The ELCA has taken shots, in recent weeks, since controversial votes taken at the Churchwide Assembly. (The local Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod congregation has run a paragraph of particularly harsh criticism which, I will admit, angered me.)

This morning, during worship, my feeling was one of praise and joy: I gave thanks to God that I am pastor of a congregation that could sing and actually mean all the words of Hymn 641 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship.