HELLO AND WELCOME

Welcome to Shepherd of the Desert Evangelical Lutheran Church’s website situated in beautiful Sun City, Arizona. Our church was the first Lutheran congregation established in an active retirement community in the U.S. We gather around God’s Word and the Holy Sacraments, with traditional worship, each weekend. We extend to you an invitation to worship and fellowship with us.

OUR VISION

“To be an intergenerational congregation that puts the Love of Christ into action from one generation to another and from our community to our world.”

OUR MISSION

Our ministry is centered on being “Created, Redeemed and Called by God…as we reach out to ALL by sharing our gifts and the unconditional love of Jesus.”

RECENT NEWS

Peace be with You!

I am writing this in June for July but June does not seem much like June and I expect July will not seem much like July…The Grace of our Lord God in Christ Jesus is Yours!

Things have not seemed the same since mid March. Then again, as I remember conversations with my parents and grandparents things did not seem the same to them (as I was growing up) which I had considered simply the way they were…if not “always” were. This “changing” could be said about school, work, economy, neighbors, and neighborhoods, the clubs, the restaurants, the barber, the beautician, the bars and yes, the church.

“The “Changing church”: beyond denominational, beyond the loss of the distinctions of Christianity… beyond the renewed individualism, beyond the culture we live in which makes it hard for people to imagine being led by God. Then as now, heightened by the pandemic and the changing ethos of this day as opposed to 1867( after the Civil War and the reconstruction with the imposition of “Jim Crow”) or 1967 (the race riots, integration, Vietnam War protests…) or you pick and name the time….the reversal is perhaps inane if not simply pointless.

What we must be clear about is what God’s promises in Christ are for us, for our neighbors (from God’s understanding of neighbors. Luke 10) and to bring those promises alive. The promises are to be brought alive through our living, through our loving that all ordinary and extraordinary people can understand and so embody that love reflected of God in Christ, made real by the Holy Spirit. It is through the One who is the same (in an ever changing world) yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever.

And on that my hope is built on nothing less… So Brothers and Sisters in Christ What are you afraid of for God is in Love with You!

Blessings Pastor

Our church office will be closed on Monday July 6th