Dear Friends through Christ,
God is Good, All the Time! All the Time, God is Good! For the first time in a long time (at least six years) we are full, not only full, we are busting at the seams. Peace Lutheran Church is serving the Lord through serving our community. Currently, Lifeline Academy has approximately 70 kids, split between middle and high school. In September, we will begin a weekly chapel for these young minds. I’m excited! I’m not sure if you realize that Peace started this entire process two years ago. Setback after setback, expense after expense, and finally the hard labor after hard labor paid off.
We also have a new partner in spreading the gospel, Iglesia De Cristo Ebenezer, with pastor Luis Herrera from Honduras. A group of 20-30 meet in our fellowship hall on Sunday from 3-5 PM, offering to our community a fully Spanish speaking worship. If you including Peace, with a traditional and Saturday contemporary, we now offer five unique styles of worship on our campus. That is a first for me.
Allow me share again the ministries being offered from our older, in need of repair worship center. Along with the Christian school and four different churches, we feed some 400 families a month with mostly meats. If those items were purchased through Walmart or Publix that would mean our panty gives to the needy close to $250,000 per year of meat. Meals on Wheels serves 250 shut-ins per day from our doorstep. Because of the sign our AA program is overflowing, now meeting every day, at two separate times of the day, couple that with CODA (codependency program) two nights a week. This year we will serve as Palm Bay “cold night shelter” for the homeless. Here in a few months, we open our doors for voting. There are Stamp Clubs, Garden Clubs, Via De Cristo, all kinds of communities functions now making use of our facilities. We are full. Just gotta keep working on Sunday morning.
God is Good, All the Time! All the Time, God is Good! Utilizing our gift of space for worthy causes enabled Peace to generate enough extra income to make up our difference between Sunday morning giving and expenses. As a church, we operate on a very tight budget. We do everything I mentioned above, pay five employees, plus all the intangibles, for around $250,000 per year. Pretty thrifty if you ask me. A lot of bang for the buck.
Yet, with all this good news of being full and having more income, this good news only gets Peace back to a balance budget. In other words, “We’re even.” Which is good, but there is still much to do to keep Peace Lutheran a bright and shining Lampstand in our community.
Did you know, in my six years of service here at Peace, we have replaced 13 air conditioners, only one more to go. Ya’ll know how much they cost! Granted the one we just replaced was 24 years old, but in the year 2000 that same $2900 air conditioner now cost $6000. However, next up on our “to do list” is huge. Our roof, or I should say, roofs, eight of them need to be replaced. (All of roofs are even older than the last air conditioner.) I can remember when I first arrived at Peace, just about every giant rainstorm produced a new leak, but six years later, between Tech Systems and Mark Grice, we have managed to keep us dry. We do this continual patching of leaks because a new roof or roofs will cost approximately $375,000. Ouch!
Council and Faye Schill have been working diligently with the old insurance company and various adjusters trying to get that number down. Right now, and don’t hold me to it, we should be able to fix our roofs in the $80,000-$100,000 range. Of course, that’s better than $375,000, but still it’s going to take time to raise that kind of capital. In the meantime, your council will continue to search out all options. But no matter what we decide as a council and as a church, replacing our roofs is going to be a costly matter. Start thinking about, praying about how you might be able to help. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to keep you dry and keep a light on for you.
Ok, that takes care of the business side of church. Let get to the spiritual side. Just last month I finished a series, where for over 30 weeks we had a dialogue with the bookends of Scripture, Genesis 1:1-12:5 and all of Revelation. This message in its entirely is available through a self-published book, titled “It Is Enough,” located in the narthex (back) of the church. The premise of “It Is Enough” is that a knowledge and understanding of these bookends of Scripture is enough to know God and understand humanity. It is enough to see our past, our present and our future.
I still passionately believe this premise. However, as you all know, things don’t always turn out the way you hoped. In 2010, I took my first stab at publishing the traditional way. What a nightmare. Felt like I spent all my time dealing with the publisher—Tate. Then a couple of years later, the two sons of the founder, squandered the money and charged with embezzlement. So about three years after publishing, Tate shut down and the book was out of print.
This time I thought I would self-publish through Amazon, or as they call it Amazon Kindle. After all, they are ones who started selling books online. They are the ones who started Kindle. They promised to edit, format and design cover for a reasonable fee. That’s all I need. But then these slick talkers convinced me to take a chance on allowing Amazon Kindle to market for an entire year. So I scrouged together almost $10,000 and took a chance. After all, I sold 5000 copies of the first book and I didn’t advertise at all, granted I never got paid by Tate, but Amazon is different, right? They are the king of advertising.
Well, it was all a scam. Still don’t know what or how it happened. Just happened. Amazon and Amazon Kindle are pleading the silent fifth. Amazon is one of those beasts I talked about in the sermon series and in the book. They offer the world and when they fail to deliver, they are simply too big to challenge. Granted, I do have an unedited book, but mistakes in books drive me crazy. It does have a beautiful cover that I designed. But more importantly, is the valuable information found inside, just waiting to be read. Still, it breaks my heart that people and corporations do such things. I often wonder, how they live with themselves?
Yet, I did not write “It Is Enough” to make a million dollars. If I did, I could pay for a new roof. I wrote so that others may gain knowledge of God and have a better understanding of humanity. I wrote so that others may see their past, present and future. I wrote because I feel that’s what God wanted me to do.
When people, like yourself, explore these pages, making exceptions for a few grammatical errors, you will find a fresh understanding in two of the strangest books known to humanity, Genesis and Revelation. You will be the ones who share this newfound knowledge with others. I don’t need Amazon Kindle’s advertising. I got you. Eventually, and over time the scam artists will be canceled out. I know this because God is Good all the Time! All the Time God is God!
In Christian Love,
Pastor Trexler
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