It’s that time of year again. Our annual custom of Family Day and celebrating the anniversary of the dedication of our beautiful church building is fast approaching on October 4. Divine Service is at 11:00 AM. We will have with us as preacher and celebrant the Rev. Lucas Witt, Executive Director of the Lutheran Mission Society Compassion Place. Pastor Witt is a great friend to Our Saviour and we look forward to welcoming him and his family. We will of course have our traditional luncheon following the service. Please sign up on the sheet on the piano or call the church office by September 27 so that we may properly prepare the food.

Pastor McClean is back at Beachwood Assisted Living, 101 North Beachwood Avenue, Catonsville, MD 21228. The house phone there is (410) 455-0492. Please continue to keep him in your prayers.

The Sunday Bible class has taken up for September a study of “The Blood of the Lamb: Understanding the Levitical Sacrificial System.” In October, we will take up a study of the Five Solas: Sola Scripture (Scripture Alone), Sola Gratia (Grace Alone), Sola Fida (Faith Alone) Solus Christus (Christ Alone), and Soli Deo Gloria (to God alone the Glory). We learn that these are not a checklist invented by the reformers, but the grammar of the Gospel itself, answering specific questions about how sinners are reconciled to Christ. We thank Scott Jones for his tireless work in preparing these fascinating studies! We meet each Sunday at 9:45 AM.

We continue to remember in prayer Pastor McClean, Bridget Bauman, James Bauman, Albert Bell, Christopher Bell, Bertha Buchanan, Dana Carmichael, Elizabeth Coats, Timothy Doswell, Quilla Downs, Frank Ford, Iris Ford, Sean Fortune, Lynne Funck, Katherine Gray, Sherry James; Gloria Jones, Byron Masterson, Beth McClean, Julia Silver, Robert Siperek Jr., Lawrence Smallwood, Paul Swank, George Volkman, Gary Watson, Marvalisa, Sierra, Jonathan, and Steven Gibson.

In addition to Family Day, in October we look forward to celebrating two festivals. On October 18, we observe the Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist. St. Paul calls him “the beloved physician,” and, by the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, in his Gospel and the book of Acts, he wrote more of the New Testament than even St. Paul. We give thanks to God for the work of St. Luke on this Sunday. On the last Sunday in October (October 25) as is our custom, we celebrate the beginning of the Reformation of the Church. This was never intended by Luther or any of the Lutheran church fathers to be a founding of a new church, but rather a restoration of the true Gospel to the Church. In this way, we consider ourselves to be a continuation of the church catholic (universal), which is to say, the church of all times and all places. You can learn more in ‘The Month Ahead’ at the end of this newsletter.

Please see notes below from Bernie Knox about holiday gift cards and the opportunity to give electronically. As the Fall season approaches, be on the lookout in future newsletters for information about our coming celebration of the Advent and Christmas seasons.

See you in church!

In Christ and on behalf of the Church Council,
Paul Techau, Council President

Holiday Gift Cards

Again, this year, OSLC will be providing Aldi’s Gift Certificates to needy families from Waverly School at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We are including this reminder in our bulletins and newsletters now so that our gifts may be as generous as possible. Please indicate on your check memo line or in an accompanying note that the funds are designated for these Gift Certificates.

We also use the collections taken at our Lenten Soup Suppers to help support our Food Gift Certificates. In 2025, combining the Soup Supper donations and congregational donations, we were able to provide 12 families with a $100 certificate for Thanksgiving and a $40 gift certificate at Christmas. Our four Soup Suppers this year yielded a total of $275 to begin our Gift Certificate Fund.

Please begin now to think about making generous donations. These gifts allow us to assist those less fortunate in providing a special meal for their families at holidays.

Our gifts remind us to be thankful for all the Lord has given us and especially to celebrate God’s greatest gift of all—the birth of our Savior Jesus.

– Bernice Knox

Electronic Tithes and Offerings

Our Saviour members have the option of giving their tithes and offerings electronically if they so choose. At this time three members/families donate in this way. The offering gifts are taken directly from their designated bank account and deposited directly into our special account at the Lutheran Church Extension Fund. Both Jean West, our Financial Secretary, and I receive notification of the deposits monthly so that your giving is recorded by name and amount in her records. As treasurer, I transfer them each month to our Harbor Bank Account.

