107 Concord Road, Wayland Massachusetts 01778

Anniversary fundraiser

Gifts came in last week from members Rob and Andrea McDonald and from our friends Rev. Rick and Judy Kremer. This campaign has been a great success. Thanks to all of you for your gifts. The solar panels are in their glory on these bright summer days, drawing energy from the sun.

Midweek communion Wednesdays at 7 pm.

These midweek services focus on the written and read word as our spiritual life-blood. We try to surround our hearing of the word with “live” and listening silence (in contrast to “dead” silence which is uncomfortable and threatening). The prayers are a deeper communion of our hearts and of our world with God. The simple order of Holy Communion is an even deeper participation in the mystery of God’s love.

Connecting with partners in Boston and Cambridge

In my sermons the past two weeks I’ve spoken about the scriptural “icon” of Zion, the spiritual metropolis or “mother city” from which the biblical faith goes forth. For us, geographically, Boston/Cambridge is the metropolis. Energy, art, knowledge, ideas, entertainment, innovation, etc. are found in the city. It’s good for us, out here in the philistine suburbs, with our philistine churches, to turn toward the good parts of the city–and to face the problems of the city–as often as we can. This summer I have been in contact with partners in the city, exploring possibilities for ministry projects. If you would be interested in helping move any of these partnerships forward, let me know. I’ll report to the council about all of them and keep all of you informed in the usual ways.

•  I hope to find another Harvard Divinity School student interested in coming out here to work with me on our suburban agriculture and nature spirituality field work site. The HDS field work fair is the last part of August. If you would like to join me at the fair, to speak to students about our site-you are welcome. Let me know.
• The Rev. Tiffany Chaney is pastor and mission developer of The Intersection, a new ELCA ministry in Dorchester. http://www.connectingfaithandlife.org/Pages/aboutus.aspx . At the synod assembly Kim Canning and I spoke to Tiffany about her work and how we might be involved. She told us that she had a projector but needed a screen. At its meeting in June the council voted to buy the screen Tiffany identified. The cost was $100.  Here is Tiffany’s email in reply to the notification that the screen had been sent from Amazon earlier this week: Thank you so much! I’m planning to use a video clip in my sermon this week, so we will be quickly putting this to good use! Many blessings! Tiffany
• The Rev. Kari Jo Verholst is Lutheran chaplain at MIT. Later this month Kari and I will meet at MIT to discuss ways in which our congregation might be involved in that campus ministry. We will talk about Peace members and friends with an MIT connection, those who might be interested in campus ministry, those who have a special interest in topics related to faith and science, and brainstorm for ways we might cooperate.

Wayland Food Pantry

Thank you for filling up the basket for the Wayland Food Pantry. When Kirsten and I delivered the food this week we entered a pantry that was quite bare. During the summer the schools and other big suppliers of food stop collections, so our contributions make a difference. I’ll deliver the food every week if the basket fills up.

Gardens

The rabbits have devoured the sunflowers in our affirmation garden. I chase them and scold them but they keep coming in! I feel like Mr. McGregor from Thornton Burgess’ Peter Cottontail. (Burgess was a Massachusetts author, you know, born in Sandwich.) So the sunflowers won’t tower this year but Stephanie’s onions and Milly’s rhubarb, and Ron’s tomatoes, and Carter’s carrots are all doing fine. Weeding and reading on Sunday or anytime you want to stop over and help. Thanks to those who have given time to the gardens this summer. Weeding is really an activity of humility. The word humble to me means “grounded”. It has the same Latin roots as the word humus or soil. Weeding is not for everyone… Thanks to the grounded souls with patience enough to weed at the church.

Summer stewardship

We create the community of Peace Lutheran Church by giving ourselves to the programs and ministries of the church. A congregation is community dedicated to helping others. It is created, reformed and nourished when members and friends give their time, money talents, their ideas, prayers, etc. Don’t forget your church in mid summer. This means, in part, don’t forget your spiritual life. Pray, find even small ways to read a passage from the bible, say the Lord’s Prayer, recite the creed. Find some way to love your neighbor. Feed your Christian life. As always, thank you for choosing to live out your Christian life here at Peace.

Looking forward to the fall

Our 50th anniversary celebration with special guests–including Bishop Hazelwood–September 28. Other anniversary events have been scheduled for the fall.

