Dear Friends,
Since my mother turned 101, I’ve been thinking about the huge changes that have occurred in her lifetime. She grew up in a house built by her grandfather (imagine having to build your own house!). They had an outhouse, no telephone, no electricity and thus no refrigerator. The spring house, still part of the property, sent a stream of cold water down a concrete trough where food was stored in large pottery crocks. They had no automobile. They had oil lamps and traveled on in a horse and buggy, or by train, to go into town.
They raised most of their food. They had bees for honey, chickens, corn, wheat, vegetables, berries, pigs, cows for milk and butter, a small apple orchard up the hill. When they walked in the fields, they always carried a sturdy stick lest they encounter a local rattlesnake.
There had been no great flu epidemic of 1918 or HIV/AIDS. The first safe antibiotics were invented in 1945. World War I or II, let alone Korea, Vietnam, or the Middle East wars had not happened. William Howard Taft, a Republican, was president.
Just a few years before she was born, the Wright brothers’ plane flew 6.8 mph. (By contrast, earlier wagon trains traveled 2-20 miles a day, depending on weight and terrain.) Everything has picked up speed since then. It’s sometimes said, that the only thing that is constant is change. In nature, things typically adapt to changes in their environment or they die off.
American church and society are undergoing huge changes. But, really, that’s not new, though the pace has increased. The first Norwegian Lutheran immigrants joined with other Norwegians in other cities to form synods, as did the Danes, the Swedes and other nationality-based groups. Gradually, mergers occurred, and congregations are often a mix of races and ethnicities, languages and cultures from all over the world.
As CTS looks toward its next decade, we need to think seriously about what sort of changes might be necessary for this congregation to continue its ministry. The alternative is to let external events make the decision for us.
While everything around us changes, there are some things that remain constant – the love of God that we witness in the words and ministry of Jesus; the care, teaching and service that are characteristic of CTS; and our ability to think imaginatively about the changes that we can embrace without losing our identity, and that will strengthen our ministry for decades to come.
Peace,
Pastor Hoehn
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