Matthew F. Leighty
Executive Director

There are certain moments you never forget. I was a teenager in Fort Wayne, Ind., in the summer of. 1993, when lightning struck the steeple of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in the heart of our city. Within hours, that iconic 237-foot spire came crashing down. When it was over, only the exterior brick walls remained standing.

Fort Wayne is known as the City of Churches — steeples are part of its skyline and part of its identity. St. Mary’s stood about a block from the historic St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, among the closest steeples to one another in that part of the city. I wasn’t a member of either congregation, but as a Fort Wayne native, watching that steeple fall left a mark on me — about grandeur, about impermanence, and about what truly endures.

That memory came rushing back in the fall of 2021 when I had the opportunity to visit St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Beecher, Ill., just days after a fire had destroyed their beloved sanctuary — a building the congregation had called home since 1865. The blaze had started in the steeple while members were gathered for their annual Oktoberfest picnic on the church grounds.

I stood near the ruins of that building, taking in what remained. Across the parking lot was the parsonage, and before long, the pastor, the Rev. Michael Stein, came out to meet me. His office was gone. His personal library was gone. And yet what struck me most was not what had been lost. Standing together on those grounds, Pastor Stein told me the church was still there, very much intact. The building was gone, he said, but Christ was still with them — and so they were still the church.

The apostle Paul was clear on this point. Writing to the congregation in Corinth, he declared: “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). The foundation of the church is not stone or timber or stained glass. It is the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who declared that even the gates of hell shall not prevail against His church (Matthew 16:18).

I think about all of this often in the context of Worship Anew’s ministry. Some who receive this magazine are no longer able to worship in a church building regularly. Perhaps illness or injury has made travel difficult. Perhaps the years have simply made Sunday mornings harder than they once were. Perhaps you have known the particular grief of watching a beloved congregation close — the building where you were married or your children were baptized now serves another purpose entirely.

We have felt that grief alongside you. Over the years, we have had the privilege of receiving stained-glass windows from two congregations whose earthly journeys came to a close: Trinity Lutheran Church in Glencoe, Ill., and Trinity Lutheran Church in Evansville, Ind. Those windows — carefully extracted from each sanctuary and restored — now reside here at Worship Anew and appear on our weekly television program. Glass that once filtered light into pews full of worshipers now filters light into a studio that carries the Gospel into the homes of people who can no longer make it to a pew. The ministry of those congregations did not end. It was transformed.

And yet, you are not outside the church. You are the church.

Christ is present and active through His Word wherever it is received — even in a living room chair, through a television set, or a devotional booklet in hand. That is precisely why Worship Anew exists: to carry that living Word to you, wherever you are. The Gospel that Paul preached in synagogues and homes and in prison is the same Gospel we carry into your home each week. No fire can touch it. No storm can topple it. No circumstance of age or illness or isolation can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).

As for Pastor Stein and the people of St. Paul’s in Beecher, they did not simply rebuild. They joined together with two neighboring congregations to form Peace Lutheran Church. Three bodies, each with their own history and memory, became one. It is the Body of Christ doing precisely what Christ calls it to do.

They are the church, and so are you. 

No matter what has been lost in your life — and the years have a way of taking things we love — that foundation holds. He who laid it “is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). And on that Rock, dear friend, we stand.