House of God or the Church's House

I have had an interest in church architecture for some time.  I have also had an aversion to much of what passes as church architecture today.  It is not that I disdain all things modern but that modernity has delivered to us many church structures for which worship is almost an afterthought.  The focal point of the structures has also shifted from the God whose house we gather by His invitation and favor to the people who have made His house their own, comfortable living room.

In the beginning this was fueled by the modern idea that the early Christian community did not build church buildings, did not even consider church buildings, and saw the home as the principal worship space by design (as opposed to because they had no money or legal standing to build).  Herein the archeology of the last 50-60 years has proven this myth false and rendered much of the premise of modern architecture obsolete.  It appears that there were church buildings used for worship -- from the beginning.  It began, of course, with the discovery of Dura-Europa and a church structure dating from 232 AD.  That has been the spring board for a host of other buildings built or remodeled by the Church for use in the Divine Liturgy.  Some of these were found in ruins but the majority have been referenced in Christian literature of the period.  A great article in the journal for the Institute for Sacred Architecture tells the story well.  

The problem is that we know very little about pre-Constantinian liturgy or Christian architecture. Yet from the scant literary evidence we do have, we should not reject the strong probability that even in the second century the Church owned land and built special buildings for the community. The earliest record of the special purpose church building seems to be from Chronicle of Arbela, a fifth-century Syrian manuscript which tells us that Bishop Isaac (Ishaq) (135-148) “had built a large well-ordered church which exists today.” The Chronicles of Edessa mention a Christian church destroyed in a city-wide flood around 201. Around the year 225 A.D. Christians acquired a piece of public property in a dispute with inn-keepers to build a church with the explicit blessing of Emperor Severus Alexander, who determined “that it was better for some sort of a god to be worshipped there than for the place to be handed to the keepers of an eating-house.”

Thus the disconnect presumed by modern architects who assumed that a focus on the assembly was the earlier direction of church buildings.  It renders some of the old assumptions as suspect.  For example, you can hear the bias built in through the comments of a couple of noted modern architects:

As Father Richard Vosko surmised, “The earliest understanding of a Christian church building implies that it is a meeting house—a place of camaraderie, education and worship. In fact, the earliest Christian tradition clearly held that the Church does not build temples to honor God. That is what the civic religions did.” This notion was put most forcefully by E.A. Sovik, writing: “It is conventionally supposed that the reasons that Christians of the first three centuries built almost no houses of worship were that they were too few, or too poor, or too much persecuted. None of these is true. The real reason that they didn’t build was that they didn’t believe in ecclesiastical building.”

If you plan on building a structure in which the principal activity is worship, specifically the liturgy, you need to read this article.  Its conclusions are inescapable for those who would force upon the Church another structure ill prepared for the Mass, with a focus upon the assembly rather than the Word and Table of the Lord, of a scale that emphasizes the place of the people, and without ornamentation designed to communicate the tenets of what is believed and confessed during the worship that takes place within its walls.

If the domestic model has no sure foundation, then the arguments erected for rejecting the hierarchical and formal models of liturgy; for discarding the sacramental language of Christian architecture in favor of a functionalist and programmatic approach to building; and for dismissing any appeals to the rich treasure trove of Catholic architectural history and various historical styles are susceptible to falling like a house of cards.

Would that it were so, Joe...

Mr. VP, I know you misspoke but in that error is the hope of many...

These are a few of my favorite things...

The primary and exclusive aim of the liturgy is not the expression of the individual's reverence and worship for God. It is not even concerned with the awakening, formation, and sanctification of the individual soul as such. Nor does the onus of liturgical action and prayer rest with the individual.... So wrote Mgr Andrew Wadsworth...

It almost seems sacrilege to the ear so tuned to Protestant ideas of worship, rooted in the individual and reflective of the individual choice.  I fear that we as Lutherans would be hard pressed to agree with the sweeping statement I have quoted above.  We have become, well, less Lutheran and so we tend to think of worship as the venue for conversion or the domain in which the individual expresses his or her faith, choice, and praise.  We have forgotten much about who we are.

The liturgy is not our domain -- corporately or individually.  It is the domain of Christ and the means of grace that deliver to us what Christ has done in the once for all sacrifice of His body and blood on the cross.  It is the domain of the Church, more than merely the assembled congregation, in which the saints of old and the saints of today receive with joyful faith what Christ has done.  It is not so much a moment in time as the timeless moment in which yesterday and tomorrow encroach upon today, bring the past to the present and in this mystery anticipating the future promised.

We guard the liturgy not because we have some slavish obedience to the past but because this liturgy keeps us from stealing worship away from the hands of Christ and making it into what we do, what we offer, and what we accomplish.  It is entirely too easy for us to fall in love with our own voice in praise so that we forget who is being praised and, worse, forget that such praise is possible only when and where He has revealed Himself to us and given us permission to enter that mystery.

