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Missouri's Clergy Crisis
The discussion surrounding the ELCA sexuality task force’s recommendation to consider ordaining non-celibate homosexuals to the public ministry raises a number of questions, not the least of which is: “Who gets to decide who is ordained to the public ministry of the church?” The ELCA is not alone; this question has lurked in the background of the LCMS for much of the past decades, surfacing as districts shun candidates for first call placement from one seminary or the other, and as certain men seek ordained ministry via non-residential seminary routes. The question recognizes that a tension exists between the rights of an individual congregation and the responsibility of that congregation to both the wider denominational community and the church catholic...
Ecumenical Liturgy, Its Possibilities and Problems
Already, among the ecumenically-minded, preparations are underway to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, which is regarded as the birthday of the ecumenical movement. What seems to be quite a bit less well-known is that this year, 2009, is also a 100th anniversary celebration, and for a movement that has impacted the Christian world every bit as much as the ecumenical: the liturgical movement...
Sin Bravely: A Joyful Alternative to a Purpose-Driven Life
Is religion supposed to make you happy? This question begged for an answer throughout Mark Ellingsen’s Sin Bravely: A Joyful Alternative to a Purpose Driven Life. The author believes that Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life is too focused on the self to combat the rampant narcissism of a me-driven culture in modern America. Taking a leaf from Martin Luther, Ellingsen offers his alternative of sinning bravely as a way to avoid the inevitable “guilt and sense of inadequacy” that come from a “duty-oriented conception of faith and life” (3)...
Pietism According to Bo Giertz
The influence of Bo Giertz (1905-1998) on the American scene has been such that some have even taken to calling themselves “Giertzians.” What are the marks of a “Giertzian” confession of the faith? American Lutheran scholar Clifford Ansgar Nelson noted already in 1950 that Giertz “has a profound appreciation of the high-church liturgical movement as well as of low-church evangelicalism. If one should characterize the type of piety which is most congenial to his spirit, it would be as a broad evangelical orthodoxy”...
Worth a Look and Worth Your Support
Odds and ends of recent interest!