Pastor Luke’s first words as the installed senor pastor:

I stand before you now as your installed senior pastor. In thinking of what my first words to you would be, I turned to the promises I made in my candidating sermon in December of 2016. I will visit your elderly, visit you in the hospital, teach and learn alongside you as we journey in our faith together. Life will be the same, yet life will be different and changes will come.

Those promises still hold. Yet I want to lift up the two greatest dangers of church facing us today: apathy and consumerism. Apathy doesn’t care, it can’t even. Apathy is what allows evil to flourish in the world. Linked with this is, Consumerism the idea that we can buy our way out of problems, that someone else will do it for us. That there are experts we can pay, that this is someone else’s work.

I want you to know that I care deeply about our life together. I will lead you but I won’t do church for you. We do it together. We are the church. I have found such a loving community here. I believe God thought it was a good idea that this should happen. These past few months have been wonderful. I believe we are off to a wonderful start together. I challenge us all to get ready to work and dream big dreams, as we can do hard things. Today is mental health awareness Sunday. We will work to bless and let each other know that we are not alone. Tomorrow is 9/11. We will pray for our country and our world. In doing so, we will be sensitive to both the individual and global nature of our lives.

Please stand, all who are able, for the blessing.

May God help us to be welcoming, loving, and serving. May God bless our time together, that it be a good long while of caring about our neighbors and learning more about who God is. May we see Christ in one another. May we nurture the fruits of the Spirit we find in one another. And may we never think we are alone or wait on an expert. God has blessed us with one another, and together in Christ is more powerful than we can possibly imagine.

I ask all this in Jesus name. This service has ended, our service now begins. Amen.