What if God is a painter? What would that look like? He would paint creation. What if God wanted to repaint? He would paint a new creation. We are a new creation in Jesus Christ/ Today we are celebrating the 45th anniversary of Peace Lutheran Church. Although this congregation was organized in 1962 our corner stone date is 1963. Peace Lutheran began as mission congregation in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS). They project was a church building with a large piece of land, for the purpose of building a school. Our congregation was started with big ambitions; ambitions don’t get much higher than having a church and a school together. The LCMS was the first mainline protestant congregation to be targeted by the fundamentalist movement, In reaction to this the Concordia Seminary professors broke away and left the LCMS. They walked out over theological issues and began The Seminary in Exile later called Seminex. This created a loud discord within all the LCMS where the laity had to decide where they stood on these issues. This congregation was part of the 25-30 per cent of the LCMS that chose to follow the Seminex professors and became the Associated Evangelical Lutheran Church. The main dispute was over the authority of the Bible. The Augsburg Confession begins with God. The Fundamentalists say that the Bible is the first authority. Jesus is the cornerstone and Jesus Christ is the Word of God. The Bible is important because it bares Jesus Christ to us. The AELC realized the futility of having yet another Lutheran denomination and they sought out unity with the LCA and the ALC, which were two distinctly different facets of Lutheranism. Finally, in 1988 all three Synods merged to form the ELCA which we are now. After the beloved pastor Earl Merz left Peace Lutheran an explosion happened; a fight broke out. There was a large group the was hoping to return to the LCMS and when that didn’t happen they left in anything but a peaceful manner. The\y left and formed Christ our Savior LCMS. Later another group became angry over various issues and left and formed Good Shepherd ELCA who are having a ground breaking ceremony today. Finally the big dream died when the land was sold to Holland Christian Schools. In the book, Unbinding the Gospel a former fundamentalist pastor who is now part of a mainline protestant congregation says that mainline Christians do not understand the power they have in the Gospel and they don’t share it. They have a case of Gospel Constipation. We like most mainline Christians are hesitant to talk about our faith. We have communion every Sunday to see, taste and feel that Christ is truly here and truly leading us and truly present with us.