Goodnews—Evangel 2023
Presenting the gospel in language that people can understand
Preached in 2022, published in 2024, 320 pgs. St. Paul’s Evangelical Church in Marietta, Ohio, where I currently serve as pastor (2025), continues to recover, explore, and celebrate her faithful rootage by being faithful to the love and grace of Jesus Christ. While founded in 1839 as a German speaking Reformed Evangelical church, we are thoroughly American and have been for generations. Marietta, Ohio is where we have been planted, and this is where we are blooming. We are a hearty breed, faithful to the best of the ministry of Jesus Christ. St. Paul’s was originally founded to serve it’s local community in a language that they understood: German. Today we continue to serve that same mission: St. Paul’s aims to provide Christian worship, study, and service in language that people understand. Of course this means English, but more than that. Our aim is to make the gospel and the Bible understandable to ordinary people.
“This second volume of sermons at St. Paul’s continues the pattern of preaching from the Lectionary. The Lectionary is a three-year cycle of weekly (some are daily) biblical readings that cover the major themes of the Bible. It includes readings from Psalms, Old Testament, New Testament, and Epistles (letters). It covers the life of Jesus three different times, using different readings, And within the themes various choices can be made regarding particular points or stories that can be emphasized. I haven’t used all of the readings for any given week, but have selected readings that deal with important, contemporary themes.
“I returned to pulpit ministry at St. Paul’s because they needed help and I was available. And having been a member of St. Paul’s for a decade prior to this, and serving in various capacities, in the choir, as an elder, and an interim pastor, my affection for the people and St. Paul’s history has grown.
St. Paul’s has had a long, complex, and difficult history that is reflective of the history of the United States. Originally a German immigrant church on the American frontier, it was affiliated with a German Evangelical denomination in Germany, and it had difficulties from the very beginning. Early German churches were not independent, but were state churches supported by state taxes. That means that the Germans were not used to running their own churches. The kind of leadership needed in America was simply not available. St. Paul’s early pastors came from Germany, and they didn’t understand how independent churches worked, and didn’t have knowledge or experience as independents.
“It is important to also realize that German Christian scholarship since Luther (1500s) was the best, the most productive, and widely diverse in all of Christendom. German Christians and their pastors were highly educated in the faith, far more educated than most of the Americans they encountered on the Western Frontier. This amplified the communication issues that were already present, as they were just learning English and spoke it with difficulty. In addition, Germany was the most advanced industrial country in Europe. So coming to the early American frontier where there was no industry at all was quite challenging.”
Order Goodnews—Evangel 2023 and learn more biblical continuity between the Old and New Testaments. These sermons are relatively short and digestible by ordinary Christian, yet ever challenging people to keep growing. Because when growth stops, we call that death.