Author: Rod Anderson

It was midsommar in Sweden when the phone rang at 4 a.m. in our Stockholm hotel room.  Because we were just 500 miles from the Arctic Circle on the first day of summer in this land of the “midnight sun,” it was bright as day outside our window when our son Nathan called. “Hi, Dad … I thought you’d want to know Pastor Paul Youngdahl from Mount Olivet Lutheran Church died today.”   I didn’t fall back to sleep after that message but got up early to bring the message to our Gustavus Adolphus College president, who was leading the college board and…

Since 1876 the Cannon Falls Beacon has covered almost every happening in town and the surrounding townships, including two counties that border the city limits. After checking the obituaries, I usually turn to the ‘Yesteryear’ full-page recapitulation of area news stories from 15, 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago, where I often find a person, place or event that sparks a special memory. We’ve been able to do some reaching-back stories in this all-new EP Local News, but we don’t have a continuous, uninterrupted archive from which to draw. Memorial Day beckons us to very special community archives for…

As I write today, on April 24, it’s Eastern Orthodox Easter Sunday in Ukraine, one week later than on our Church Calendar; in the east, based on the Julian calendar rather than on the Gregorian calendar in the west. The Easter faith is the same, with just the timing being different. With the smoke and ashes of battle in the air and ruins of bombed-out buildings all around, I’m left wondering how believers can gather for worship in churches and even how delicate Ukrainian Easter eggs survive. Yet pictures we see and stories we read tell of a resilient people…

Early in the morning before the dawn on the first day of spring, my dad died 25 years ago … and amazingly, my brother Don who lived in Florida, was also there with all six of us boys in the family! On this special anniversary, it’s a Sunday, remembering the Lord’s Resurrection before the dawn on the first day of the week … and this year, brother Don is there with Dad again, in heaven! Praise the Lord! Brother Brad, who still lives with his family in his own house on our farm, remembers getting called in the middle of…

The case can certainly be made that our society, and even the whole world, has been grieving our way through this global pandemic together. Why wouldn’t we turn to classic and seminal writings on grief by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross? She delineates five stages we process when we experience loss — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  We can recognize we’re on this grief journey when we hear ourselves saying, “Oh no! Why me! What if? Poor me! and My life will go on!” It’s the “What if” bargaining stage that asks tricky questions like, What if the cancer had been…

Ask me, “Which is the longest season?” I’d answer liturgically, “Pentecost.” It’s longer than Easter, which is seven weeks; Lent, which is six weeks; Advent, which is four weeks; or Christmas, which is 12 days. You might answer, “spring, summer, fall or winter,” but they’re all the same — each 13-week seasons. Or your answer might even be about the fishing or hunting season, growing season or harvest season, but in this article, I’m focused on the NFL 2021-2022 season. Have you noticed that the regular football season expanded from 16 to 17 games this year? Who cares? Well, players…

My wife, Julane and I lived in Arizona for a full year of seminary internship in a wonderful congregation learning and growing under the supervision of a much-loved pastor friend and a helpful team of ministry mentors. Our first child was born and baptized there and countless other great memories with forever-friends keep drawing us back for visits in the desert. Over the years we’ve gravitated to a favorite house of worship called The Casa on the campus of the Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale where the liturgical music is engaging, the message is uplifting and the community is always so welcoming.…

There is hyperlocal news happening every day in Eden Prairie. All of us working and writing to bring it to you in the Eden Prairie Local News find great joy in the effectiveness and efficiency of modern technology getting the message through cyberspace on the information highway straight to you! Every day I’m in awe at the unimaginable possibility of words and images flying from my fingertips on this keyboard instantly to our ears and eyes … local news, gone viral! God has been bringing “hyperlocal news” to my mind in these recent weeks leading up to Christmas. Hyperlocal news…

It’s as simple as breathing in and breathing out – respiration. Inhaling and exhaling are so natural and voluntary that we don’t even need to think about them, but they are the very definition of life. But COVID-19 has forced us to do just that – think about it. Masking our respiration has restricted the oxygen that brings inspiration and life itself to our lungs and our whole bodies as well. And masking our respiration has restricted the aerosol that emanates from our voices, adding risk to others around us, through both our words and our songs. The well-loved hymn titled “My Life Goes on in Endless Song” asks in its refrain, “How can I keep from…

For most of my 47 years as a pastor, the nearly universal practice across most Christian denominations has been the celebration of World Communion Sunday every first Sunday in October. Not so much in the past several years. The tradition was begun in 1930 by Hugh Thomson Kerr, a Presbyterian minister whose goal was to bring churches together in a service of Christian unity in which each congregation experienced a sense of interconnection one with another. It was then adopted throughout his denomination and subsequently spread to other denominations. World Communion Sunday offered individual worshippers and congregations a distinctive opportunity…