From Beyond The Page

Two years ago, I packed up my entire life in Upstate New York into a rental and departed for a town I had only heard of a few months before my egress. After relying upon the hospitality of the Scholz’s and Britt’s for temporary housing and transportation, I moved into the Pink House on Main Street and started my ministry with Apostles Lutheran. We really started off with a bang until a once in a century Pandemic left us dazed and confused. Lockdowns, canceled trips, social distancing, mask mandates, and worst of all no takeout! Now I never got on the bread baking bandwagon having left my bread maker to a friend Upstate, but like many of you, I learned how to navigate the new normal. Then that became shattered and discarded for the newest normal, then came the new, new normal, the normal 2.0, which gave way to the nouveau normal. It became normal to embrace the abnormal, which only came with the guarantee that things would  change tomorrow. I asked you all to go along with some crazy ideas: recording for Christmas Eve before Advent 3,  rhyming the liturgy, and embracing life online. These maneuvers seemed out of left field, but they were all apart of a  carefully thought-out plan that took months to prepare. Now that we are back in our building, we can adapt to this particular way of being God’s people that combines the familiar customs of the past with the innovative habits we  discovered during 2020. We will host an in-person Adult Forum dedicated to inclusive language followed by an online Blessing of Animals on October 3rd. Ministerium was canceled due to COVID this year, but I will be taking an  extended Sabbath from October 17th to October 30th. We welcome and thank Pastor Sandy Wisco for supplying during Sunday Worship while Pastor Alex Wit is available for Pastoral Emergencies while I’m gone. We will end October  celebrating Reformation Day as a newly formed Reconciling in Christ Community with our guest preacher, Pastor Kelly Bayer Derrick. I pray that this Autumn will be bountiful for us all.

In God’s Abiding Love,

Pastor Jeniffer Tillman
Mission Developer