New pastor, Bethany Lutheran both making transitions

A born-and-bred Lutheran is the new pastor at Bigfork’s Bethany Lutheran Church, which like the pastor is making a transition to a new church affiliation.

The Rev. Christopher Miller, 31, recently moved to the area with his wife Rebecca, 30, and their 2-year-old daughter, Grace.

Miller presided over his first service at the 300-member congregation on Jan. 2.

He comes to the area from northeastern North Dakota, where he and his wife pastored two congregations.

Rebecca Miller also is an ordained minister.

The couple met while attending Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn.

Rebecca will work as a stay-at-home mother and writer, Christopher said.

“I bounce ideas off her. She sees things in my blind spots,” he said, calling his wife a “wonderful support for me.”

“I dove deeper into faith and life while I was in college,” Miller said, adding that he fought his calling along the way.

He didn’t decide he was going into the ministry until taking his final test at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn. The next summer he found himself at a seminary taking a course in Greek.

Although the churches he pastored in North Dakota were part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America organization, Miller found himself in transition.

Bethany Lutheran Church was as well.

The congregation voted twice last year to leave the ELCA. Those votes were 112-19 and 97-10, easily surpassing the two-thirds majority required.

That decision came after the organization adopted a controversial social statement on sexuality in 2009 that allows individual congregations to have homosexual ministers who are in committed relationships.

“What I learned in an ELCA congregation is different from what the ELCA is teaching now,” Miller said.

He wonders where the changing doctrine ends. “What about when that attitude reaches the resurrection?” he asked, referring to Apostle Paul’s teaching on the resurrection in First Corinthians 15:14.

“Scripture is over us. We are not over scripture,” he said.

Miller called the move to the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, or LCMC, “a good fit. I feel we can do good mission and ministry together in this place,” Miller said.

“It’s still a fairly new experiment,” he said of the 10-year-old association that has ballooned from 25 charter congregations to 538 as of last October.

“I’m excited about it,” Miller said, adding that “congregatisons are places to get fed and go out and feed others.”

The redemptive work of Christ “frees us from our lack of trust in God,” he said. “It frees us to be able to trust in God.

“We need to constantly confess our sins and hear the word of life,” he said. “God is looking to kill our old sinful self and raise us up new to be his people in the world to share his word of love and forgiveness.

“What God uses to bring the Holy Spirit into people’s lives is his word,” he added. “The word is the highway the Holy Spirit travels on.”

Bethany Lutheran Church is located at 8559 Montana 35.

Worship services are at 9:30 a.m. Sunday.

Reporter Caleb Soptelean may be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at csoptelean@dailyinterlake.com.