Watch your email and make plans to register your children for Sunday school!

We remind each other often that we are people of prayer. We know that prayer is many things. Prayer may quiet our restless minds. As such it may be our therapy. As the children of God in Christ we are invited to pray. When we fail to pray, or neglect our prayer life, our Christians spirits starve.

Last Sunday we discussed the word of God as the source of our life. Imagine the word as the air we breathe in, and prayer as the air we breathe out.

Prayer pairs well with many activities that fill our day–commuting, exercise, gardening. In fact these activities may be prayers. Begin with a trinitarian invocation–in the name of the Father, and of the Son….– and end with a word of thanks for the time you spent doing whatever you did.

Prayer need not be eloquent and measured and perfect. Sometimes prayers in public sound like short speeches to me, or like declamations or resolutions about one thing or another. These prayers may be earnest and well-meaning but sometimes they seem manipulative or coercive.

Prayer is nothing other than the humility of the Christian life–loving God and loving neighbor–alive in your day.

Prayer directs our attention and our thoughts in the two ways Jesus recommended–toward God and other people -Matthew 23 Prayer may be private and quiet but even when we pray alone we are joining the saints in heaven and on earth. So prayer is always a corporate event. The whole church in heaven and on earth joins us when we pray.

Often we think of prayer as asking for things or as putting in an order or a request for something we desire or need, or something we think others might need. We should try to resist the assumption that prayer means asking for things or asking for an outcome or asking that the events change to fit our ideas of right and wrong. I am always in favor or simply raising up names of those who are sick, worried, alone, or… celebrating, happy, going through transitions, etc, or raising up problems and unpleasant situations.

Prayers may sound like praise and thanksgiving. We need more prayers that sound like this.

Prayer might be formed without words. Prayer might be silent openness to God.

You will hear about this again at the semiannual meeting on Sunday, June 22 (please mark your calendars) but I want to report briefly on one of our anniversary projects. We have been working together–council, property and grounds leaders, anniversary committee and others–to install solar panels on our building. This project has taken several years. After one funding source fell through, we turned to a Wayland group-buying program. A generous member of the congregation loaned us the money–at no interest–to buy and install the panels. We raised the money to put a new roof on the sanctuary prior to the installation of the panels. The plan had been to pay back the loan with savings on the electric bill.

In this our 50th anniversary year the council thought it would be fitting and possible to raise $50,000 from members and friends to repay the solar panel loan immediately. The campaign was successful. The solar panels have been up and working for more than a year. The loan was repaid last week.

The panels produce enough power to meet the electrical needs of our church. In addition to providing all the electricity for our building, solar credits accrue based on the energy the panels produce. When the credits are sold, we receive additional income. Earlier this year we received our first solar credit payment.

Thank you to the members of Peace who worked together on this project: to all of you who contributed so generously and quickly, to the congregation council for their solid wisdom and judgement, to the anniversary committee for their ideas and energy. Special thanks to Ron Riggert, Milly Engberg and Kathrin Midgley for their exceptional leadership on this project.

Peace: The Early Years. For Rejoicing Spirits May 18, 2014

Our Bible lesson for today tells us to go and bring people to Jesus and the church and that God will be with us at all times. In 1964 there was no church in this place, only an open bare field. Then the American Lutheran church decided that is was a good place to build one of the 70 new churches they were planning to start across the country. This was part of their program of “package missions”. A pastor would be called and a building erected and then a congregation started. And so it began. The building was raised and Pastor Peter Wuebbens and his family came. Some informational meetings were held and it seemed that maybe there would be an interest in starting a church here although there weren’t many (almost none) Lutherans around.( Nobody seemed to know what a Lutheran was; sort of like the Jehovah’s Witnesses? someone asked me.) We had lots of meetings, always with coffee and cookies, of course. I said to my friend, Doty Renner, that I didn’t know that it took so many cookies to start a church!

