January 2020

Happy New Year Gracious People of God,

For the society and our culture, January marks the beginning of the New Year. But we are ahead, leading the way because we have already started our new church year with Advent on December 1st and move into our third season of the church year with Advent, Christmas and now the season of Epiphany. As we follow Jesus, these seasons shape and form us and help us to explore the many dimensions our relationship with God.

The season of Advent helps to prepare us for the coming of God into our world and into our lives. The season of Christmas marks 12 days of the celebration of God’s incarnation – God has come to us in Jesus. The season of Epiphany allows us to take a look at ourselves in light of God’s revelation in Jesus.

This month, on Sundays we explore the magi’s visit to Jesus (Matthew 2), Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3) John’s declaration that Jesus is the Lamb of God (John 1) and Jesus’ call to repent and calling fishermen to learn how to fish for people (Matthew 4). These scriptures shape and form us to be God’s people who point others to Jesus. We are children of God who are called to be witnesses and disciples to our community.

I think about how John the Baptist was called to prepare the way for Jesus as a prophet and then called to be a disciple who had to figure out what it means to follow Jesus. Remember John did that from a prison cell. How do we live into this dual role of pointing to Jesus and following Jesus? How do we keep our eyes focused and learning as disciples and sharing what we know as witnesses to what God is up to in this world? It is good that we have a head start on the new year!

Trust that the Holy Spirit is with us and continues to help us to see God’s coming to us now. Just as Jesus expands on the skills that the fisherman have, the Holy Spirit helps us to use the gifts we have, the work we are engaged in to learn more about God and to share what we know with the people we live with claiming our dual call of being disciples and witnesses of what God is revealing to our world. This is challenging work, work that we are ready for because the Holy Spirit is with us and we have each other. Share your encounters with one another, tell what you think God might be doing. When we tell each other, we enter into discerning the Holy Spirit’s work among us. It is dangerous to do this discerning alone. We follow Jesus’ lead, covered with the Holy Spirit, Jesus called others to join him in the ministry. Develop your relationships with one another. Challenge yourself to get to know someone from CTK better. Join a study group that is already meeting or create a new one. You are a child of God and God has work for you to do both as a witness and a disciple.

Believing It Boldly Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

December 2019

Greetings to the Holy People of God,

Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
Psalm 27: 14

What is worth the waiting for? How would you answer that question? Family gatherings, a child, the homecoming of a loved one, a new season, a movie? Did “Advent” cross your mind? Advent is worth the wait. The word “Advent” comes from the Latin word adventus, meaning to visit, come or arrive. This four week season has a double focus as we look to the past with the first Advent in the arrival of baby Jesus and to the future with Jesus’ coming return, the 2nd Advent. We live in the in between time where we celebrate that Christ has come and will come again while we trust that he is present in the world with us now.

Advent is worth the wait. We wait with anticipation the coming of Jesus. It is this great mystery that we wait for what we already have and what is to come and it is well worth it. Let the images of this season sink in as we live in this in between time.

Isaiah 2 gives us the hope that weapons will be transformed into farming tools that nurture growth (Advent 1). Isaiah 11 gives us the peaceable kingdom where predator and prey eat and rest together (Advent 2). Isaiah 35 draws a beautiful picture of the desert coming to life (Advent 3). Advent concludes with Isaiah’s prophesy of a child who will come and be called Immanuel – God is with us!

In this season of waiting, I invite you to be awake to where the Holy Spirit is transforming tools of destruction into tools of life. Look for where opposites attract and exist together. Be attentive to life springing forth from what appears to be dead. Be ready to receive the life that God prepares for you.

I’ve had a glimpse of opposites attracting as I listened to Daoud Nassar speak about his farm being a “Tent of Nations”. Nassar is a Christian Palestinian whose farm is in the midst of five Israeli settlements. He and his family are struggling to keep their farm. In the aftermath of olive trees on his farm being bulldozed by Israeli forces, Jews from Europe bought olive trees and came and planted them. I am drawn to this place and these people that try to exist together when it would be so much easier to take the money offered for the farm and leave but rather stays and provides a powerful witness to the world. I think God is up to something here and it is worth the wait.

