (in cases where people have moved) helping them transfer their membership to a congregation close to them. And we try to account for snow birds, college students, shut-ins, deployed military, or people who we know come to church but just never sign the book for whatever reason. But after accounting for those cases we still usually have a lot of people left, and our monthly reports include fewer and fewer successes in contacting them and more and more “I couldn’t get in touch,” or “Not sure this phone number is still good,” or “I heard this person took a new job out of state but there is no forwarding address.” 

Despite the ongoing efforts of the Board of Deacons we have a long list of people who have not been in church here in two years as far as we know and whom we’ve had no success in contacting about it. In short, it’s a list of people in our flock/family whom we are failing to shepherd or be a family to. 
This problem affects the whole family here, and the whole family can be part of the solution. The Board of Deacons and the pastors might not know the situation of each person on the list, but surely somebody in the congregation does. We need the whole family acting as a family and being their brother’s keeper in the case of absent members. 

There are lots of perfectly innocent reasons your name might appear on this list. In some cases it might simply be a typo in an email address. But in other cases it might be something more serious like an illness. The goal is not to embarrass anyone. The goal is make sure St. Paul’s is able to minister to and shepherd everyone in the flock to the very best of our ability. 

I’m writing this in advance of posting the list just to prepare people and explain it. Given the divine mandate to shepherd God’s flock and our ongoing struggles to fulfill that mandate for every member, I think posting the list is a positive step as long as people understand the intent. I also know it is an easy thing for people to take the wrong way. So when the list gets posted in April, please check it for your own name or anyone you know. Then talk to one of the pastors or to your deacon (the appropriate deacon’s name and contact info will accompany each name on the list) to make sure we have good contact information and any other knowledge that will help us serve the whole family better. 
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See you Sunday (or Saturday). 
In Christ, Pastor Speckhard 

God never runs out of fresh starts. A blanket of new-fallen snow can make a whole bleak and dirty
world look beautiful. A new calendar all clear and unsullied (back in the days before everything was online and people actually went calendar shopping in December) gives us a feeling of clean slates and new possibilities.

A simple Christmas carol reminds us that no matter bleak the midwinter, no matter how weary the world, God comes into it fresh as a newborn to bring righteousness and holiness to a fallen, sinful people.

When I talk to people at St. Paul’s I’m always struck by how much importance they attach to God’s
Word. Even people who rarely if ever come to Bible study nevertheless tend to say that Bible study is very important. And of course that makes sense. God’s Word is what draws us all together here.

Because Bible study is such an important part of the life of St. Paul’s, and because for so many people getting to Bible study is like getting in shape or saving for retirement, that is, easy to say it is important but hard to act as though it is important, we want to make it as easy as possible for all of our members to be involved, and we want to encourage all of our members to use the fresh start of the new year to take the plunge and actually do the thing they’ve been meaning to do for a long time—get involved in Bible study.

A Bible study isn’t always simply an examination of the text of the Bible, important as that is. Our
Wednesday and Thursday morning Bible studies typically just choose a book of the Bible and study it closely with lots of discussion and questions, and our Sunday lectionary study during the adult education hour does the same thing with the readings for that Sunday. But sometimes a Bible study can be topical, perhaps a series on Evangelism or Stewardship, or based on some practical, everyday concern for Christians.

Starting in January everyone at St. Paul’s will have several options for Bible study on Sunday
mornings. We will continue the lectionary study in the adult education room each week, usually led by one of the pastors but sometimes led by one of our gifted Lutheran teachers, Rick Arndt. We will also offer a six week series on Christian Parenting taught by our principal, Barb Mertens, who has certainly worked with every kind of child and parent over the years. We will also offer a video-based discussion led by our DCE Jaymes Hayes and Rick Arndt on Life Issues. The videos are published by Lutherans for Life and cover many practical topics from end of life issues to beginning of life issues to the value of all human life in between.

Later in the Spring when those series end we will have a series on Big Questions/Biblical answers on a variety of topics, and after that we will offer a series on the book of Ephesians. The whole time, of course, there will be confirmation class (open to anyone who might want a refresher) going on in the sanctuary and New Member classes going on as well. Check the bulletin for room assignments.

There will always be an excuse not to be in God’s Word. Let this be the year of no more excuses. Use
the fresh start of A.D. 2016 to deepen your understanding and faith in the everlasting newness of life Godgrants us in Christ Jesus.