Birthdays This Week: Gary Goodenough, Nicholas Avellaneda, Hedy Hou, Michele Eckersall

Anniversaries This Week: 

Upcoming Combined Worship: Join us for Christian Education Sunday at a Combined Worship Service on Sunday, September 28, at 10:00 AM. We will be installing Principal Michael Grasz and having our teacher/staff dedication ceremony. Potluck luncheon to follow the service.

It’s that time of year again… our Annual Athletics Clothing Drive Fundraiser is BACK and ready to make a BIG impact! This is one of our favorite—and most successful—fundraisers, and we’re calling on YOU to help us reach this year’s goal!

• 📅 DATES: August 25th – October 1st
• 🎯 GOAL: 534 tall kitchen bags!
• 📍 DROP-OFF LOCATION: In front of the school

We’re asking all families to clean out those closets and fill up tall white kitchen trash bags with the following soft items:

• 👕 Clothing (all sizes!)
• 🧺 Towels & Bedding
• 🧸 Stuffed Animals
• 👗 Shoes, Accessories, and more!

This is a great way to declutter AND directly support our Athletics Department—helping provide equipment AND finalizing LIGHTING to our newly renovated BLUE COURTS!

Our next Family Night Out event will be held at Red Robin Chino Hills on September 17. When dining in just mention the fundraiser and 20% of the sale will go to Loving Savior. If ordering online, please follow these instructions:
1 Start your order at redrobin.com/order and select the restaurant above.
2 In the menu, go to the category labeled “Fundraisers (To-Go Only)” and click on that item.
3 Click the “add” button, and then “add to bag.”
4 Add your meal items and check out.
5 Arrive at Red Robin, come in, say hi, grab your food and be on your way! If your location has curbside pick-up, we can bring it to your car too!

Join us for our annual Harvest Festival! A fun family event you won’t want to miss! It is Loving Savior’s biggest fundraiser of the year.  The event will take place Saturday, October 18th from 4:00pm – 8:00pm. We will have music, game booths, train rides, face painters, a rockwall, giant slides, wrecking ball, game truck, an interactive light battle, vendor booths, a variety of food and snack vendors, and a FABULOUS silent auction.  Pre-sale tickets to be sold soon! 25 tickets for $20.00! Rides and game booths will require tickets. The CAKE WALK and some food items will take tickets as well BUT MOST all other food vendors will take CASH or other various types of payments. Mark your calendars! Hope to see you there!!

2025 Flower & Eternal Candle Calendar

Flowers: To donate and/or dedicate flowers for a birthday, anniversary, special even or person, choose a date, print your name clearly on that line, and then under “Dedication: list what or to whom you are dedicating the flower bouquet(s). There are 2 spots available for each week. It will be noted in the News & Notes for that week. You do NOT have to donate in order to dedicate, but it does help the church if you do. Donation for each bouquet is $20. Checks should be made out to Loving Savior and placed in the flower envelopes provided and placed in the offering plate.

Eternal Candle: To donate and-or dedicate the eternal candle in remember of a person(s), special occasion or event, choose a month, print your name clearly on the line, and then your “Dedication” for the month. It will be noted in the News & Notes for the entire month. You do NOT have to donate in order to dedicate, but it does help the church if you do. Donation for a full month is $20. Check should be made out to Loving Savior, placed in the eternal candle envelopes provided, and place in the offering plate.

LCMS Stewardship Ministry Newsletter Article – September 2025

Work and Keep

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15).

Genesis chapters one and two are familiar to us. We know them best as the Creation Account. Chapter one is where we hear the familiar, “let there be…and there was” directives. Chapter two gives us the account of Adam (the man) being formed from the “Adamah” (the dust) and becoming a living being when he receives the breath of life in his nostrils. Because of this, it would be quite easy to simply lump these two chapters into the category of creation accounts.

But do not be too hasty in this! While these two chapters do faithfully relate to us the account of creation, they also give us the creation of the “office” of steward. The man, created in the image of God in Genesis 1 and formed from the dust in Genesis 2, is created for a distinct purpose. He is created to be a steward of the perfect and beautiful creation that the Lord has made! In fact, this is THE reason that man was made. He — and we — were created in the image of God to be stewards of God’s creation.

This purpose is spelled out in verse 15 of Genesis 2. The steward has one job, with two purposes. It is fitting that in the month that our nation marks Labor Day, we consider the task of steward. The first purpose of the job of steward is to work. The steward is the caretaker of the Garden. Being a steward is work! Before the fall into sin, this was not an onerous task. But it was an active thing.

Imagine being a farmer in the Garden of Eden! Work would be only harvest. No plowing. No planting. No cultivating. No weeding. The perfect garden that the Lord had made would simply produce automatically to provide for man, woman, and all living beings!

But there is a second task in verse fifteen. The word “keep” is not just a synonym for work. This second task is related to defending. This garden, holy by virtue of its being called into existence by a holy God, needed to be defended. Here is where the vocation of steward becomes priestly. The steward was to defend the perfect and holy garden from that which was unholy. Later in the Old Testament, this was the task of the priests in the tabernacle and temple. They were to defend with their lives the Holy of Holies. This too is the labor of stewardship. It is a labor that calls the steward to be willing to put the garden before life!

Stewardship was always work. It only got burdensome after the original steward, Adam, failed to defend the garden from the alien word of the serpent. But this was not a failure of harvest. It was a failure to defend the garden! As a result, all work that followed that failure became burdensome.

The steward failed but was never fired. That is why we have such an issue with stewardship to this day. We continue to live out a pre-fall vocation in a fallen world as failed stewards. That is why we in the church need to be reminded of our vocational call to be stewards. We so easily forget that this world is not ours to do with as we please. Nothing is ours. We are but stewards entrusted with managing the creation for the glory of God and the benefit of the neighbor.

It is a daunting task. But it is the one to which we have been called. We cannot do it on our own. Apart from the grace of God shared with us through Jesus, we would be burdened to the point of temporal and eternal death. But the Holy Spirit calls us by the Gospel! This Gospel connects us to the fertile garden of Christ’s Work on our behalf. Now we are stewards of that grace! The Holy Spirit works this in and through us today and every day.

This is the work of the church. It is also the work of the individual steward. The Lord has placed us in the “garden” with the same twofold purpose: work and keep! Enjoy your labor. For in the Lord, our labor is never in vain!