Lenten Renew Begins Feb. 22

Words With Friends.

It’s the latest fad. Like an electronic Scrabble game played on the internet, one can create words, keep score and even chat with your opponent on the screen. You can play it on your computer, smart phone or digital tablet but watch out you will become addicted to the game!

Please consider putting down your digital “friend” one hour each week to meet with real friends for face-to-face conversation in our Lenten renewal. Like last year our main focus will be on small groups.

CONVERSATIONS is the name of our renewal which begins on Ash Wednesday, February 22. Each week we will have conversation about one character in the life of Jesus. We begin with Peter, then Mary Magdalene, etc.

The CONVERSATION renewal will include the following:

+Ash Wednesday Worship at 11am and 7 pm on February 22

+Small Groups will gather weekly beginning February 19th. Watch for sign-ups in the fellowship hall area. These groups are informal gatherings in homes, church building, or restaurants with minimal but warm hospitality. An easy-to-follow discussion guide makes it a “no-brainer” for the guide. The questions are to create friendly conversation and build trust in the group. Want to go deeper in the Word? The St. Mary’s blog on our web-site will include Biblical commentary.

+Daily devotions delivered via email. These will be written by members of St. Mary’s congregation.

+Wednesday Evening Worship in Lent beginning February 29th, the high school youth will lead a drama series, “Unlikely Conversations About Jesus.” These services are at 6 pm and a soup supper begins at 5 pm.

+Wednesday Morning Worship will include a short Bible study, special music, and prayer at 11 am

+Healthy conversations mission focus. Watch for displays in the library for ideas.
+A family event is being planned to lift up the renewal.

Watch the announcements!

May you be blessed in your “words with friends” this Lenten season. May you grow deeper in love with Jesus Christ and his people.


Pr. David Raben


PS: Prayer concern-the Call Committee is actively discerning God’s guidance as we seek an associate pastor. Pray each day that the Holy Spirit would call a pastor to lead in our midst!

For Sunday, January 15th

Readings for this weekend:
1 Samuel 3:1-10
Ps. 139
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51

CONVERSATION is the name of our Lenten Renewal which begins February 22, Ash Wednesday. The main experince for Lent will be our small groups gathering in homes, church, and coffee shops for discussion. Watch for details. Each week we will focus on at particular character around the cross. Peter, Mary Magdalene, Simon of Cyrene, and others.

New member Sunday at St. Mary's Church

From Mark, chapter one:

"In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.'"

New beginnings are important for everyone. For some the New Year will bring a new workout routine at the gym. Some has joined Weigh Watcher after too many Christmas treats. New starts are important. It is significant that we remember baptism on this Sunday when we receive our new members. Perhaps this Sunday will be a time for us all to start again in our walk with Christ!

Happy New Year!

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven..."

I will be preaching on Ecclesiastes 3 on New Year's Eve, the 5 o'clock worship service. For baby boomers we remember "Turn, Turn, Turn" a popular anthem of the late 60's. Whenever that last digit turns over on our calendar there is always some fear and hope. In 1999 we were under the anxious weight of the Y2K scare. In the past years we have been hoping for a better economy, for companies to begin hiring more employees.

For Christians, the birth of Christ has brought a new sense of hope and expectation. We await the Kingdom of God...the good business of God is fill the earth. What "season" is it for you? Hope? Fear? A time to plant? A time to harvest?


Sunday we will gather for one service at 9 am. This will be a Christmas Lessons and Carols Celebration. Many of our college age youth will be leading music and participating in worship.

Happy New Year!
Pr David

Christmas Eve at St. Mary's Church

I will be preaching on Luke, chapter 2 at the 5, 7, and 10 pm services at St. Mary's in Kenosha. I will also refer to Colossians 1:

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, the visible and invisible..."

