State of the Church – December 2018

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I was reminded recently of just how important it is to get the whole picture!
Our local StarTribune newspaper has run a series of articles this year about the changing trends in religion and churches in our country, and the latest installment ran in early November. It was a very good article, supported by plenty of strong research, and it reports the trends accurately. But I fear the title of the article, “Fastest Growing Religion is ‘None,” could send the reader away thinking all churches are doomed, which is far from reality. Particularly at Mount Calvary.
Are these trends real? Yes, absolutely. Should Mount Calvary members be worried about this? Not today.
We don’t need to look far for evidence that there are churches in trouble; Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, which provides critical daycare and food shelf services in their community, has seen their congregation dwindle over the years, leading to a need for outside assistance which we gladly support. But while the StarTribune article is helpful in articulating some general trends inner-city and rural churches are facing today, this is clearly not the case for all churches. In fact, if we look further, we can even find some positive signals and evidence of opportunities ahead for churches like ours. We just need to dig a bit deeper, get a bit more information, and paint a more complete picture of our own outlook
The importance of “completing the picture” was made very evident to me several years ago by a simple example; hold up a bowl between two people with the bottom facing one person and the top facing the other and ask what shape the object is, convex or concave. Obviously, each person will have a different answer even though they are looking at the same object because their information is incomplete. Gathering more information, from different perspectives and sources, can often enhance our understanding.
In preparation for some upcoming Church Council activities, I’ve recently reviewed several survey and research reports from a collection of reputable sources that can add depth and color to the picture sketched out by the recent newspaper article. Interestingly, a 2015 report by Scott Thumma, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at Hartford Seminary and the director of Hartford Institute for Religion Research, found that the vast majority of congregations with 500-1799 weekly worshipers (Mount Calvary is in this category, near the low end) are growing quite rapidly compared to smaller churches, at a median 5-year growth rate of 17%. In addition, almost three-quarters (72%) reported their financial health as good or excellent. So, while there are broad, general issues for some categories of churches, this does not reflect the situation or outlook for our church.
Importantly, a couple of reports I read also highlighted the importance of “spiritual vitality” to the healthy condition of a congregation. The message here is that churches can determine their destiny if they remain innovative and relevant to their members. After attending a very relevant and rousing Sunday service, participating in a well-attended new member meeting, hearing about some recent community support/interaction from our neighbors at Wells Fargo, and seeing the success of the Many Hands, Many Meals packathon at our church – all within the past two days – I have no doubts about the vitality of Mount Calvary. Be assured, our congregation is thriving!

Advent

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This season of Advent begins with a surprising word from God. The Gospel reading for the first weekend in Advent is made up of surprising word pictures of heaven and earth all coming apart at the seams, all that we know and count on disrupted and changed (Luke 21:25-36). In that disruption and picture of divine interruption we hear a word of hope. We hear in this season that the Christ has already been born, has already lived and died for us, and comes here now among us each and every day as the light in our darkness. He comes as the one who makes a new creation out of the ashes and remnants of the old. So, we sing in this season marvelous songs of hopefulness, joy and anticipation. We look for God again, knowing that even as wildfire rages or children die, as hopes are dashed or wars are waged, as evil rages or loved ones leave—the light, the true light has not gone out. The light, our true light, still shines. We look for it. We sing about it. We invite others into it. We share it within family and friendships. And we stay alert and wide-eyed to everything that is happening to and around us for what God is bringing, for what God hopes to usher in, and for what God wants us to see.
We often ask why such interruptions and disruptions plague our world. Perhaps they happen because we live in a world where the fault lines of sin run through all that is. Perhaps they happen because things that we assumed would be forever unchanged are, in reality, transient and temporary. We live in a world where we know that any day all that we have relied upon, trusted, counted on and looked forward to could be taken away or turned on its ear. Jesus knows it—we know it—and he teaches us in this world how to live with it. He teaches us how to grow through it and how to serve in it. And it is in that living, growing and serving that hope begins to shine. When the world as you know it falls apart, when even the day seems darkened and the night never-ending—look! Look for what God is doing. Look for God’s nearness, for when there seems to be no other source of light in your darkness, God is there as he has always been. Jesus said, “When you see these things taking place, you will know that he is near, at the very gates”…at the doorstep of your heart and at the threshold of your hopes. Look for him, he is near. And though everything else might pass away, God won’t.
The birth of Jesus, the most spectacular divine interruption of all time, invites us to hold an audacious and abundant hopefulness in all things. God is here with us. God is here for us. God meets us in the most humble and humbling of circumstances. God meets us in times of strength and success. God meets us always with a vision, a hope, and a call that transforms our tomorrows. Hallelujah! Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Many Hands for Malawi

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MANY HANDS FOR MALAWI: PACKATHON
NOVEMBER 9 TO 11 

We’re seeking more than 1,000 volunteers this year to help scoop, pack, seal and box 350,000 meals for Malawi. We’re partnering
with Children of the Nations, whose program in Malawi works toward self-sufficiency for meal recipients. We’re excited to support the people
in the program who are working toward sustainability and self-reliance.
The Packathon is a great opportunity for groups to do good and make a difference together! We also need other volunteers, such as team
leaders, who help oversee the packing stations, and those who can help on the equipment and supply teams.

