21st September 2025
When people ask me about Ascension I describe our comings and goings in the phrase we used at the beginning – “we’re a home for some and a ‘whistle stop’ for others”. We have folk who live in Suffolk or Norfolk permanently and folk who are here for a few years. I was here when Ascension as a mission became a congregation – Membership Sunday on 21st September 2003 and then at Synod the following Saturday we were welcomed into the ELCE – and so now in 2025 I have also been known to say, “I’m on my eighth congregation!”. There have been a lot of comings and goings! (Next year, it will be me who sadly is going and we are busy working on the next phase of Ascension’s story – twinning with Resurrection until we are able to call a pastor with a military background.)
In the bulletin blurb of that Membership Sunday 2003 I concluded with this paragraph …
5 years ago a group of Lutherans worshipped together and thought that to continue to do so would be a good thing. Few of them are still doing so in Suffolk but they are still doing so somewhere. In ten years from now who of us will be here? I don’t know but I can still say that Ascension will be here and Ascension will have also spread across the globe. That is the way of congregations whether they are in Nebraska, Alaska, Queensland or Suffolk. We are not beginning the creation of an Ascension empire. Rather we are being gathered together as members of God’s kingdom in this time and in this place for now so that we may live as God’s people … together. It is exciting to be here because you are here and because God is doing his work among us.
One of our pamphlets in the foyer is entitled ‘How might Ascension Lutheran Church serve you?’ and it is about how God serves us in worship as he calls us to him primarily on Sundays whereby he serves us. God also serves us in confirmations, marriages, and funerals and also through pastoral care, prayer, and personal absolution, and also through God’s bestowal of blessing in many aspects of daily life (eg. an anniversary of marriage, before or after surgery, when we live in a new home, when we travel, and so many more). The pamphlet concludes … Ascension is a home and a whistle stop …
Set in the district of RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath and RAF Feltwell, Ascension Lutheran Church will always be a congregation in which people come and go more quickly than usually happens in congregations. We are excited by this because it reminds us that God is here with us now and will be with us on our journey in life. He has brought us together in this time and place so that we can be served by him and so we can serve those around us. We learn. We grow. We make mistakes. We grow. We laugh. We cry. We grow. We celebrate. We mourn. Above all we live – lives to the fullest – to the glory of God!
Today we celebrate 22 years as a congregation (or 27 as a mission) and Ascension is the same and isn’t the same now as we were then! But what is the same is what is the most important – that God’s grace is the same, that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that the Holy Spirit is the same – always using his means (Word and Sacraments) so that we live with God as we focus on Jesus! That is the heart of Ascension. God is with us here – and wherever we may go – back to our home in Suffolk or Norfolk – or around the world!
GS