The Last Supper - or the beginning of the longest Blog.
Upsala's blog page will continue a long tradition of blogging. Blogging is a modern way to pass on stories and information. Return to our page to get the Cliff Notes on last week's sermon, or perhaps a deeper dive into the message.
Every church wants to believe that they are a healthy, vital church. But how do we judge that?
What makes a church a good, healthy church? What are the signs?
In our society, bigger is seen as better. So, society often judges the success of a church on the number of its members and the size of its budget. The larger these numbers are, the more successful a church is deemed to be.
Down deep, most of us know that the faithfulness of a church cannot be measured by this kind of numbers. But this impression persists because membership size and budget size are concrete numbers that are easily measured. Faithfulness, on the other hand, is an abstraction that is difficult to measure.
Having said that, let me reassure you that there are signs that we can look for to indicate if a church is healthy, faithful, and vital. A healthy, faithful, vital church is one that looks upward, outward, and forward.
A healthy, vital, faithful church is one that looks upward for the power of the Holy Spirit, outward for those in need, and forward toward the future that God is building for us.
For more see the full of video of our worship service and sermon by clicking on this link:
June 1 2025 - Signs of a Healthy Church
How to you respond when what you planned doesn’t work out the way you wanted it to? If you haven’t had that happen to you yet, it will happen to you. It is a universal experience. Things don’t always work out the way we planned them.
There is an old “Peanuts” cartoon strip most of us can relate to. Charlie Brown says, “I learned something in school today. I signed up for folk guitar, computer programming, stained glass art, shoemaking and a natural foods workshop.” He continues in the next panel, “(Instead, I got spelling, history, arithmetic, and two study periods.”
Charlie Brown’s friend asks, “So, what did you learn?”
“I learned that what you sign up for and what you get are two different things.”
There is no question as to whether you will experience times when things don’t go as planned. All of us have times when we say, “This is not what I signed up for.” But the real question is about how we respond to these changes. That is especially true when really bad things happen to us. Will we trust God in those times and seek his plans or not? Scripture reminds us that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts and his ways are not our ways. How will we respond when our plans are destroyed?
Paul had great plans to take the gospel into Asia. But the Holy Spirit said, no! Then Paul had a dream about a man pleading, “Come over to Macedonia.” So what did Paul do? He immediately set sail for Macedonia. He was obedient. At at first he had little success, but he remained obedient. In the end, through his encounter with an unlikely woman named, Lydia, Paul started a new church there. What looked like a busted plan, was instead of utmost importance.
What will you do when God or life changes your plan? Will you keep trusting that God has a plan for this too? Will you see this as an opportunity that God is providing for you to do something important? Will you be obedient even when you don’t understand the plan?
For more see the complete service by clicking on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=tMNY3KMNt-Y&list=PL8LzK6qLS5-JSZBWWfVcXxt8uHj-NBa6P
No one is born a Christian.
My Grandpa Koerner came over from Germany just prior to World War 1. He had to go through a process to become a naturalized citizen of this country. My Grandma Koerner was born in this country so she did not have to do anything to become a citizen.
However, Christianity does not work that way. You may be born to a Christian family. You may be born in a Christian society. That does not make you a citizen of heaven. Someone has to tell you the good news of Jesus Christ and you have to accept Jesus for yourself. Someone has to tell you the good news. You can’t figure it out on your own. It is not something that comes naturally. It is not common sense. Someone has to share the good news with you. Before Jesus ascended to heaven he charged his disciples to tell others about him. Those others were to tell still others. And that has continued down through the centuries. Now it is up to us to share the good news with others.
Jesus knew this would be difficult sometimes so he sent the Holy Spirit to remind us of all that Jesus taught and to empower our ministry. He did not leave us or orphaned and on our own. We have the Holy Spirit to help us.
Our calling may be difficult, but it is not some terrible burden. After all, if you discovered the cure to cancer, would you not tell everyone you met? The gospel is even better news than that. Share the goodnews!
For more view the complete service and sermon by clicking on the link below.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITrBKkFxShQ&list=PL8LzK6qLS5-JSZBWWfVcXxt8uHj-NBa6P
She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. (Acts 9:36 N.R.S.V.)
It is not easy being a mom. But we are so grateful for the mothers and mother figures in our lives. Among the things most of us learned from our mothers or mother figures is how to be compassionate. The ability to care about others is not something we are born with. We have to be taught how to be compassionate.
