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Up one levelThe Best-Kept Secret in the Christian Church: Senn on Lutheran Identity
A number of years ago, while teaching a course in human anatomy and physiology at our local community college, a student in her early 20s approached me and said, “It is so cool that you are a pastor and my professor! What is even cooler is that you are the pastor of a black church.” Somewhat taken aback, I replied, “Thanks, but what makes you think that my congregation is made up of African-Americans?” She said, “Well, you know, Martin Luther King and all that.” This is a true story! And to this day this episode causes me to ponder our identity as Lutheran catholic Christians. There have been numerous attempts to define Lutheranism from a doctrinal, ethnic, or sociological point of view. Too often, Lutheranism ends up being the best kept secret in the Christian church.
Lively Stones - The Catechetical Approach of Berthold von Schenk
What is the relationship between Confirmation, First Communion and Baptism? In the introduction to Lively Stones, his parish Catechetical program, Berthold von Schenk, 20th century pioneer of liturgical renewal, offers a spirited assessment of contemporary Lutheran catechetical practices and proposes a Baptismally based, sacramentally oriented approach…
Ash Wednesday
On this Ash Wednesday, let us take these words of Isaiah to heart, trust in Christ as the authentic Word, the Word that should guide all the words we speak to each other and to God. Let us turn from our sin, repent, and seek Christ's forgiveness...
When the Gospel Excludes
“There is nothing new under the sun”: Ecclesiastes tells it the way it is. I don’t know how often I have thought of a “new” program to try in my congregation only to learn that it had been done before. Sometimes people tell me flat out; other times either they’ve forgotten, or are trying not to hurt my feelings, so I learn on my own by leafing through bulletins or coming across council minutes of years past...
Commending the Lenten Discipline
For some of us a Lenten discipline is as automatic and essential as presents are at Christmas—with perhaps some of the same pitfalls of familiarity as well. Done rightly, it is a good and honorable practice. Commending it to the folks in the parish, though, is a little trickier, especially when it is new and unfamiliar. This is the letter I hand out to my parishioners the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday to encourage them to give it a try...
Small Catechism Preaching Series
Free and downloadable! A schedule for preaching through the Catechism in 12 weeks, plus bulletins that you can easily alter to suit your own parish's needs.
Reforming the Daily Office: Examining Two New Lutheran Books
The creation of Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW) by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, as I understand it, was generated by the convergence of two factors. One was the fervent desire on the part of a relative minority in the church to end the use of masculine pronouns (“he,” “him,” “his”) to refer to God. The other was the increasingly serious financial situation of the church’s publishing house, Augsburg Fortress...
A Primer on Lutheran Hermeneutics
A Lutheran approach to Scripture has certain necessary components. They are: the priority of Scripture, Christ as the center of Scripture, law and gospel, the plain sense of Scripture, the power of Scripture, and the inspiration of Scripture...
Don’t Call Me Pastor
While I was growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, Zion Lutheran Church of International Falls, MN, was served by a man we knew as Reverend Evans. A battlefield call to ministry in the trenches of France in 1918 led him to seminary. From the lumber camps of the 1920s, through the Great Depression, and on into the baby boom following the Second World War, three generations came to call him “Reverend.” Some have even suggested his bride called him Reverend when they got up in the morning...