Pastor Lillo’s Call

Pastor Lillo has received a call to be the pastor of St. John Lutheran Church in Fairfax, Minnesota and Emmanuel Lutheran Church in the Township of Wellington, rural Fairfax, Minnesota. Fairfax is located about twenty miles northwest of New Ulm (or about an hour outside of the Twin Cities area). The two congregations have a combined membership of about 300 souls. The two congregations operate a Lutheran elementary school system called Prairie Lutheran School along with two other area congregations. It is the first call that Pastor Lillo has received in twenty years (his last call was to a congregation in Eagle River, Alaska in January of 2002).

Over the course of the next few weeks, he will be deliberating where he should serve the Lord in his ministry. This will mean re-evaluating his talents and abilities, studying what the needs of St. Paul’s are and what the needs of the congregations in Fairfax are, where his talents and abilities might be best put to use in the Lord’s kingdom, and how a move to a new congregation will affect his family situation (which will factor into the kind of work that he will be able to do).

While he deliberates this call, he asks for the input of the members of St. Paul’s. Please keep him in your prayers as he deliberates the call. Give him advice to help him make this decision as well. He should come to a decision by the end of July.

Monday Evening Service

Lately, attendance for the Monday evening service has dropped off steeply. We are wondering if we should discontinue it (especially since Pastor Lillo is planning on teaching an evening confirmation class this fall). If you have any opinion on this, please let us know.

Church Projects

Recently, we passed out congregational surveys regarding what improvement projects we should undertake as a congregation. We thank everyone for their input. The responses were interesting and helpful. The church council will be going over the surveys and coming to the congregation with recommendations in the near future. Look for an announcement about this soon.

New Hymnal

Thanks to a generous memorial, we have been able to order enough copies of the new hymnal to serve the needs of our congregation. We have ten copies of the hymnal available in our narthex for our members to take home and look over. If you would like to examine the hymnal and give your thoughts on how we can implement it, please sign up on the sheet next to the hymnals in the narthex and take a copy home. We’ll probably start using them in our worship services this fall.