We Lutherans have become victims of our own insecurity so that we judge worship not by its faithfulness to Christ and His means of grace but by the fickle barometer of consumer appreciation.  If the individual likes it, it must be good.  If the individual wants more of it, why it must be great.  All of this would be humorous were it not for the fact that it is so easy and so common to substitute our own desire and energy for the desire of the Father fulfilled in the Son and the for the energy of the Spirit in bringing to our awareness and trust the work of our Mediator and Redeemer.

The weird thing about it is that so many Lutherans have come to believe that liturgical worship is suspect with respect to Jesus admonition to worship in Spirit and in truth and the worship that reflects our desires and delights is somehow higher, more noble, more authentic, and more effective than that silly stuff by the book or by rote.  The individual has taken our thinking captive and stolen worship right from the arms of the Lord who comes with the means of grace that makes it all possible.  His Word is cast aside in favor of our own words.  His gifts become second to the voice of our praise, the offering of our spiritual gifts, and the sincerity of our feelings.  We are so in love with the idea that we love Jesus that His love for us has become secondary and almost inconsequential.  But of course.  Why wouldn't Jesus love us -- we are so lovable!  It is God who is hard to love and so our love for Him is the greater achievement.

It is as if the most authentic worship of all is about me and what I think, feel, desire, and choose.  Little do we realize that much of contemporary worship has more in common with the golden calf than that God of the cross.

Another perspective on work... reward... and retirement... and vocation

Do we work so we don't have to?  From weekend to vacation to retirement, we increasingly see work as a necessary evil to get where we want to be -- in leisure.  As pervasive as this view is, it is challenged by Luther, by the doctrine of vocation, and by the understanding of life as the arena of work that glorifies God in that work.  So comes the response of noted Lutheran Gene Edward Vieth in responding to Gary Gutting.

Read them both and reflect upon the positions.  I especially like Vieth's affirmation:

"God does not need our good works," Luther taught. "But our neighbor does." Our relationship with God is established solely by his grace in the atoning work of Jesus Christ. But then he sends us out into the world to live out our Christian faith in love and service to our neighbors.

Furthermore, God himself, in his providential care for his whole creation, is working through our human vocations. God gives us our daily bread by means of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. He protects us by means of lawful magistrates. He creates and cares for new human beings by means of fathers and mothers. He proclaims his Word and administers his sacraments by means of pastors. He creates beauty by means of artists and musicians.

and


The economy can indeed be a dog-eat-dog, Darwinistic, self-obsessed struggle, which we yearn to escape---whether on a weekend, a vacation, or retirement. But even the leisure, bought at such a cost, may still keep us trapped within ourselves. The doctrine of vocation, properly understood, frees us from our sinful selves through the gospel as our love for God overflows into love for our neighbors.  Our very work becomes transformed not in its substance---Christian workers mostly perform the same tasks as non-Christian workers---but in its meaning and in its value.

Can such a marriage be real?

Sermon for Pentecost 19, Proper 22B, preached on Sunday, October 7, 2012.

