Article: The Christmas Story as Told by Children

I ran across this article in our ELCA publication “Living Lutheran” written by Rod Boriack. Boriack is a writer and editor living in Des Plaines, Ill. I learned a little bit, maybe you will too! 1 The word “Protestant” was first used formally around 1529. “Protestant” originates from the Latin word protestari, meaning “declare publicly, testify,…

If you go to Bethel Lutheran Church (I assume most people reading this are from Bethel) you are going to hear about Jonah’s response to God for not destroying Nineveh this Sunday. (If you need to catch up, you can listen to the first 3 sermons of this series on this website.) BUT… it is…

“This is the God of the gospel of grace.  A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was…

He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all. – Eleanor Roosevelt  Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.” ― Horace Mann  In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. ― Matt Taibbi  For the love…

Wow, what a week at Bethel! Even if you haven’t been at church this week, there is a lot going on. We began the week with filling Easter eggs for our annual Easter egg hunt, others made fleece blankets for those in need, some students were in a class to learn more about Holy Communion…

On Wednesday night 40 of us gathered at Bethel and watched the documentary “When God left the Building.” (For those of you who call Bethel home, you can check the video out of the library at church.) The documentary talks about the decline of church attendance across the United States. To help the watcher understand…