Here are some really important things to consider as you look for a church, (but it might not be what you think):
At Risen Savior, you will always hear the good news of Christ and Him crucified for your sins. Church is where you go to hear and receive the Gospel, first and foremost; the social benefits are secondary. By the way, don't worry, we will never make you stand up and introduce yourself or anything. If you visit, feel free to sit in the back and nobody will bug you. Also, you will be given a worship folder (or program) with everything written out, so you can easily follow along with the worship service.
We sing hymns that have been time-tested over many centuries, and they are always focused on God and His Word.
We use a liturgical form of worship because it puts parameters on the service so that it's always focused where it belongs-on God, and His Word. If you’ve ever felt like a church service was a show and the pastor was too much like a comedian or motivational speaker, you’ll really appreciate how we try to do things here.
The entire church service is generally about one hour long. After the server, we have children's Sunday School and an adult Bible study.
We are not overly interested in "getting the numbers up," but we are very interested in making disciples. Our pastor will spend a lot of time teaching the Bible to every single person who wants to learn; in fact, in order to be a member you need to go through a detailed Bible study with him. You won't find this kind of careful instruction in many churches anymore.
The Adult Education class is where you'll receive solid, in-depth teaching directly from the Bible (not the latest Christian best-seller):
It's very common for churches to use the phrase "Come as you are" as a slogan to welcome new people, but after you've been there a while, that phrase doesn't seem to apply anymore-it's only for the newer new people. "Come as you are" gets replaced with "here's another sermon on all the stuff you aren't doing-now get to work!" That's not what we teach and believe as Lutherans. We would really like the chance to explain what we do and why we do it here at Risen Savior; you may find out that Christianity is more simple than you thought, and a whole lot better, too.
We are all a bunch of sinners and we don't need to pretend we're anything else. Our faith is focused on Jesus and His amazing love that was expressed on the cross.
If you've never visited Risen Savior before (or if you're just curious) here's a fun and interesting conversation between Pastor Janke and Steve Kozar (from our church council) about what we do here, it's called "Old-Fashioned Fuddy Duddies?"
Here's the second video in the series: