Imagine my surprise. . .

A long while ago I blogged about the demise of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's flagship magazine Living Lutheran.  I had a few issues left on the subscription but I wrote it all off.  It was not all that worthwhile anyway and I subscribed mostly to see who I knew who had died.  So, imagine my surprise when in my mailbox appeared a Spring issue of the now quarterly printed magazine -- like Lazarus back from the dead.  Well, not exactly.  The monthly version which they canned had given me source material for my blog.  This quarterly version had a feature article on the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed.  It is was not a perfect article but it was much more profound and much more orthodox than most of the content of the past.  I was actually not only surprised, I was shocked.

If the content of the past was like this article, perhaps the magazine would not have folded in the first place.  Yes, we all know that print seems to be going the way of all flesh.  Look at any newspaper.  But there was also another reason for its decline -- it was filled with nothing.  It stood for nothing.  It raised more questions than it answer for the readers and put more emphasis on what people were doing than what God did.  Content contributed to its decline as much as the technology transformation.  If you do not promote the faith but have something else as your message, what reason do you have for your existence?

My point here is not to beat a dead horse.  We all know that the quarterly resurrection of that once monthly magazine is a stop gap measure and that eventually it will die in print form and probably in digital form.  It was probably a gift to those whose big donations might be lost and who probably are not digital types who would read this online.  I don't know.  Maybe I am completely off base.  My point is that content matters.  Technology may change and forms may adjust to meet those changes but content matters.  If a publication intends to serve the Church, it must actually promote the faith, enlighten the reader, and instruct those outside the faith as to what it believed, taught, and confessed.

Most of what sells today is like the Platte River in my home state of Nebraska -- it is a mile wide and an inch deep.  The Church cannot afford to be generic.  We must be explicit in our support of and our confession of the faith.  This is the lesson.  The people in the Church and outside are looking for truth and conviction.  Nothing less is worthy of any magazine or digital publication that purports to be a voice of the Church.  Too much of what we get in the mail and in our email is worthless.  We cannot afford to send out or post that which has no solid content, no truth, no conviction, no confession, no creed, and no roots in Scripture.  We do not have the time or the money to settle for anything less.  

Thankfully, The Lutheran Witness is not one of those journals that gives us Christianity Lite.  The media in the LCMS has become much more content oriented.  It has aroused some ire from those who do not wish to be a lightening rod for the faith but so be it.  The Gospel always offends those who refuse to hear it and it can be a thorn in the flesh for those who want their own church to be less about doctrine and more about relationships.  I have heard complaints from those who did not like to see a clerical collar or chasuble in the photos or a doctrinal topic like marriage and family.  So be it.  If we are not contending for the faith -- as offensive as the faith can be to the culture and social movements of the day -- then why do we exist at all?  That is the lesson.  Content does matter.