Today we wer privileged to worship twice. Our mornig began at the Christian Media Centre worshiping with the Vaan Malar congregation. Instead of their "regular" liturgy, today they used a worship form that utilized traditional Tamil music. This form involved a cantor chanting and the congregation echoing.

Previously, the liturgy was, more or less, a "Tamil-ized" version of The Lutheran Hymnal's old order of Matins. Today's worship seemed more "foreign"... outside the Scripture Readings and Dan's sermon... oh, and the Offering... nothing could be equated to a Western/Lutheran liturgy.

After a cup of Indian coffee and a bit of fellowship, the four of us and the Davids headed about 35km out of Chennai to worship with the St. Luke congregation, a mission plant from Pilgrim Lutheran in Chennai.

Over the past couple years, Trinity Lutheran, in Paso Robles, has sponsored ten mission planters through Mission India. Seven of these mission plants have become Independent congregations and three have become Lutheran congregations.

St. Luke worships in a 20foot by 40foot thatch building. After three or so years, ther are 26 families celebrating their life in Christ. They own the land they are on and are hopeful of building a more permanent building soon (after all, during the monsoon season snakes sometimes join them for worship... though the pastor assured us no one had ever been hurt... Thank You, Lord, for widely scattered thunderstorms today... very widely scattered!)

The pastor's mesage was based on Ephesians 5:1--"Be Imitators of Christ." Seeing the joy of Christ on the faces of the folks at St. Luke as they celebrated Holy Communion and on the faces of the people at Vaan Malar as they sang traditional Tamil music is the highest reward for the "imitations" being made by the people in these two places... and by the people of Pilgrim, Chennai, who are planting congregations... and by the people of Trinity, Paso Robles, who are supporting and sponsoring the mission plants!

May God be praised and His children served as each of us seek ways to "Be Imitators of Christ!"