In our lesson from Acts we are introduced to a female disciple named Tabitha. We are not told if Tabitha was a mother in the traditional sense. There is no mention of children. What we are told is that she was a mother figure in the lives of many of the poor widows of her community.
Tabitha was known for her compassion, for her good works of love and caring. Tabitha was a woman of means, purpose, and compassion.
Tabitha was a woman of means. She had a certain amount of wealth, enough to afford both the material and the time to make dresses for poor widows. Tabitha was probably not extremely wealthy. But she had enough that she was comfortable. That makes her a good model for many of us.
Tabatha was using her means and influence. She didn’t just say to the poor widows who had no means of support, I’ll pray for you. She made dresses. She acted to correct the situation.
As the late Pope Frances is quoted, “First you pray, then you feed people. That is how prayer works.”
Tabitha was a woman of means and of purpose. As human beings we need a purpose in life. Tabitha had a purpose in life. She was serving God. She was helping people. She was making a difference.
Tabitha also had compassion. Compassion is empathy paired with loving action. It is the very opposite of the numbness and indifference to the pain of others that is so common in our society.
Tabitha was beloved by her community. You don’t get to be beloved by treating people
as if they were not worth your time. Right? And such compassion is contagious. When we experience it, we want others to experience it too.
For more, view and listen to the service by clicking on this link:
God did not stop working in the world with the death and resurrection of Jesus. He continues to shape and reform his church and his people. Just because we have long done something or long believed something does not necessarily mean that this is what God wants. We human beings seem to have an inexhaustible ability to sin and stray from God’s will.
At the same time, the world is always pulling at us to water our faith and actions down. So how do we know when God is calling us to change? What would it take for you to change a long held belief?
This week’s sermon explores what it took for the early church to accept gentiles directly into the Christian community. We need to remember that Jesus himself was a Jew. All of the original 12 disciples were Jews. Jesus’ message was first to the Jews. So was the good news of salvation just for the Jews or for those who were willing to convert to Judaism first?
Peter was given a powerful vision from God. He then was sent to witness to a gentile who was also an officer in the hated Roman Army. Peter saw first hand how the message was not only received, but also how the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to this gentile convert.
This sermon is a first person sermon in which I pretend to be the Apostle Peter and tell the story from his perspective. For more see the full sermon by clicking on this link:
Does God have a sense of humor? Did Jesus ever laugh out loud?
This last Sunday I preached on John 20:19-31. This is the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples in the locked room. Thomas wasn’t there and when told about the appearance of Jesus, he refused to believe unless he could see and touch Jesus for himself.
Jesus does appear to Thomas and invites him to touch and feel and believe. We are not told the tone of Jesus’ voice or the look on his face. Some imagine that Jesus was sternly rebuking Thomas for his lack of faith,.
While most would say that Jesus was joyful, traditional drawings of him show him as always serious and intense. I think those drawings sell Jesus short. Humor is one of God’s greatest gifts to us, and I believe that Jesus smiled and laughed often.
In the case of him appearing to Thomas, I see Jesus with an understanding smile. I see him here with a twinkle in his eye as he invites Thomas and the disciples in on the greatest cosmic joke ever. Satan and death thought that they had won, but here is Jesus back from the dead, laughing and celebrating with them.
How would other Bible stories change if we could see them in the light of God’s humor and laughter? For more you can view the whole sermon for Holy Humor Sunday at www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Zh22CnaxOeZmFdPVfVWCQ
Many people, even some Christians, think that God does not really intervene in our day to day lives. They think that in the beginning God set up the world and the natural laws and then left things alone. Many think that if God is watching us at all, he is doing so from a distance - off in heaven somewhere. That is a depressing thought because, if true, would mean that we are on our own to sink or swim.
The great, good news of Easter is that God does indeed intervene in history and in our lives. Jesus took on human form and lived among us to show us the way that is right in God’s eyes. He died on the cross that we might be forgiven for our sins and wanderings from God. On the third day, Easter, God intervened directly to raise Jesus from the dead. Those who put their trust in him will also be raised from the dead to eternal life with God.
Although Jesus is the most obvious example of God intervening in history and our lives, it is far from the only example in scripture. Time and again in scripture we read how it seemed like all was lost, but then God acted and changed the outcome.
For more on this theme, I invite you to view the Easter message at
www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Zh22CnaxOeZmFdPVfVWCQ
