Beloved Friends in Christ,

When the foundation of the temple was laid in the days of Ezra, there was both joy and sadness among the people of God. Though all were looking at the same thing, some saw it as a cause for rejoicing while others saw it as a reason to cry. Why? Some rejoiced because they would soon have a temple in which they could worship their God again. Others, however, wept for they could see that the new temple would not be nearly as glorious as the previous temple of Solomon.

Looking back at the year of 2007 may produce different reactions also. Though the year gave us reasons for celebration, specifically in the area of finances, it also gave us causes for concern, especially in the area of attendance. Allow me to be frank in examining these two areas briefly.

Attendance at our worship services and in our Sunday School dropped significantly during the year gone by. In large part, this was due to the departure of some young families from St. Paul's. Without question, their departure was both sad and troubling-sad because we miss them, troubling because they have separated themselves from the sound Biblical teaching of the Lutheran Church.

Increasingly, it seems, Christians have become less concerned about the pure teaching of God's Word. Instead, programs, style of worship, friends for their children at another church are among the reasons for selecting a church. While these things are without question important considerations, not one of them is mentioned in the Bible even once. Faithfulness to God's Word, however is mentioned frequently, as is cherishing and maintaining the truth. Jesus says, "If you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free". Abiding in the truth of God's Word is that one thing that should override every other consideration when it comes to worship and church membership.

Inasmuch, however, as cherishing the pure teaching of the Word of God did not override other considerations among those who left the congregation in the past year, there is cause for concern. That our attendance dropped accordingly is really a secondary matter. But 2007 gave us cause for rejoicing also.

For the first year in five, we ended the year with a financial surplus. What is particularly noteworthy about that is that we managed this surplus in the very year we undertook a sizable capital project. Although some had wondered how we would be able to pay for the Accessibility & Enhancement Project, when it seemed we could not even keep on top of our regular bills, their concern was unnecessary. By yearend, we had come very close to reaching (and at the time of this writing have even surpassed) our initial fundraising goal of $125,000 for the project. By God's grace, we prospered financially in the year gone by.

Perhaps there is a lesson in this for us-a lesson of faith. The writer of Proverbs declares, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding". It has often been said that the Lord can only bless that which we do. If we do nothing, He has nothing to bless. Because we stepped out in faith, and did not lean on the easy-to-understand figures before us, the Lord blessed us.

He blessed us financially and He blessed us with something more valuable still. Even as I believe that the chief concern coming out of 2007 was not the drop in our average worship or Sunday School attendance but the lack of concern for pure Christian doctrine that to some degree brought that decrease about; so the principal blessing in which we may rejoice was not our financial surplus, rather it was the privilege of seeing God at work in our midst, blessing our faith in such a way that it can only produce more faith still.

That is my continued prayer for the future: that God will use the events of 2007 to increase our faith. My prayer is that we will grow in boldness of faith and not be held back by our own understanding. My prayer is also that we will increase in our appreciation of God's precious and life-giving truth as contained in His holy Word and as faithfully set forth in the Lutheran confessions. And finally, my prayer is that as we look back at the year of 2007, we see therein far more reasons for celebration than for concern.

In His service,

Pastor Richard A. Frey