    It might seem a fool's errand to address the subject of marriage in the climate of the world around us.  In the midst of a culture in which cohabitation has become the norm, same sex marriage is approved one state at a time, and divorce is so prevalent, what we heard in the lessons today seems more than old fashioned, it seems downright irrelevant.  It might be nice to think of such a marriage as an ideal but it sounds like more theory than reality.  Yet Jesus is not speaking theoretically.  He is speaking of the Biblical underpinnings of this thing we call marriage.
    Jesus is not trading rules but addressing the foundation on which marriage is built.  That is made clear in the contrast between giving and taking.  Now, no different than in other ages, we are severely tempted to see marriage as there for the taking.  We marry because we have wants and needs we want fulfilled.  Marriage works, then, as long as we take out from marriage what we want.  So the success of marriage becomes the balance scale – are we getting as much as we are giving.  When the time comes and we determine that we are not getting as much as we are giving, then the marriage is at best on the rocks or at worst completely over.
    The temptation and downfall of marriage has always been the idea that marriage is there for the taking.  The Jews of Jesus' day were quick to quote Deuteronomy and justify the divorce of a woman when she or the marriage becomes objectionable – as if any marriage or spouse or family does not become objectionable to us at one point or another.  In other words, when you are no longer getting more from it than you are giving to it.  Jewish culture guarded this right as one given by God, decreed by Moses, and therefore as sacred as the very gift of marriage itself. 
    Judging marriage on the basis of what you get is pretty common.  Giving up on marriage that does not return what you think is faith is also common.  And with it was the idea that, once divorced, the people were free to go on with their lives.  This fragile understanding of marriage continues today – only the right of divorce applies equally to men and women.  We have still muddied up what marriage is and what makes it a gift of God in creation and what makes this blessed relationship the image of Christ and His relationship with His bride, the Church.
    Jesus insists that marriage is not for the taking but for the giving.  He insists that this is not new teaching but the very essence of the gift of marriage when God created Eve and Adam. Adam did not exclaim that Eve was pretty or all he could have wanted in a woman.  Instead he exclaimed in joy that at last he had flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, completing him and making him whole.  Marriage will always be weak and vulnerable as long as it is defined by what it returns to us instead of providing the arena to give and serve the other.
    Jesus says that in marriage there is no longer two, but one flesh.  In other words, husband and wife give up self.  They are no longer two in some kind of negotiated partnership but both have surrendered self in order that the new creation of their life as husband and wife remains.  St. Paul insists that this is most fully visible in the self-less sacrifice of Jesus for us – giving up heaven and its glory to become incarnate, suffering and dying for us on the cross, and rising to impart to us the immortality that was His.  Husbands love their wives as Christ loved the Church and died for her.  They may not physically die but they die to self to love and serve the other.  Such love is reciprocated by the wife just as the Church, the bride returns what she is given by Christ.
    The whole nature of love is that it does not keep count or measure the giving and the getting.  It is the nature of love that it counts nothing but the giving and it counts this giving as joy, privilege, and willing gift.  In this love, it is not what we take or what we get but what we give that is important.  The marriage Jesus speaks of and Paul writes of is one where the spouse comes before self all the time.  The struggle in marriage is not between husband and wife but within each the battle to love without counting the cost and to give without bitterness, regret, or jealousy.
    A marriage built up taking what you think you deserve is an easy marriage to discard and toss away.  A marriage dependent upon getting more than you are giving is easy to dissolve when the tide turns against you.  But a marriage forged out of the love that joyfully gives and serves as Christ has for the joy set before endured the cross and its death on our account.  Well, how you can simply discard and dissolve such a marriage? 
    We admit this in the vows.  We promise to love not only in prosperity, good health, and in good times but in poverty, in weakness, in need, and in trouble.  This love is really not so rare.  The truth is that I see it all the time.  I see in the people in these pews whose life together endures despite the loss of job, the death of dreams, the loneliness of isolation, the death of a child, the test of affliction and illness, and the fragility of age and approaching death.  You see it too.   This kind of love and marriage is not so unusual but it does not call attention to itself.  It draws attention to the other.  In forgiveness and sacrifice and service we glimpse Christ’s love for us in those who love in His name husband and wife.
    This is what marriage is.  The romance and hope of youth are great but what endures is love that gives without fear, limit, or measure.  St. Paul says look and you will see Christ's love in marriages all around you.  God does not love us like husbands love their wives and wives love their husbands.  It is the other way around.  We love as husbands and wives as Christ has already loved us even to death on the cross.  Love is defined not by rights or obligation but by service, sacrifice, and giving.  We live a world of rights but Christ teach us the language of giving.  It starts here, extends into the home and the world.  And it changes everything we thought we knew about marriage, family, and home.  Amen

Some advice that is worth,well, not all that much...

I admit that I have not thought all that much about advice for the new Pastor.  As I read and listened to a couple of pieces advising the novices, I found myself somewhat conflicted.  I can understand why these folks were saying what they were saying -- go slow, get to know the people, make sure you know the sacred cows before you begin a slaughtering operation...  It is probably good advice.  But I did not follow it.  I went into intensive teaching mode and directed much of the subject matter toward things I identified as needing change right away.  I did not play fruit basket upset but in both parishes where I have served (and not been fired so far) my tenure was marked by a distinct move toward the catholic end of our evangelical and catholic Confessions and practice.

I let them know that the weekly Eucharist was where we were headed and that I would not be arbitrary but that neither would they be voting on this.  I wore Eucharistic vestments from the get to (neither parish had ever seen them before).  I chanted from day one (no previous Pastor had practiced this).  I reintroduced the chalice (after one had only had the individual cups and the other had long ago abandoned the chalice).  I did not ask or make them bow or genuflect or kneel but I did it consistently from the beginning.  I guess I broke all the rules about going slow and winning trust before making such visible and distinctive change.  But I also wondered if I accepted what had been and conformed to it, would that be saying to them that I found such, well, sub-Lutheran practice acceptable?  Tolerable?  And if it were acceptable or tolerable in the beginning why would a Pastor then one day decide to make changes?

In the end I have no advice about introducing change -- especially liturgical change.  I was who I am from the beginning.  I kind of think they knew I was different from my predecessors.  But while I was modeling such things and doing them, I was also doing what the advisors always tell you to do -- love your people, pray for them, be patience with them, teach them, display a sacrificial and pastoral heart to them...  I had folks who thought my Sunday morning practices at least a bit odd if not downright weird but Monday night I sat with them at the hospital waiting room and prayed when the news was bad and early Wednesday morning I rushed to the house when their broken hearts and broken lives intersected and postponed a vacation and day off or two or two hundred to remain with them when death left them grieving and alone.  When I asked for things I shopped around so that I gave them some choices and options and let them know I wanted the dollar to go as far as I knew they did.  I tried to listen as much as or even more than I spoke and often just venting was enough to diffuse discontent.  I don't know how to advise this or teach it.  I learned it by doing and by failing as well as succeeding in this endeavor.