I also was inspired by David L. Miller's words on the baby Jesus, God who became flesh, in the Lutheran magazine, Dec. 2004:

"His tiny hands will bless and heal. They will welcome the weary and cast out the demons that disfigure our souls. They will beckon to be heard and brush away detractors from the one true love that they bear. They will hold children, break bread and feed the hungry. They will bear the brutality of the executioner's nails, wielded by those who think it better to act on one's fears than to risk knowing the Love whom is God. These hands bear the power of Being itself, that holds all things together even now-and will draw us and all things into one loving, uninhibited holy Communion with himself." -page 66

Pr. Cliff Schmidt will be preaching at the Christmas Day service, Sunday at 9 am.

On behalf of St. Mary's community I will you all a most blessed Christmas celebration!

Christmas Reflection by Bishop Barrow

Christmas is probably my favorite holiday, not because it is so terribly perfect, but instead because it is so terribly flawed. Much as we try to make Christmas look like a Hallmark card, or envision it as a sleigh ride down a snowy lane, or portray Jesus as a cuddly little baby, it just never works that way-at least not for me. In the same way, while Advent begins the church year as a season of expectation, a time of preparation and hope, we never really do seem to get prepared for the coming of Christ.

Let’s face it-the world no longer seems able to take a break from itself. “O Holy Night” gets played all right, but it’s as likely to be overheard in the checkout line at the supermarket as it is as the centerpiece of a worship service.

Who knows? Maybe that’s the way it has always been. Maybe it was designed from the beginning to be the Word thrust into the middle of tax season, amid long, arduous journeys in crowded places and in empires powerful enough to demand tribute and crush the human spirit if you let it.

No I think the true gift of Christmas is that it is a blessed intrusion into a world which is so far from perfect-SOOOO FAR from perfect.

Over the years I have begun to pay more attention to the number of the “strays” who seem to show up at Christmas time. On Christmas eve, I became more and more aware of the seemingly equal amounts of joy and sorrow, hope and disillusionment, promise and pain as people entered the sanctuary. Interestingly enough, we all come with the same hunger, not for a word ABOUT God as much as a word FROM God.

I also realized more and more that the proclamation of the “good news of great joy, a savior which is Christ the Lord” is a powerful word for a weary world.

For those of you who are part of the proclamation, either through preaching or reading or singing or setting the table for the celebration. I invite you, I implore you, to be bold in your proclamation. Preach and sing and pray as though your words make a difference in the lives of the hearers-because in fact your words do make a difference.

Those of us who are the hearers, the hungry, the beggars at the doorstep, we will not settle for a merry little Christmas. We long for a word which will pierce the darkness, a sound which will tear open the heavens like a bolt of lightening crackling down a mountain canyon.

A blessed Christmas,
Bishop Jeff

Third Sunday in Advent-December 11th

This Sunday, Dec. 11th, I will be preaching on Isaiah 61. The people who were in exile in Babylon have now returned to the city of Jerusalem. It is a broken and ruined city. It looked worse than New Orleans after Katrina had done its damage a few years ago. The people returned to a mess, they were grieving their beloved city. Isaiah is addressing a community gearing up for a wake and funeral. Isaiah's words name this sorrow but points the people to the hope in God's power. The garland of flowers are to replace the ashes: God is coming and we expect a wedding festival instead of funeral dirges.

It is easy to be overwhelmed today with the funeral dirges of the bad economy, terrorism threats, war, homelessness and violence in our streets. Isaiah invites us to a wedding like celebration not to live in denial but to be caught by the vision of God. We shall be called "oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory." We are to be firmly in the world but not of it...we are to put our roots deep into the Word. Each week we gather for the party of hope, gathered around bread and wine we proclaim God's coming. There is reason for great joy!

Remember our Christmas Concert this Sunday at 1:30 pm in the sanctuary at St. Mary's Church. John Rutter's "Gloria" will be performed, as well as other sounds of the season from four Vocal Choirs, three Handbell Choirs, Youth Orchestra, and Joyful Noise. High Tea will follow the concert.