Pastor’s Corner - September 2026

Four Hours
And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
– Acts 2:42

Recently I was reading the August edition of the LCMS newspaper, The Reporter. One article discussed a congregation in Kenya, stating? On an ordinary Sunday morning in the Samburu County of Kenya, 10 women rise before the sun to make the four-hour walk to attend church in Wamba.

Did you catch that? Before dawn, ten women rise and walk four hours to church. We don’t do this in the US, do we? We will refuse to drive even forty minutes to get to a church because we deem it “too far away." Yet these women rise early and walk four hours, one way, to church.

With the help of Googlemaps, I wanted to put these “four hours” into perspective for us. So, if you live in Bridgeville and decide to walk to Canonsburg, it will take four hours. But, if your church was located in Baltimore, MD you could still drive there in four hours. In fact, if your church was located in Erie, PA you could drive up there in only two hours! Would you drive to a church in Baltimore if that was your only option? The women in Kenya walk four hours, would you drive four hours? Are you willing to drive up to Erie if that was the closest LCMS congregation around? It’s only a two hour drive, the women in Kenya walk four hours.

Most of us would not even drive an hour to church, much less walk, but we could. It all comes down to a matter of priorities and WHY we would be willing to go to such great lengths to worship with other Christians. The women in Kenya had a very specific reason why they went to church. The article continued, “10 women . . . make the four-hour walk to attend church in Wamba. There, with the rest of the congregation, they receive the gifts of faith and forgiveness that God promises to give in the Divine Service.”

Why do those women walk four hours every Sunday? They walk because they yearn to receive Christ’s forgiveness, they hunger to receive Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, they long to hear Him say to them, “I forgive you all your sins.” But those women are not alone. You are the same as them, and you can also desire to be near Christ in worship and Bible study with your fellow saints. I think the question always comes down to this: is Christ and the church a priority in your life? Christ has certainly made you a priority in His life and because of that, He longs to come to you in Word and sacrament every single Sunday.

– Pastor Grimenstein