Focus on Fellowship
Photos from Zion’s Mardi Gras Luncheon and Bingo Event
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm on Sunday, February 15, 2025
This event included delicious food like jambalaya, po’boys, salad, rolls, soft drinks, coffee, king cake, bread pudding and more. After everyone had their fill of Mardi Gras-style food, we played bingo with a wide array of prized awarded. Thanks to all who planned this event, set up, cooked, and cleaned up. You helped guarantee a great time for Zion’s members!
Click on photos to enlarge and see the complete image
Photos from Zion’s Mardi Gras Luncheon and Bingo Event
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm on Sunday, February 15, 2025
This event included delicious food like jambalaya, po’boys, salad, rolls, soft drinks, coffee, king cake, bread pudding and more. After everyone had their fill of Mardi Gras-style food, we played bingo with a wide array of prized awarded. Thanks to all who planned this event, set up, cooked, and cleaned up. You helped guarantee a great time for Zion’s members!
Don’t miss our next two fellowship opportunities
Vocatio: Retreat
Vocatio: Retreat Spring 2026
College students and second-career men and women considering service as a pastor, deaconess, missionary or chaplain are invited to Vocatio: Retreat April 12–15, 2026, at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. This distinctively Lutheran retreat offers an introduction to life as a seminarian, as participants spend time in God’s Word and join in sessions with the Seminary's renowned faculty. Register by March 22 at www.csl.edu/vocatio-retreat or by scanning the QR code.
College students and second-career men and women considering service as a pastor, deaconess, missionary or chaplain are invited to Vocatio: Retreat April 12–15, 2026, at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. This distinctively Lutheran retreat offers an introduction to life as a seminarian, as participants spend time in God’s Word and join in sessions with the Seminary's renowned faculty. Register by March 22 at www.csl.edu/vocatio-retreat or by scanning the QR code.
VBS 2026: Save the Date!
VBS week is set for July 13-17, 2026
for kids aged 4 yrs—4th grade
Please mark your calendars!
Volunteers are needed!!!
There are lots of opportunities to help in hands-on roles with children, and with behind-the-scenes tasks!!
Contact the church office to get involved: 412-221-4776
VBS week is set for July 13-17, 2026
for kids aged 4 yrs—4th grade
Please mark your calendars!
Volunteers are needed!!!
There are lots of opportunities to help in hands-on roles with children, and with behind-the-scenes tasks!!
Contact the church office to get involved: 412-221-4776
Online Content from “The Lutheran Witness”
A series of articles published in The Lutheran Witness helps Christians develop a better framework for understanding the digital world, responding to it, and living humanely and faithfully within it. Written by Josh Pauling – a father, husband, classical educator and vicar at an LCMS church in North Carolina – the articles in the series focus on: Parenting in the Digital World; Navigating the Digital World as a Young Adult; the Church in the Digital Age; and Managing Digital Tools as an Adult.
The first article in the series begins ...
"In recent years, there has been a significant rise in public concern about the impacts of the digital revolution on human life — everything from rising anxiety to declining attention. Increasing numbers of people are now willing to acknowledge we have a problem. But what are we to do about it?"
Read this engaging series HERE
A series of articles published in The Lutheran Witness helps Christians develop a better framework for understanding the digital world, responding to it, and living humanely and faithfully within it. Written by Josh Pauling – a father, husband, classical educator and vicar at an LCMS church in North Carolina – the articles in the series focus on: Parenting in the Digital World; Navigating the Digital World as a Young Adult; the Church in the Digital Age; and Managing Digital Tools as an Adult.
The first article in the series begins ...
"In recent years, there has been a significant rise in public concern about the impacts of the digital revolution on human life — everything from rising anxiety to declining attention. Increasing numbers of people are now willing to acknowledge we have a problem. But what are we to do about it?"
Read this engaging series HERE
Pastor’s Corner
“For Us”
Our Lenten theme during our midweek services is entitled “for us.” It is a line from the hymn, “O Love, How Deep” (LSB #544). During Lent, we do reflect upon our sins, and we remember Christ has called us to repent of those sins. But more than just concentrating upon us, the season of Lent is especially a time for us to focus upon Christ.
If you have a moment, try reading through this hymn and reflecting upon all the work Jesus has done for you. This hymn alone mentions that Jesus has done something “for us” on fourteen different occasions. Here are just a few:
For us baptized, for us He bore
His holy fast and hungered sore;
For us temptation sharp He knew;
For us the tempter overthrew.
Click the link below to read the complete article …
“For Us”
Our Lenten theme during our midweek services is entitled “for us.” It is a line from the hymn, “O Love, How Deep” (LSB #544). During Lent, we do reflect upon our sins, and we remember Christ has called us to repent of those sins. But more than just concentrating upon us, the season of Lent is especially a time for us to focus upon Christ.
If you have a moment, try reading through this hymn and reflecting upon all the work Jesus has done for you. This hymn alone mentions that Jesus has done something “for us” on fourteen different occasions. Here are just a few:
For us baptized, for us He bore
His holy fast and hungered sore;
For us temptation sharp He knew;
For us the tempter overthrew.
Always remember, everything Jesus went through in His baptism, fasting and temptation was not done for Himself, it was done “for us”.
For us by wickedness betrayed,
For us, in crown of thorns arrayed,
He bore the shameful cross and death;
For us He gave His dying breath.
During Lent we focus not just upon our sins, but more importantly, we focus upon Christ and especially what He has done to combat our sins through His death on the cross.
For us He rose from death again;
For us he went on high to reign;
For us He sent His Spirit here
To guide, to strengthen, and to cheer.
Even Christ’s resurrection was done “for us.” I pray for all of us that the remaining time we have in this Lenten season can be one in which we focus more and more upon Christ. Everything He did in this world was “for us.” If you ever forget, or just want to remember better, try singing the above hymn every day during Lent, read it, or prayerfully reflect upon it.
VIDEO: Sunday, March 8, 2025 - Complete Service
Each service at Zion Lutheran Church (normally the first of our two Sunday services) is streamed LIVE on our YouTube channel. These streams are for Sunday’s, Wednesday’s, Lenten, Advent, and special services. The entire service is streamed from beginning-to-end. Weddings and Funerals can also be streamed, if requested in advance.
Audio: Readings & Sermon for Sunday, March 8, 2026
This audio-only file includes all the readings from scripture, along with the sermon — and when available, the announcements, adult choir, men’s choir, and/or bell choir. Also posted along with the audio file is the text for all the scripture readings, and a link to the current bulletin, and our YouTube channel if you prefer to watch the LIVE Stream.
View the bulletin for Sunday, March 8, 2026
Archive of AUDIO “Readings & Sermons”
Archive of VIDEO “Complete Service”
Archive of Bulletins
Old Testament Reading -- Exodus 17:1–7
All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
Epistle Reading -- Romans 5:1–8
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the fourth chapter
[Jesus] came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8(For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
Quartet -- See Now (8:00 a.m.)