Hmong, Vietnamese, Laos, and Thai Update

Our Hmong, Vietnamese, Laos, and Thai friends constantly seek new opportunities to magnify and multiply the great work entrusted to our care. Through connections that crisscross our planet, this community is bringing good news in ...

South Sudanese people

While Peter and Simon and Professor Sorum were in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, they visited the Rev. Dr. Kebede Yigezu, founder and president of the Lutheran Church of Ethiopia (LCE). The three hundred members of ...

Ethiopia update

In October 2014, Peter and Simon and Professor Sorum travelled to Gambella, Ethiopia, to encourage people who are living in and around this city as refugees. Our Board for World Missions sent us to find ...

Preach the Word – July/August 2015

Volume 18, Number 6. In this edition, Pastor Tom Westra provides a checklist for writing a sermon and writes about how Paul teaches us justification and sanctification. A Sermon Checklist A checklist of important characteristics ...

Now, That is Amazing

Dear Brothers, If someone would ask us the two most challenging places for us to preach, many of us would list the seminary chapel and the congregation where we grew up. A key challenge in ...

The Stronger Man

Dear Brothers, Is this the kind of experience a supervising pastor would plan to give his vicar on his first day of training: allowing that student pastor to hear respected church leaders insinuate that the ...

Preach the Word – May/June 2015

Volume 18, Number 5. Pastor Tom Westra highlights the importance of Christ's active obedience and how that shapes the rest of the elements of the sermon. A Clean Set of Clothes In place of our ...

The Far Greater Protection

  Dear Brothers, It is sad that Ascension Day is for so many the forgotten church festival (perhaps even passing too easily from our own radar screens?). There's the glorious Jn 14:1-4 ascension truth Josua ...

Didymus’s Twin

  Dear Brothers, I think poor Thomas gets a bum rap. There's not one of the Eleven who believed without seeing. Luke reports that not one of them believed the women's eye witness testimony. None ...

Preach the Word – March/April 2015

Volume 18, Number 4. Here Pastor Tom Westra explains how telling stories can enhance our telling of The Story. What's Your Story? In the retelling of The Story, you are swept into it, and in ...