Special Guest Preacher for Easter!
Easter Sunday Main Worship Service
Sunday 31 March at 10:30 am
with Holy Communion
We are delighted to announce that the Reverend Dr Laura Holck will be leading our worship at 10:30 on Easter Sunday morning. Dr Holck is the at Hillhurst United Church. In the past, Laura has served over twenty years as parish clergy, and has served as a seminary instructor at Lutheran Theological Seminary Saskatoon.
In the twenty-first century, the church is seeing a dwindling number of people entering seminaries, and existing clergy are aging and retiring. Taken together, our synod has notified parishes that we cannot expect new pastors to be available every time a church needs to call one. At Emmanuel, we have seen the reality of that prediction: seven years have passed since we had our own called pastor; seven years of our call committees seeking for, and failing to find, a pastor to take on the shelpherding of this congregation. God has nonetheless been meeting our needs: with a part-time interim pastor, with a wonderful pulpit-supply preacher in the person of Daranne Harris, and with talented lay-preachers who have stepped up since the interim pastor’s retirement. Every Christian believer is called to become mature in their faith, to study Scripture and be able to proclaim the gospel — and Lutherans, with their emphasis on sound, extensive confirmation classes, have every reason to expect their members to be well-taught in those skills. We should not, therefore, be surprised to hear the gospel taught from the pulpit by laypeople.
But on a Sunday as glorious as Easter, we yearn for something more: for the insights of a dedicated scholar and — more importantly — for communion with God and with one another that is particular to the consecrated Supper of the Lord. Both of those yearnings, Laura will be able to satisfy at next Sunday’s Easter worship service at 10:30 am.
Join us also for Easter sunrise at 8 am, with Easter breakfast to follow.