Because the ingredients are not donated but are purchased, we’re also seeking donations. Supplies for the Packathon cost about $45,000. To view volunteer opportunities or donate to the event, please go
to mh-mm.org. Thank you!

State of the Church – Oct. 2018

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As summer fades, with family vacations just a memory and kids back in school, it’s time to look ahead to my favorite season…fall. And of course that means our Mount Calvary annual meeting is right around the corner—Sunday, October 7 to be precise.

As a prelude to the meeting, I want to offer a refresher this month on some of the key efforts that your church council is working on.
Our most recent strategic plan, which included congregation input from a church-wide survey, resulted in a guiding imperative to celebrate and communicate who we are and to build on our strengths. We learned from our survey that we are clearly doing most things very well, and in these areas we are striving to move from good to great. There are also a few areas that we found which required our attention to make some necessary improvements.

The output from our planning process was the following eight initiatives (included here in abbreviated form), and we assembled a team for each initiative composed of our council members and the pastors. The eight initiatives are:

• Ministry: Grow faith and values through life-stages, and connect the generations.
• Leadership: Develop an organizational development and succession plan.
• Worship: Continue developing and evolving worship to meet the ever changing needs
of our congregation.
• Inclusion: Work to overcome social and cultural boundaries within our walls, and seek
to develop “radical hospitality.”
• Stewardship: Clarify and align relationships between funds/campaigns, and develop
multi-year facilities and benevolence approach.
• Awareness: Develop and deploy an identity plan to tell our theological and community
story.
• Listening: Develop and deploy active ad hoc and periodic feedback disciplines.
• Partnership: Introduce tools to evaluate partnerships, communicate activities and status to the congregation, and solicit volunteers and support for various partnerships.

You will receive an update from one of the initiative teams at our annual meeting, but this will also be a great opportunity for you to ask about any of the initiatives.

I look forward to seeing you on October 7.

Mike Kasprick
Council President

Epiphany Gallery – Featured Artist, Bob McLain

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We speak of inclusion; we are asked how many people can fit under our umbrella; we are challenged to draw the circle wider; we are called to love God’s people.

Artist Bob McLain feels a pull to draw faces. His work is a study of the human face and is also a personal commitment to honor the faces and their people. His work includes the faces of young and old; it includes faces of people who have known joy and sorrow, success and struggle; it includes faces of people whose skin colors range from light to
dark; it includes faces of people who each have stories; it includes faces of people who are surrounded by love and family and faces of people who know loneliness and rejection; it includes faces, created and cherished by God, drawn with love and respect by Bob McLain.

In preparation for his drawings, Bob takes photographs of the face from nine specific angles. From these photographs, he can capture a replication of the face as well as find a variety of moods within the expressions. Bob explains his drawing process, “The first part of my study is done with graphite pencil to work the tonal values of the face. The second part of the study explores skin colors of different nationalities using acrylic paint and colored pencil.” The series, “Faces,” is a beautiful celebration of the many faces we encounter. The series has a gentle voice that says, “I see you.”

Bob graduated from Minnetonka High School and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Art Education from Mankato State University. He has worked as an art teacher, graphic designer at Tonka Toys, and has his own art studio. Bob and his wife Kathy have been members of Mount Calvary for over 40 years. Now retired and living in Chaska, Bob can
be found painting, woodworking, researching and always learning

Quilting News Oct 2018

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We are a group that finds joy in making quilts for homeless people in the west metro and Minneapolis. Recent donations include Families Moving Forward and the new Family Retreat Center at Luther Park Bible Camp. The camp got a huge gift of 12 bed size quilts from Ann Fox.

We also conducted a silent auction selling smaller quilts to raise money for the camp. Sharon Roos and Lynne Walker helped make some of the last few remaining quilts that were needed at the camp.

If you think you might like to join our group, no skill is required. When we get together we mainly tie the three layers of the quilts together, so if you can tie a knot, you can be in our group. We meet in the Undercroft the first three Thursdays of every month from 9 to 2.

We hope you will join us!

Farewell to Diane Eidsmo

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If you have spent any time around the church office over the past sixteen years you probably have met our Director of Communications, Diane Eidsmo. If you haven’t met her in person, you have met her through her Mount Calvary ministries of word and design – in our Caller newsletter, our Web site, emails, social media and many print materials.

Here in the office, we have all come to depend upon Diane’s thoughtful and valuable presence. She is one of those team members that you can always count on to get things done, and she gets things done without fuss or drama. She has a natural ability to discern what looks just right and a talent for cutting through surplus information to find the real story.

Diane first began her Mount Calvary journey in 2002. Her background in corporate communications and marketing gave her a particular insight and expertise in telling the stories of our faith community. Throughout her 16 years at Mount Calvary, she worked in almost every facet of office life – facilities, accounting, and communications, working for three Business Administrators. As Pastor Dave says, she has brought us through “generations of technology changes.” She has been part of creating two Web sites, through too many technology changes to count, and, most importantly, contributed to Mount Calvary’s success and growth.

