Sunday, July 11, 2010

A New Brother In Our Circuit

This afternoon, I was privileged and blessed to attend the Ordination and Installation of Matthew Makela (oops, that's Pastor Matthew Makela now) at St. John's Lutheran Church in Midland, Michigan, where he has been called to serve as Assistant Pastor.  The Service was wonderful and very well attended for a steamy July afternoon.  Beautiful hymns were sung (LSB 682 "God of the Prophets, Bless the Prophets' Sons"; LSB 602 "The Gifts Christ Freely Gives"; "The Lord, His Peace Bestowing" [another Starke original]; and LSB 586 "Preach You the Word"), the Law and Gospel was preached most excellently by Pr. David Kahle, who served as Pr. Makela's vicarage supervisor and made the over 1,000-mile trip from some weird place called Nebraska (I think that's somewhere out West or something :) to participate, and the laying on of hands was done by the many Pastors in attendance. 

I pray the Lord's richest blessings upon Pr. Makela as he begins serving Christ's people in His stead and by His command, and I look forward to getting to know him better in the months to come.  He's gotta be one cool dude and a theological stalwart - I mean, he did graduate from Fort Wayne, after all. :)  He's actually the sixth consecutive Fort Wayne grad to be placed into our circuit in the past six years, so as I told him this afternoon, he is privileged to belong to the absolute best circuit in the Michigan District! :)

A couple of pics of the occasion:

  (Pr. Makela is front and center)

(Pr. David Kahle and Pr. Makela)

2 comments:

Logan said...

Is that the alter he standing on?

Rev. Thomas C. Messer, SSP said...

Logan,

No. St. John's has a unique design - an octagonal(?) chancel in the center of the nave. The altar is in the middle of that octagon, and it is behind everyone pictured in these two pics.