Blessing of the Animals

On Saturday evening we moved our worship service outdoors and had a blessing of the animals. We had our best Saturday worship attendance ever--79 people (and 29 pets). It was a great service and we intend to make it an annual event on the first Saturday in August. Thinking about having Saturday worship outdoors on several more occasions during the summer too.
Hopefully it will attract more people and increase awareness of the service time and the casual atmosphere for this service. We have begun to promote the Saturday service as "No dress code. Bring the kids," with sandwich board signs out front and articles in the local newspaper and our newsletter. Hopefully an alternative to the 'high church' setting on Sunday will be attractive to people who have been avoiding coming on Sundays or who are not familiar with Lutheran worship and are just checking us out. The goal, of course, is to reach more people with the good news of salvation by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ. Things like blessing pets may seem a bit wacky to some -- but think it's being faithful to the mission of the church -- reaching out to more people with the life changing Word of God. And we had a lot of fun. Joy in worship! What a concept!

Trusting God. Following Jesus. <><
Pastor Roy+