Welcome to Redeemer Lutheran Church in Jasper, Indiana

Our Mission Statement:  To live life abundantly THROUGH the Worship of God and Service to others.

(Check here for urgent announcements, special service times, cancellations, etc.)

Holy Week Bulletins:  For use with our Online Worship videos or for worship in your home

In this time of cancelltion of in-person worship, we want to make it possible to still offer worship to God and be connected as a congregation.  Please follow the links below to bulletins of our Holy Week services and join other members of Redeemer in worshiping together from a distance this Holy Week.  Video links will be posted above after being filmed and made available.

Maundy Thursday (April 9, 2020)

Good Friday (April, 10, 2020)

Easter Vigil (April 11, 2020)

Easter Sunday (April 12, 2020)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

At last night’s brief council meeting (3/30/20), it was decided that, with continued concerns about the coronavirus and at the recommendation of the bishop, we will continue to suspend in-person worship and all other activities at Redeemer through April 19th.  The council will meet for its regular April meeting on Tuesday April 21st and will evaluate the situation further at this time.  

Sadly this means that we will not be able to meet together for Holy Week or Easter Sunday, in addition to Palm Sunday and Easter 2.  However, with the help of Kristy Vaughn, we have been able to successfully record and post worship at Redeemer online.  In the coming weeks we will be recording and posting worship for Palm Sunday (April 5), Maundy Thursday (April 9), Good Friday (April 10), Easter Sunday (April 12), and Easter 2 (April 19).  (We have discovered that we do not have a fast enough upload speed at the church to stream the video live.)  Links to these worship videos will be posted on the website’s home page (www.redeemerlcjasper.org) and emailed out to everyone in the congregation that we have email addresses for as soon as they are posted.  (We hope to film the Sunday services on Saturday evening and the Holy Week services in the early afternoon of those days so that they can be posted by Saturday night and Thursday and Friday evenings, respectively.  Worship materials for Easter Vigil will be provided, but no service will be filmed for this day.)  I encourage you to join us for this virtual worship experience and to continue/begin to hold devotional times with your family in your home in this time of physical separation.  We will continue to print bulletins and make them available outside the front doors of the church, and will post a version of this bulletin online for worship in the home, also emailing this out.  These bulletins will reflect the modified order of worship to participate in worship online, but will also enable you to use them as an outline for worship in the home.  I will also attempt to send a weekly mailing to members of the congregation we do not have email addresses for and/or do not have internet access in their homes.  

A few other notes:

It has also been brought to my attention that the latest Christ in Our Home devotionals start in April, and many members have not had a chance to pick one up yet.  We will be making these available also outside the front doors of the church starting this Thursday.  Palms will also be made available for pick up outside the church once they arrive (hopefully by Thursday as well).

At the request of the Crisis Connection, in concern over coronavirus, we will not be providing Easter meals or Easter baskets this year.  Thank you for those who were willing to provide and had already signed up.

Giving of our first fruits, giving to God some of what God has given us, is a central part of what it means to live and worship as a Christian, even in this time.  Sadly virtual worship does not offer us the opportunity for the worship offering that we would otherwise have in person.  So please, in this time of physical separation continue offering to God your gifts and tithes by either mailing your contribution to the church or dropping it by during the week.  

As we face the prospect of a Holy Week without gathering together in person we must find new or other ways of reflecting on Christ’s journey to the cross for us.  So I encourage you to find something that still makes this time holy and dedicated to God.  One of the things I like to do around this time of year is to have a Jesus movie marathon--watching some of the films that reflect on Jesus’ life, or the Passion/Resurrection of Jesus.  If you have access to some of these movies, that might be a pleasant way to extend your focus on Holy Week this year.  Of course not all Jesus movies are particularly good theologically, but even the bad ones can get you reflecting on what Jesus and the cross really mean.  Some of the movies I intend watch over the next week and a half or so are:  King of Kings (1961)--An epic film depicting the life of Jesus particularly within its historical context (Think Ben-Hur without Charelton Heston), The Robe (1953)--A fictional tale of a Roman tribune’s journey to lift what he feels is a curse put on Jesus’ robe that leads to his own conversion to Christ, Ben-Hur (1959)--An epic story of friendship and enmity set against the background of Jesus’ life and crucifixion, The Passion of the Christ (2004)--A very gory look into the physical and emotional agony Jesus went through during the passion, The Gospel of John (2003)--A word for word depiction of the Gospel of John using the text of the Good News Bible, and Risen (2016)--A story about a Roman tribune’s search for the body of Jesus that leads him to the resurrected Christ.  There are many other Jesus movies out there, but these are ones I know and have access to.  If this kind of thing doesn’t appeal to you, never fear, there are plenty of ways you can still make this week a holy reflection upon the passion of our Lord Jesus.  In this time though we will need to take much more of our own initiative in making it so.

I still want to encourage you to keep in touch with one another over this time apart.  Keep contacting one another, keep praying together.  Let me know if I can be of assistance in any way and give me a call if you need someone to talk to.  This is a strange world we are living in right now, a world that needs our Christian witness more than ever.  But take heart, Christ is with us now and always, and we will be together again soon.

In Christ,

Pastor Adam

All in-person worship services and activities at Redeemer have been cancelled through April 19th.  Council will re-evaluate the situation at its next meeting April 21st.

New Email Address

Effective August 14, 2019, Redeemer has a new email address for church related emails-- redeemerlcjasper@gmail.com.  As of late September, the old email address will no longer be effective.