He Has Saved Us ...

Thirty years ago I was Pastor of a small church in West, Texas, north of Waco. We celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the congregation. A few weeks ago, I was pleased to attend the 130th Anniversary of the organization of that same congregation, The West Brethren Church, a congregation in a Moravian denomination, the Unity of the Brethren - the church that ordained me - one of the sponsoring bodies of the Moravian Board of World Mission. A church with roots in the 15th Century Hussite Reformation.

I was one of three other former pastors present. I thought about Paul’s comments in I Corinthians 3:6-7, “I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planted anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase.”

I have served other churches in Texas that reached their 100th Anniversary when I was there. Emmanuel Lutheran Church here in Littlefield, where I currently serve as Pastor. Zion Lutheran Church in Alamo. Trinity Lutheran Church in Clara in rural Wichita County. Another I served was well past their 100th year; I recall the words Zions Evangelische Kirche in stained glass over the door when I was in the Waco area.

All of these churches have been served by many pastors. We come. We go. We work the ground and water the crops. We preach. We baptize. We commune people with the elements of bread and wine. Yet, the one who causes increase is the Lord. The one who will harvest is the one who shall come back at the end of the age in the Second Coming.

I love Christ’s Churches, the congregations that He calls together through the Spirit by word and sacrament. I think of how the letters in the New Testament are all written to congregations, or to people in congregations. There is nothing in the Bible to suggest one can be a Christian apart from His Church. These flawed communities, all served by flawed pastors, are the Lord’s. He works in them and through flawed people to bring about the increase that He desires.

I have spent more years in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod than I ever spent in The Unity of the Brethren. But, I think of the words of John Hus, Martyred July 6, 1415, and the message proclaimed in all these churches, “Jesus Christ, our blessed Savior, Turned away God’s wrath forever. By His Bitter grief and woe, He saved us from the evil foe.”

(Editor’s Note: This column is written by a different Littlefield pastor for the Leader-News each week. The columns are published on this page on Wednesdays.)