OAFC Canvass, Outreach Planning, and How You Can Help

[pretend there's a nice picture here, because I forgot to take one]

Today St. Silas hosted an Ongoing Ambassadors for Christ canvass.  We split into five teams of two and spread out over North Liberty making contacts and informing people about the congregation.  We handed out a total of 250 congregation information cards along with some OAFC materials.  Special thanks to Melissa for coming out from Davenport and Jeff for coming down from Marion to help us.

In other outreach planning news, we've got some things in the works to make people more aware of St. Silas in North Liberty and invite people to receive Christ's gifts with us.  We're going to be launching a new website, hopefully this month, that does a better job of giving people a feel for the congregation.  We're launching Facebook and Google ads to let people know about St. Silas online.  We've got some printed materials we can hand out and are planning to team up with Camp Io-Dis-E-Ca to connect with people at the end of the camp weeks this summer.  We're also keeping an eye peeled for places to advertise for free or inexpensively here in North Liberty.  We've got a growing list of contacts to whom we write letters and make phone calls.  We offer rides to church from the Jefferson Point Apartments here in town and offered rides from the North Liberty Living Center (where we previously met), though no one took us up on them.  We do continue to have a good connection there and I conduct a brief service for the residents the fourth Friday of each month.  I continue to visit with contacts as people are willing.  And there are other things that aren't necessarily secret, but that we're still talking about as a congregation and have not yet reached the point of being posted online.

Here's how you can help:

• If you know someone who lives in North Liberty who does not attend a congregation, ask them if you can pass their name and contact information along to us.  We'll then contact them and invite them to service and visit with them if they would like.  If you have already passed along contacts, remind them about the congregation.  We can invite from our end, but you know these people better than we do.  They'll listen to you much better than they'll listen to us.
• As we have other Ongoing Ambassador for Christ canvasses we'll make sure to publicize them.  You are welcome to take part.

We'll most likely think of other things along the way and make them known to you.

All this being said, I cannot say it enough, Jesus said, "I will build my church" (Matthew 16:18).  We want to deliver the Gospel to people and give them the means of grace through which Christ has promised to work, and all our outreach planning is directed toward that.  But you'll notice something interesting as you consider our congregation's history.  At our first service there was not one person there that I had initiated contact with or invited.  Looking at those who have become members of the congregation since, very few have been because of a conscious effort on our part.  This isn't to say that conscious effort shouldn't be involved, after all we're planning outreach very purposefully.  But ultimately if I've learned one thing it's this: Christ gathers people to the place where his Word is faithfully believed, confessed, preached, and taught.  That focus on what Jesus does permeates the congregation, not in the sense of the question "What would Jesus do?" but in the sense that Jesus is the one at work, not us.  And he is constantly finding ways to remind us of that.

Continue to remember us in your prayers, that the Lord of the Harvest would make the soil good for the sowing, that he would give us boldness in proclaiming the Gospel, and especially that he would keep us steadfast in the true faith, trusting in him above all things.

In Christ 

Pastor Andrew Richard

St. Silas Lutheran Church
www.stsilaslutheran.org
www.facebook.com/stsilaslutheran
stsilaslutheran@gmail.com

Confirmation

The Lord is risen!  This past Sunday we celebrated the Resurrection of Our Lord and also had our first confirmation.  Jared Campbell received instruction in the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, drawn from the Holy Scriptures, as he learned to know it from the Small Catechism, and has confessed that it is faithful and true.

Jared's confirmation verse is Colossians 3:3 (from Sunday's Epistle reading), "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

Later in the Divine Service Jared got to be like the women coming from the tomb who not only laid hold of Jesus by faith, but laid hold of him physically.  Jared received for the first time the body and blood of his Lord Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar.

A more general update will follow next week.  Many things are in the works, but we have some decisions to make as a congregation before posting about them here.

In Christ 

Pastor Andrew Richard

St. Silas Lutheran Church
www.stsilaslutheran.org
www.facebook.com/stsilaslutheran
stsilaslutheran@gmail.com

Visitors from Immanuel, Grinnell

Yesterday on the Third Sunday in Lent we had visitors from Immanuel Lutheran Church in Grinnell.  Our guests joined us for the end of Bible class and then Divine Service, setting 3, hymns 418, 605, and 601 in Lutheran Service Book.  Thank you for coming to be with us!

A more thorough general update will be forthcoming, but for now a few of the major points:

• We've been having midweek services during Lent going through the Small Catechism
• One of our catechumens will be confirmed coming up this Easter Sunday
• We continue to have visitors on a regular basis and have received several new members since moving into our new space

Other things are in the works, especially in the area of outreach.  More to come soon.

In Christ 

Pastor Andrew Richard

St. Silas Lutheran Church
www.stsilaslutheran.org
www.facebook.com/stsilaslutheran
stsilaslutheran@gmail.com

Dedication and Installation Service

This past Sunday we had the formal reception of the congregation into The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, the dedication of a church, and the installation of the pastor.  Quite a few clergy came from various congregations in Iowa District East, along with some members of other congregations in IDE.  The main service was the Service of the Word from Divine Service Setting 3 (bonus points if you know the page number), interspersed with the other rites.  President Brian Saunders extended the right hand of fellowship to the chairman of St. Silas, Mr. Kristian Fosse, publicly recognizing that St. Silas is a congregation of The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod.  Rev. Dean Rothchild, assistant to the president of IDE, blessed the doors, building, and baptismal font.  Rev. Victor Young, chair of the IDE mission board, blessed the lectern, pulpit, and altar.

