Check out some Sermons I have preached, and a condensed Plan of Salvation which may be useful for new or more mature Christians.

My story began in Langford, South Dakota. I have already written about Langford elsewhere on this site For those of you not well versed in the characteristics of the Web, you can get there by clicking on the word "Langford" in the previous line. You will notice that it is underlined and is a different color than the preceding word. This is generally true of pointers to other places on this site or other places on the Internet.

I have come to the conclusion that the most important aspects in my life have the following priorities.

1. Relationship with God.

2. Relationship with my Wife.

3. Relationship with my Children.

4. Relationship with my Church.

5. Relationship with my Employer.

Separating God and Church is relatively difficult since we often act as though our relationship with God occurs only when involved with Church. The Church has its own unique place in helping us to define and continue our relationship with God. Martin Luther was quite adamant in his declaration that the Church belongs to the Secular world and not the Spiritual. I am sure that many of our experiences with the Church would confirm this declaration. In order to describe the process of arriving at my current relationship with God I will certainly have to include the participation of the Church in leading me to my current understanding of my Relationship with God.

Other than the Church, my mother was the primary influence that led me in my journey to a spiritual destination. There has never been a time in the 71 plus years of my life which I can remember that I did not believe in and in some manner feel the presence of God. The three churches which were most instrumental in my early life are now all together in a Parish called the Langford Churches

I am a little fuzzy about the details, but I believe that I was baptized in the Falnes Church which was a slightly shorter version of the picture below and was located a short distance west in the middle of the cemetery.

Since we moved to the big city of Langford when I was about six months old, I don't really remember much of Falnes from that time. My mother was born and raised about 3 miles from Falnes, so a number of my cousins grew up there.

My earliest memories of Church are all from what we used to call The Langford Norwegian Lutheran Church and is now Langford Evangelical.

When I was growing up the church looked much different than the picture. This church was built in 1959 after I had left Langford and joined the Navy. The little piece of green, which you see on the bottom left hand corner of the picture, would have been directly in front of the old Church.

The old Church had one characteristic which made life more fun for teenage boys. There were a Pair of Evergreen trees - one on each side of the Entrance Hall - which were believed to be occupied by bats. A fact which we often used to scare the girls. If the truth were known it would probably be that one bat was once observed in a tree.

I remember the physical details of the church much less than the Ladies who taught our Sunday School class. I was always kind of weird as I was growing up. I not only liked Public School, but I also enjoyed the Sunday School classes, the group worship sessions, and the Picnic each spring.

I remember years later, when I was in my early 40's, leading a class for Sunday School teachers. One of the teachers asked me "What is the most important thing that a Sunday School teacher can do for her children". She was probably expecting something more profound, but I answered, "Let them remember how much fun they had in your class". I am not suggesting that discicpline, the teachings of Christ, etc. are not important, but working out our own salvation is a life long process and will be much more likely to happen if we enjoy our time in Sunday School and Church.

As I mentioned, my mother had 10 brothers and sisters living in the Langford area. I was able to spend most of my summers on the farm with two Aunts - Emma and Mary. While at Mary's we were involved with Falnes. Emma married a Swede, my Uncle Andrew, so while spending the summers on their farm we attended Highlanda. We also used to accompany Emma and Mary to "Ladies Aid" which was held in various farms in the area.

The point of all of the above is that I was fortunate to have a number of people and churches involved in my growing up years. I also believe that growing up in a small town has a very different influence on one's moral and religious beliefs than a large metropolitan area. Not only did I live in a number of homes, but in a small town we have the advantage of knowing about families in a much broader segment of society than in a large city or suburb where the tendency is to associate mainly with people of your particular place in society.

I also tended to have a different set of companions, depending upon the activities involved, for example, academics, sports, church, and play. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, church activity tended to be much more female oriented. This trend seems to have continued through most of my life. The Langford Churches tended to be run by women with men putting in the appearance of being in charge. Generally women were not able to vote in churches during my growing up years - they could still not vote in the Lutheran Church we attended during the '60s.

One of my role models was Pastor Oscar Rud. His son Paul was about my age, so we spent quite a lot of time at their house when we were in grade school. I always thought Pastor Rud was someone who I would like to use as a Role Model. But as I was determining a vocation, I had the feeling that we were somehow not in that class of people, and also the need to make sure that I would never be poor took over.