I have no clue what they tell seminarians today.  I was told a bunch of hogwash about people who would follow their Pastor into the burning fires of hell if he so much mentioned it.  No one has ever volunteered to go there for me or even with me.  But I have learned that the people in the pew are neither impediments to my ministry or enemies.  At times, at least in the beginning, I had doubts about this.  I hope that those candidates about to be ordained have a bit more realistic idea of what to expect than I did though I doubt anyone can ever be fully prepared for the parish.

Disappointment is inevitable.  You have a great setting in Seminary -- good musicians, great preachers, good teachers, fine role models, etc...  And then you come out of Seminary to find a parish with a person who had a few years of piano before being told he or she was an organist... and you find out you are not as good a preacher as you thought.... and you struggle and fail to teach like the teachers who taught you... and your role models are far away from where the rubber is hitting the road by you...  It is impossible not to flirt with some disappointment and depression the first year or ten.  I still do.  Despair is, in many ways, the constant companion to parish successes.  Maybe it is inevitable.  Maybe it is by design.

One thing I will say.  Don't ever become a Pastor unless you are convinced it is the only thing you can do.  There.  I violated my own rule.  I gave you some advice that is worth not all that much.  Just consider the source and move on to the next blog...

When you get to my age...

I had a funeral the other day.  The woman was a former member of the choir, pianist, and part of a salt of the earth couple married just shy of their 61st anniversary at her death.  She was almost 82 at the time of her death.  She was very close to the age of my parents and my in-laws.  Funerals like these have ripples well beyond the individual whom we commend to the Lord.  I was thinking of it in one way but the words of another member of the parish framed it all quite differently.

"When you get to my age," he said, "every funeral you go to is like a rehearsal."  Now there is something to think about...

It was not that long ago -- I remember it as a child -- when people did not think in terms of retirement.  They generally worked right up to death.  In farm fashion, this often meant the parents moved to town while the farm home was given to the son (or daughter and son-in-law) who was to continue the farming tradition.  It was not really a retirement -- these folks did pretty much everything they had done on the farm but they had to drive out there from town to do it.

Now retirement has changed the way we look at life.  The prospect of giving up work you have to do for the work (hobbies, interests, etc.) you want to do, has become very attractive.  There is not much Biblical about this notion -- try to find a work that means something like retirement in the Bible.  Can't be done.  It is not there.  But that has not stopped us from redefining life and seeking that day when work ceases and, as some retired folk are want to remind me, the real work begins.

Once age was just a birthday -- sometimes a milestone -- but a day not all that different from any other day of work, eating, and rest.  Now getting to a certain age in relatively good health is a pretty big goal for most folks approaching the late 50s and early 60s.  We have created a parallel universe in which we look forward to the surrender of the time clock, bosses, and due dates to be free to do what we want (so long as we can afford it).  I appreciated the honesty of the fellow who said the the funerals he attended had become dry runs for his own mortal future as well as that of many loved ones around him.

One thing retirement has done is move even further from our radar the idea that life is limited and that death waits for us all.  I recall a shut in from early on in my ministry.  She complained that her husbands pension was miserably small.  In the 1980s it was about $150 a month.  Her husband had worked as a New York City policeman, beginning his service after he left the army following WWI and ending his time about 25 years later.  At that point they had moved upstate and he began collecting his pension while beginning a new career in a lumberyard.  He worked there for 20 more years before retiring and then dying not so many years later.  I reminded this shut in who was then in her mid-90s that the NYC police retirement fund had not planned on her living so long and still collecting on his pension.  They had expected the two would have died many years before.  Image that.  Two careers and two retirements!  BTW this same lady sometimes said that all her friends were long dead and she did not have much chance for any real decent sins since she lived alone and seldom left the house!  She was a hoot. She would have understood that comment -- every funeral I attend is like a rehearsal.  She was not trying to put off death.  She had been ready for a long time. 

I don't think such talk is morbid or depressing.  It is in the glimpse of reality that the grace of God is made even more profound in our eyes.  To be sure, there is a certain sadness in every funeral and I understand it.  I shed my own tears for many of those who were more than mere names to me.  But it is also healthy to realize our own mortality and to remember that every funeral is, in that very real sense, a dry run or rehearsal for your own.  In life, in death, and all the days in between, abide with me, O Lord... Abide with me.

Two watches... no right time...