Plans were made for a first service and the beginning of a Sunday School. The national church had rovided plans for the chancel furnishings, the altar, lectern, and baptismal font. Several of our men were good woodworkers and so they set about making those things. It was getting closer to time for the first service and the altar was just finished the night before.The varnish was barely dry. I wasn’t there, but I heard afterward that the altar was so big they had a very hard time getting it out of Art Metzger’s basement. I know there was a large cross which my friend said she and her husband struggled with, too. The altar was so high that the pastor looked rather small behind it! However, the first service was held on August 16, 1954 and the church was filled. The altar flowers must have been really beautiful because those of us who were there particularly remember the blue delphiniums. Ray Renner called the pastor the night before the service to ask what the pastor would preach on Sunday and was told, “the gospel, of course”.

And how did we get our name? One evening in the summer Pastor Wuebbens dropped by my house . (since we were the only Lutherans he knew in Wayland at that time, he often dropped in) and said “ we need a name for this church” so we sat at my kitchen table to think about it. There were already a Faith Lutheran, Grace Lutheran, Our Savior’s, Christ Lutheran, Trinity, Church of the Holy Spirit (Episcopal), etc. and we finally settled on Peace as there didn’t seem to be one of those anywhere close by. It is a name that has served us well through the years.

There was still quite a bit of finishing to be done to the building and the prospective members pitched in. One of the things we didn’t have was a paved parking lot; it was a sea of mud out there. One evening one of the women lost her shoe in the mud! The kitchen was only one little alcove with sink, stove and refrigerator combined in one unit. For years when we had pot luck suppers we brought our own dishes from home.

Services were held every Sunday and in December 90 people signed the charter as members of the new congregation of Peace Lutheran Church. We had a busy Sunday School and it soon became apparent that we needed more room. We were using the parish hall with dividers set up between classes. It was very noisy and crowded, and we kept falling over the feet of the dividers! One of our members drew up the plans for the educational wing and with the exception of digging the foundation hole (which promptly filled with water. It was a wet summer and that delayed the work for a whole year) and hoisting the trusses for the roof, members did all the work themselves. Every Saturday was a work day, many came and worked: I have pictures of the kids- my son, Jim, was about ten- up shingling the roof. Doty Renner and I made lunch every Saturday for the whole crew all summer.

One thing different in the new congregation was that we had almost no older people, no senior citizens. In fact, only one man in his late eighties and one couple in their 70’s. Fred Wagner had been a pastry baker in New York City until he came to live with his daughter in Wayland and he was a faithful member of Peace. He was the greeter who stood at the door and welcomed people in but you had to be careful shaking his hand as those pastry making muscles could mash your fingers! The dog wood tree you see on the lawn is in Fred’s memory. The rest of us were mostly families with school age children, not many of even high school age. Don Alstad was a senior and he became our choir director. We had various organists for our little electronic organ (which occasionally picked up the ham radio from across the road) . Some were ok and some barely adequate. It was also a great improvement when we got the organ which Ron Riggert disassembled in Boston and reassembled here.

In January of 1969 Pastor Paul Lindstrom came with his family. Under his leadership Peace began to realize that there were opportunities within the congregation to care for members. He scolded us for not helping a family in the congregation who were experiencing a bad time with four little children and an ill father. Our eyes were opened and this emphasis has only grown through the years so that Peace is now a place where we support each other in many ways through joys and trials. At the same time we have a strong outreach into the community beyond our membership. Rejoicing Spirits and Family Promise are some of the ways we do that.

After 9 years Pastor Randy Wilburn came and the strong community ministry continued as well as a connection to the wider church organization and its activities. We had a number of people who served on Synod and churchwide committees and boards and a very strong connection to Lutheran Social Services here in New England and its work with refugees, the elderly, and adoption services.

Another difficulty in carrying on a consistent ministry is the transient nature of the New England population. People and families have cycled through this church as their employment took them to other parts of the country. If you were to add up all the members that have been a part of Peace through these 50 years it would be well over a thousand. People who are now members do not know or remember those who were here 25 or even ten years ago. There are only a few of us who remember the early years. It has been a great blessing to have the long ministry of Pastor Jeff who has been our leader for over 20 years. I think Peace is at its most stable condition at the present time. There were times in the past, particularly in the early years when it seemed uncertain whether we would survive but with a strong commitment to the gospel, and Jesus’ command to go and make disciples, and by the grace of God, we are here and although I will not be, I hope some of you will gather in 2064 to celebrate Peace’s 100th anniversary. Keep on spreading seeds of Peace!