I had the pleasure and joy of attending Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp's fundraising dinner and auction last Friday night. They served a wonderful meal and the night was a joy filled time when we were able to connect with friends from across the state and support camping ministry in western Montana. One of the featured stories of the evening was from a mother and her children who have been supported by the camp and donors over the last four years after having fled a cult in another part of Montana. This cult group drew her in as a tight knit community of faith several years ago but, over time, forced her into greater and greater isolation. Women in this group were expected to be mothers, so much so that she had nine children with members of the group. As one might expect, the life, manipulation and control that she suffered in the group took its toll, so much so that she said one morning, when she was pregnant with her ninth child by the group, she looked in the mirror and realized that there was no life left in her eyes. That was the day that she decided she must leave for her sake and the sake of her children. She told her kids that they were going on  a picnic one day, packed them up and left everything behind to flee to the sanctuary of friends and family in Kalispell.
         Part of the sinful nature of cults is that they bind member's minds so that they cannot really leave, even when they are no longer in the group. It takes a large degree of help, therapy and re-orientation in one's understanding of the world in order for a person to truly escape the manipulation of a cult community. She received that in the Kalispell area, but her children needed help to be free, too. She shared that Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp helped to provide freedom through the Gospel of Jesus Christ for her children. There her children were able to hear words of forgiveness and grace through the Bible instead of the fear and manipulation that they had endured the rest of their lives. At camp, her kids were able to make friendships with people on their own terms and live into the social freedom of just being themselves - a right never given to them before. All of this was made possible through the camperships (scholarships to camp) provided by donors who support the camp. The power of the Gospel at work through the institutional church.
         I share this as a reflection on how the church is actively at work in the world. Many people in our country today question the efficacy of supporting churches and other institutional ministries that seem more concerned with self-interest and survival than actual mission and outreach. They think that financial support is better given directly to causes than institutions and organizations like the church because institutions care more about their own survival and serving the world. Sometimes, this is clearly the case. I can think of dozens of churches that have a clear vision of how important it is to put all their money into making an altar look nice, while turning away those begging for help in the streets. Yet, skeptics of this sort fail to see the importance of supporting ministries in our midst that can respond to needs as they arise. I must admit that I have dabbled in this sort of skepticism myself from time to time, but my experience of being a pastor thus far has informed me of how wrong I have been on the issue. Our church has been able to support and minister to all sorts of needs in our community precisely because we have a door for people to come to. We have helped people with meals, trips to the doctor, and insured that children and families are fed. We have supported partners in global mission abroad and worked to make sure people stay warm through the winter here at home. We have raised money to help people who suffer from malaria abroad and minister to patients at St. Luke here in Ronan. All of these things are marks of the Gospel alive and active through the institutional church here in the Mission Valley. By supporting the church, we do more than just provide for our continued survival - we also continually respond to the call of God by making a way for the hungry to be fed, the sick to be visited, the cold to be warmed, the isolated to find fellowship, and those who feel forsaken to find the love of God. The mission of God is truly present in our church - an institution worth supporting long into the future.

            I hope this church newsletter finds you well! This month, I want to focus on the mission of our church space. We have been working on a few items of upkeep around the church, and are almost done with the few changes that we have planned to make. Thinking about changes to church buildings can bring up some questions. I have heard things through the years along the lines of, “Why spend money on a building when you can invest in mission work?” Or, “Why change things that were perfectly fine before?”
            But I want to ask you all a different question: Have you thought about our church building as a place of God’s mission work? Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. For a long time I took for granted that churches just exist in America and there was not much that is very special about this fact. I am seeing now more than ever, though, that I was wrong. Our church building, the property that Faith Lutheran Church owns, is a place for God’s mission on earth. It is space in which the mission of God is found. Weekly we preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ here. Weekly we pray for each other here. Weekly we come here to lay our sins before God and receive Christ’s forgiveness. So, when we work to keep up our building we are furthering the mission of God in our world by keeping up a place in which the mission of God is active. Put differently, work to keep up a place of worship is mission work. When we preserve and provide a place of worship, we are missionaries to the wider world in which we live.
            Unfortunately, some see church buildings as a barrier – walls to keep members in and non-members out. I am not sure of all the places from which this perception has its source, but I have encountered it first hand from many people, including people here in the Mission Valley. One thing that helps us overcome this sense of our church walls being barriers between those inside and those outside of the church is the work we do to make our church building a place of welcome rather than a place of exclusion. When we carry out this work, we counter the perception that the church building is a barrier by turning our building into a place that welcomes people to encounter the Gospel, instead of being a club for members only.
            If we view our church building as God’s house, then we can think about welcoming guests to it like we would into our own houses. I have been to most of your homes and know that the people of Faith Lutheran take pride in having well-kept houses (at least when the pastor is coming over). You understand that it is good to clean house when you invite a guest to visit, and do a good job of taking care of things, too. Over the past couple of months we have been doing the same in God’s house at Faith Lutheran Church. We have started cleaning out closets that have been neglected for a while. Thanks to Dorre Webster, Maxine Hanson, and Chris Noel, we now have newly painted Sunday School rooms and a newly painted nursery. We also have opened up more space in the Narthex to welcome guests as they come in, and fellowship with them after service around coffee and treats (many thanks to Lute Thingelstad, and Gordon, Gary, and Adam Granley for their help with that project). We also have a brand new baptismal font by which we welcome the faithful into the kingdom of God for all eternity, thanks to the help of Dana Thingelstad in memory of his parents. All of these things support and help further the mission of God by helping guests who worship among us get a firm sense that our church is a place which we value and consider important enough to work to take care of.
            Lastly, I will say that ours is an inherited space in which the kingdom of God dwells. None of us are left who built the original sanctuary and fellowship space over seventy years ago, so the space in which we worship is one that we have been given. Being an inherited space, it is important for us to recognize and wrestle with how best to steward the history of our building while allowing present and future generations to leave their marks, as well. I have seen it all too often, especially in Lutheran churches, that some people only desire to keep things as they once were and try to force future generations of Christian church goers to become curators of a mission space that once was. Perhaps without even intending to, they turn their congregations into de facto museums because they do not permit any changes to be made and are surprised when their children do not desire to come to church anymore to curate the museum-like structures that were once thriving worshipping communities. It is important to honor the past and worship with the saints who have gone before us as we worship the living God in the present. Yet, the mission of God in our current time and place should always allow for present and future generations to engage our worship spaces in new and creative ways. For instance, I am equally excited to think about the church our charter members envisioned out of nothing as I am to think about how the entry to our choir loft is being re-purposed as a space for the increasing number of youth in our church to call their own. In the dynamic history of our church, we are called to perpetually steward our places of worship in ways that preserve the memories of the faithful who have gone before us while welcoming future generations to add their own memories to the same space. I am grateful that we are doing this here at Faith Lutheran Church!
 
In Christ,
Pastor Seth