A person with one watch knows what time it is; one with two watches is never quite sure. So says an old saying that addresses the same issue of Scripture when Jesus says no man can serve two masters.  This is the problem with the kind of diversity in which we present two (or more) different faces.  We are never sure which face is the real one.  It reminds me of my Grandma telling me that if you tell the truth you don't have to remember how you spun the lie when you have to say it again.

Quite apart from anything else, Lutherans faces the problem of several watches and therefore no sure time.  For our early history and for much of the time following, who we are was shaped by our Confessions.  Our practice flowed from those Confessions.  We wore one watch.  Oh, to be sure, there were folks who deviated from our Confessions and those whose practices conflicted with those Confessions.  There will always be.  But the difference was that those who deviated in confession and practice were both seen and identified as exceptions, challenges, and even errors.  They were not the showing the correct time of Lutheranism (to extend the metaphor).  Now, the whole culture of diversity has said that Lutheranism wears many watches and we are have our own time.  It may be close but the preciseness of the time is less important than the fact that we all have our own watches.  In other words, Lutheranism has many faces, many definitions, and none of them is necessarily wrong or not authentic.  Lutheranism can exist in the form of a seeker service with contemporary music pumped out by a praise band and Lutheranism can exist in the form of the sung Divine Service and pipe organ and chanting and incense.  In this sense, Lutheranism is more of an idea than an entity.

The problem with this is that when we wear many watches we don't really know what time it is.  When Lutheranism wears many faces, no one knows what Lutheranism looks like.  When we embrace many confessions and practices we have no set confession or practice.  We don't know who we are among ourselves as a Lutheran family and so we don't know how to present Lutheranism to the world.  Nearly all of us know how untenable this is so we fight internally over contemporary vs traditional, maintenance vs mission, progressive vs repristination, modern vs ancient, etc...  What the world sees is a Lutheranism wherein even the Lutherans are not sure who they are.  Who wants to join such a church?

I am tired of the worship wars and the debates between inward focus or outreach.  We fight the same straw men over and over again and no one wins.  It seems to me we are arguing about something we say is already settled by our Confessions.  It seems to me that the only authentic face of Lutheranism is the one that still confesses what we have always confessed and the one that looks like those Confessions on Sunday morning.  If we want to be something other than this kind of Lutheranism, then we need to either ditch our Confessions or join a church body whose faith and practice corresponds to what we think and want to do.  Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want anyone to leave Lutheranism.  I would much rather that all Lutherans simply decided to be who we say we are in our Confessions and to make our liturgical, mission, and parish practice conform to those Confessions.

If you wear two watches, you never know which one tells the right time.  If Lutherans confess many confessions and wear many faces before the world and tolerate many practices on Sunday morning, we are like the man with many watches but who cannot answer what time it is.  The world pays attention to those who know what time it is -- they may reject them but the world has little respect for those who have no confidence in their convictions.  Think how we show our disdain for politicians who have no firm positions.  Again, my plea is not for anyone to leave but for us all to look at what we have said we believe and how this Confession is lived out in practice and to be what we are.  Period.

Repost of old "news...."

* * *

The latest Vineyard Music worship CD, “Intimacy, vol. 2,” has raced to the top of the Christian sales charts, but Wal-Mart is refusing to stock the album without slapping on a parental warning sticker. The ground-breaking — some say risqué — album includes edgy worship songs such as “My Lover, My God,” “Touch Me All Over,” “Naked Before You,” “I’ll Do Anything You Want,” “Deeper” and “You Make Me Hot with Desire.”
“We’ve had concerns about previous Vineyard CD’s, but this time they went overboard in their suggestive imagery depicting the church’s love affair with Christ,” said a Wal-Mart spokesman. “It would be irresponsible to sell this to 13-year-old kids.”

A Vineyard Music Group (VMG) spokesman defended the album. “We felt this was the next logical step in furthering people’s intimacy with the Lord, as the title implies,” said Sam Haverley, director of VMG public relations. “People aren’t content with yesterday’s level of closeness. They want something more. We feel this album gives them that.”

Wal-Mart represents a third of all CD sales, which has forced VMG to try to negotiate a deal. VMG proposed adding a heart-shaped warning sticker rather than the black-and-white label more often seen on raunchy rap albums, but Wal-Mart refused. VMG is considering issuing a censored version of the album.

“If Christians want to make R- or X-rated music, that’s up to them,” said a Wal-Mart spokesman, “but we don’t have to carry it.”

- Lark News, April 2003

The large number of very small congregations...

Somewhere it was pointed out that the average Protestant congregation has less than 75 members and an attendance of something between 30-50.  Even if those figures are off by a little, they are not off by much.  In the LCMS we have 1500-2000 parishes that come close to these numbers.  In other words, we have almost one third of our total congregations that fit this scenario.  Again, my point is not the numbers but the overall concern.