My perception is that my religious beliefs and activities during the first dozen or so years in my life were mostly there out of respect (or possibly fear) for the women involved in shaping my life. The first defining moment in my religious journey happened when I was about 13 and attending Bible camp at NeSoDak. To be a little more specific, I believe this was the first time that a Religious Experience was more directly focused between my perception of God and me individually. While we were singing I Need Thee Every Hour I had a definite change in my personal perception of a Spiritual connection with God which has stayed with me to this day.

I have always remembered that special time which occurred during that service at NeSodak. But, time had dulled my remembrance of one of the other reasons that made that time special. About 45 years or so later, we were at my Sister's resort on Roy Lake in South Dakota. We were sitting in the living quarters when Anna came out and asked me if I remembered a girl from Britton who was at Bible Camp with me. I did not, so Anna embarrassed me by saying, "Well she remembers you", as she led me out into the store to meet this "girl" of 45 years ago.

She introduced me to this nice lady who later joined us while we were singing with the Strand musicians. As she and her sisters were singing for us, it dawned on me that she was likely the one singing I Need Thee Every Hour beside me back at NeSodak. And as I recall, she also was the only girl who could beat me in Ping Pong! In those days we couldn't sit by a girl in the Langford Church because the males were on the right side of the church and the females on the left.

Most of the Hoines men were obviously men of faith, but were not at all vocal about their relationship with Jesus. Actually they were not very vocal about anything in public. I seem to have inherited some of that reticence as well, and have been hesitant to express my Christian belief outside the refuge of the Church.

During High School my time was mostly taken up with school, sports, and other activities and I seemed to have different sets of friends on Sundays then during the week. Again, there were generally many more girls involved in Church Activities than boys. I remember being President of the Luther League when I was a High School Senior and all of the other officers were girls - and of course that's not all bad.

I have been procrastinating for awhile on this project, probably because the early part of my Spiritual Life was mostly directed by others. As an Adult I become more responsible for what I think and do, both the good and the bad. Fortunately, I believe God has a much more objective way of dealing with the human weaknesses than we mortals. Living a life exactly as Jesus did is very difficult and personally, I believe, impossible. As a corporate church we also believe - or at least we did believe - the following which we confessed each Sunday at morning services.

Most merciful God, we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. We have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name. Amen.

The reason for joining was not necessarily pure, but the result was great! One of my shipmates in Boot Camp heard that a very limited number of Trainees would be accepted into the Naval Training Center's Choir if they could pass the Audition. We decided to give it a try mainly to give us the opportunity to leave the Basic Training area one night a week when practically everyone else could not.

Fortunately the Choir Director let me sing the only song which I had ever sang solo in front of a crowd, We Three Kings. I had sung that with a quartet in a High School Chorus concert and sang one verse alone. So we both passed and became the newest members of the Blue Jacket Choir. After boot camp I went for further training on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, and was accepted into the Blue Jacket Choir there as well.

One of the lessons learned during this period of time was that being associated with a Church Activity makes it much easier to live a Christian Life. There are at least three practical reasons for this:

1. The association requires a commitment and gets you to Church.
2. You become friends with those who have like interests and beliefs.
3. Being known as one who regularly is involved in Christian activities tends to decrease the number of opportunities to participate in non-Christian activities.

At my first tour of duty in the Navy, Memphis Naval Air Station, we had an "Electronic Shack" which was somewhat isolated from the base. Those of us who were single tended to spend much of our free time there as well as our designated working hours. During this time, I began to figure out that some of the thoughts and beliefs that seemed to be prevalant back in Langford did not seem to bear out in the larger world. Many of my relatives and probably my mother as well seemed to believe that Lutherans were the closest things to "real" Christians, Presbyterians and Methodists were probably next - some were not too sure of the Presbyterians, they had Santa Claus in Church at Christmas time. Catholics seemed to be somewhere in a completely different world and were not to be trusted - after all they believed the Pope was God.

This was an area where my parents had differing opinions. My father would often have to do some work at the Catholic Church in Eden - about a half hours drive. He would usually enjoy a meal with the Priest and his housekeeper while there, and my mother would generally chide him about associating with those people. We had one Catholic family in town when I was young, but they moved out of town while I was in the early years of Grade School so the entire town was either actively or passively Protestant.

