Will Preach For Food Podcast

Dear friends, grace to your and peace from Abba-God and the Lord Jesus Christ! Way back in mid-August, I introduced our Emotionally Healthy Relationships series imagining our spiritual lives as a marathon—a long, long race, or facetiously, a five-year mission to explore strange new feelings, seek new life in Christ’s civilization, to boldly go where Christ has gone before!   Since then, we’ve lean...

I have to say that this has been a very emotional week at Faith. All week the church has been buzzing with church members preparing for our annual holiday bazaar, which is taking place even as I record this podcast! It is also my daughter’s birthday—Happy Birthday, Hannah!  But even as we have been enjoying the fellowship, the baking, and the decorations of the week, we are grieving, too. We can’t...

Happy Reformation Sunday, celebrating the re-forming, re-newing work of the Holy Spirit in the church in every generation. Lutefisk, lutefisk, lefse, lefse: We’re the mighty Lutherans—Yah, shore, you betcha! We are also in week six of our series focusing on Emotionally Healthy Relationships—EHR for short—as Faith leans into our congregation’s vision and dream to grow “closer to and more like Jesus...

Exploring the Iceberg How do we grow closer to and more like Jesus? How are we experiencing the regeneration of the Holy Spirit in our lives today? It starts and ends with God’s agape love for us and for the world. God, in Christ Jesus, has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. Through the love of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we have been saved, justified, and called chi...

Words for beginning the service: You have loved us first, O God, alas! We speak of it in terms of history as if You loved us first but a single time, rather than that without ceasing You have loved us first many times and every day and our whole life through. When we wake up in the morning and turn our soul toward You—You are there first—You have loved us first; if I rise at dawn and at that same...

Hello, and welcome to the Will Preach for Food podcast. I’m Doug, a pastor here at Faith Lutheran Church, based out of Shelton, Washington, a congregation of the ELCA. “Great Expectations” is this week’s podcast title. That “EHR” you see in parens stands for “Emotionally Healthy Relationships.” This Fall Faith Lutheran is leaning into our congregation’s vision and dream to become “closer to and mo...

Hello, and welcome to the Will Preach for Food podcast. I’m Doug, a pastor here at Faith Lutheran Church, based out of Shelton, Washington, a congregation of the ELCA. “It Starts and Ends with Love” is this week’s podcast title. That “EHR” you see in parens stands for “Emotionally Healthy Relationships.” This Fall Faith Lutheran is leaning into our congregation’s vision and dream to become “closer...

GOSPEL READING 1Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2So [the rich man] summoned [the manager] and said, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’  3Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now...

Today’s reading is  Luke 15:11-32, often known as the parable of the Prodigal Son. The word “prodigal,” comes from the description of the younger son’s “wild living” in verse 13. Reckless, extravagant, wasteful, over the top. A closer reading wonders about several “prodigal” characters, including both brothers and the father, and whether maybe the younger brother is actually the hero of the story,...

We are wired to ask questions from the time we are little. Where do babies come from? Why is the sky blue? Why is life so hard sometimes? What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?  Most of these questions defy a cookie cutter answer. And so we tell stories. The Bible is full of compelling, multi-faceted stories that make us think and help us see the world with fresh eyes. The Bibl...

The primary image for today’s message is that of a banquet, of a big table with lots and lots of people and a table with lots and lots of free food. Think about the biggest feast you’ve ever attended. Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like THAT, and that there is a place for YOU at the table. Let’s look at what it means to be a GUEST at God’s table, then what it looks like to faithfully HOST G...

Introduction Hello, and welcome to the Will Preach for Food podcast. I’m Doug, a pastor here at Faith Lutheran Church, based out of Shelton, Washington, a congregation of the ELCA. Faith is a welcoming community: growing closer to and more like Jesus; making Christ known; joyfully serving each other, our neighbors, and all God’s creation. You can learn more about Faith at our website, www.faithshe...

