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Up one levelA LCMS Pastor's Appeal to the ELCA
I am sometimes asked as a member of the LCMS about the sexuality proposals that will come before the ELCA Church Wide Assembly this summer. I make no claim to speak officially for the LCMS, although I am certain that I speak for many other LCMS pastors and members. I will further disclose that I was one of those 55% who voted for fellowship with the ALC in 1969. I am one of many who was deeply disappointed when the LCMS (by a close vote) discontinued full communion with the ALC, one of the ELCA predecessors. We had fervently hoped that ALC and LCMS full communion would be the beginning of full Lutheran unity in America...
I Have a Dream
I am generally optimistic. On an optimism scale of 1-10 I would come out at about 7.3. I have found in my personal life that I can make most situations better when I imagine better situations. I’m not a blurry-eyed optimist who imagines that everything is always wonderful. They are not and reality must be faced honestly. At the same time, I don’t like to brood on adversity or misfortune as though the glass is only half full. It is also half full. It does become harder to maintain much optimism when situations (like the state of the Church or the economy) are bad and out of my control. Yet history is always comforting for it shows that virtually nothing remains the same. It can better just as it can get worse. Take the case of the American Lutheran Churches. For the past 40 years it has seemed that it gets worse and worse. With the two principal church bodies in North America, there seems little room for optimism in either case...
Exaggerated Lutheran Civil Politics
Here comes Inauguration Day. In some ways it is a relief to know that a presidential election will not be for another four years. At the same time this election has been more interesting than usual. There were no incumbent candidates. Both of the primaries were engaging and meaningful; there were no guaranteed nominees until the primary season was almost over. We had the first woman to run seriously for president in primaries; she almost made it. We had the first POW and the first clergyman. We end up having the first black president. (Actually he’s only half black and one could also say that Obama will be the 44th white president.)...
The First Reorganization of the Missouri Synod, 1839
I have always believed in the priority of the Christian congregation. Someone put it well in saying that the Church cannot be any more the essence of the Church than when it is celebrating the Eucharist. At the same time I don’t find that bishops are necessarily in opposition to that foundational Eucharistic assembly. I am one who hopes that the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod will seriously consider an episcopacy as part of the reorganization of 2010...