Saint Paul Lutheran Church - Wheaton, Illinois

Worship & Music

Witness/Nurture

A message from Senior Pastor, Melody Eastman		A message from Associate Pastor, Mark Williamson
The The Awkwardly Truly Welcoming Church Any church can be welcoming if everyone who walks in the door looks like you, thinks like you, sounds like you and acts like you. It’s easy to reach out to people we can communicate with easily and comfortably. The truly welcoming church is the one that is willing to reach out to folks whether or not we recognize their accent, understand their names, eat their foods, share their physical characteristics, relate to their family structure, or listen to their music. St. Paul has, at our core, a desire to be an open congregation that welcomes diversity. But we know this can be a challenge. Most of us were born in this culture, and we are used to looking and feeling gracious when we welcome a newcomer. When we can’t understand that newcomer because of language or accent or culture, we become uncomfortable, and may feel embarrassed for ourselves. We don’t like having to ask over and over for someone to repeat themselves; we don’t like having to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t understand you.” We’re may be afraid it makes us look— well—ungracious and unwelcoming. But it’s really quite the opposite. People new to this country face this situation constantly. Think about how often someone wrestling to learn English must have to communicate, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Maybe the most gracious act we can perform is to reach out to someone when we are the ones struggling to understand. Here is a great example of Christ-like humility: Take the risk of not looking cool and in control. Risk embarrassment because you can’t understand or make yourself understood. Be willing to be uncomfortable for someone else’s sake! It is vital, if we are to celebrate being a welcoming church, that all of our members practice the art of welcoming.If you’re not sure how to go about this, here are a few suggestions: Just greet someone, smile, and say, “My name is_________. We’re glad to have you!” Ask their name. If you can’t understand it, ask if they can write it down for you. (Remember, though, that some people have not had the opportunity to learn to write. Indicate that’s ok, too.) Ask them to sit with you, or offer to sit with them! Provide explanation for things like going to communion or sharing the Peace if they seem unfamiliarwith the process. If they are able to read, show them the pages in the bulletin and the hymnal. Otherwise, just be willing to be present. Introduce them to at least one other person, but don’t overwhelm them with too many names. Make sure you ask them back for next week; then find them when they come back, and introduce them to one more person then. Invite people to attend an event or ministry with you. Offer to pick them up, if you can. If they don’t need a ride, ask them to meet you at church. It’s perfectly acceptable to use these ideas with folks who have been here a while, too, by the way. The important thing is to see if there is anything keeping you from getting to know someone, and then making the decision to not let that stop you from reaching out!.		Is Faith Located in the Head or the Heart? Some Reflections on a Bad Question One of the more harmful and divisive assumptions causing trouble in God’s church today is that the Holy Spirit only has one “proper” way of awakening faith in sinners and that if we can only fine-tune our proclamation in accordance with it, the church will suddenly grow like wildfire. To use an image from my favorite TV show, we sometimes operate with the notion that successfully communicating the gospel to someone is more or less like finding the mysterious island on Lost, which can only be reached by approaching along one particular bearing. To be clear, the error here is not in believing that there is one God, nor in confessing that there is one Name by which we must be saved; it’s in thinking there is only one island. In truth, there are 6.8 billion, and not one of them the same! To focus on the most common form of this fallacy, consider the neverending and, no doubt, irresolvable debate about “head faith” and “heart faith.” As a pastor, it is not unusual for me to hear in the same week a critique from one person about one ministry that it is “too informational” or “too heady,” and from a different person about a different ministry that it is “too emotional” or “too touchy-feely.” Without denying that there are extremes to be avoided, I try to remember that these statements usually reveal more about the critic than the ministry in question; that is to say, they are mostly autobiographical comments that attempt to appeal to a nonexistent absolute. It comes out as, “Pastor, we need to find that right bearing” when deep down the person is saying, “That ministry wasn’t on the best bearing to reach me.” I recall a man named “John” in my pastoral residency church who would regularly offer me glowing reports about how the preachers at an evangelical parachurch ministry he was involved in always spoke so passionately and “from the heart” about Jesus. This was, I believe, his not-so-subtle way of telling me that my messages, usually carefully written out in advance, were not nearly as much “from the heart.” While in each case I’m pretty sure I managed the ever-necessary pastoral smile-and-nod, John’s comments agitated me and usually left me wrestling with a twin-temptation: to doubt the sincerity of my own (heartless?) faith and to judge John’s faith as being mindless and sentimental. What I was still learning is that there were simply two differently wired human beings trying to grasp at a single bearing for how the gospel ought to be communicated when no such single bearing existed. Even among those who value an integrated head-heart faith, one can still hear strong and divergent opinions about the proper order. Are we to reach understanding via feeling, as we reflect upon our tears? Or to arrive at feeling via comprehension, weeping over our epiphanies? Try as we might to pin that one down, we will only end up running in circles—people are too different! How much better to simply marvel at this interdependency: that the brain doesn’t work if the heart doesn’t send it blood and the heart doesn’t pump unless the brain tells it to, and that all of this happens involuntarily, which is a neat scientific way of saying, “You can give up your chicken-and-egg debates! God is taking care of it!” God has crafted us each unique and good and wired us all differently on this head-heart business along a spectrum of infinite gradations, and that is nothing short of beautiful. Still, we are islands that need to be found. The good news is that we have a 360-degree Spirit who delights in our diversity and is wise, agile, and creative enough to know how to approach every one of us. She has come to ensure that none of us is merely an island unto ourselves (see John Donne), but knits us together through the gospel into a network of islands (see Nick Hornby, About a Boy), so that while still being unique and distinct, we might become connected and interdependent—kind of like Hawaii, which you know is often called Paradise…

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515 S. Wheaton Avenue - Wheaton, Illinois - 60187

630 668-5953 Fax: 630 668-0020