Trinity Lutheran Church November 2021 Newsletter

Newsletter Archive

November 2021

Trinity Lutheran Church

Villa Park, IL

Always Growing in Christ


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The Lion's Roar

Amos 3:8

The lion has roared; who will not fear? 

The Lord GOD has spoken; who can but prophesy?”

Genesis 1:28

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The Earth is Given to Humanity not Humanity to the Earth

Recently one of you made me aware of another demonic activity put forward by leftist atheists who believe far more deeply in the principles of sociology and anthropology than they do in God. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood once said,

“The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”  The leftist organization, World Population Balance, initiated a new program called “One Planet, One Child.” The premise is that every family ought only to have one child in order to reduce global overpopulation.  They postulate that if every family would take this stance, we could reduce the world population from 7 billion to 3 billion in 100 years.  I have no doubt that they are correct but who decided that some leftist organization was in charge of the world?  Who determined that God was out to lunch and had not noticed that the world was more crowded than some think feasible?  Of course, in reality, we do not have a population problem but a distribution problem.  Because human beings are inherently lazy, we have all moved to large cities where we have to expend a great deal of resources to bring in food and goods necessary for the millions of people who dwell in a small area.  Nonetheless, there is a more fundamental problem in their logic.

God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful, multiply and subdue the earth.  That directive was never rescinded. The earth was given to humanity to subdue and use.  We are not called to cohabitate with the other species of flora and fauna. We are called to SUBDUE them.  Now one of God’s fundamental principles of life is good stewardship so dumping garbage in the ocean and shooting all the buffalo was stupid.  It was using the earth for our convenience instead of caring for the earth as our great gift from God but at no time do children become secondary to flora and fauna.  Every child is a gift from God, not just to their parents. Their parents are the primary caretakers, the first line of defense if you will, but they are a gift to us all. What’s more, they inherit the earth with us and become co-masters with us.  So, while it is the duty of Christian parents to teach their children to care for this wonderful gift, they are never beholding to the gift as though they were given to it instead of it to them.

If you give your child a guitar, you would teach him how to care for the instrument, play the instrument, and maybe even make money from the instrument but if your child became ill and you needed money, you would sell the guitar in a heartbeat.  If in some way the guitar began to cause problems for your child you would destroy it without a second thought.  Sacrificing children, aborting them or even refusing to have them, for the sake of the earth is as ludicrous as hanging the guitar on the wall and allowing your child to die.  Please understand that there is a demonic agenda at work here.

Satan wants Christians to stop having children! The first evangelists are Christian parents.  The most likely way a person becomes Christian, and the most efficient way is to be baptized and raised in the Church by Christian parents.  Were your parents perfect? No. Are you perfect? No. That is immaterial.  If your parents brought you to the font for baptism and to Sunday school for Christian education, they did the most important work they could have done. If they read the Bible to you and taught you Bible stories at home they went above and beyond. If they encouraged you to come to confirmation classes and youth ministry events, they were super-heroes!  They made Satan afraid.  If they had aborted you or refused to have you, he would have danced with glee because you are nothing but another example of God’s eternal majesty and his immortal race. There is an agenda at work here.

“Pro-Choice” and “One Planet One Child” are not just harmless slogans.  They are the way Satan is trying to destroy God’s people by simply stopping the source.  You could never drain the Mississippi River in St. Louis, but if you could destroy the place where the river starts, Lake Itasca, MN, you might have a real chance at significantly diminishing the power of that mighty river. Satan knows that he can never destroy all of God’s people. He just wants less of us to deal with.  If I had my way, every faithful couple at Trinity would have many children because that is the best way we have of growing God’s kingdom. Of course, this comes with responsibility on our parts as well.

Children are not someone else’s problem.  They are our gifts.  They are our resources to grow and teach and love.  They are assigned to specific parental units for primary supervision but they belong to God and their care is the responsibility of the whole church.  That also means that the pregnant woman who has no one to help her is also our responsibility. It is our place to help her, house her, clothe her, teach her, feed her, do everything we can to care for her and her unborn child. We do that because that child is a gift from God and we are called to be fruitful and multiply.  Don’t imagine that Satan is lounging about possessing demoniacs in 3rd world countries.  He is demanding blood sacrifices. Last year over 42 million babies were offered in sacrifice on his altar. Don’t think we have advanced as a society so that we no longer offer human sacrifices to Satan. 42 million worldwide and there are leftist atheists out there spouting their slogans, “One Planet, One Child!” And there are Christian people who are blindly following their false prophecy because they think they are being responsible, tolerant, even loving. God help us all.
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Voter's Congregational Meeting

Sunday, November 14th

Between Services

In the Trinity Center

Please plan to attend this meeting.

Thanksgiving Worship

Wednesday, November 24 @ 7:00 PM

Please join us the evening before Thanksgiving for service.

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Giving Tuesday

Once again, Trinity is participating in Giving Tuesday which occurs on Tuesday. November 30th this year. Giving Tuesday is the Tuesday following Thanksgiving each year and it encourages participants to support their favorite non-profit organization.

This year we hope that you will help support Trinity Lutheran Church to reach our goal of $15,000.

Facebook will MATCH 100% of donations up to $2M. After that, they will match 10% of donations until they reach $6M.

Facebook Matching begins at 7:00 AM CST on November 30th. This could go fast so get your donations in early! Last year we received $856.50 in Facebook matches.

Non-Facebook donations should be sent to Margaret via envelope or eOffering giving.

This year we do not plan to have sponsors matching our donations. However, if you would like to sponsor this event, please reach out to Shelly Bychowski at shelly.bychowski@yahoo.com. Last year we received $25,000 in sponsorship matches.
While we appreciate any monetary donations, please keep in mind that there are so many ways to give to Trinity, especially appreciated are your time and talents.

