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Feeling Overwhelmed?

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Longing for peace?

Discover peace beyond what you've ever experienced.

Are you weary?

We're here to encourage and support you.

Join us this Sunday at 9:30 AM 

Holy Trinity is a small church with room for you.  Come as you are.  

Here you'll find faithful, biblical teaching, meaningful worship, and genuine friendships.  Wherever you are on your journey, there's a place for you at Holy Trinity.  Come to worship and stay for coffee and conversation.

Join us this Sunday and discover a community that welcomes you just as you are.  If you're looking for a Bible study near you, we do Bible study on Sundays and Wednesdays. We also welcome volunteers to assist with our community service.

Men's and Women's fellowship breakfasts are planned for Saturday, November 7.  See the Events page for more details.

Donations of food for CHOW are accepted every Sunday and our bins for clothing and bottle and can donations are available 24/7 next to our parking lot.

Why Holy Trinity?  Every Sunday, we offer reverent and reflective traditional worship that offers joy, peace, hope, strength, and spiritual growth. Our small groups and volunteer service opportunities foster a deep sense of community.  As Jesus said to Andrew, brother of St. Peter, "Come and see."

From President Pingel

The season of autumn, with leaves falling to the ground, is certainly a beautiful time of year. But it has also been called “the most melancholy of seasons.” Melancholy is defined as “a deep feeling of sadness, often without a clear or specific cause.” People have often confessed to me that, for all the beauty of the season, they are afflicted with either depression or a sense of sadness which is difficult to put their finger on in terms of where it is coming from.  

But I don’t think these feelings are difficult to explain. Fall is, of all the seasons, the most fleeting, occurring as it does in the waning days of the year and as the days grow shorter. The autumn of the year, perhaps more than any other season, reminds us of the brevity of life. The bible tells us that “all men are like grass, and all the glory of the flowers; the field of grass withers, the flower fades.” Life IS short. It DOES pass quickly.

The challenge is to make sense of it all. The ultimate question is-CAN we make sense of it all? Does life have meaning? Can life have meaning and purpose? These are philosophical questions that demand an answer.

The answer we fear the most is that life HAS no meaning. We spend our time on earth adrift on a meaningless sea. In other words--you spend all that time growing up, learning, working, at times struggling….and all you get for it all at the end is a hole in the ground. Pretty depressing, wouldn’t you say? In literature there is a genre of writing known as “existentialism.” I took a class in philosophy in college and had to read existentialist philosophers. They said that basically we are born into an irrational universe through no fault of our own.  It has nothing to do with God because there probably IS no God. Since we are born into a world with basically no framework for our living our lives, it’s up to each of us to come up with a reason for our being here. It’s all kind of depressing. I found myself getting more and more depressed as I read the existentialist philosophers, and was glad when the class ended.

Some people try to instill purpose in life through the acquisition of material goods. Their framework for living life is, as the saying goes, “he who dies with the most toys wins.” Meaning comes by obtaining and stockpiling what I like to call “stuff.” But we have seen where this leads. Think of the Hollywood crowd. People who have everything are sometimes the most miserable of all! That’s because ultimately meaning in life cannot be gained through the acquisition of money and material goods. 

Science does not have an answer to life’s ultimate questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? Will it matter, when all is said and done, that I lived at all?  

People looking for answers in all the wrong places. People try everything and wind up just being more confused.

I believe that the answer lies in a biblical perspective on life summarized in what we call “Christian Stewardship.” The basic affirmation of the Christian steward is that all that I am and all that I have is of God. We are created by God and God blesses us, as Luther says, “with all that we need to support body and life.” God blesses us daily with his gifts. The greatest gift of all is the gift of faith in Christ and the promise of eternal life in his name.

It is only by acknowledging God as creator and owner and redeemer can life have meaning and purpose. 

One of my favorite hymns contains the line: 

“Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail, in Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail.” 

The point is, we ARE, in the final analysis, “children of dust,” and quite frail at that. We are reminded of this not just by falling leaves and fading flowers but at every funeral service. One day, when you die, a pastor will stand at the head of your casket and say: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Why say those words? You won’t be able to hear them—you’ll be dead! The answer is that they are said for the sake of the living, those present, to remind them that life comes from God and goes back to God—that all those things that we claim as our own are in reality NOT our own. They are on loan to us for a time. This, once again, is a basic principle of Christian stewardship. Life is at its best when we understand this and live with the ownership of God in mind. Without God in the picture, life becomes a dismal affair. As James puts in his epistle, “Nothing more than a mist that appears for awhile and then vanishes” –such as we see on fields and forests on autumn mornings. As the sun comes up there is a haze which by late morning disappears. You’d never even know it had been there! It is in living life in God that life has meaning and purpose.

In Matthew 16: 26, Jesus says “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” All the things that we sinners think of as SO important are—in the final analysis—not that important at all. What IS important it so have Christ and follow Christ, who died and rose again to save us all.

I remember years ago, as a vicar, sitting in the home and at the table of an elderly member of the congregation. As I shared with her the Lord’s Supper, I noticed her wrinkled and arthritic hands, which had at one time most certainly been young and beautiful. Glancing up at the wall, I noticed a plaque which read: “Very Soon our Life is Past; Only What’s Done for Christ will Last.” How true.

So may God give us and keep us in this eternal perspective. Life DOES have meaning and purpose. But only as a result of what God has done for us in Christ. And now, having as our possession HIS life, breathed into us by his Spirit, we can live thankfully, joyfully, and in service to God and others. 

John Pingel is president of the Eastern District of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod

Some thoughts for October...

It really is remarkable what God has been doing at Holy Trinity.  From 2020 to today, He has been adding to our numbers and enabling us to serve our community in ever-increasing ways, thanks be to God.  As I think about where we've been over the last six-plus years and where God is taking us, I am filled with gratitude for being a part of it.  After Covid, we didn't miss a beat.  Each year since that Covid period, God has been faithful to us, and given us so many opportunities to honor Him through serving our community.

I've been hearing over and over again from a retired pastor who now serves the church through coaching active pastors that people don't like going to church. He cites statistics like "fewer than 14% of Americans were in church last Sunday."  I don't doubt that he's right on the 14%, but each Sunday I see a congregation of people who seem to want to be at Holy Trinity.  On those Sundays when we have guests, I see them welcomed warmly and engaged in conversation that goes way well beyond "I'm glad that you're here."  

I really believe that the same God who has brought us together has great plans for our church and I'm excited to see who He will add to our numbers moving forward.  There may be someone reading these words right now who is wondering whether they should investigate our congregation and see whether there's a place for them here.  I look forward to meeting them!  God works through communities committed to His Son to bring friendship, support, love and encouragement to each of us.  It really is a wonderful thing!

With love in our Lord Jesus Christ,

Pastor Tony