January 16, 2018

As expected, Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday was a moving day at LABC. Now we look forward to the third Sunday of the month.  As I continue my “Forged in Crisis” series on leadership I will invite us to consider the life and witness of The Reverend Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer – German scholar, pastor, theologian and leader of the resistance to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
In this month’s Sojourners magazine in their essay “Is This a Bonhoeffer Moment? Lessons For American Christians From the Confessing Church in Germany” Laurie Brandt Hale and Reggie Williams note, “Bonhoeffer argued ‘as much as the Christian would like to remain distant from political struggle, nonetheless, even here the commandment of love urges the Christian to stand up for his neighbor’. He continued, ‘His faith and love must know whether the dictates of the state may lead him against his conscience.’ He had no idea that he would soon be pressed to act upon this line of thought…In a beautiful twist on the classical theological dictum that God became human so that humans might become divine, Bonhoeffer argues that God became human so that humans could become truly human, and humane.”
In her recent pastoral letter to the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America Director LeDayne McLeese Polaski lifts up the significance of Bonhoeffer’s witness. I will quote from her letter on Sunday. You can read it here.
Prayers of the Congregation

• The homeless members of our community
• The homebound members of our community
• Sydney Webster for her mom (health)
• Marie Johnson for her mom (health)
• Myra Saxton for Jim and Annette Coleman (Jim is very ill)
• Ann Fields for her family
• Gloria and Phil Meads for June and Billy (health)
• Thanksgiving for our caring participation in the Retired Ministers and Missionaries Offering
• Anthony Marshall and Leslyn Henry (Anthony is in hospice care)
• Jesus Portillo for Merle, Max and company
• The residents of St. Mary’s Shelter
• All who are grieving
• All who are sick with the flu
• The Wilkinson family for Gloria and Evan
• The people of the Philippines as they deal with the volcanic eruption
• All our elected leaders
• Thanksgiving for the witness of the Baptist Peace of North America