A Message from Pastor Anne

So, what’s a bishop’s job? That’s an interesting question in 2025, especially if we’re asking about a national bishop. Our national bishop does a lot of relationship management. The bishop sits, for example, on the National Council of Churches here in the US. They work with the Lutheran World Federation. They manage relationships with our full communion partners like the Presbyterian church (PCUSA) and the Methodist church (UMC). They work on creating relationships and ties with other kinds of Christians, like Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians. They work on inter-religious relationships with Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and the like. That’s a big piece of their job.

They also provide a less tangible form of leadership; being an example. In this case an example of what is possible. What fascinates me about our new Bishop-Elect, Bishop Yehiel Curry, of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod, is that he didn’t come into the bishops office in the traditional way, growing up Lutheran, going to college and then directly to seminary, serving for 20 years in a congregation and then getting elected a regional synod office and then the national office. His journey looked rather different.

First, Bishop Curry grew up Roman Catholic and came to the Lutheran church as a young man working in social work and education because of a mentoring program hosted by a congregation on the southside of Chicago for boys. The call to action is what brought him to the church. He said it took him a couple years to realize he was attending a Lutheran church! He was then asked to be a lay mission developer (like a founding pastor) for the congregation and then he went to seminary and became a pastor. As Bishop Curry said in Phoenix when he was elected, he’s what return on investment looks like.

Through its actions in the world, the church drew him and his family into ministry. The church saw someone qualified and called by the Holy Spirit and named it and asked him to lead, he said yes. Bishop Curry kept saying yes: he was elected Bishop of Metro Chicago in 2019 and then the Chair of the Conference of Bishops before he was elected national bishop. And all of his yes’s have rippled out – one of his daughters is about to become a Lutheran pastor!

He will serve a six-year term starting this October. His ordination will be livestreamed on October 4 at 2 pm. You can learn more about our new bishop and the livestream by visiting our national church’s website: www.elca.org.

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Youth Corner

Ellen Olson, Coordinator of Youth Ministries

Sunday school

Welcome Back!  We have an exciting Sunday school year planned with new curriculum, new classes, and some new teachers!  Each of our families have received information for their child(ren) in regards to their classroom, their teachers and a calendar outlining the whole year.  In addition a special invitation to our Rally Day event to be held Sunday, September 7 from noon – 3 pm (but it is actually for the WHOLE congregation and your friends and neighbors).

Preschool/Kdg-1st grade will be taught by Morgan Miller, Didrik Lundtvedt and Brenda Krull as a sub when needed.

2nd/3rd/4th grades will be taught by Erin Heims, Katie Kuhn, and Roxann Harms.

5th and 6th grades will be taught by Joye Moore and Debbie Sampson.

We will install our teachers on Sunday, September 7 during the 9 am worship service.  We thank them for their gift of teaching God’s Word to our children.

Let’s pray for our students.  Let’s encourage our teachers.  Let’s model faith today and every day.

Noisy Offering

Thank you for your generous gifts of coins and dollars for the Summer Noisy Offering to Tori’s Angels.  The Tori’s Angels Foundation brings people together to provide and receive life-changing help.  The foundation provides opportunities for community members across Central Iowa and beyond to make a difference in the lives of infants, children, and adolescents with life-threatening challenges.  We reach out to the community both near and far to gain the needed funds to distribute to families who need real-life angels to help them through one or more crises.

Our very own, Maverick Ketchum, son of Courtney Chambers is a recipient of these angel gifts. 

On September 7, we will celebrate “God’s Work. Our Hands” with more activities to support Tori’s Angels.  Please plan to attend!

LYO

LYO will be meeting Wednesday, September 17 at 7 pm at the church for prayer and fun games.  Plan to attend.   Confirmation

Henry Heims, Caleb Humiston, and Nick Klopping will be confirmed on Sunday, October 26 during the 9 am worship service.  They will complete their instruction during the months of September and October.

Madeline Olson and Henry Groom will begin their confirmation classes in September in addition to receiving their Bibles.

College Care Kits

Watch the September weekly bulletins for the items requested for our college care kits to be sent in October. 

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God’s Work, Our Hands Sunday

Join Maverick and friends for Tori’s Angels Fundraiser on September 7, 2025 from 12:00 noon to 3:00 p.m. at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church.