Some try to approach this from the vantage point of the top down.  Some voices have been raised to say that some, perhaps many, should be closed.  Period.  In the Roman Catholic Diocese of Milwaukee there is talk of closing half of their parishes and consolidating them because of a priest shortage and too many parishes too close together.  Others have been more blunt.  The excess capacity is NOT due simply to bad real estate (location, location, location) but to the fact that Mass attendance hovers around 20-25% of Roman Catholics.  The issue is not how big or where our buildings are but how few are attending regularly.  In this respect, we Lutherans share the same problem with Rome.

I am not an advocate of closing parishes (at least in general).  Neither am I an advocate of serving them with some sort of bandaid approach to ministry (read that deacons) until the last person in the building turns out the lights as they leave.  I think that the radical alternative is to renew these parishes.  Sure, some of them are in places where population declines have literally swept their potential community out from under them.  Funny, though, some of those who should be dying aren't and some who should not, are.  Statistics don't tell us everything.  The last thing I would advocate is giving up being Lutheran to emulate some other denomination or confession in their values and methodologies.  We will not rescue anything by betraying our confession to add a couple more bodies to the pews.  Either we will grow as Lutherans who confidently confess and live out that confession or we should simply leave and become the kind of Christians we envy so.  Common sense added to our courageous and confident confession will accomplish God's purpose.  Period.

One Roman Catholic has put together a set of questions for those who complain about dying congregations or closed churches: One may also ask the parishes that will be closed or clustered, a few questions, and these questions teach, even as they ask:

1. When did you start to notice a significant decline in membership?
2. What response was made to that decline?
3. Did the pastor and people work to evangelize?
4. Were drifting members ever contacted and encouraged to return?
5. How did the older members of the congregation fail to hand on the faith effectively to their children?
6. How did the Pastor and catechetical staff fail to hand on the faith effectively to the next generation?
7. What sort of financial plan was developed to secure the Parish’s ability to pay its bills?
8. When was the last time there was a vocation from this parish?
9. What is done to foster vocations?
10. Has the parish carefully maintained its buildings, or are they in disrepair?
11. How open is the parish to the wider community in which it exists?
12. Has the parish simply depended on [others] for vocations and monetary shortfalls or has it been carrying its load?
13. Did the pastor ever really level with his people as to how critical the problems were becoming in both the parish and the [District]?
14. How did things get this bad?

Although it is tempting to think that the solution lies with methodologies or with staff, I am not so sure.  I think that much of our problem is that we act like the defeated who cannot hope for anything better, that we have come to believe that we have nothing to offer the community and are here only to serve ourselves, and that our Lutheran identity just does not "sell" in the current market.  We do not need a marketing guru.  We do not need to clone praise band members.  We do not need to mirror the malls in church design.  We do not need to mimic the preaching of America's pulpit sweetheart Joel Osteen.  We simply need to be who we are.

There is just simply no avoiding the fact that, nationwide, only 20-25% of Lutherans are in Church on Sunday morning. Perhaps we are a church body not of 2.3 million members but of 800,000 or so who are actually in Church on Sunday morning.  Family sizes, birthrates, cohabitation -- these all contribute to the lack of Lutherans there but they do not explain why our kids are marrying outside and joining other churches or why the children we have are not there or why we are virtually invisible to the community around us. Financially, we Lutherans put 1-2% of our income in the plates.  These smaller parishes might be more viable if we gave more and what a tailwind it might be if we could turn our attention from paying the bills to speaking the Gospel in our neighborhoods and communities.

I am NOT ready to give up.  I am NOT ready to settle for makeshift ministers to simply prolong the agony.  I am NOT willing to exchange our theological integrity for a flash in the pan solution that betrays who we are.  I do believe that we possess the seeds of our success -- they are and always have been the means of grace.  Our confidence in these is key.  Our application of this preached and visible Word should be without embarrassment or apology.  A robust ministry begins with a robust Divine Service (speaking here not of all the bells and whistles but of the attention and priority given to the Sunday service -- source and summit of our faith and endeavors).  

Recently my District's church planting committee reported that they are focusing on planting congregations primarily in communities of 30,000 or more, that can be expected to "worship" (hate that phrase) 500 or more, that grow primarily through conversion (not transfer or renewal of lapsed Christians)... This in a District that has more than a third of our parishes which the church growth experts see as dying or no longer viable.  What might happen if we were able to invest and support and turn around even half these smaller congregations?  As we sat in convention listening to this, many of the delegates sitting at the tables came to the sober conclusion that this mission strategy has effectively written them off.  We can do better.

The Top 25 God Songs

What's on YOUR Ipod?  If you are evangelical, chances are what you listen to in the ear buds or from your local Christian radio station or what you hear at church include a healthy smattering of the CCLI top 25.