Of my three best friends in Memphis, two were Catholic and the other had no Church affiliation, but was probably the most moral of the four of us. This seemed to be a trend in the succeeding years in the Navy and later in College and early work life where my best friends tended to be Catholic. In one sense, this probably points out a failing of the Main Line Protestant Churches. We tended then and probably still do not "indoctrinate" young people with as strong a sense of morality as the Catholic Church. Our emphasis on "Saved by Faith, not works" causes us to often hold back on teaching morality because of the Judgmental nature of teaching right and wrong. We forget that even though Martin Luther emphasized "Faith not Works" in his teaching and preaching, he spent his entire life dedicated to "Works".

Just in case I have not made myself clear, my point is that since I tended to be far more conservative in my beliefs than the average young person, and believed that "Works" follow "Faith", it seemed more Catholics had a set of values close to mine than Protestants.

During my transfer from Memphis to a ship in Newport, Rhode Island, I rode to New York with one of my Memphis friends and spent the Labor Day weekend with his family in a predominately Italian Catholic neighborhood of the Bronx (Remember this was in the 50's). I had a most enjoyable weekend - even attended Mass with the family on Sunday morning.

During the remainder of my time in the Navy, I generally attended services every Sunday, at Sea we would have a non-denominational worship, and when on shore, I would usually attend the nearest Lutheran Church. The last Lenten Season during my Navy time, I was stationed in Milwaukee. I attended a Lenten Revival meeting presented by the Lutheran Evangelical Movement (LEM) and there experienced what is described in John 3:1-17 during the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.

Nicodemus had a difficult time understanding Jesus when he said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God." This understanding of what it means to be "born again" unfortunately seems to be one of the most divisive characteristics of Christians. We tend to complicate the process by trying to define exactly what one must go through as well as the story we tell about the event. To me it was an event, but there are not words to describe it other than to completely believe and accept the simplicity and mystery of John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

The next period in my life is kind of a blur from a spiritual point of view. My four years at South Dakota School Of Mines and Technology consisted mainly of attending classes, working, and studying. I attended Church practically every Sunday at the closest Lutheran Church, but had no other regular Church involvement. I was also an "old man" since I was already 22 years old when starting college. One of my observations about College Students right out of High School is that they are in much greater danger of getting into morally and spiritually dangerous environments. In the Navy we always had somebody keeping track of us and at least trying to keep us out of trouble. In college very little effort was applied to any aspect of life except the academic.

I learned a very important lesson today while watching a writer, Anne Lamott give a lecture to future writers. I have again been procrastinating in my efforts to write down observations of my Spiritual Journey. Anne Lamott said there were five important concepts to remember when writing anything which will be read by others.

1. You will always make mistakes.

2. People will tell you that your memory is wrong.

3. About 36 out of 37 people will not want you to write about them.

4. The first draft is always bad.

5. People will be happy to remind you of the results of concept 1.

The next thing she said effectively summarized my reason for writing this story in a way which I would not have been able to articulate. This is not a direct quote, but my best recollection.

Nothing is worse than not giving yourself a chance learn who you are and what you believe, except not being able to explain what you have learned.

Gospel For Today provides many examples of articulating a Spiritual Journey.

Hamp Smith provides a poetic example of simply but completely articulating a Spiritual Journey.

After a relatively long time of inaction, I am back to continue in this attempt to articulate my Spiritual Journey.

The first three years of my "after college" life were fairly close to the College years from a Church activity point of view. I belonged to a couple of Lutheran Churches in the Minneapolis area and in Los Altos Hills, California. Again I was mostly an observer and not a very active participant in Church life. One of my "excuses" was that these churches all seemed to be poorly prepared to deal with young single people. They were full of activities, but the majority were either for young children and families. I attended a few adult social functions and was most often the only single person in the group.

All of this changed very dramatically in 1964 when I met Mary Lou. We were soon planning to be married in Mary Lou's church, Saint Paul's Lutheran in Minneapolis. I joined Saint Paul's and immediately became active in the Choir and Pioneer Girls - As a leader - not a participant :). Choirs and children have often been the tools of integration into new congregations which helped us quickly become active and useful members of churches. As we continue this journey, you will learn that this integration into new congregations happened quite regularly in our lives.

Joining the church and getting to know Pastor Riebeck turned out to be very useful. I had not researched the legal details of getting married in Minnesota, and found out that there was a relatively long waiting period between the purchase of a Wedding License and the Wedding. I learned this less than a week before the planned wedding date. Fortunately a Judge accepted a nice letter about us from Pastor Riebeck and the wedding was able to go on as planned.

