Today I preached my final sermon as Interim Senior Pastor of Advent Lutheran Church (ELCA). It was the concluding message in the Discovering Joy series.
Sermon
My message, “Do You Know?” is based on Philippians 4:4-9 & John 21:15-17.
You can watch below or read the manuscript.
Excerpt
As someone who was born in Arlington, grew up in Arlington, and now lives in Arlington I’ve traveled down South Cooper Street thousands of times. Despite passing by Advent on nearly all of those occasions, the first time I entered the doors was in May 2024. I came for an initial conversation with the Executive Team about serving as your interim pastor.
It turns out that Pastor Joel, your full-time settled minister for many years, had retired a few months earlier and you were actively seeking an interim pastor. So, of course, it made all the sense in the world that Advent’s leaders would be talking to me – a guy who isn’t Lutheran and who wasn’t willing to leave his full-time job in a faraway land known as East Dallas.
Thankfully, through a process of mutual discernment, we determined that what on paper wasn’t an obvious match was in fact the right fit at the right time.
In reality, I have quite a bit of training and experience in interim ministry. And I also knew quite a bit about being Lutheran thanks to serving at King of Glory in North Dallas a few decades ago.
You may have noticed that since this is my last Sunday I made sure we started in a way that flexed our Lutheran muscles. And nothing does that quite like singing A Mighty Fortress.
In all seriousness, there is no way to summarize the last fourteen months in the next ten minutes. I learned long ago that any attempt to name names is always incomplete. Instead, I will reflect on our shared journey with thanksgiving.
On my first Sunday I realized that I was entering a vibrant congregation with a shared mission of living and loving like Jesus.
Do you remember early on how many announcements I made inviting you to consider wearing a name tag? Yes, it was a way to help me begin to connect names and faces. And, yes, it will be a helpful practice in the coming weeks as you welcome Pastor Erik. Learning one another’s names was a small first step. One of our most impactful days was the Day of Discovery . . .