Word Alone Newsletter

A Lakeside friend noticed my "Digging for the pony. . ." blog essay on the ELCA sexuality statement in the printed Word Alone Newsletter. Look through the archives--it's an interesting publication even if you aren't a Lutheran. All mainline protestants are going through the same battles.

My final paragraph where I urge UALC to leave ELCA was deleted from the reprint.

I don't know what our congregation (UALC) is waiting for--it took this sexuality task force seven years to write a mish-mash and hodge podge and submit it to the people of God as a serious work. Every paragraph looks like the sentences were drawn from a hat of former reports and pasted to a page. It is an insult to our common sense and a travesty of our faith. It's time to go. It really is. These people will not back down; they'll just wear us out.

Update on Monica Durban

Last winter at church we were told about a family who had been visiting our church, the Durbans. Their 20 year old daughter Monica was near death after being hit by a drag racer on her way home from work. I put her name in my prayer job jar and sent several cards and notes to her parents. Today I came across an update of her situation in the Columbus Dispatch. She is slowly recovering from massive head injuries.

Durban's once fast-paced life has slowed to baby steps. She is undergoing physical rehabilitation to learn how to walk again. A rod props up her crushed left leg while hunks of metal hold together her shattered right heel.

The traumatic brain injury she suffered apparently still plays tricks. "My hand hurts so bad, daddy. Love it," she says, asking her father to rub her hand. There's nothing wrong with her left hand or wrist. Her brain, though, tells her it hurts.

Monica's strength is amazing, her father Lee Durban says. The neurosurgeon gave her a 200-to-1 shot of survival.

"For six-weeks plus, you think you have an absolute vegetable. It's a hell you can't describe. But we're past the miracle and piling miracles on top of miracles," he said of his daughter's ongoing recovery.

I will continue to pray for Monica and her family. This is a very long road.

Now that's preaching!

The Brethren genealogy listserv provides some entertaining reading from "the old days." Here's an item from 1914 recalling how things were 40 years before in Iowa--

"The winter of 1873 and 1874 was not severely cold,
with very little snow. IRA CHASE, a Brethren minister
from South Dakota, came to our neighborhood and
opened a revival meeting in the school house. The
elder was one of the 'hollering' kind. No person could
go from the meeting and say that they did not hear
what the preacher said, for he usually could be heard
for one-half mile. Elder Chase was a good man as well
as a good speaker. His sermons began to take effect.
People came for miles from every direction. The school
house could not hold one-half of the crowd. A collection
was taken up, teams were dispatched for lumber, one
end of the school house was moved out and the sides
were built in to double its former size. All of this was
done and not a meeting missed. Something over 80
people were converted or went to the mourner's bench.
During one of the elder's sermons he designated the
locality as Pleasant Valley, which name it carries to
the present time.


LeMars, Iowa Sentinel, Jan 9 1914

Expanded the building, renamed the town and 80 souls saved, too!