Today is a special episode of "Will Preach for Food." The message is presented by Rev. Brenda Satrum, my wife and coworker here at Faith. Enjoy! Support the show

My wife (Brenda) and I just returned from an amazing week-long adventure in the Bob Marshall Wilderness of Montana. People in Montana know it simply as “The Bob.” We were two of eleven guests, six guides, seventeen horses, and sixteen mules coved over 45 miles of remote, rugged wilderness: from Wrong Creek to the North China Wall, the north fork of the Sun River and Headquarters Pass. We saw bear,...

I am recording this podcast for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost. My sermon title is “The Art of Neighboring,” as a reflection on one of the more well-known stories told by Jesus: the story of the Good Samaritan, found in Luke 10:25-37. The story teaches us how to inherit eternal life and how to be a good neighbor. It turns out these are the same thing. Open your Bible to Luke 10, and let’s dig in....

Introduction Hello, and welcome to the Will Preach for Food podcast. I’m Doug, a pastor here at Faith Lutheran Church, based out of Shelton, Washington, a congregation of the ELCA. Faith is a welcoming community: growing closer to and more like Jesus; making Christ known; joyfully serving each other, our neighbors, and all God’s creation. You can learn more about Faith at our website, www.faithshe...

We read about Jesus to learn about God’s love for us. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus’ mission statement is borrowed from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. It is quoted in Luke 4:18-19, and it says this: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,     because he has anointed me     to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners     and recovery of sight for the blind,...

How old is “old?” Are you old? Raise your hand if you are old. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel came out with a song in 1968 called “Old Friends.” “Can you imagine us years from today,” the song goes, “sharing a park bench quietly? How terribly strange to be seventy…” Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel are both 80 years old now, about the same age as President Biden. Rod Stewart, in 1988, at the age of 43,...

The Ascension of our Lord Where is Jesus when you need him? Seriously, in this day and age, as people of Faith, this may be the most important question on our hearts. I was in a small group discussion recently and posed the question to the group: What in the world is God doing? “Not enough!” said one of my friends. It turns out that Jesus is closer than you think. Today’s reading from the end of t...

Acts 9:31-43 Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers. 32 As Peter traveled about the country, he went to visit the Lord’s people who lived in Lydda. 33 There he found a man named Aeneas, who was paralyzed and had been bedridden for eight years. 34 “A...

Following up with last week’s podcast, we’re going to spend some more time in the book of Revelation. It calls itself a revelation of Jesus Christ, so let’s look closer to learn more of what the Spirit wants to reveal to us about Jesus, about the nature of power, and about the kingdom of God. Please open your Bible to the book of Revelation—the Revelation of Jesus Christ—and turn to chapter 5:1-14...

Have you ever seen Jesus? Have you ever encountered the risen Christ? The Bible tells us that Mary did. And so did Peter. And John. Doubting Thomas saw Jesus. Cleopas and his wife met Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Fifteen years later, Paul of Tarsus met Jesus on the road to Damascus. Just last week a dear friend shared with me a story of when she, as a little girl, saw Jesus.  The sad thing about i...

“Nothing is certain but death and taxes,” the saying goes. Benjamin Franklin wrote that back in 1789. The whole quote goes like this: “Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” He wrote this about five months before his own death on April 17, 1790. Today is the 232nd anniversary of his de...

Raise your hand if you want to go to heaven when you die. How do you get there? The Bible teaches that we are saved by God’s grace, through faith, apart from “works of the law.” Yet the Bible also talks about seeking the kingdom, striving and straining, obeying the commandments, and entering through something called the narrow door. Just how does it work, anyway? Today we’re going to talk about sa...

Hello and welcome to the Will Preach for Food podcast. I’m Doug, a pastor here at Faith Lutheran Church, based out of Shelton, Washington, a congregation of the ELCA. Faith is a welcoming community: growing closer to and more like Jesus; making Christ known; joyfully serving each other, our neighbors, and all God’s creation. You can learn more about Faith at our website, www.faithshelton.org . Tha...