I hope that in this time of waiting you will gaze upon what the Holy Spirit is shaping and creating in front of us now, in this in between time, a beautiful, holy time, a time set apart.

Believing It Boldly Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

OCTOBER 2019

Greetings Salty Disciples,

Rev. Lenny Duncan’s book, Dear Church has captured our attention. Some of the first responses to reading this book included:
Angry
Challenging
Easy to read, hard to put down
Expanded definition of reparations
Hooded Acolyte Ropes and KKK?
I want to walk as a Child of the Light?
Rethinking our own history
White Supremacy & Privilege
Whitest denomination

Duncan was angry when he wrote the book and it is difficult to sit in another’s anger without getting pulled into its vortex to defend or push back. If I wrote a letter back in response, what would it be? Would I mirror the anger? Would I try to defend the actions of the church? He was angry and pushing back when he put together the table of contents for Dear Church when his first bid for a book was rejected which was more a memoir, a trajectory of grace. Now he is working on that book.

On of the questions that we discussed in adult forum was, “What would reparations look like in our congregation?” The dictionary definition of reparations is the act of repairing something; the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money or to otherwise help those who have been wronged.

Duncan thinks Lutherans are obsessed with reconciliation (the restoration of friendly relations or the action of making on view or belief compatible with another) and really need to be in conversation about reparations. Duncan thinks that Lutherans have been trained to search for reconciliation and “we don’t like the waiting between repentance and reconciliation - that silent pause is a moment for us to see ourselves for who we truly are and it’s scary (p. 39). He says that our attempts at diversity are mostly from an assimilation modality - in other words become like us. Duncan is calling us to repent of the systemic sin of white supremacy and not move immediately to calls for reconciliation because we get uncomfortable.

Duncan calls for financial reparations but pushes Lutherans to begin by repenting and turning away from the root of the problem - to repair the breach that we caused. We’re all complicit in the communal sin of white supremacy. Duncan thinks the first step toward reparations is to dismantle white supremacy. He points us to “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa” as a model; and I would also recommend The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu. As well as the model that is outlined in Matthew 18:15-20 where the person who has been sinned against is to go to the one who has committed the sin against them and name it, name the brokenness, the fault and if they listen to you, they are regained into the community, if not bring witnesses so that good listening takes place.

So we have listened and we have acted. Our acolyte robes have had the hoods removed. The council is opening the discussion for marriage equity to have a place in the by-laws of our constitution (see page 4). And we will listen to our neighbors and not assume we have the answers or offer a program but will work together, accompanying one another, walking together with our neighbors. I will encourage our council and committees to meet outside our walls and in our neighborhood. Meeting outside our walls might change us and how we think about our mission and ministry at Christ the King. I think this is what reparations might look like at CTK. What do you think?

Believing it Boldly Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

September 2019

Greetings to the Holy People of God,

With the beginning of school, it’s time to revisit our Epiphany word. In January, Eric Klein reached into a bag and pulled out the word “Discipline” for us as a communal word to hold before us this year. I hope you have your individual word and are enjoying how the Holy Spirit is dangling that in front of you. My word is “Life” which seems so ironic in the wake of my mother’s passing in November. I think the Holy Spirit is calling me back to life as I grief, especially in this year of firsts without her. Carolyn Laxson has the word “Illuminate” and each week on Face Book she posts a reflection on what has been illuminated. If you have miss placed your word, just take our collective word of “Discipline” and try it on for size.

Together we began with the bulletin board asking for your responses to the word discipline. During the season of Lent, in worship we practiced being silent together for a few minutes after the sermon and with Intern Nicole’s help, we learned how to fold origami butterflies in anticipation of Easter. It was frustrating and fun. During the season of Easter, we folded cranes to remind us of the gift of the Holy Spirit blowing through our community.

