Photo by Howard Owens.
People should be excited about attending St. Paul Lutheran Church in Batavia each Sunday, says newly ordained and installed minister Thompson Marin, because they will hear the word of God without any innovations.
"We believe the Bible is the Word of God. There is no error in it. We teach people that the Bible interprets itself," Marin said to The Batavian. "Then, just to make it more exciting to people, we teach Christ crucified. We teach the Word of God. We don't add to it. We don't mix it with other teaching outside the Bible. Christ is at the center of our teaching."
Marin, his wife Erika, and their two children, Micaiah, 4, and Olivia, 1, are new to Batavia. St. Paul is Marin's first calling as a pastor. He recently completed four years of study at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Ind.
"I was praying for a church with a school," Marin said. "When I saw that (St. Paul) had a school, I was excited to see how God would lead me to help the school and the church."
Marin was born in Haiti and immigrated with his family to Brooklyn in 2007. He has been a Christian since childhood, growing up a Baptist. His uncle was a Lutheran pastor in Haiti.
He graduated from Brooklyn College in 2013, moved to South Dakota for more schooling, and then returned to Haiti, where he met Erika. She was on a Lutheran mission trip. They were married in 2016.
"I was very used to how (Lutherans) do church and what they believe, teach and confess," Marin said. "I became a Lutheran after I met my wife in 2013. I got used to going to church with her, used to the teaching in the Lutheran churches, and then I wanted to marry her, so one of the requirements was for me to become a Lutheran, and it wasn't hard for me, because I was already used to what they do and what they teach and believe."
The Lutheran Church was founded by Martin Luther (1483 to 1546) in Torgau, Germany. Luther led the Reformation, a break with Roman Catholicism, in the early 16th Century. A key point of Luther's theology was he rejected the Catholic Church's role as an intermediary between the people and God. He believed that salvation comes only through God's mercy. He rejected papal authority. He believed the Bible is the central authority for all Christian beliefs.
The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod governs St. Paul. It is a conservative denomination whose core belief is that people are saved from their sins by God's grace alone, through faith alone, on the basis of Scripture alone. The Synod holds to the Luthern Confessions, which include the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed.
After joining the church, Marin became interested in attending seminary, not to become a pastor but to deepen his understanding of the faith.
"The people I interacted with really encouraged me to follow this call, and that's what I did," Marin said.
As Marin completed his education, the members of St. Paul contacted church leaders and informed them there was an opening for a new pastor at St. Paul. They requested a recent seminary graduate, Marin said, and district leaders reviewed the needs of the church and the available seminary candidates and selected Marin as the best fit for St. Paul.
Besides the school, Marin said he was excited to come to Batavia because his wife likes small towns, and it's only six hours from New York City, where his parents and sister still live.
Given his wife's experience with missions, it's not surprising that Marin is eager to see St. Paul grow its efforts in international missions. St. Paul's does sponsor missionaries in Japan. He thinks the church might be able to grow in this area.
"That was really something that I admired when I met my wife. They were helping with a school and an orphanage in Haiti, in the town where I was from, and I want to continue that aspect of ministry, reaching out to the unchurched, helping those who cannot, who don't have access to certain things and sharing Christ's love with them."
He said it's something he intends to talk to St. Paul's leadership team about.
I know a lot of missionaries," Marin said. "They do need help from the churches here in the States. That's something I still need to figure out and probably start on, but it is a big part of sharing God's love."
He sees St. Paul's school as a great resource for reaching the local community.
"I think St Paul plays a great role in showing God's love, especially in our school," Marin said. "The school is a really great way of reaching out to parents and parents who are not Lutherans, even just reaching out to them and teaching them how we do things and extend God's forgiveness to them. And if they want to come and check it out, they can.
He said not all children attending the school are Christians, so the school offers an opportunity to learn about God's love for them.
"We tell them that God loves them every day. I think it's a really good thing," Marin said. "And the other thing is, their parents are invited to come to chapel on Wednesdays so they can hear us teaching them and see how we do it, and also they can hear God's message to them, too, and it's a great way of reaching out to the community."
On Sundays, visitors to the Church can expect a conservative service.
Lutheran services tend to be more liturgical than many other Protestant churches. Marin said people who come to St. Pauls can expect more traditional hymns.
"We conserve all the ways that the Church Fathers used to worship and how they did the service, with no new ideas," Marin said. The way we do things is very traditional. We do have some contemporary songs we sing here because the members are used to doing it in the past, but we're trying to move more toward a traditional way of doing things."
Marin acknowledges that these are challenging times for churches. In 2021, church membership in the U.S. fell below 50 percent for the first time. Marin doesn't believe innovations in theology are needed to bring people back to church. He believes the Word of God is sufficient.
"I think we need to stay faithful," Marin said. "We need to believe that God will send His Spirit. The Holy Spirit will work in people's hearts and change their minds, and then people will be attracted to the church. People will come to the church through the Gospel being preached, and not by changing how we teach it or how we worship, incorporating new things, new theology, and new ways of interpreting the Gospel, the Bible. I don't see it that way. I think we need to stay faithful, and I think that way, people will know the truth."
