“I needed a place to be with God again. I watched the services on YouTube for a few weeks and decided I was ready. I loved how the service was so clear to me and helped me understand how the community works together. It seemed friendly, not assuming that I needed to be obligated to join in anything,” said Mary Lou Aranda, who recently started attending the 9:30am Sunday worship services at Advent Lutheran Church in Morgan Hill.
She has, in fact, become involved in serving at the Community Table, a ministry of the congregation that provides to-go meals for anyone who asks for them each Tuesday evening, 5-6pm.
Fifty years into its history, Advent Lutheran remains a congregation shaped by people who come to worship God and respond to the community of which we are a part.
This past weekend the congregation, located at 16870 Murphy Ave., held several events to welcome back former members and friends, and to celebrate its 50 years. A dinner and program highlighted its history and the involvement of so many people in so many ways in this community.
The Rev. Gary Berkland, mission developer and founding pastor of the congregation, told of six founding families who sought to have a Lutheran church in Morgan Hill. One of those families was that of Dr. Lyle Siverson, who was the Superintendent of Schools in Morgan Hill at the time, and his wife, Ellen, a kindergarten teacher.
At the anniversary program on Oct. 15, their grandson, Rolf Siverson, and his daughter, Ellen, played “Blest Be the Ties the Bind” on violin and celeste. Lyle and Ellen’s son, Allen, came from Sacramento, and, along with Jennifer Hamilton, presented an original “Old Crow” skit Allen had written for the occasion.
Emcees Peter McElheny and Norman Osumi invited various people who had been involved in various ministries within the congregation and community to stand, and everyone was on their feet several times. The program included poetry and music—including a brass sextet from the South Valley Symphony, which is also celebrating their 50th anniversary and has held a number of concerts at Advent Lutheran.
The program also included a tribute to Christian Music Theatre and invited participants to envision the new ways in which we can support the joyful development of children.
Rev. Berkland recalled times when five churches cooperatively held a single Vacation Bible School for children outdoors during the summers. The congregation included the first director of the Morgan Hill Parent-Child Nursery School, a parent-child cooperative preschool that has met at Advent Lutheran since 1975.
Both Rev. Berkland and Allen Siverson stated that music has always been very important in the life and worship of this congregation.
“Music remains important to us,” said Rev. Anita Warner, the current Pastor at Advent Lutheran who began serving the congregation in 1994. “We have also continued to evolve in relation to community gifts and needs.”
Voices College-Bound Language Academy, a fully bilingual public charter school, has had some grade levels meet on Advent’s campus in recent years, as it awaits the completion of a new campus for the coming school year.
The congregation is a Reconciling in Christ congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. “As a congregation, we welcome and include people of all sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions as a part of our church’s life,” said Warner. “This is aligned with our understanding of the gospel of Jesus.”
The celebratory worship this past Sunday morning included a newly commissioned choral piece, “Rejoice in the Lord,” by the composer Kenneth DeJong, who came from Seattle to conduct the choir. In the sermon, Rev. Warner said, “Christians are taught how to hold two truths together: The cross of Christ and the resurrection of Christ; that we are at once, simultaneously, sinner and saint; that the scriptures contain both the law and the gospel.
“We hold together that this has been a devastating week of killing and trauma in Israel and Palestine—and that we are gathered for a weekend when we celebrate and give thanks for our past 50 years and imagine our future,” Warner continued. “We hold together our sadness over the grave illness of someone we love—and rejoicing in the beauty and creativity of the love of this community.”
The service closed with a blessing of the solar panels that the congregation has recently installed as a part of its care for the environment.
The congregation is actively involved in the Interfaith CommUNITY of South County, and those who led the blessing of the solar panels with Rev. Warner included Rabbi Faith Joy Dantowitz of Congregation Emeth, Aun from the Dhammakaya Meditation Center, Father Jose Antonio Rubio of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Gilroy, and the Rev. Lee Tyler, an ordained Presbyterian minister.
