This past week I have been at the funeral service of Brenda Weisiger, saw the livestream of Virginia Riedthaler’s funeral, and was able to officiate the wedding of two of our alumni, Emma Pollard and Hunter Garrison. Weddings and funerals are called “occasional services” in church terms – services that are not tied to the…

Recently I downloaded a kind of fun app called “Slowly”. Slowly’s claim to fame is that it is an international pen pal app. Having been raised overseas and having traveled to a few different places in the world, the idea of communicating with someone from another country was interesting to me. The other thing that…

For a few weeks in the newsletter, you’ve seen a note that I (Pastor Jay) am starting classes this week for a “Doctor of Ministry” that is affectionately known as the “D.Min”, not to be confused with the nefarious spirit creature. I am taking on this project with so much gratitude for University Lutheran, allowing…

Today is the Feast of Ascension – the day that Jesus blessed His disciples and was taken up into heaven. It is probably something that we don’t give much thought to, which is unfortunate because the Ascension has a lot of theological connotations that we should probably not ignore. I bumped into one of those…

Last week I encouraged people to send in questions that might “stump the pastor” in the “Question of the Week” portion of the newsletter. I got, well, actually nothing. But someone did send in a question on the Sunday connection card, and that question was “What are cherubim and seraphim?” Connecting this with last week’s newsletter…

In popular culture, the term “Easter Egg” means something that is hidden or only observable to someone who is diligently looking for it. This can be like the fact that you can find the Star Wars characters R2D2 and C3PO in the hieroglyphs in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Stuff that…

When I was growing up watching cartoons, the world was still Judeo-Christian enough that when a cartoon character died, it wasn’t surprising to see a “ghost version” of themselves, now clad in a white robe, with a halo, wings, and a harp, floating upwards towards the heavens. And had you asked me at that time…

I don’t know how much you like it, but I usually sigh when I get one of those “two factor authorization” messages when I’m trying to log into something. You input your username and password, expecting to be let in to whatever it is you’re trying to get into, and then you get a message…

One year I went on vacation after Christmas. Since I wasn’t going into the office, I decided that I wasn’t going to shave. By the end of the vacation time, I decided that I still wasn’t going to shave. The season of Epiphany came and went, and then we got into Lent, and by the…

Peeps. These sugar coated marshmallow baby birds (now outsold by their rabbit cousins) are sort of like the candy corn of Easter — not many people will confess to liking them, but they still sell well enough that they stay on the shelves. In fact, estimates say that every year the parent company of the…