From the Pastor's Desk

Surrounded and cheered on by that great cloud of witnesses, we head into another week!

Tonight our Long Range Planning Team meets to look at a proposal for expanding our gathering and sending space in the church (the narthex and outside space). Tomorrow night the Church Council meets, looking ahead at upcoming things for the Fall. We'll keep you up to date on what comes from these meetings.

School has already begun for some of our kids (the charter high school for example) and this week school begins for the teachers in Indian River County. With that in mind, this coming weekend, Aug. 21-22, we will have a "Blessing of the Backpacks" during worship. All of our children are invited to bring their backpacks to church for a special blessing as they begin school next Monday. Teachers are also invited to bring their lesson plan books and come forward for a blessing along with the children. Along with those blessings, we will also be celebrating the Baptism of James and Julie Ledlow's new son, Aaron Louis Ledlow. Good, happy milestones for us all to celebrate together.

Also, this coming weekend, former bishop of the Florida/Bahamas Synod, Rev. Lavern Franzen, will be our guest as he will share with us the work of Lutheran Services Florida.

As summer winds down and the new season begins to unfold, may we enter it with hope, faith and the confidence that God is with us and surrounds us with his love, as those people of faith who have gone before us knew and lived out in their lives.

God's work; our hands!

Pastor A.C. 'Jack' Diehl III