“These are job related ‘rocks,’ but on a personal level I have made long lasting friendships and had the honor and joy of working with so many wonderful people within the Mount Calvary congregation,” she says. “This has been a job where I loved every part of what I did on a daily basis, and the relationships with staff, volunteers, and church members were the highlight of the past 16 years.”

We wish you all the best in your retirement, Diane. We hope to keep in touch, and we expect to see some great pictures of you and your grandchildren doing water ski tricks together! Thank you for your work and witness and may God bless and keep you in your new ventures.

Kara Paulson

A New September

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There is so much hope and energy surrounding a new September. Children and youth returning to school in a new grade, college freshmen shaking off the shackles of adult oversight, beleaguered parents placing kids on the bus with feigned regret and then rushing off to celebrate their emancipation over coffee with their peers. There is a freshness and newness to September, as we begin our shift back from shorts to slacks, flip flops to flats, vacation to vocation and backyards to schoolyards.

Rally Weekend, September 8 and 9, our kids and guides return to Sunday School; then on Wednesday the 12th our Confirmands and guides gather for the first time this fall. Along with them, numerous other groups and studies reignite or launch with renewed spirits. Our worship theme this year is “All In God’s Grace.” Joyfully, we will worship, study and pray, seeking greater clarity and depth to our relationships with Jesus and each other. We will explore what it means to be “all in” in our discipleship and what it means to proclaim “all in” in our diverse and often exclusionary world. Confidently, we will explore the treasures that are ours in Christ, in relationships, in our community and in our world. On Tuesday nights in CrossPaths, I will lead a Bible study that was inspired by our national Bishop’s four emphases “We are Church” “We are Lutheran” “We are Church Together” and “We are Church for the Sake of the World”. I hope you will join me as we explore our identity as Lutheran followers of Jesus in this place.

What a treasure we have been given through God’s ongoing creation of our world and life, through Jesus’ transformation of the redundant life into the abundant life, and through the Blessed Spirit’s renewal of daily life. What a blessing, indeed, and what an amazing journey of discovery God has mapped out for our hearts to follow.

Come this fall to join us as we map our way to a deeper relationship with God, seeking clues for the direction God would have us go and keeping our eyes on the prize that is God’s love and favor. Joy, hope and purpose will surely abound!

Pastor Dave

HIS HOUSE THRIFT STORE…Gone But Not Forgotten

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HIS HOUSE THRIFT STORE…Gone But Not Forgotten

In August the His House Thrift Store was torn down to make way for a Starbucks! We have had that store in Minnetonka for 10 years. Since then we have partnered with RAK (Random Acts of Kindness) Resale Store and created a Regional Resource Center at 2460 Chaska Blvd in Chaska. The Resource Center includes a food recovery program with Carver County Public Health for people that have a barrier getting to the food shelf or need extra food. We also created a car repair program for people that cannot afford to repair their car, and we took all the wonderful donations from our His House Thrift Store to share with people graduating out of the Families Moving Forward homeless program. So, His House Thrift Store might be gone but the mission and ministry lives on. We will continue to focus on basic needs and homelessness in our community.

One weekend mid-August the His House team worked the Cub Brat Stand again. This is a great program. All proceeds from the brat stand go to the charity working the food cart. The wonderful volunteers from Mount Calvary came out to assist. When we were done serving on Saturday evening, the His House team took any leftover food to a homeless couple staying in a tent in the back of a local business. Yes, there are homeless people that are in the shadows of our community. Many live in cars, some in tents. One young man was sleeping at the Cub Store overnight in the deli. Homelessness is all around us even here in the suburbs.

Does His House need a building to continue in our missions of serving the marginalized…NO!
Thank you for the last 10 years….we look forward to the next 10 years.

Martha Brannon
His House

Linked in Prayer 9-18

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Linked In Prayer – Gifts of prayer

For where your treasure is, there your heart shall be also. Luke 12:34

I appreciate this passage because it reminds me that where I focus my time, my thoughts, my actions, shows what is in my heart.
That’s why I value setting aside daily time to pray.
+ It helps us put God’s love in the center of our life.
+ It can focus our attention on the gifts we receive from God and our gratitude.
+ It can increase our receptiveness of receiving God’s love for us and presence with us.
+ It can remind us that we are forgiven and can start anew this moment.

What reminds you of God’s love and presence within you throughout your day? Here are some suggestions: In prayer, while reading scripture or inspirational writing, when listening to another, when I notice my breath, when I hear joyful laughter, seeing something in nature – a flower, a tree, a sunset, a sunrise.

Let me know what reminds you of God’s presence throughout the day? When we share this wisdom with each other we learn and grow. Please feel free to email me your God reminders at: Laurieberickson@msn.com.

For where your treasure is, there your heart shall be also. Be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Luke 12:34-36

Laurie Erickson