President Brian Saunders preached the sermon on Acts 20:17-31, highlighting the relationship between articles IV, V, and VII of the Augsburg Confession.

President Saunders then oversaw the installation.

After the installation I tended the altar to which I am called, leading the congregation in the Prayer of the Church and concluding with the Benediction.  We then took a picture of the clergy and sang the closing hymn.

The hymns told the story of the day.  Opening we had 901, Open Now Thy Gates of Beauty:

Open now thy gates of beauty;
Zion, let me enter there,
Where my soul in joyful duty
Waits for Him who answers prayer.
Oh, how blessed is this place,
Filled with solace, light, and grace! 

Gracious God, I come before Thee;
Come Thou also unto me.
Where we find Thee and adore Thee,
There a heav'n on earth must be.
To my heart, O enter Thou;
Let it be Thy temple now! 

Speak, O God, and I will hear Thee;
Let Thy will be done indeed.
May I undisturbed draw near Thee
While Thou dost Thy people feed.
Here of life the fountain flows;
Here is balm for all our woes. 

        Lutheran Service Book, Hymn 901, stanzas 1, 2, 5

That hymn speaks well about the significance of the building: it is Mount Zion, where the Lord sits enthroned (Psalm 9:11), it is a heaven on earth because Christ comes to us there, it is the place of the living water.  Our psalm was Psalm 48, which spoke constantly of Zion: "Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God!  His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King."

The Hymn of the Day was 644, The Church's One Foundation:

The Church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ, her Lord;
She is His new creation
By water and the Word.
From heav'n He came and sought her
To be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her,
And for her life He died.  

        Lutheran Service Book, 644, stanza 1

We hear that the Church is only the Church because of Christ's saving work.  Without Christ, the Church is nothing.  Without Christ there is no Church to speak of.  But with him the Church is - is his bride, is his body, is his saving ark in a world that is perishing.  The pastors nicely emphasized the centrality of Jesus in the Scripture passages they shared during the installation.  Jesus is the sine qua non, the "without which not," the one who makes things be and saves his people from their sins.

The closing hymn was of particular comfort to the congregation of St. Silas as a mission congregation, 921, On What Has Now Been Sown:

On what has now been sown
Thy blessing, Lord, bestow;
The pow'r is Thine alone
To make it sprout and grow.
Do Thou in grace the harvest raise,
And Thou alone shalt have the praise! 

To Thee our wants are known,
From Thee are all our pow'rs;
Accept what is Thine own
And pardon what is ours.
Our praises, Lord, and prayers receive,
And to Thy Word a blessing give. 

O grant that each of us,
Now met before Thee here,
May meet together thus
When Thou and Thine appear
And follow Thee to heav'n, our home.
E'en so, amen, Lord Jesus, come! 

        Lutheran Service Book, 921

As a congregation we do not rely on ourselves to give growth to the Church, but Christ is the one who builds and grows his Church, adding to her and multiplying her, as is clear everywhere in Scripture, from Peter's confession in Matthew 16 when Jesus promises, "I will build my Church," to Paul's agricultural analogy in 1 Corinthians 3 where he emphasizes our "grower God," to the book of Acts where the word "gather" is always passive tense, meaning the Lord gathers, and the Lord is always the subject of the verbs "add" and "multiply."

And so the emphasis of the entire dedication and installation service was the means of grace: the Gospel being preached in its purity and the holy sacraments being administered according to the Gospel (to borrow some language from Article VII of the Augsburg Confession).  There is a place in North Liberty to which people can point and say, "Christ saves there."  There is a man in that place to which people can point and say, "He stands here in the stead of Christ to administer the means through which Christ gives us grace."  All of this means that Christ is present bodily in North Liberty to call people to repentance, to warn, to rebuke, to comfort, to evangelize, and to save.

"Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.  There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.  God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.  The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.  The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress" (Psalm 46:2-7).

In Christ 

Pastor Andrew Richard

St. Silas Lutheran Church
www.stsilaslutheran.org
www.facebook.com/stsilaslutheran
stsilaslutheran@gmail.com

Dedication of a Church and Installation of the Pastor

Join us 

Sunday January 19th

at 4:00pm

at St. Silas Lutheran Church

for

Reception of the Congregation into Synod

Dedication of the Church

and

Installation of the Pastor

1295 Jordan St. Ste. 5 North Liberty, IA 52317

The service will last approximately an hour and a half,

includes the Service of the Word with the above-mentioned rites.

Hors d'oeuvres will be served following the service.

Come see the work that our Lord Jesus Christ has worked among us in North Liberty.

Note: if searching for the church location in Google maps, the actual location is on the northeast corner of Highway 965 and Ashley Ct., a couple doors down from Eggy's.