Who are we?

Internet communion has been a vexing issue for some time.  Long before COVID ever showed up, Lutheran congregations experimented with communion at home with a voice over a DVD.  The advance in technology has allowed live streaming of that voice so that it can even contemporaneous with a worship service in which people might be gathered in person.  In other congregations, Jesus has been packaged up in hermetically sealed containers and sent through the US Postal Service to people unable or unwilling to venture out to their own congregations (which may or may not have been open for in person worship).

Our church body has been uniform in its insistence that internet or any other version of home communions without the pastor present do not conform to the expectations of Scripture or to the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.  

1. CTCR Statement
2. Addendum
3. Additional Statement
   
4. Previous CTCR Statement
5. DVD Consecration Opinion

Almost immediately, a chorus of opinions arose against the official decision of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  An example of one is here.  The opinion of the church body through the official sources does not seem to have made much difference to those who insist that they are doing the Lord's bidding by offering the Sacrament through technology.  Some have taken it upon themselves to expand their own parish boundaries by offering their own versions of internet communion to any and all who want to use it as well as sending Jesus through the mail to those who belong to other parishes.  I fear the genie is out of the bottle.  It appears that many of our District Presidents are offering either back door support or open advocacy of practices to which our church body has said "no."  

A good example of this is a Bible Study at the official convention of the Texas District of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  The District President invited a robust conversation and, apparently, that included the subject of internet communion.  The author, Rev. Zach McIntosh, is one of the pastors on staff of a prominent Texas District congregation.  Concordia Lutheran Church, San Antonio, Texas, is and has been for a very long time one of the largest congregations in the Texas District and, indeed, the whole of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  It openly offers "At Home Communion Instructions" on their website.  As others have noticed, it is curious that a congregation that offers the Sacrament only 12 times per year would go to such great lengths to offer it at home -- even thwarting the good judgment of their theological peers.  The LCMS is not alone in dealing with this.  An example from the ELCA is given here.  It seems that Lutherans are finding themselves hard pressed to respond to such things with any real unity.  

They say that necessity is the mother of invention.  I am sure that such may be true in many cases but not in this.  In emergency the greatest temptation is to jettison what we hold dearest for the sake of a higher goal -- doctrinal integrity gives way to the more urgent necessity of making our way through a pandemic.  As a pastor of a congregation that did not shut down at all during the COVID pandemic, I well understand being creative while being safe and following rules imposed by the government.  No one is suggesting that we do everything as we have always done when things prevent the old routine.  But neither can we use necessity or even urgency as an excuse for violating our very confession or ignoring the very intent of Scripture.  At some point in time, we must come face to face with things that were done with good intention but not in keeping with the integrity of the faith.  If we need to confess what we have done wrong, then let us confess.  But let us not continue to do what is wrong after being counseled by Scripture and the Confessions and the wisdom of our peers.  Nor should we invent excuse and justification for what was done with good intent but clearly against our Confession.  

In the Church we seem hell bent upon making things new.  What we have received from those who went before, is not a mere suggestion but the living faith of the dead.  To dismiss the witness of the past because the world is not the same can be the first step into irrelevance.  It was the fear of irrelevance that became one of the reasons for adjusting the age old teaching of Scripture and the Church on same sex marriage, gender identity, and cohabitation to be more in line with popular opinion.  Such might be an extreme circumstance in comparison to what seems to some a benign debate over how to administer Holy Communion, but the comparison may be more apt than some think.  How we handle this may well be the measure of our fidelity to Scripture, creed, and confession overall.  For what is expedient in time of necessity or urgency will only become what is the norm in normal times.  Well, listen to the Bible study and tell me what you think.  If you want another side, you might want to listen here.  You might also want to read this.  

Now to be fair, although the author of the Bible Study suggests that the only concern being expressed is the Sacrament part of the Word and Sacrament worship; I am not ready yet to grant this.  While no one but an idiot would suggest that the efficacy of the Word can be reduced to a narrow circumstance, to suggest that people watching a sermon at home is the same as or the equivalent to being together in the Lord's House, around the Word and Table of the Lord is not something I am willing to grant.  Instead, the real issue here is not only home communion via technology of one sort or another, it is the whole idea that digital worship is an equivalent of and replacement for the in person Divine Service.  The challenge before us is whether what was done in pandemic time under emergency conditions will become routine and one of the norms for the Church post-pandemic and when there is no longer a pressing emergency?  In other words, will the in person service times come to regularly be supplemented by and communicants counted from online platforms?  Some are suggesting that this is exactly the shape of the future.  Others are not so sure.  Some, like me, warn against necessity becoming the norm for tomorrow.