This Week
- Today @ 11: Making Peace Seminar
- Monday @ 5:30 p.m.: Girl Scouts
- Tuesday Bible Study: @ Jeremiah’s, 2 p.m.
- Wednesday @ 11: Spiritual Council; @1:00 p.m.: Outreach
- AA Meetings: in the Parish Hall:
- Tuesdays, 6:30 – 7:30 p.m. – Discussion
- Wednesdays, 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. – Big Book
- Fridays 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. – Discussion
Making Peace Seminar Today!
Session two of a 12-week video series by Jim Van Yperen based on his book, Making Peace: A Guide to Overcoming Church Conflict. Meetings will be Sunday mornings, 11:00 a.m. Please make every effort to attend.
Who We Are
St. Paul’s Evangelical Church
2009 MISSION STATEMENT
“We believe St. Paul’s is a Church with a purpose and destiny. We are here to worship and adore the Creator, to receive and celebrate his grace, and to respond and commit to his call to love and serve. By God’s grace we will make an impact in our community touching individual lives through worship, sacraments, preaching and teaching, music, fellowship, discipleship and evangelism. Together we will fulfill our purpose by recognizing and operating in our call, our commitment, and our compassion.”
Consistory Report
We found this statement while looking through some old files. It was done during Pastor Tom’s time with us, and is the most recent statement. So we are going to dust it off and engage it.
We have made some adjustments to the sound system which have improved its quality. Let us know how it sounds to you. We will also be improving the quality of the sound of our Facebook streaming service that will allow the recording to connect directly to the sound system, which should provide a drastic improvement.
We will celebrate our original name to St. Paul’s Evangelical Church in 1872 with a dinner cruse on the Valley Gem Steernwheeler on Sunday, May 22, 2022, from 5 – 7 p.m. That date is being reserved. We need at least 40 people to make the total cost $36 per person. This celebration is being planned and more information will come as plans are firmed up. Save the date! Invite family and friends.
–Phil
Jesus Our Hope
By David McLemore
(…continued…) Living between the two comings of Christ, Christians are to look backward and forward: back to the manger, the cross, and the empty tomb, whereby salvation was won for them; forward to their meeting with Christ beyond this world, their personal resurrection, and the joy of being with their Savior in glory forever. New Testament devotion is consistently oriented to this hope; Christ is “our hope” (1 Tim. 1:1) and we serve “the God of hope” (Rom. 15:13). Faith itself is defined as “being sure of what we hope for” (Heb. 11:1), and Christian commitment is defined as having “fled to take hold of … this hope as an anchor for the soul” (Heb. 6:18-19). When Jesus directed his disciples to lay up treasure in heaven, because “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21), he was saying in effect, as Peter was later to say, “set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Pet. 1:13).
Hope, for the Christian, is as firm as can be, and even our suffering can’t take it away. As Packer goes on to say, “Though the Christian life is regularly marked more by suffering than by triumph (1 Corinthians 4:8-13; 2 Corinthians 4:7-18; Acts 14:22), our hope is sure and our mood should be one of unquenchable confidence: we are on the victory side.”
We are on the victory side not because we are overcomers but because Jesus, our hope, is the Overcomer. Christian hope, therefore, is resting in the victory of Jesus. It is knowing that he cares for his people and will bring them home—or, more precisely, he will bring his home to them, making new what we destroyed.
That evening after the long journey home, Jesus sat with his disciples and did what he’d done so many times before. He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them (Luke 24:30). And when they ate, as Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened to their sin, these disciples’ eyes were opened to their Savior. They saw before them Hope himself. And they ran back to Jerusalem to share the good news with their brothers and sisters in hope.