Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum...

We have a congregation! Turns out that Trinity in Knoxville is actually the closest Iowa East congregation- only thirty some miles away- but until last night we had completely overlooked it (Pr. Rothschild, the assistant to Iowa East District President Arp, had mentioned it to me in passing, but we somehow had the idea that it was much farther away). We attended this morning, and liked it so much that we decided before we even left the pew that we were home.

The pastor's name is Picard. While it is by his speaking that bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, simple water becomes the means of new birth, and sinners are pardoned and declared by Christ's own authority to be saints, I shall endeavor to avoid mentally paraphrasing the effectual words he speaks as " Make it so." No more Star Trek jokes about Pastor Picard; I'm sure he's heard them all- and with a name like "Waters," I know how tedious it can be to hear people repeat for the zillionth time obvious plays on one's name on the mistaken assumption that they're original or clever.

But it's a good, confessional, liturgical congregation (though nowhere near as "high church" as Immanuel in Alexandria, Virginia, where my membership is at the moment). I can learn to live with "Touchdown Jesus" over the altar, and even with the absence of a chalice; this congregation has so much going for it that even these two pet liturgical peeves of mine are simply no big deal. If anything, they're a reminder not to be as pedantic as I am sometimes apt to be over things which are, after all, adiaphora.

Both of us are grateful to have found such a fine new church home. And we see God's hand in the discovery that it's actually the closest IDE congregation to our apartment!