Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Just before Jesus took Peter, James and John up the mountain to witness His transfiguration, Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. And so He began His final journey to Jerusalem and to the cross. We too, with Transfiguration Sunday and Lent, began our journey to “witness” again that breathtaking event in which our Savior took all of our sins upon Himself, all the while anticipating that wonderful celebration that will come on Easter Sunday.
May God bless us as we follow our Savior to the cross and the empty tomb.
CONCORDIA SEMINARY IN FT. WAYNE
In January my wife and I traveled to Ft. Wayne, IN for the annual Symposia. One of the reasons we attend is to have an opportunity take our IDE seminary students and wives out for dinner (we do the same in the fall for the students in St. Louis). Leaders from many of our partner churches around the world attend the Symposia. Among them this year was Bishop Mindaugas Sabutis, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania. Attending also was a young Lithuanian pastor who has accepted a call to serve a Lithuanian Church in Chicago. We invited both of them to join us for dinner. The seminary students enjoyed interacting with these two men and had many questions about our sister church in Lithuania.
For the past few years Pastor Mitchell Otto and the members of Prince of Peace, Coralville have provided the funding for these dinners. Both the students and I thank Pastor Otto and God’s people of Prince of Peace.
THEOLOGICAL CONVOCATION
In the last issue I wrote about our IDE Theological Convocation. The convocation took place as scheduled on February 26th with Dr. George Wollenburg as the speaker. Approximately 200 lay members, pastors and commissioned workers participated. The plan is for those who were present to bring the contents of the convocation home to their congregations.
See the pictures and story on the cover and on page 7.
Lithuania Project
The final appeal for the Palanga, Lithuania project will be coming to you in the form of a bulletin insert. The final report will be given to the IDE Convention on June 23rd.
See the up-date on page 16.
LUTHERAN SERVICE BOOK
Our new hymnal, Lutheran Service Book, is scheduled to be ready for delivery this fall. I encourage all the congregations of IDE to give strong consideration to purchasing Lutheran Service Book. In addition, those pastors and congregations that print out the service will want to check out the electronic version. The District Presidents had a demonstration of the electronic version at a recent meeting. To say it is amazing is an understatement! One of the District Presidents commented, “I know nothing about computers and this is the first time I’ve seen something that makes me want to learn how to use one!”
Lutheran Service Book will be introduced at our District Convention this summer. We will be using some of the services and there will be a five minute presentation. You can read about “Lutheran Service Book” on the LCMS website at this address:
https://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=9298. IDE
