From Our Senior Pastor

Dear Saints:

     As Lent unfolds, there is opportunity for us to prepare for the Paschal Feast which has no end.  I find the older I get the more I thoroughly enjoy the rebirth and renewal that Easter stirs within our lives.

     This year, as I have in years past, I am singing with the Plymouth Oratorio Society, rehearsing on Monday evenings.  Our concert which will feature the Mendelssohn piece, “Elijah” will be held at 4 PM on Sunday, May 1, 2011, at the First United Methodist Church in Plymouth, Michigan.  This year in particular with all the transition in my life, this one constant has been a welcomed anchor activity in a sea of change.

     Earlier in the year, I was contemplating how much I enjoy the rehearsals, and it occurred to me that the practice and polish brings a diverse group of voices, talents, and persons into a choral piece of precision, cooperation, and beauty.  When one steps back, the sounds that are heard and absorbed can be nothing short of ethereal and eternal. 

     The local Church can be that kind of “bunch,” for lack of a better word at this juncture.  The Church in a geographical location is made up of a bunch of persons with diverse talents, voices, and gifts.  Sometimes the people who comprise the Church are locked into disharmonious relationships and interactions, but, at its best the Church becomes a group that fits together integrally and strategically to create the kind of music that will theologically touch the hearts of many at a deep level and point folks Heavenward.  I guess I feel the Church at its best has the message of Christ to present, like a beautiful choral piece, and when the Church is at its best, there is precision, cooperation, and beauty, in short, a work of art.

     Many of you have heard that at an early age I received a sense of God’s invitation to eternal life through the great choral music I heard in the auditoriums of my youth.  Whether it was an anthem on Sunday or the sounds of students doing such great works as “the Messiah,” “King David,” the Vivaldi “Gloria,” or whatever…  I was transported to a “…foretaste of the Paschal Feast to come…!”

     For All Saints Lutheran Church and Little Saints Christian School to complete their mission here on earth, we need each one of you to lend your unique voices and talents.  Invite someone you know to enroll their children in our school with wonderful enrichment.  Come and participate in our Lenten Worship on Wednesdays and Sundays.  Like a great choral invitation, there is always a place for you to contribute your voices and unique gifts. 

     And the one unprecedented parallel is this:  In a great choral group, there is a gifted conductor who helps everyone to blend beautifully to create that ethereal sound.  So, too, with the local Church, when we take direction from the conductor, the Triune God, and suppress our own preconceptions and desires, the blend is phenomenal.  May our Church be that Choir for God that sings with such a beautiful and winsome voice that many folks will be moved ever closer to the joys that await those who are drawn to a Gracious God! 

Trying to be in "sync" with the Triune Maestro,

                             + Pastor Drex