We have generally believed that both Church and Community activities are important in our lives, so we have often made our Church choice by geographic location rather than by denomination. The first home which we owned was in Burnsville, MN. This is about 20 miles from St. Pauls, so we joined the Lutheran Church closest to our home, Ascension Lutheran.

Ascension had the dedication of its first Sanctuary on the day we joined. One of the myths about Churchs is that they are run by the "in" group and will not accept "outsiders". Our experience at Ascension was just the opposite. If you are willing to seriously participate, the larger problem is getting completely immersed and other activities might suffer. This was my first experience of being directly involved in the operation of a Church. That reminds me of an old saying If you like sausage don't watch it being made. I have watched many kinds of sausage being made and I still like sausage. I have also watched and participated in the making of Congregations. These inner workings are not always pretty, but I still believe in and enjoy the benefits of the results.

Our Pastor was Palmer Ruschke and he lived just down the street from us. As I mentioned earlier, Oscar Rud was our Pastor in South Dakota when I was in my young teens and one of my role models. I had thought during my growing up years that my ideal vocation would be as a Pastor. Because we were from a family of relatively few well educated people and grew up with a relatively low income, I felt that such a vocation was out of my reach. Palmer was an excellant Pastor and friend, but as I got to know him as a normal Human Being, I realized that this was something that I was capable of accomplishing - more of this discussion later.

Paster Ruschke decided early in our life at Ascension that he was going to train me in all the offices of the Church. Ascension was a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. In the mid-60s women had not achieved sufferage and the men were not very active in the politics of the Church, so if the truth be known the Pastor practically determined who should man the Church Offices.

My involvement in Ascension began by singing in the Choir. We also believed that involvement in our Children's activities was also tremendously important, so we became active in the Youth Group and eventually became leaders in that group and participated in most of their activities, including trips to Northern Minnesota which was described in the sermon, Road to Emmaus.

My first step in the process of being involved in the Church's organization was to be elected as Evangelism Chairman. Our Evangelism committee participated in a large Evangelism Training Session in Minneapolis lead by Bill Bright.The program was very inspiring and helped us in getting a neighborhood visitation program active. My evaluation of the program either illustrates a change in my opinion about the stature of Christian Leaders or an overblown belief in my own ability to evalute presentations. The general program and worship with thousands of dedicated Christians was the inspiration. The not so inspiring aspect, from my point of view at least, were the small group instructional sessions.

The instructions as I remember them could be grouped into two general ideas:

Either my analytical Engineering education, my ego, or my Norwegian bred hard-headedness sees a dichotomy between these two statements. Either the presenters of this information felt they were the Holy Spirit or they felt that all of us would not be intelligent enough to observe the contrast. Personnally, I believe that more emphasis needs to be placed on helping us all experience the work of the Holy Spirit and less on indoctrinating the Lay People with the "correct" way to speak about our relationship with God.

In fairness, there was a lot of other very useful information received at the program. For example, step by step procedures for obtaining information such as building lists of people in the neighborhood who are new or unchurched.

The last year we were in Burnsville, I had become involved in many aspects of the Church, as a member of the Church Council, Confirmation Instructor, Choir Member, and Co-Leader of the Youth Group. In 1969, we decided to leave Burnsville and move to Ferney-Voltaire, France to help begin a European Systems Division for Control Data.

We thought that we had a great learning experience in the working of the Church at Ascension in Burnsville. We enjoyed getting to know more about how Christians work together to form a vibrant congregation of believers. We did not know at the time that we were moving to a much more diverse and exiting adventure in the English-Speaking Lutheran Church in Geneva, Switzerland.

It was a pleasant surprise to find an English speaking congregation with an ALC paster from Illinois in the middle of Europe. There were a number of unique characteristics of this church. One being that over half of the congregation's families included an ordained clergy. The choir director was the Director of Music for the Lutheran World Federation, another member was in charge of the group selecting Music for the Lutheran Hymnal. I believe I and a guy working for Caterpillar from Peoria, IL were the only male members of the Choir who were not ordained.

Besides singing in the choir, I also began teaching the Confirmation group's Sunday School class. One of my students was the son of the General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation. He seemed to have read most of the Works of Martin Luther, but he was also the biggest trouble maker in the class.

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