Skip to main content

Fear Not, Worship, Pray, Relate!


Happy Easter Christ the Servant!

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! I thank God for resurrection hope and power in our lives, in our church, and in the world. 

 CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO VERSION OF THIS MESSAGE!
In the Easter gospel message in Matthew, we heard the words “Do not be afraid” from both the angel of the Lord and Jesus himself. While the world is turned upside down and inside out, we know God is at work healing us and all of creation by the same power that rose Jesus from the dead. The God of the resurrection is with us so we need not be afraid. Several ELCA Pastors from the St. Paul area have created a free daily devotional for the Easter season entitled “FEAR NOT” that is available now and I would commend it to you. It’s good food for the soul.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE “FEAR NOT” DAILY EMAIL DEVOTIONAL!
I also thank God that we have been connecting with more people than we could have hoped through our online worship ministry over the past month. We had over 100 logins on Easter Sunday representing individuals and families worshiping with us from near and far through our livestream on Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook. We will continue worshiping through online means for the time being and will keep you updated as to any possible change as the situation unfolds. Please go to our website cslcvh.org for updates and connection links and details. Also, a detailed access instructions for each of the worship platforms is attached.

CLICK HERE FOR ACCESS INSTRUCTIONS FOR ONLINE WORSHIP!

CLICK HERETO WATCH THE REPLAY OF EASTER SUNDAY WORSHIP!
This coming Sunday, we’ll be worshiping again at 9:00 a.m. and as part of the service I want to invite you to participate interactively in a couple of ways. First, we’ll have a Thanksgiving for Baptism at the beginning of our service which is a prayer for remembering and celebrating that in Baptism we’ve died to sin and are now alive to God through Christ, the only death we have to fear is behind us, we’ve been made children of God, and we are splashed with the promise, power, pardon, pleasure, and peace of God. You are invited to prepare for this moment in our worship by setting up a basin of water wherever you are worshiping to dip your hand in and splash your face and trace the cross on your forehead with water. Then, later in the service we’ll also be joining in a time of interactive prayer, during which we’ll invite you to type your prayers into the chat feature of whatever streaming platform you are if you’re on Zoom to speak their prayers.

We want to make sure everyone is supported, connected, and engaged in our mission even during a pandemic. The way we’re doing that is by establishing extended family household size groups called missional communities. This is your extended family within the larger spiritual family of Christ the Servant. If you haven’t already, you should be hearing from your missional community leaders about ways to give and receive support, stay connected with one another, and find a way to serve together. We’re also experimenting with a prayer app to help keep us connected spiritually as a congregation and to follow the biblical urging for us to pray without ceasing. The app is called ECHO and you can find our prayer network under the name “Christ the Servant Prayer Network.”

CLICK HERETO GET STARTED AND DOWNLOAD THE ECHO PRAYER APP!

Finally, I want to invite you to consider joining me for a new group study that will begin on Wednesday, April 29th called “Emotionally Healthy Relationships – A 40-Day Journey to Deeply Change Your Relationships.” Two years ago we had a worship series and 8 week study on Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. This is the sequel of that study and I hope you’ll consider joining us for this. You can sign up online at our website. The cost is $17 per person for course materials which includes a workbook and a daily devotional book. I’ll be leading this course through Zoom and it will be offered on Wednesdays for 8 at either 10:00 a.m. or 6:30 p.m.

CLICK HERETO REGISTER FOR EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS COURSE!

Easter blessings and peace to you and I look forward to connecting with you in worship.

In Christ,
Pastor Chris Steubing

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Christ the Servant Update on the COVID-19 Health Crisis Dear Christ the Servant Community, CLICK HERE TO WATCH PASTOR CHRIS' VIDEO MESSAGE! We have made the difficult decision to cancel, postpone or reshape all programming at Christ the Servant through Sunday, April 5 th based on recommendations from the CDC and Minnesota Department of Health.  This is a bold act of love that aligns us with the best efforts of our larger community, state and nation to ensure the health of all who live here.   Here’s what that means: ·    There will be no meetings or gatherings of our church leaders, teams, worship, or outside groups at our facility between today, Friday, March 20 th and Sunday, April 5 th . ·    Worship on Sundays and Wednesdays between March 22 nd and April 5 th will be livestreamed. You may join the livestream in multiple ways and find links on our website to connect online (please bear with us as we continue to work out technical issues): Facebo
1 comment
Read more

FULL INTERVIEW WITH PASTOR RIZ PRAKASIM

Greetings in the name of the great peacemaker and prophet Jesus Christ, I have comitted to posting daily on my Facebook page for 46 days, one post for each year of George Floyd's life, to uplift and centralize the voices of people of color in regards to racial equity and justice. I did an interview yesterday with Riz Prakasim who serves as pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Rosevile, MN. Riz also works as a manager for the Minneapolis restaurant Gandhi Mahal which was destroyed during the recent unrest over the death of George Floyd while in custody of police. Pastor Riz has a unique perspective on race in the U.S. as a native of South Africa, being of Indian descent, growing up in rural Minnesota, and now serving as pastor of a predominantly white congregation. He is a man of deep faith and offers a strong and compassionate call for spiritual unity and prophetic action influenced by his generational roots in the reconciliation movement of South African apartheid. Riz and I
Post a Comment
Read more

Interview with Riz Prakasim Parts 1 & 2

Here is part 1 of my interview with Pastor Riz Prakasim. Here is part 2 of my interview with Pastor Riz presented as the 10th of 46 daily Facebook posts, one for each year of George Floyd's life, to uplift and centralize the voices of people of color in regards to racial equity and justice. In this episode, Riz and I discuss what it means to sacrifice for the sake of truly knowing, loving, and serving one another by coming close and becoming vulnerable as an expression of racial reconciliation. I ask Riz how we can help our predominantly white congregations to recognize the correlations between injustice within the biblical narrative and the social injustices of our day which disproportionately affect people of color. Here's a couple quotes from the interview: "The precursor to being courageous is being vulnerable...when you're vulnerable there's an amount of uncertainty...there's a risk that you take that folks should really initiate. And there's emotiona
Post a Comment
Read more