Music News

JOIN THE CHOIR or JOIN THE BELLS just for the Christmas season!  If you love Christmas music, but can't commit to an entire school year of choir/bell participation, here is your opportunity:
Choir rehearsals for Christmas begin on Thursday, December 2 (8:00-9:00 pm) and continue on December 9, 16, and 23.
Bell rehearsals for Christmas begin on Wednesday, December 1 (7:45-8:30) and continue on December 8, 15, and 22.
It is not necessary to read music to participate.  I hope you'll consider joining just for the Christmas season.  If you have any questions, contact Mary Stahlke at 708-552-1271 or mary@trinityvp.com
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Stewardship Corner

Sometimes people don’t like it when pastors talk about stewardship. For some, it hits too close to home. It is easier to talk about bad people in Washington, in history, or wherever than it is to think about what our daily life in Christ is supposed to look like and how we are supposed to love our neighbor.

The fact that we don’t like it certainly means we ought to face it. So, here are a few simple and practical realities.

God calls us to first-fruits, sacrificial giving. That means that we should give off the top. We should set a percentage of our income as a deliberate gift for the work of the Church and then give that first. We write the check to the Lord’s work in the Church before we pay the mortgage or pay for our medicine or pay for anything else. We don’t pay for all the stuff we need – and stuff we think we need – and then give from what is leftover. That is the first-fruits idea. It is hard because we think we need all sorts of other things first. But that is the point of “sacrificial.”

Next, how could the starting point for Christian generosity and sacrifice really be anything less than a tithe – 10%? The ceremonial law of the Old Testament was never arbitrary. In the Old Testament, the Levites received this tithe so that they could be full-time ministers.

Does the New Testament have a ministry that is larger or smaller? It is far larger: “Make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). And we are still to have a full-time ministry: “The Lord has commanded that those who preach the Gospel should make their living from the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:14). So if 10% is what it took in the Old Testament, and we have a bigger mission need in the New Testament, how can we expect the Lord’s work to be done on less than a tithe?

By first-fruits, sacrificial, and generous giving – that’s how. We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that we’ve outgiven God’s goodness or that we’ve given plenty. We might be tempted to think that way, but consider that no one in the Church has given plenty because no one has given all. No one has died for his sins. Only the sinless Son of God did that.

St. Paul brought the Good News of Jesus into the discussion of our giving to support the Lord’s work in the Church when he wrote: “I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:8-9).

As you can see, what the Bible commands about our stewardship can sting. It’s Law, and the Law shows our sins. It calls us to repentance. The Law is meant to expose and accuse for the sake of showing us Christ and His fulfillment of the Law. So if first-fruits, sacrificial giving has you squirming, that’s the point.

In Mark’s account of the feeding of the 4,000, Jesus took the disciples’ seven loaves and blessed them. It was nothing among so many, but, of course, it was plenty. Jesus makes something from

nothing. Mark doesn’t say that all the disciples gave Jesus all the bread they had. It is quite possible that some of them held something back. But even if they did, that didn’t stop Jesus from blessing them. Jesus makes something out of nothing. He, who fed His people in the desert with Manna every morning, doesn’t need their bread.

But they need to give it. And what they give – however little it might be and however grudgingly they do so – He blesses. He not only blesses those whom He feeds with it, but He blesses them – the givers. He blesses the givers not just in that they wind up with a basketful for each loaf, but they are blessed by learning to trust and rejoice in Him.

The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. The Lord gives abundantly, or He asks us to fast. We do not know what will happen. Blessed be the Name of the Lord. He does all things well, and He works all things together for good. The disciples don’t give their bread to Jesus because it is a good investment. They give it because He is good, because they love Him, and because they trust Him. Let us go and do likewise.

Phone Messages/Text Messages

We have a new system that can call and or text members with our messages. Please contact the office if you would like to add or delete your cell or phone number from the calling list. 

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AMAZON SMILE

Please use Amazon Smile when doing your Christmas Shopping and designate Trinity as the
beneficiary of your charitable rebate. Every little bit adds up to a big gift! Go to Smile.Amazon.com to set
up your account. If you need help setting it up let Pastor know.

Youth News

December 11: Breakfast with Santa – The next NYG fundraiser!

ALL youth & their families are invited to be part of the event. Pastor will make his famous pancakes and Santa Dave will visit with the kids and also pets!

January 29: Trivia Night - Our favorite fundraiser needs some helpers! Do you or someone you know have the skills to lend a hand in one of these ways?

*Trivia Questions – Set up an app with Trivia questions that could be used for the event

*Emcee – Read the trivia questions, tell lame jokes…

*Technical person - Set up the sound system and perhaps project questions on the big screen. 

November 14: $25 Winter Xtreme Deposit Due

What’s Winter Xtreme? A weekend for middle & high school at Camp Timber-lee in East Troy, WI on March 4-6, 2022. They provide lodging, meals, snacks, worship, and awesome winter activities. There’s tubing, tobogganing, a broomball tournament, and more. The total cost is $155 with the balance due on February 6

Wednesdays November 10, 17 @ 4:00 : Confirmation Class

Pastor Rogers will be teaching the Ten Commandments this year. Mary Stahlke has some great ideas for music class, including making devotional videos for the pre-school. 

Wednesdays November 10, 17 @ 6:00 Dinner for Junior High - High School.

Wednesday, November 24 – No Confirmation Class or Dinner

Stay home and help your mom make pie and stuff the turkey.

Worship Services

Saturdays 4:30 pm

Sundays 8 am & 10:30 am

If you have any upcoming news, events, photos or other information to share, please email Marna Rundgren @ marnarundgren@gmail.com

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