Encouragement for Church workers/pastors

LCMS/President Matthew Harrison: "preach the Word" (2 Tim. 4:2)

"The Word of God is living and mighty and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing unto the marrow.

And the Word of the Lord does not return void. So, don’t lose heart, brothers. The Gospel does its business, even through you and through me.”

He suggests reading Martin Luther’s Invocavit sermons that he preached in Lent of 1522, as an exercise of how “he drives things home personally” to his congregation by talking directly to them."



“He (Luther) says ‘I’ — talks about himself as a person who is a believer and also who is concerned about the congregation — is responsible as a preacher,” Harrison says of Luther.

“Look at all the places he uses the word ‘you’ when he delivers the people the Law: ‘you are sinners, you have fallen short.’ And then, also, he does so with the Gospel. He talks directly to people in front of him, people he knows, people he talks directly to, people he talks to face-to-face and he looks in the eye.”



Harrison encourages church-workers in videos:
http://blogs.lcms.org/2014/harrison-encourages-church-workers



Encouragement for pastors (video 6:11)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyiiK9Bu_nA&feature=youtu.be




Encouragement for church workers (video 6:59)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbe0F6Y3dSw&feature=youtu.be
In the other video that focuses on “all the other church workers — the DCEs, the teachers, all the people working in our schools, our secretaries, everybody who makes the church work in addition to the pastor,”




Photo of President Matthew Harrison thanks to Lutheran Church Missouri Synod