Serving Schedule

If you are unable to keep your scheduled serving day, please contact the church at least a few days before the service so there is time to find a replacement. Thank you!

Subscribe to the official newspaper of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod! Visit reporter.lcms.org to get regular updates, notices, synodical news, and more!

Pastor Carlson has been publishing a daily devotion online and emailing it to subscribers. That’s right! This is a great way to start of your day in the Word and prayer. Simply go to stpaulsmilaca.org/subscribe or speak to Pastor, and you’ll start to receive a devotion every weekday in your email inbox.

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, 68th Regular Convention is July 29 through August 3. Pastor Carlson, along with a lay delegate from our circuit, will be attending the convention and representing St. Paul’s and our circuit. The convention is in Milwaukee, WI at the Wisconsin Center/Arena.

Pastor will spend a little time at the next quarterly voters meeting detailing the convention and provide for you a list of matters which will be voted on.

To keep up with the convention timeline, to read the overtures, and to learn about the various candidates who will fill positions nationally, please visit LCMS National Convention – The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Also, please pray for safe travel for all who are preparing to head to Milwaukee in late July.

SCRIPTURE: When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, He said of him, “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.” – John 1:47

Our Lord does not want us bragging about being Christian, or as with Nathanael, being an Israelite. It is simply not enough to say, “I am baptized,” or even to say, “I am a pastor,” or “I am a Lutheran,” or “I am an elder.” But you must believe in Christ and His forgiveness and live like a Christian which makes baptism your own. You must be righteous both on the inside, and also on the outside. You must not be embarrassed of the Lord or the Christian faith. If you are, then you are a false Christian. If you do not believe in your heart that Christ is your Lord and savior, then you are living a lie and remain in darkness. You may appear to be pious on the outside, but the inside is far from Christ for your faith does not show in your actions, or your actions do not exhibit your faith.

If it were possible to separate Christians from one another – dividing them into true and false Christians – how many true Christians would we find? Consider the world and how full of craziness and foolishness it is – adultery, drunkenness, vindictiveness, deceitfulness, gossip, love of money, etc. There are even those who no longer consider it a sin to cheat or lie or steal or fornicate. Yet such people want to be considered Christian? It would be enough that they repent of these things and acknowledge God’s anger against sin, but they can’t even do that but want to have their sins and still have salvation. But as St. Paul writes, “You are dead to sin! How can you live in it any longer,” and “You are no longer a slave to sin and death, but you are a slave to God in Christ, therefore do not work to serve your old master but the new.”

In such ways you are not fooling anyone, and certainly not God. God knows precisely who you are and what is in your heart, just as He did with Nathanael. And when the Lord returns on the Last Day to judge the living and the dead, onto what side will He place you, on the side of the few who repented and trusted in Christ and believed His words, or on the side of the massive crowd who filled their lives with the pleasures and passions of their flesh and the world?

“Let us not be unaware of his kindness. Were he to reward us according to our works, we would cease to be. Therefore, having become his disciples, let us learn to live according to Christianity.”

— St. Ignatius of Antioch (AD 36-110)