I know that my folks never encounter this in church on Sunday morning but I also know a healthy segment of the faithful Lutherans in the pews have this kind of music running through their eyes the rest of the time.  Perhaps it is no different where you live.

October 1, 2011 and March 31, 2012). Report Period 1011 - United States

Rank	Song Title	Author/s	CCLI#
1	How Great Is Our God	Tomlin, Chris\Reeves, Jesse\Cash, Ed	4348399
2	Mighty To Save	Fielding, Ben\Morgan, Reuben	4591782
3	Our God	Redman, Matt\Tomlin, Chris\Myrin, Jonas\Reeves, Jesse	5677416
4	Blessed Be Your Name	Redman, Beth\Redman, Matt	3798438
5	Here I Am To Worship	Hughes, Tim	3266032
6	Revelation Song	Riddle, Jennie Lee	4447960
7	Everlasting God	Brown, Brenton\Riley, Ken	4556538
8	Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)	Tomlin, Chris\Giglio, Louie\Newton, John	4768151
9	Jesus Messiah	Tomlin, Chris\Carson, Daniel\Reeves, Jesse\Cash, Ed	5183443
10	In Christ Alone	Townend, Stuart\Getty, Keith	3350395
11	Your Grace Is Enough	Maher, Matt	4477026
12	Forever	Tomlin, Chris	3148428
13	Open The Eyes Of My Heart	Baloche, Paul	2298355
14	Forever Reign	Morgan, Reuben\Ingram, Jason	5639997
15	How He Loves	McMillan, John Mark	5032549
16	You Are My King (Amazing Love)	Foote, Billy	2456623
17	Holy Is The Lord	Tomlin, Chris\Giglio, Louie	4158039
18	From The Inside Out	Houston, Joel	4705176
19	Hosanna (Praise Is Rising)	Baloche, Paul\Brown, Brenton	4662491
20	Shout To The Lord	Zschech, Darlene	1406918
21	Come Now Is The Time To Worship	Doerksen, Brian	2430948
22	The Stand	Houston, Joel	4705248
23	Hosanna	Fraser, Brooke	4785835
24	Lord I Lift Your Name On High	Founds, Rick	117947
25	Glory To God Forever	Fee, Steve\Beeching, Vicky	5384338

If you are like me, you probably only recognize a handful but that does not mean Lutherans, Roman Catholics and others are not using these either at home or in the car or at church.  In the Internet Monk discussion of the three new break out hits to make the list, a certain Miguel in the comments made this observation:

Reasons these songs are popular:
1. They’re simple. Their chords usually only change on downbeats, and you can teach it to your church band quickly.
2. They’re written by celebrities. I’ve heard far better songs written by the unheard of.
3. They’re recorded with top notch production. Trust me, if it was up to the way YOUR church sounded doing these songs on Sunday to make them sell, they’d be going nowhere fast.
4. They get exorbitant amounts of radio play on the three big Christian radio stations. People have been brainwashed into expecting to sing their radio pop favorites on Sunday morning.
5. The musicians are usually the other extreme from ugly. (My wife has a crush on Joel, not sure if it’s the accent or the hair, but she got irate when I suggested one of his songs for Sunday).
6. They are marketed like nobodies business. The machine behind these releases could rig nearly ANY song up to the CCLI top 25, and IMO, these songs prove this.
7. They are demographically targeted at youth. See “the Merchants of Cool” documentary: Cut and paste from the MTV playbook.
8. But most importantly, they don’t require deep thinking or doctrinal commitment/understanding to sing.

I think his eight points are pretty fair.  Church music is big business.  Whether you are Hillsong or Hilldale (that is the church next door).  It is no longer a hand maiden to the Word.  It is a cash cow for the producers, an earthly measure of success for the musicians, and a feel good medicine for the listeners... That cannot be denied.  I am glad that people are listening to this instead of the vulgar stuff that glorifies all sorts of evil (secular music) but I am not sure that this music is all the friendly to the cause of the Gospel.  Music has become a personal expression of taste and less a medium of confession and truth.  The sound of it is much more important that what it says.  It is beat driven instead of Word driven (remove the percussion and you cut the heart out of this music).

I do not think it is fair to write it all off and smugly open our hymnals as if this other stuff did not exist but neither do I believe that this Christian pop rock has a place in the liturgy.  We need new music, new hymns, new songs for Sunday morning -- this just ain't it!  And, sadly, the reality it that for too many (especially the younger end) this is the ONLY thing they hear.... 

What do you see... Whom do you see?

Sermon preached for Pentecost 18, Proper 21B, on Sunday, September 30, 2012.

