Our Mission Statement:
We are a Gospel-centered community of people blessed by God to be a blessing to others.
All church activities, including in-person worship, are canceled for the next few weeks due to the coronavirus.
However, the Sunday morning service at 10:30 will be live-streamed through the church's Facebook page.
Joe Nolte is in charge of setting this up. You can contact him with any questions, at jtnolte22@gmail.com.
Get involved!
Highlights of our upcoming events:
The Coming Back Together Committee
-A new committee has been formed to make decisions about worship as we deal with COVID-19.
Want to spotlight your event? Email the webmaster at popdsm@gmail.com and we'll put it here!
This month's letter from Pastor Roger Osbeck
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
So, how are you doing? The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to drag on.
The Spring and Summer of 2020 will go down in history as one of the weirdest times we've
faced in our generation. (And that's putting it mildly). I hope you are all trudging through with
complete confidence the end is somewhere in sight. In the meanwhile, I try to wear a face mask
as often as possible, wash my hands several times a day and show respect to others by social
distancing.
I'm writing this page a few days before I have knee replacement surgery on July 20th. As
many of you already know, I've been dealing with the pain for quite some time. It has come to
the point where the only relief I get is sitting or lying down. Any standing or walking torments
me with near-crippling agony. Okay, that may be a bit dramatic, but many of you know what I
mean. You've gone through, or still are trying to cope with the same anguish.
Pain has an intensely powerful way it can take over one's life to become the focal point of
attention. Many times, I've tried to chat with people standing in the narthex, Connecting Link or
Education Wing where, after 5 minutes, a little voice repeats in my head, "Where can I sit down?
Where can I sit down, Where can I sit down?" I lose track of the conversation, and it takes a
mental slap in the face to get back into it. As a pastor, listening is an important part of ministry,
so I grit it out with heroic, bullet-biting endurance. (OK, maybe heroic is over the top).
Pain often has a harmful effect on emotions, behavior, and over-all wellbeing. Mental stress,
depression, anger, anxiety, etc. often stem from chronic pain. I’m sure many of you have been
the target of someone, trying to cope with chronic pain, who has lit into you, spewing a raging,
poisonous venom of verbiage, when they are upset at something someone else had done. Even a
minor transgression, with which you had nothing to do, can make you the victim of rage as they
take out their resentment on you. I can site some examples of incidents where I can forgive, but
forgetting is difficult.
Trying to cope with pain often turns the lesson of 1 Corinthians 13 on its end. When St. Paul
writes how love is patient, kind,...not arrogant or rude; does not insist on its own way...is not
irritable or resentful...bears all things...endures all things, pain can erase any understanding or
practice of these features . TRUE CONFESSION: I, too have let the irritability of pain get the
best of me. My sincere apologies to anyone I've offended.
These months under the spell of COVID have become a big pain. We've endured so much "out
of the ordinary" in our lives that anger, anxiety, and stress have become the norm. We've seen
videos on TV and the internet of retailers who require facemasks to enter their establishment,
feeling the rage of angered customers rebelling by refusing to wear one. I certainly don't
understand what the big deal is. Is putting a facemask on such a hard rule to follow? Is it really
such a serious violation of one's civil rights? I don't get it.
Sorry, got off on a little tangent, there. Anyway, this is a time for prayer and patience in the
midst of pain. It took 40 years out of slavery in Egypt for the Hebrews to reach the Promised
Land. We can wait a little more for our deliverance.
Peace to you. See you, sometime soon, in church,
Pastor Roger
Outreach links:
Meals from the Heartland
Habitat for Humanity
Lutheran Services in Iowa
Lutheran World Relief
Make Malaria History
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