Free will lunch at noon and Mini Carnival for the kids which will include:

Games & Bounce Houses for kids - $5.00 unlimited play

Dunk Tank - $1.00 per ball

Face Painting – Free Will Offering

There will also be a Silent Auction with over 25 items to bid on.  Last bid will be at 2:30 p.m.

All proceeds will go to the Tori’s Angels Foundation in honor of Maverick.

*Volunteers are needed to provide watermelons, salads, cookies, or bars, or help serve the noon meal on Sunday, September 7th. Please contact Carol Henkel if you are able to help.

Tori’s Angels Foundation has helped with many expensive provisions for Maverick’s care, and they pay for a lifesaving treatment that keeps Maverick’s central line clean from bacterial infection. This treatment is not covered by insurance and is a treatment not affordable to the average family.

Tori’s Angels is a non-profit foundation helping kids across Iowa with life-threatening medical challenges. The Foundation pays for medical expenses not covered by insurance, including travel, hotel stays, meals, prescription meds and other expenses. Each sponsored child is supported until their 19th birthday. At this time, The Foundation sponsors 180 kids. For more information visit https://www.torisangels.org.

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Wednesdays with GOD

Beginning in September we will be having different activities on Wednesday evenings.

First Wednesday will be Women’s Bible Study at 6:30 pm

Second Wednesday will be Holy Communion at 7:00 pm

Third Wednesday will be LYO Gathering at 7:00 pm

Fourth Wednesday will be Mission Gathering at 6:30 pm

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Food for Thought Bookclub

Meets on the third Thursday of the month at the Brickside

Brew N Chew at 12:00 noon in Vinton.

September book will be “Peace Like a River” by Lief Enger

October book will be “Trial of Innocents” by Michael Swiger

November book will be “Sisters of the Great War” by Suzanne Feldman

December book will be “Tales of a Paperboy” by Andrew J. Mair

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Prayers

We have remembered the following in prayers

during the month of August. If you are missed off this list, our sincere apologies.

For health, healing and comfort: Jim Woolison, Cindy Krempges, Joan Volberding, Julie Lindahl, Bob Stoulil, Maverick Ketchum, Jean Jurgensen-McCurdy, Raina Lough, Marlyn Jorgensen, Elaine Bearbower, Pat Gardner, Larry Bearbower, Steve Overton, Donna Burkley, Jason Mangold, Joe Vermedahl, Bill Smith, Steve Wallace

For Protection: Connor Kruse, Dakota Boots

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EWALU Fall Festival & Quilt Auction

The Bethlehem Quilting Group has donated quilts to the EWALU Quilt Auction.  It will be on Saturday, September 20th at the EWALU Bible Camp located at 37776 Alpha Ave, Strawberry Point, Iowa.  The day begins with Quilt Review & Country Store opening at 9:00 a.m. followed by a Devotional Service at 11:00 a.m.  A Free will offering Lunch will be served at 12:00 noon with Quilt Bidding at 1:00 p.m. Contact the church office if you would like a ride to this event.

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Message from Bishop Current

Dear Beloved Ones of the Southeastern Iowa Synod,

Thank you for your prayers for the work of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, for the Southeastern Iowa Synod voting members, and for me over these last days and months. What a week! The voting members will have much to share as we return home to our congregations and synod. As I write this, we still have a day and a half ahead.

I write today to offer my deep gratitude for your support, for your prayers, for your curiosity, and for living in the tension of discernment with me. As you know, I had the profound privilege of being considered as a candidate for the role of ELCA presiding bishop. As you know, I believe in the Spirit and in call so I felt compelled to engage in the process—all the while, knowing that my very clear sense of call is to “share the Good News of God through Jesus Christ” with all y’all in Southeastern Iowa. It was a true honor to stand, to receive the prayers and affirmation, to pray with my colleagues and friends as we addressed the church side by side, and then to breathe a deep sigh of clarity when my name was not among the top three candidates.

Here is what I want you to know about my experience of discernment and the experience. The words that I have been using are Affirmed, Proud, and Relieved. What a beautiful experience to feel affirmed in my call as a preacher and leader in our church. As I prepared for my address to the assembly, I was praying about how to balance preaching and pragmatic. I clearly heard the call to preach Jesus. I had another speech that outlined my imagination for priorities, structure, administration, etc. but the Holy Spirit beckoned me in a different direction. I was confident and clear that I was being called to preach to the assembly. Why? Well, one of the things that I am deeply concerned about is that we, in the ELCA, can be afraid to proclaim Jesus. I fear that we are bashful about the Gospel. I believe that the Holy Spirit is calling us to confession, to repentance, so that we might be profoundly transformed by the power of God’s love that transforms the world . . . but more on that later.

