This morning, after the kids and my wife left for work, I felt a need to worship. I was still in my pajamas in the parsonage, so I considered getting dressed and walking across the lawn to sing and pray Matins (Morning Prayer) by myself in our sanctuary. Perhaps it was out of laziness, but for some reason I found that idea unappealing. I thought to myself, “I really just want to pray as a person in the pew and not the person leading the service.” So, I stayed in my pajamas, clicked on the YouTube app on our TV, and searched for recorded Matins services that use our same hymnal setting. I was a little surprised that there were not more out there (Lutherans have gone incredibly digital these last few years!), but I eventually found a few and decided to sing and pray along with an ELCA pastor from a church I did not recognize by name from a place that I did not bother to look up. Though I did not know the person leading me in prayer through the internet, I was very familiar with the prayers he prayed, the canticles we sang together, and the scriptures that we read. Across time and distance, we were united in our faith through technological tools. I found myself surprisingly renewed through the experience. Our worship was simple, but I felt prayed over in new ways and my faith was strengthened to serve the church another day. The service was fairly basic (probably due to the fact that it was recorded in the first month of shutdown), but it was good, honest, faithful, and sacred.
           
The experience got me thinking about how many aspects of ministry have gone digital lately, and there are many reasons we can be grateful to God for the fact that faith is now shared, encouraged, and renewed online. Just as people now have made massive moves to shopping online instead of in stores downtown, banking is no longer restricted to paper checks and cash, people’s dating lives have gone digital, and we can even go to school online now, it seemed like only a matter of time that faith and spirituality began to be shared in a similar way. Online, we can now worship in the Washington National Cathedral, old sanctuaries throughout Europe, or locally here at Faith Lutheran Church in Ronan, Montana. No longer does a church require the grandeur and high production value of a mega-church to televangelize their worship. The internet has made it possible for a humble pastor in a small town to be led in morning prayer by another pastor with a simple laptop in front of him, a church wall with a homemade version of DaVinci’s The Last Supper behind him, and a clergy collar around his neck. Personally, I find this much more powerful than TV preachers who lead far larger churches, with far bigger budgets, and far higher salaries. God has always blessed the small, and He did again this morning.
           
This is not to say everything is better online. At the end of the day, I still take that experience with me alone. If I did not write about it for you today, I am not sure that I would ever be inspired to share it with anybody else. There is not much to tell, really. Nevertheless, it was significant. It was one experience of many in which digital ministry has blessed the world in new ways. Some churches who went online quickly out of necessity to protect worshippers during the pandemic have moved away from online ministry just as quickly. I disagree with their approach, because I believe that there are new blessings found in our new ways of doing sharing the Gospel. I am grateful that we continue to do the work of connecting in-person when we can, and grateful that we connect online as we are called to, as well.
           
May we all continue to find God in ways old and new, in-person and online, through old spaces and new technologies, and continue to trust that God promises to be forever present to us in love, no matter the format.
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In Christ,
Pastor Seth

There are many things in life we should leave behind. As we grow, there are clothes and shoes that we should no longer wear when they get too small. As we age, there are immaturities and trivial endeavors that should be left behind later in adulthood. There are bad habits that, though they certainly do die hard, should be left in the past if possible. There are toxic ways of thinking that we should do our best to move on from. There are sins that we should always be repenting of.
           
Sadly anymore, too many people think that repentance is for suckers. They believe that saying your sorry and turning over a new leaf in life shows that you are weak somehow. Admitting your faults does indeed involve being honest about your faults, but far too many people think that the work of changing for the better is somehow beneath them. While they would probably not go so far as to say they are perfect, they would also say they are not in dire need of improvement because to do so would mean that they have much in them that is wrong and needs correcting.
           
As Christians, we are commanded to repent. Our ritual of practicing confession and forgiveness requires that we confess our sins before we are forgiven of them. Jesus often told people he healed to “Go now, sin no more,” with the expectation that they would live a repentant life after having encountered the incarnate God on earth. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the worst sins are not often described as people being uniquely evil or imperfect, but rather that they are uniquely unrepentant for the sins that they contribute to the milieu of human misdeeds. Repentance is central to the Christian life.
           
​Entering 2023, I invite you to think of new ways that you might be repentant this year. Do you have a bad attitude towards others or toxic traits to your personality that you need to work on? I invite you to turn away from them and turn towards loving others in new ways. Are you distrustful of God’s role and place in your life? Turn away from your distrust and place your faith in God’s direction for your life in 2023. Do you have harmful habits like eating or drinking too much, overworking at the neglect of your personal life, not prioritizing family relationships like you should, or the myriad of other sinful habits that we are inclined to fall into human beings? I encourage you to make a change. Walk away from the sins that have held you down and step into the Way of God – the Way of repentance.
 
In Christ,
Pastor Seth