A Big Day

My March 4-5 went something like this:

1) I got the keys for the townhome I'm renting in Godfrey. My place is, by looking towards the back door, the left-most of the units of the four-plex. I spent the night.

2) As I was arriving at a local restaurant for a Fat Tuesday pancake breakfast (I elected to not celebrate Pancake Day at the International House of Pancakes}), Sebastian (my 2002 VW Golf

TDI) reached 200,000 miles. Breakfast was delicious.

3) I signed up for cable TV -- I've never paid for TV before -- and internet, so I've now got all the home utilities ordered. Hopefully everything not yet on -- water and heat were already a-ok -- will

be installed by Friday. So it's back to Peoria to continue packing. But I'm not leaving the new place completely empty. And, since the Seraphs won their Spring Training game, beating the Cubs 9-2 in warm Tempe, Arizona, the Angels bobblehead legitimately gets to show his face in joy.

Here's to new ventures in 2019!

It's Official: My Second Call

Yes, I posted the news on Facebook a week ago Sunday, so lots of folks have heard the news. But the official notice didn't arrive in the mail until this morning: Resurrection Lutheran Church in Godfrey, Illinois, meeting on February 10, 2019, has called this unworthy servant as Pastor. I intend to officially accept the call as soon as I find a place to live and we determine a start date. Having played in Peoria for more than 26 years, I'll be moving on.

Godfrey, Illinois, is a village right next to Alton, Illinois, along the Mississippi River in the northern suburbs of metropolitan St. Louis. Resurrection is, for this part of the country, a rather young ELCA congregation. It formed in 1976 when, in the midst of turmoil then happening in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, the pastor and several families of Faith Lutheran Church in Godfrey left to form a new Lutheran church. It would be the first southern Illinois congregation to join the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, but with the decline of Alton's economy in the early 1980's, the congregation had to sell its property and came very close to being merged or closed.

Not accepting either option, the congregation instead chose to redevelop as a mission. With support of the Lutheran Church in America's Division for Mission in North America and then the (new) ELCA, Resurrection was able to grow enough to purchase its current property in 1988, and dedicate a brand new church building in 1992. In 2019, the congregation faces the same challenges of most North American churches -- how to continue proclaiming the Gospel and ministering to and with the neighbor in a culture that no longer defaults to supporting churches, and to grow (or even maintain) when the church's upcoming generation is both smaller and less committed to the church than previous generations.

I'll admit to not having looked forward to departing Peoria. But I am looking forward to challenges in a new place with a new flock called (like the congregation where my faith and vocation were formed) Resurrection.