“Why Do We?”
A series of articles on why we do what we do here at St. John’s.
An elder recently asked: “Why are we going to have communion each Saturday evening for six weeks in a row?” Our worship schedule can be a bit mysterious to some, especially because there are so many individual factors that determine how we worship on a particular day or time.
When Pastor Albers became pastor at the end of 2021, he also brought a basic idea for organizing our worship life together: let a series of otherwise independent factors determine the schedule for what we do and when.
For example:
- Ordinarily we celebrate communion at 8am (and the night before) on the 1st, 3rd and 5th Sundays of the month, then celebrate communion at the Connect service (9:30am) on the 2nd, 4th and 5th Sundays of the month.
- We also celebrate communion at each Festival service, including some “lesser” festivals, especially festivals that celebrate our Lord’s life and ministry (e.g. Christmas, Baptism of Our Lord, Passion Sunday, Easter, Day of Pentecost, etc.)
- We celebrate communion at least once each weekend. Some Sunday morning events (like National Lutheran Schools Sunday) will naturally draw in a large number of visitors who would otherwise not join us for communion. In that case we move the communion service to Saturday evening.
So, for the Saturdays in the month of January …
- December 28 … the next day is a “5th Sunday”
- January 4 … the first weekend of the month
- January 11 … the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord
- January 18 … the third weekend of the month
- January 25 … the next day is National Lutheran Schools Sunday
- February 1 … the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord