The Rooted Gap Year program is off and running and I couldn’t be more thankful for the way things have started. We have eight incredible young adults from all over the country who have come to be discipled, to live in community, and to serve the Lord.

Called by God to lead this infant nation, Moses had been extracted by God from a sheep tending career and pressed into leading this strange adventure. People who knew nothing but slavery journeyed into the wonders of freedom in a land that would be their very own.

John 1:14 describes “The Word” (Jesus) as dwelling among us “full of grace and truth.” As a pastor, I hope that I regularly dwell with others as Jesus did, in the fullness of his grace and truth, but I don’t.

I’m more inclined to lose myself in the urgent, but relatively comprehensible, demands of a Christmas shopping list than to lose myself in meditation on the incomprehensible truth that “the Word” ––the One who is God––would become a man to bring the grace and truth of God to humanity.

In many instances my clients were not just the children who had come to my office for help, but also the parents who came with them, most often mothers. Mothers who were exhausted, anxious, depressed, lost, and breaking under pressure―struggling to know how to help themselves and their children.

The Glimpse Project is a resource that gives you the ability to peek into the life and ministry of our Lutheran Brethren missionaries. New Glimpse Projects of Taiwan and Japan were released this year, along with companion study guides for each series.

For five days we watched our young people take in God’s Word, praise his name together in worship, and join each other in prayer. They experienced fellowship through afternoon activities, games with emcees, climbing mountains, and more! Hundreds of students are growing in Christ!

One of my biggest priorities is supporting students as they go through challenges in their lives. I am not a mental health expert, but I am here to tell my story and share advice coming out of my successes, as well as my failures.

It was a Saturday. I was trying to finish a sermon but couldn’t quite get it done. Feelings of sadness didn’t help. Maybe going for a walk would. It didn’t. Despite the beautiful fall afternoon, the sad feelings only increased. They reached a point of almost overwhelming me with their power. I knew I had to do something.

Mental health problems are difficult to talk about because we simply don’t do it much. As a result, we don’t always know what to think or what to say. Yet mental health problems are extremely common. In any given year, about one in five persons, regardless of age, will experience a mental illness.

This was one of my favorite Women’s Ministries conventions! Why? I think it was how the theme of “Women Together” was embodied in this day. Together, every two years, we, as women, have this opportunity to forge new friendships, embrace long-lost friends, and raise our voices in praise to God who created us as individuals, but unites us together in his Body.

When planning began for this year’s biennial convention of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren of America—themed “Partner in Mission”—it seemed very appropriate to invite the synodical presidents of our international LB synods with which we remain active in mission partnership.

It is noon on a Monday, time for The Clothing Closet to open. About a dozen people are waiting to enter the building. Some early arrivals find their way to the food pantry and quickly load up on fresh vegetables and fruit, dry goods, and ready-to-eat meals; others disperse through the racks of clothes and household goods, hoping to find what they need.

"I am so glad to be in this mission together with you,” President Paul Larson greeted the congregation of delegates Saturday morning, June 9. The theme verse for Church of the Lutheran Brethren Biennial Convention 2024 resonated in his words: “I thank my God every time I remember you… because of your partnership in the gospel” (Phil 1:1-2).

To those of you who attended BC24, to those of you who sent and supported this gathering, to all of the CLB—I greet you as partners in mission!  Indeed, I am so very grateful that we are “in this together.”

It is Sunday, March 17th, day one of the centennial celebration of the Lutheran Brethren Church of Cameroon. It seems I am dreaming, having just crossed the Logone river this morning from Chad in a wooden canoe.

Historically, the art of public speaking (including proclamation) has been considered under the category of rhetoric. Aristotle famously defined rhetoric as “the faculty of observing, in any given case, the available means of persuasion.”

Dangers confront us continually in the form of car crashes, heart attacks, divorce, politics, war, or terrorism. Jesus prays, appealing to his Father for our protection, but do we feel safe? We can look to pillars of Christianity and ask the same question.

Most of us think of a “kingdom” as a place. But when Scripture speaks of the “kingdom of God,” it is not speaking of a place... Rather, the “kingdom of God” (or the “kingdom of Heaven”) is a fact, the fact that God is king.

I don’t know if the church gets much more divided than during an election year. 2024 is shaping up to be no different. How should we, the body of Christ, think and behave in this divisive climate?