Welcome and thank you for visiting our website. We hope that it can be a resource to tell you a little about who we are and we hope that you will consider visiting us for worship, joining us for one of our fellowship opportunities, or participating in one of our ministries. You are always welcome and we look forward to meeting you. What I have tried to do here is put a little biographical information because some people find that interesting. Also I have included a little bit of where I am coming from as a pastor and what I hope we will achieve in our ministry together.

Thank you and God Bless. -Pastor Mike-

 

The Altoona Mirror article about the pastor can be accessed by Clicking Here

 

Rev. Michael Rhyne, Pastor - I grew up in Youngsville, NC a small town north of Raleigh, NC. Growing up I worked at our neighbors farm, Hill Ridge Farms, where I spent years picking tomatoes in the summer pumpkins in the fall.  Eventually, I was able to watch the farm transition to a family destination and Farm Tour center by the time I left for college.

I attended Bunn High School in Bunn, NC where I was one of the few people to ever be captain of both the Football and Quiz Bowl teams. I went to college at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and double majored in Communication Studies and Drama.

It was in college that I found that I really enjoyed working in the theater.  After college I spent several years working to start a theater company in Central NC called the Open Door Theater.  While I was doing that I also went into business with a friend to form a digital media production company called Learna Media.  We had a wonderful idea of figuring trying to figure out how to put videos on the internet.  That was pretty cutting edge in 1996. Although we weren’t able to make it work, websites like YouTube show that we were on the right track. 

But my heart was in the theater and so I continued acting and directing plays and that was where most of my energy went.  Eventually it became clear that if I was going to take the next step in my career I needed to go back to school.  So I auditioned for and was accepted into the MFA program at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. 

My wife and I moved to Montgomery, AL for me to attend this program.  I was there for 2 years as an actor at ASF but on the way our first daughter was born and my wife went back to school.  Needing to give my wife more time to finish her program and not wanting to move to New York with a newborn, we decided to stay in Montgomery after I completed my degree.

This actually was very fortuitous as was able to teach at several local colleges.  I various courses from acting and directing to Introduction to theater at Huntingdon College, Troy University, and Auburn  - Montgomery.  I found I really loved this work.  Had God not stepped in I am fairly certain I would still be working as a Theater Professor.

But after a few years of teaching God began to help me think about what the result or purpose of my life would be.  If I were a theater teacher I could look back and say that I worked with a lot of great people, I had a lot of fun, and I hopefully would make a few people happy along the way.  That would not have been a bad life.  But what would my life be if I took seriously what I felt to be this pull and call to go to seminary and possibly to be a pastor.  I realized that life as a pastor would allow me to tell people about Jesus and the difference he makes in our lives, it would let me walk with people and share our lives, and it would help others.  That seemed much more important than just doing plays to me.

So in the summer of 2005 I entered the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary  in Columbia, SC.  It was an experience that changed and shaped me and allowed me to work with some wonderful people along the way.  The greatest thing is that ten years ago I wouldn’t have really expected that I would be a pastor one day.  If I did I might not ever expect I would end up in Central Pennsylvania.  But God has led and guided me this far and it has been a wonderful experience.  Even the challenges have been fun. 

That is pretty much who I am and how I got here. I could not have taken this journey without the support of my wife Karen and our daughters Lillian and Ella. They remind me every day that no matter what, I am loved and supported. I know I am very lucky to have such a wonderful family.

 

Thoughts on Ministry:             

The Ministry of the church is our ministry together. It is not the Pastor’s ministry, it is not the outreach committee’s ministry, it is the ministry of all baptized believers. Because of our baptism we are each and every one of us joined eternally to the life of the resurrected one – Jesus Christ. We are eternally connected to the life of God, that is Jesus.  We are therefore to be about God’s business, Christ’s business in this world – which is the ministry of loving, caring for, and calling all of the world into the love of God. We, each and every one of us, get to be the instruments of God’s love in this world. Or to say it another way – God uses our hands and hearts to take care of all of creation.

 

So in a very broad sense what we do in the church is offer (to the entire world) a better way an alternative to what the ‘world’ will say is the way things must be. Because in the church we follow the one, Jesus, who showed us a life of giving, sacrifice, and love. Unfortunately, in the world we live in we have been sold on the idea that we have to get ours. We have been taught that the one who dies with the most toys – wins! We have been told that you ‘have to look out for number one’. All of these things come out of a human need for self preservation and to meet our basic needs – but they lead to a worldview that makes the individual (me) the most important person and breeds a philosophy of selfishness.

 

God says that there is a better way. This is what we see in Christ. Christ shows us that God’s vision of life  is about loving, serving, and giving to others. In Christ we see that it isn’t about looking out for number one but about giving ourselves away for the sake of the world. We get to love God’s creation and welcome all into this life with God.  Because, we know that in Christ our eternal life is secured – we are saved by the great gift of God who is Jesus. 

 

So my job as the pastor is to walk with others as we seek to live this life in Christ, to grow in our faith, to deepen our relationship with God, and to serve the world. We all get to be the frontline troops for the kingdom of God. We get to show the world an alternative, to show what difference Jesus makes.

 

And thanks be to God that we don’t do this on our own. God is with us. Our baptism unites us eternally to the resurrected life of Jesus, which means that the water of baptism we wash on a Jesus that can never wash off. We are sustained and strengthened in this life by our encounters with the Word and through the Holy Sacraments.  We are given the each other, the Body of Christ, to walk with us in our lives and help in our struggles and triumphs. Most importantly we remember that Christ promised his eternal presence in Matthew 28 when he reminds us that he will be with us, “until the end of the age.”  God is here, Christ is here, the Holy Spirit is here leading us, guiding us, and calling us more deeply into the cruciform life. We are God’s people here and now and God leads us in this journey.