Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Church is a confessional Lutheran congregation with rich, liturgical worship, enveloped in the ancient Christian mysteries; we’re a people who gather weekly to receive God’s precious gifts of faith and forgiveness, as God gives them to us in very perceptible ways.
As such, we’re not caught up with all the latest spiritual trends, with all the flashes-in-the-pan vying for your attention. We’re committed to preserving and passing on what matters most. If you only like new things, if you crave something cooler than the old-fashioned things your grandparents used to do, if you want your Sunday morning worship to feel like your Friday night rock concert, if you want your children shuttled away during the service, sheltered from the worship life of the congregation, if you want to listen to sermons that teach you how to be a better you, if you think a congregation should be made up of a bunch of holy people, Bethany won’t give you any of those things.
If, however, you want to experience the patterns of worship the Church has used for millennia, if you think Sunday morning should be like nothing else in the rest of your week, if you’re willing to admit that there are things that cannot be completely comprehended by the mind, that must be apprehended by faith, if you’re tired of self-help sermons, if you think screens and video clips are for movie theaters, if you want your children to worship beside you and receive the same gifts you do in Church, if you know you need God’s precious gift of forgiveness, here we are.
We’re not here to tell you to come be holy like us, but rather to invite you to come be a sinner like us. Here, in a little brick church, set at a strange angle to Old Collinsville Road, next door to Centerfield mini-golf and go-carts, Jesus gathers His people together to deliver to them what they cannot live without: His forgiveness.
We’re a community of diverse people who nevertheless have one thing in common: our shared need for forgiveness. Even if you don’t yet know that’s what you need, it’s exactly what you’ll find here. Every week. For you.