First Love, Love Songs and Kids: Together in Mission

Reflections on Day One of the 2010 Florida-Bahamas Synod Assembly are rather contemplative in nature. No major votes that bring divisive thoughts were taken. In fact voting was not really a part of day one except in the most mundane of tasks to get things rolling. The day rather was colored with the feeling of quiet after a storm. The presentations were to a people who were ready to move forward with where God wants to take them despite whatever cultural and internal struggles might have pulled at unity even in the recent past.

Being a Mission Developer, I have been struck in years past how much the people of God in Florida have lifted up Mission and mission-mindedness. This Assembly in many ways is the culmination of discussions that have been going on over the past several years about the direction of the Synod. Some of those discussions I have been a part of and so to witness the fruition is very exciting.

Pastor Steve Bouman presented some ideas in his first keynote address that seemed to color the rest of the day and perhaps frame some of the direction for the future. He used the images of love songs representing the culture’s view of Love through the past several decades. Then hearkening back to simpler times he asserted that the old hymns that tell the old, old story are really the first love songs for Christians and how those songs really draw us back to our first love, our love for God. He then started to talk about passing those songs on to children in the very pragmatic lullabies that parents sing. And then he made a comment that stayed with me the rest of the day. He lifted up my congregation and other new starts in the Synod calling us the children of the Church. It was not by the age of the members of the congregation, but the congregation itself which is an offspring of the Church. To which he then said about these new congregations, “They are our children. We can’t let them not thrive.”

The times in which we live make stepping out in faith even more tenuous than years past. But Pastor Bouman was trying to say that supporting new congregations is not an option, it is the same responsibility that a parent has for a child. Soon thereafter, the Assembly received the presentation of the “Together in Mission” appeal. Within that presentation was again the responsibility of congregations to look out for the communities and people in their mission field. The same kind of ownership of God’s ministry to the world in that area where the people of God are called. The appeal very much is a hands-on effort to share our first love with those around us by sharing the love songs that are dear to us.

I have been developing Rock of Ages Lutheran Church in Wildwood for over four years now. We began worship in March of 2006, and I was to be introduced to the Synod Assembly just a few months later. However, on May 1^st of that year, four years ago to the day, I was not here to be introduced. I was at my father’s bedside as we said our last good-byes and he went to be with his own heavenly Father. The Synod Assembly and the passing of my dad will always be intertwined for me. Since he has been gone, the words in the prayer “Our Father who art in heaven,” have a double meaning for me. I hear my dad’s words of wisdom more clearly in some ways today. Lessons and stories that he tried to tell over the roar of teenage exuberance, now settle in as sacred direction.

I feel that legacy as we gather this weekend. I feel my own earthly father’s passion to share faith and values in the midst of our heavenly Father’s desire that we would share the perfection of those things we can only see glimmering in this life. I think that it is that same Fatherly concern and compassion that fuels our need to sing the love songs Steve talks about which colors the way we look at our need to reach out in the Church today. It is my hope that my dad in heaven and my Father in heaven will look down upon these earthly children and see us passing on what is so important in the legacy given to us. It is also my hope that as they look on their children, the might see our passion and give us the affirmation, “The kids are alright!