Preachers Choosing Words They Hope Will Last All Year

The devout and the skeptical will pack church pews across the Inland Northwest today.

Most go to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. But some are there to please a relative or honor a childhood tradition.

For preachers, it’s perhaps the greatest opportunity to make a difference with one sermon: the Christmas message.

“I have this incredible longing to somehow speak the word of God so that someone can hear it for the first time,” said the Rev. Kay Tostengard, an associate pastor preaching tonight at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 316 24th Ave. “That’s what makes preaching on Christmas so hard.”

Many ministers have contemplated their sermons for weeks. In the hours just before bed or just after waking up, they jot down their thoughts on paper or computer.

Their messages are as varied as the churches they serve. Following are the reflections five area ministers plan to share:

The Rev. James Lee has been a bishop in the Shiloh Hills ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, 808 E. Sitka, for two months.

This Christmas, he is urging people to serve others all year-round. He quotes the Gospel of Matthew: “Jesus said: What you do to the least of my brothers, that you do to me.”

Lee wants people to emulate Christ year-round, not just in December. It’s not easy, he said. It doesn’t happen overnight.

It’s a discipline that takes years of practice, Lee said. He pointed to members of his own congregation as examples.

One man, a mechanic, keeps beat-up cars running for at least eight families. A farmer discreetly delivers produce to low-income homes.

“The way we serve God is in the way we treat people, day in, day out,” he said.

The Rev. Roger LaChance, priest at St. Pius X church in Coeur d’Alene, will talk about gifts this weekend.

He will start with a children’s Mass this afternoon and continue the theme in his homilies at the adult Masses.

“We need to learn above all that God and people judge us not by the circumstance by which we are bound, but by what we do with what we have,” he said. “And we have to do better.”

LaChance knows there will be many unfamiliar faces looking at him this weekend. They will be non-Catholics as well as what he calls “infrequent Catholics.”

“Hopefully, the Christmas story will be a shot in the arm,” he said. “It will encourage them to deepen their walk with God.”

The Rev. Jeff Doud, known as G-Grandpa by the gang members he leads in worship, said Christmas is a chance to re-examine the value of each person. As minister at the Victorious Warriors for Christ, Doud’s Spokane congregation is composed of Native Americans and teenagers.

He likens his congregation to the central characters of the Christmas story. Joseph and the Virgin Mary were most likely not as serene and happy as they appear to be in most Nativity scenes, he said.

She was a pregnant teen. He was a confused man, who didn’t really know what was going on, Doud said.

“How do we receive people in stressful situations like that?” Doud asked. “The church really wants people saved, but a lot of times we are afraid to get too close, to welcome them in.”

The Rev. Steve Reed, pastor at Valley Fourth Memorial, in the Spokane Valley, will quote George Bailey as well as the Bible in today’s sermon.

“‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is my favorite movie of all times,” Reed said. He wishes every person had an angel, like Bailey did, to demonstrate how the world would be different without them.

He also wants to show people what life would be like if Jesus had not been born.

“Man was without hope. We would be eternally lost,” Reed said. “When Jesus came, he gave us hope and he gave us a destiny.”

Christians, then, have an obligation to do the same - to change the world bit by bit, through each person they come in contact with.

“Act like Jesus,” Reed said. “Treat people with compassion, respect and love.”

The Rev. Tostengard sees that each worshiper at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church on the South Hill gets a candle on Christmas Eve. At the end of the service, the candles are lit one by one, as the flame is passed along the pews.

“That’s what Jesus’ coming into the world means,” she

said. “The light that we have, from hearing God’s word, we turn and we share that light with our neighbor.”

Jesus’ birth was among average people, struggling in darkness, she said.

Many people in today’s world who have experienced God, have been in equally dark places in their lives, Tostengard said.

“When that’s happened to us, we have something to share with the person next to us to help them through their darkness,” she said. “That was the example Jesus came to give us. That’s why he was born.”

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