From your bank account, you may give weekly on Mondays, semi-monthly on the 1st or 15th, or monthly on the 1st or 15th.  If you are interested in this program which Synod calls Joyful Response, please let me know so that I can give you an authorization form to complete. A cancelled check is also required to confirm the giver’s account and routing numbers.

– Bernice Knox

The Month Ahead: October, 2026

Services and Their Readings

The Season: Trinity XIX, St. Luke, and the Reformation
October turns a corner. We begin by observing the anniversary of the dedication of our church building. The Sunday after it falls under the shadow of St. Michael and All Angels, where the readings speak to a Church still under assault. Then two more red days: St. Luke, who wrote the Gospel of the Physician, and the Festival of the Reformation. The paraments are green for the second Sunday and red for the other three, the latter color of the Spirit’s fire and of those who confess under fire.

October 4  96^th Anniversary Of The Dedication Of The Evangelical Lutheran Church Of Our Saviour
1 Kings 8:22–3  •  Revelation 21:1–5  •  Luke 19:1–10
The lessons begin by recalling the dedication of God’s original temple in Jerusalem. And, we see in that dedication, Solomon giving God the glory and acknowledging that all the gifts they received in that temple were a fulfillment of God’s promises to his people that he will be with them always. The Epistle gives us a glimpse of the Church Triumphant, where we will dwell with God for all eternity. On this day we give thanks for the beautiful edifice that God has given us and where He is truly present with us in His gifts of Word and Sacrament each week in Divine Service.

October 11  Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity
Genesis 28:10–17  •  Ephesians 4:22–28  •  Matthew 9:1–8
Jacob runs for his life, sleeps with a stone for a pillow, and wakes to find that heaven has opened over him and God has promised to go with him wherever he goes. Centuries later four men carry a paralyzed friend to Jesus, who forgives his sins before He heals his legs, and the crowds go home glorifying God for giving such authority to men. That authority is still spoken here every Sunday. Paul draws the daily conclusion: in Baptism the old self was put off and the new self put on, so tell the truth and settle your anger before dark.

October 18  St. Luke, Evangelist
Isaiah 35:5–8  •  2 Timothy 4:5–18  •  Luke 10:1–9
St. Paul calls him “the beloved physician,” and almost everything we know about Luke comes from three of Paul’s verses. One is today’s epistle, written from a Roman cell with execution in view: friends have scattered, one has left outright, and Paul writes, “Luke alone is with me.” He adds that when no one stood by him at his trial, the Lord stood by him. Isaiah promises a day when blind eyes open and the lame leap like deer, and Jesus sends seventy laborers out to heal the sick and say that the kingdom of God has come near. An early writer put it well: this physician left us two books of remedies for the healing of souls rather than bodies.

October 25  The Festival of the Reformation (observed)
Revelation 14:6–7  •  Romans 3:19–28  •  Matthew 11:12–19
On October 31, 1517, an Augustinian monk and university professor posted Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. He was not founding a church. He was calling for an academic debate about repentance and the sale of indulgences, and the debate escaped the university. Luther was excommunicated, and the confession he could not stop making, that a sinner is justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, reshaped Europe. The festival itself was standardized only in 1667, when the Elector of Saxony declared October 31 an annual festival of the church.

The readings are chosen for bold confession rather than for argument. St. John sees an angel flying at the very top of the sky with an eternal Gospel to proclaim to every nation, tribe, language, and people, and Lutherans have long heard in that flight the restoring of the Gospel in Luther’s own preaching. Romans 3 is the passage that broke a monk and remade the Church: the Law stops every mouth and leaves the world without a defense, and then come the two words that turn history, “but now,” as God declares the guilty righteous for Christ’s sake, apart from anything they have done.

We sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” written while plague swept Wittenberg and Luther himself lay dangerously ill. We call it the battle hymn of the Reformation, but a broadsheet of 1529 called it what it was to those who first sang it: a hymn of comfort. This day is no contest between churches; it celebrates the Word no power on earth has silenced.