I am proud of myself for standing. I am proud of myself for remaining open to the process of discernment. I am proud of myself for taking up the space that I was provided to preach, teach, and witness to our church and the world. I am proud of myself for having the courage to be vulnerable. I am proud of myself for taking the risk that if God through the church had called me to the role that I would have had to go and leave this call that I love as your bishop in Southeastern Iowa. I am proud of you for your support and prayers. I am proud of our Office of the Bishop team for standing in the tension with such love and faithfulness. I am proud of my colleagues and fellow candidates in our loving support for one another in prayer. I am proud of our church for electing and calling Bishop Yehiel Curry. I pray that we will surround him and his family with prayers beginning now and daily.

And, I am relieved . . . I felt the call to be open. I felt the call to address the assembly. And, as the first line of my biographical form reads, “I love serving as the Bishop of the Southeastern Iowa Synod, with its joys and challenges both and I continue to feel called,” so as the results of the third ballot were revealed, my breath exhaled, my shoulders dropped, and I gave thanks to God for the affirmation of my call to serve with you still.

So, as your bishop, I want to share with you the sermon that I preached to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, I pray that we hear God’s love for us and that together, we might listen as the Spirit opens our hearts to the living Word, to the table, to the font, and to the beloved and weary world where God is always making all things new.

Thank you for your continued prayers for me, for the Office of the Bishop, for our synod, for the ELCA, in thanksgiving for Bishop Eaton, Secretary Rothmeyer, for our new Secretary, and for Bishop Curry. Thank you for the honor of serving as your bishop.

Peace and love, Bishop Current

 

Here is the address, or as I like to call it my sermon, for the Churchwide Assembly:

 

Thank you, Assembly, for the honor of standing before you, as together we discern, by the spirit’s power, our next presiding bishop.

“I believe, Lord, help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)

This is my prayer for our church that the Spirit breathes the Gospel of life into our lungs and reminds us of God’s gift of faith, drawing us to the foot of the cross to remember God’s living and abiding word—

“that God sent God’s Son into the world not to condemn it but in order that the world might be saved through him. that this world is full of humans—created beloved in God’s own image. Every one—even those whom we hate or disregard—is one for whom Jesus Christ died. And nothing—not even death itself—can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus.” (John 3:17, Genesis 1:27, 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, and Romans 8:38-39)

Yes? Yes.

Dear ones, we are humans in need of God’s forgiveness - sinning and falling short by the minute. For fear, division, temptations, betrayal, systems, structures, and all the forces of evil turn our hearts from God and from one another convincing us that we must find a way where there seems to be no way. Dear ones, the Triune God is the way. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the way, the truth and the life. (John 14.6)

The Spirit of the living God is softening our hearts towards repentance of our sins - acknowledging how harm one another and ourselves. And the Spirit opens our hearts to believe God’s promise—really believe that God’s promise of forgiveness, life and salvation is for us and for the world.

I pray that we will commit ourselves to studying the scriptures.

Jesus, even on the day of this resurrection, reminded the disciples of God’ promise in all the scriptures. (Luke 24:44-45). And renewed in the Word, may we return again and again to God’s nourishing table of grace and forgiveness - which draws us into deep listening and relationship where God will transform us by grace, united by the promise of the cross traced in water and God’s invitation together to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ, following the example of Jesus, striving for justice and peace in all the earth. (ELW p. 236)

Where God is present—calling us to boldly and courageously call a thing what it is—a sinful world in desperate need of God’s love. And together with all the baptized—we witness to God’s amazing love - not only when we get it right but maybe and most especially when we get it wrong —so that the world may witness us clinging to our confession, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). And God says—Do not be afraid. Peace be with you. I will be with you to the end of the age. (Mark 5:36,John 20:19, Matthew 28:20)

Dear church, I pray that we might humbly and faithfully pray for the Holy Spirit to lead us and that we have the will to follow

Into the Word

Back to the font

And to the table

And into the world, loving Jesus by loving our neighbors and our enemies, where God is already and always guiding our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:79). I believe, Lord, I believe.

Now, Go in Peace. Christ is with you.