2024 Worship Schedule:

Church service at 9:00 AM through June with Fellowship prior

Dear Friends,

It’s Easter.  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed! We celebrate the gift of Jesus’ resurrection, the ground of all our hope.  Death does not rule over us.  Death and sin no longer have dominion.  We walk with Christ in newness of life.

It’s also a time of transition for us.  No longer winter, but not yet spring.  We find ourselves in between.  Mud season, we sometimes call it.  Too early to plant a garden.  Too early to put away the snow shovels and snowblowers.  Yet, the April sun is warm.  Trees and shrubs will soon put out their first buds.  We’ll see crocus, first of the flowers to splash color into our drab winter-weary gardens. 

Mostly, though, we wait for the seasons to change.  We go about our business and we wait.  We make our plans and we wait.  Our waiting is charged with anticipation.

For you, at Emanuel Lutheran and Bethany Lutheran, this is a time of transition.  For five years, Michael Holman served as your pastoral leader.  I know he served you well.  With him as your leader, you lived out the gospel in your communities, bearing witness to Jesus’ love in word and deed.  Together, we give thanks for Michael’s ministry and grieve his absence.

One day, you will call a new pastoral leader.  We don’t know who that will be yet.  We can’t be sure if that person will be an ordained minister or a licensed lay minister, or a deacon.   We don’t know if that person will serve full-time or part-time.  But someone will come to fill that role.  And you, together with that person, will continue to worship and support each other, serve your neighbors and reach out to the world beyond your community.  

Until then, we will wait.  We will go about our business and wait.  We will make plans and wait.  Our waiting will be charged with anticipation.

As an administrative interim pastor, I’ve been appointed by the Bishop of the Northern Great Lakes Synod to wait and make plans and go about this business with you.  This means I will establish a rotation of worship leaders and preachers for Sundays, be available for pastoral emergencies, conduct or arrange for someone to officiate at funerals, and work with your council, teams, and committees to ensure that your ministry continues during the interim period.  One of our major tasks together will be choosing a call committee and working with the Northern Great Lakes synod in the call process.

Because of planned out of town absences and commitments I’ve already made to preach and lead worship elsewhere for the first several months, I will only be able to be present at worship about once a month until later in the summer.  During the fall, I will be present more often on Sundays.   But I will always ensure that someone is available to lead worship and be on call for emergency situations.  

In addition, because there are so many pastoral vacancies in our synod and a severe shortage of pastors to fill them, it will not always be possible to find a clergyperson to preside at Holy Communion.  The policy of our church and synod is to permit lay leaders to officiate at the Lord’s Supper only with special authorization by the Bishop, which generally means only when someone is the sole pastoral leader in a local congregation.  For this reason, during the transition period, communion will not be included in every worship service.  I will try to find clergy to officiate as often as possible—and at minimum, on one Sunday per month.  I do apologize for this, as I recognize the importance of Holy Communion to all of us and the fact that our custom has been to celebrate the Supper every time we meet for worship. 

Please feel free to contact me at any time.  My phone number is 906-250-1720.  My email address is wilsonmqtmich@gmail.com.  

I look forward to ministry with you during this time between.  
Blessings,
Pastor Dave Van Kley