Talk Stigma

All right, I guess I'm live. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the live stream today. My name is Pastor Seth Perry and I am a pastor here at Elam Lutheran Church in Scandia, Minnesota. And I'm here to talk about breaking traditions and breaking rules. That's what we are talking about today because for some reason on November 3, we are setting up a trunk or treat right here at my church. And this is where I'm a pastor. I'll give you a little shot here, the church building and everything. Let's have a look.

There it is. There's the steeple. We're out here in the countryside. I live urban and I'm a pastor in the country. That's who I am. I'm also in recovery from addiction and. Hi, Jules. Welcome to the live stream. Pastor Seth here, make sure you say hi. And as we gather a. Gather a whole crew of people. Good afternoon to you, Jules. Let me know how you're doing. Check in with me and tell me how your Sunday has been so far. I'd love to hear that from you. And I'm out here at Trunk or treat. The 1 o'clock bells of the church are going and we're doing a trunk or treat on November 3rd is well past Halloween.

So we're kind of breaking some traditions, I guess. Right. We've got a bouncy castle here, too. I mean, isn't that great? I think that we're about to start at 1:30 today. We're about to start. So first of all, the tradition of trunk or treat at a church. I mean, that's a newer tradition that people would do something like trunk or treat at a church. Am I right? I think so. I would say that's more of the advent of about the last decade, 15, 20 years maybe. Halloween used to be something you definitely would not celebrate at a church.

But here we are. We're doing it. But also, I had to make the decision. We had a huge Sunday last Sunday. We had a huge Sunday last Sunday. A lot of people were out last Sunday. And, you know, at our Service on the 27th, and I knew it was going to be a busy, busy service. And so what I did was I said, let's, you know, have trunk or treat in November. Why not? And so here we are. That's what we're doing. And Jules, I'm glad you're taking a break to listen to me live. Thank you so much. Make sure you hit love or like on the.

On the app. So I'll be getting to my story in just A moment, but I just wanted to make sure you saw all the trunks coming together here out in Scandia, Minnesota. All right, so here's the deal. Traditions in churches and in society in general, they can sometimes be harmful, and we continue them for no good reason, really. So I'll give you some examples. Some church traditions, like mandatory classes to become members of the church as adults, something like confirmation, the way that it was taught, and everything like that.

I mean, a lot of people who are seniors now talk about when they were taught about being a church or how to be church. They said in personal development. Also, the LGBTQ community. You know, my brother grew up in the church, and he came out when he was at St Olaf College, a Lutheran college here in Minnesota. And that was something that completely changed my family's outlook on gender and sexuality. And so that's something where this church is just beginning that work. And that's, you know, I'm out in the country.

We're. We're a little bit behind the times, right? And that's one way where I see new life and progress. You can also suggest ways that institutions can change. Jules or anyone else who's watching live, let me know. And a few other areas that I'm thinking about are colonialism. That's something that churches have been speaking about in my formation as a pastor. Like colonialism as a whole concept. Something that really is just not even talked about or understood, that I myself can acknowledge who I am as a settler.

I am a settler. I come from a lineage of people that came from Europe and Scandinavia, and we settled this land. So that's something that I need to be aware of as well, because here's the point. All this has to do with healing and healing your neighbor and healing the people in your community that need it the most. We need to turn our heads away from our traditions and look outward at our communities, our neighbors, other cultures, and other expressions and identities. That is the crucial work that I think churches can work hand in hand with other organizations because it's often that in church world, folks will say, I need to be in opposition to other people that think differently than I.

And we see that all over the Internet, all over YouTube, all over Twitter. You know what? X. I guess. You know what? Let's just not worry about that, because we're in a space here on Cadre where we're doing something different. Turn to your neighbor. Turn to the person who needs it. Turn to someone who has a different identity or maybe just does things differently in their life differently than you and say, what do we have in similar? What do we have similar? What do we have in common? And how can we work together?

That's my encouragement to you all. So I'm going to give a little walk around here. Hey, guys, do you want to go on camera and say, hey? No. You're not even enthusiastic about this. Here we are. That's great. Awesome. Bounce house. Not for me. That was a lot of work. No, bounce house was too much. Yeah. Oh, okay. Look at. Look at this. Oh, that's a good. That is really good. That's awesome. Oh, so my brother was in Mexico for that. I.