During the season of Pentecost, the LEAD Team along with Evangelism and Fellowship Committees worked together to host for the first time National Night Out. I hope that this is a discipline we will continue. I enjoyed seeing our committees work together and was pleased at the turn out of both CTK members and our neighbors. You did a fabulous job with hospitality and we had great fun. We also tried Service of the Word instead of our regular Eucharist worship.

Our next exploration of discipline comes on the heels of the movie, Emmanuel, which some of us saw in June (and hopefully a DVD will be in the library by Oct), the youth’s mission trip to Birmingham, AL, the ELCA’s churchwide assembly’s declaration of apology to our siblings of African descent, which was received by the African Descent Lutheran Association with thanks and a call for accountability and living into the words shared.

In Luke 12, Jesus challenges the disciples and the crowd to interpret the patterns of God’s behavior as well as they know how to read weather patterns. We won’t always get it correct but we can try to interpret the signs of what God is doing in our midst. So I invite you to read the book, Dear Church by Lenny Duncan, hear him speak at Gloria Dei on Sept 9 and participate in our adult forum or gather a group yourself for conversation. There is a discussion guide in the back of the book. In the discipline of doing this together as a faith community we also join with the larger church. I am wondering if we can use any electronic or internet tools to have a safe place to post thoughts and wonderings from our reading and discussion. If you have gifts in this area and ideas, I would love to explore this further with you.

Believing It Boldly Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

August 2019

On the last Sunday of June, while Eric, Dir. of Youth and Family Ministry and Intern Nicole and our youth shared about their mission trip to Birmingham, Alabama; I attended the closing worship service at one of my first call perishes, Trinity Lutheran, Ottosen, Iowa. It was a bittersweet day to come together for the closing of a church. Ottosen is located about 35 miles north of Fort Dodge in the heart land of beautiful farm land where farms are growing larger and communities smaller and small enough to no longer sustain a church community. The people of this worshiping community will be able to find other churches to worship with. They are a faithful group of people and it was good to see familiar faces that I haven’t seen for 20 years. I am thankful for how these people shaped and formed me into the pastor I am today and I grieve the closing of this church.

Bittersweet seems to be the theme of my month and is bringing me back to my Epiphany word, LIFE. Last year it was joy, a gritty kind of joy and this year a bittersweet kind of life with the mixing and stirring of all that life brings with it, its joys and sorrows all stirred into one.

This month, after a year that has gone so fast, we will say fare-well to our intern Nicole Hanson Lynn and her husband Anthony on Sunday, August 11. It too is a bittersweet time. I have so enjoyed Nicole and Anthony and the gifts of ministry that they shared with us. I am sad to see them leave and grateful that they will serve the church well. Thank you for your willingness to support and encourage this internship year. I will miss Nicole and I will pray for her and Anthony and the Christian community that gets to help shape and form her pastoral ministry. We will keep you posted as to which synod she is assigned to and where she is called to. Please keep Nicole and Anthony in your prayers. It is an exciting time of expectation but also a time of waiting with many unknowns.

Bittersweet – sadness combined with happiness, such an odd combination swirling together. But we are Lutherans and we are accustomed to experiencing two odd combinations together. We are saint and sinner simultaneously; duty and delight; law and gospel; life and death.

In our Vacation Bible School in July, we met in Athens where our path crossed Paul. We learned a bit about Paul’s journey of not believing in Jesus and then having an encounter with Jesus that changed him forever, so that anywhere he went he could not help but talk about Jesus even if it landed him in jail or had him run out of town. There is a wild mix of emotions for Paul and the communities he lived in and the experiences that propelled him.

Life often brings an element of bitter sweetness. In this mix, the Holy Spirit calls and gathers us with a relentless pursuit to show us God and God’s will for us and the world God loves. Keep stirring us up, Holy Spirit and shape us to be your faithful people who share what we know with our neighbors about this bitter and sweet life that we have been called into.

Believing It Boldly Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack