Happy Easter / New Year

I love springtime and prefer to view it as the beginning of a new year. I never felt dark, cold January was the time of new beginnings. And neither does the Bible (Exodus 12:1). For the Children of Israel the Passover marked the beginning of months, the first month of the year since it commemorated God delivering them from their bondage in Egypt.

We Christians are intimately linked to the annual Passover celebration. That's why the date our Easter celebration keeps moving. We are tied into the marking of the new year based upon the lunar months. Note, for instance, the peculiar KJV translation of Acts 12:4—". . .intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people." Every other English version has Passover. The point: Jesus was crucified during the Passover celebration and rose from the dead on the first day after that week's Sabbath.  For reasons unknown to me the King James translators used Easter at that point to translate the Greek Pascha or Passover. 

In any event, it is Eastertide and I invite you to join me in this new year with a new heart of hope. To mark that new beginning I am shifting the focus of this Blog and of the Reclaiming Our Heritage website linked to it. During this new year two things will now change:

1. The monthly newsletter or ezine with the various articles connected to it will now cease. We will retain earlier articles in the Reclaiming Our Heritage archives and you will still be able to search for them. However, starting with this new month, the month of the Passover and Easter, we will no longer publish monthly ezines. 
2. Instead of the ezines I will post several new blogs each week. These blogs will appear on the front page of the website, will be archived there and will be discoverable through a search.

If you wish to contribute to the ROH Blog send me an email with your copy attached. I will continue to serve as the editor and will post it as a Blog after we have discussed the content. In some cases longer articles will be posted in serial form over a number of days.

One more thing. If you would like to receive the Blog postings, use the RSS feed either on the Blog page or on the front of the ROH website.

As always, dear friends, the contributors to ROH and I thank you for your continued support and prayer.

—Al Franzmeier, editor and Blogger

Give Us This Day Thy Daily Post

Blog Tips For Pope: Give Us This Day Thy Daily Post : NPR

As I read about how the Pope is encouraging his clergy to be out there in the blogosphere I think about the relatively few Lutheran clergy who take the time and thought to put out a blog.

Oh, there are some very vocal ones among us. I'm trying to be one of them, but I'm a long way from the top.

And then I think of how many of my writer friends blog? Too busy, they say. Haven't got time. Don't know what to write about. Seems silly and pointless. So go the excuses.

But why are you writing, dear writer? Why are you preaching, my brother preacher? Don't you want somebody to read what you write, listen to your preaching and teaching?

Looks to me like blogging is one of the best ways these days to draw attention to your voice, your style and your message. What better way to build a following, a platform?

Clergy, writer—if you have something to say, get on with spreading it.

Things Are Changing

A few of you have been following my blogging over these past three years. Up to now I've always posted my thoughts, research and comments on my own personal website. But that's changing, as I've noted in several earlier postings. Here's what's going on.

I'm changing the entire website. It will have the same title as this Blog, BUT it will be the depository of a new monthly e-zine, once James and I get it up and going. Oh, the 360+ Blogs that I've posted will still be there, but they will be archived. I'll not be adding any more Blogs to that list. Everything else in terms of blogging will happen here. I know, I know. I said I was going to use another service, but I've changed my mind. I like Blogger.com much better. It is easier to set up and easier to use.

In the past week I've been doing a ton of surfing and research. I'm looking for e-zines that do what I and my friends propose. We want to post a monthly e-zine that will provide ministry resources to Christians who live and work in local communities. We don't want to become another theological journal. We want to be a down-to-earth resource, based upon the Word of God and available in language a high schooler can understand. Oh, another thing. We want to speak from the perspective of Lutherans, people who believe in the wondrous grace of God, the supreme authority of the Bible and with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, there's a whole lot more to being Lutheran, but you get the idea for now. So far I have not found any e-zine that does this, so perhaps in the vast world of cyberspace, there's room for our voice.

There are tons of challenges we Christians face every day. So I'm inviting pastors and lay leaders alike to send me contributions on family life, worship, Bible study, current events, challenges for other faiths, e.g. Muslims, sharing the Good News, personal stories and on and on. The only caveat is this: it must be readable.

I'll wait to hear from you. Hopefully, in God's good time we'll get this e-zine up and going sometime in September.