    How easy it is to interject competition into the nature of things!  Like children who compete endlessly over things trivial, we often take that which is great and make it into a competition.  It is as if we forget how lavish God’s generosity is and so we fear that our prayers are competing with the prayers of others for God’s notice and His answer.  It is as if we fear that God’s grace were in short supply and therefore if He is gracious to another, we will have suffer. Sometimes, we even turn the work of the kingdom into such competition as if were all fighting against one another for the same market share.  In such competitive thought, we all want to be the Wal-Mart’s of Christianity and forget all that Christ has told us of His kingdom.
    Once Joshua came to Moses fearing that Eldad and Medad were in competition with Moses’ authority and the seventy elders whom God raised up to assist Moses with the heavy mantle of leadership.  But the surprise is that Moses is not jealous nor does he fear the work of others.  In the same way Jesus’ disciples come rushing to the Lord telling him of one who casts out demons in His name but was not one of the disciples.  Make him stop they pleaded but Jesus is not concerned.  The kingdom of God is not a competition for power jealously guarded.  He who is not against Me is for Me.  Jesus is not looking to His side but toward the goal.  That is the struggle in the Church.  When we look at either side to see what others are doing, it is nearly always the path of spiritual ruin.  Spiritual success remains keeping our vision focused upon Christ, the message of the cross, and the grace of God.  Focus on anything else and spiritual ruin is sure to follow.  Focus on these and heavenly glory is our sure reward.
    This theme has continued over the last few weeks.  The authority of the Word is not diminished by many faithful voices speaking forth the Gospel.  Just the opposite.  To be sure, we cannot ignore when error is proclaimed as truth or the cross is displaced by other gospels.  We hold others to the doctrine of the Word and we are also held accountable to that same Word.  But we cannot do the Lord’s bidding in church, house, home, and neighborhood when we look sideways instead of at Christ.  We cannot do God’s bidding faithfully if we are more concerned about others competing with us than our own constant struggle to be captive and faithful to the Word of God and the cause of the Gospel.
    It is not the brand name we must jealously preserve but the faithful proclamation of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.  My greatest concern for the health and life of this congregation and of the church to which we belong is not that we are not as competitive as others.  My greatest fear for us is that we are more concerned with what others are doing instead of our own call to be faithful to Christ and His Word right here and right now.  We will be held accountable as a church and as individual Christians not for the successful statistics so impressive in the world but for our faithfulness to Christ and His Word.  Our focus is not on those on either side of us but upon the Christ who suffered and died and rose again, and who called us to lift high this cross in His name to the ends of the earth.  The Church will not be judged faithful because of how well we stack up against our competitors.  We will be judged on our faithfulness to Christ and His Word.  In the same way, we as individual Christians will not be judged by God on earthly measures of success but by faithfulness to Christ and His Word.
    Our Lord has promised heavenly reward to those who act faithfully in His name.  That is where we are focused.  Competition is a needless distraction to the work that God has called us to do.  We are not in the business of building bigger earthly kingdoms but in building the Kingdom of Christ through the faithful administration of the means of grace.  Period.  How much good work is undone when we look more at what others are doing than keeping our vision focused upon the Lord and His Word?
    The righteousness we raise up before the world is not the righteousness of our own accomplishment but the holy life of Christ lived for us and the holy sacrifice of Christ on the cross for us.  This is what gains heavenly reward.  The ways we serve are always important to us but it is the service to the Gospel that is important to God.  Let me give an example.  The Pharisees were jealous of their rights, power, and privileges.  When John the Baptist came on scene they saw him as competition and worked carefully to undermine him instead of heeding his message that the Messiah was to come.  When Jesus came to fulfill John’s promise, He was likewise judged by the wrong criteria.  So fearful were they of competitors, they did in the realm of faith what Herod tried to do against a child he feared would take his crown away.
    That faithfulness to which we are called is demonstrated by Jesus over and over again.  In His day, the children, the disabled, and the women did not count.  But Jesus counts them.  He touches the untouchables with their illness and death.  He eats and drinks with sinners and in their own homes like we heard of Matthew a few weeks ago.  He holds up a child as the model of faith and says whoever serves this child does the good work of the kingdom.  Where the Pharisees were concern about where Jesus came from, Jesus showed forth the Kingdom of God in His faithful words and works.
    Our focus is not on those around us as if they were competitors with us.  Our focus is always on the competition within us to be faithful to Christ and His Word, to faithfully speak and live the good news of the Gospel, and to faithfully demonstrate the words of our lips with the actions of our lives.  It is great temptation to think that others have it easier than we do or that others are being more successful than we are.  Whether as a church or as individual Christians, the cause that needs to be our great concern is simply Christ and His Word – believing it faithfully, confessing it faithfully, and living it out faithfully.
    Our vision of Christian faith and life are clouded when our view is sideways and our vision is clear when we see Christ only.  That is what Moses had to remind a fearful Joshua and what Jesus had to teach distracted disciples and what we come for each week – to turn away from the distractions and to see Jesus, to repent our unfaithfulness and be forgiven and restored, and to go forth with this clear vision of Christ and His Word ever before us for one more week.  Amen.

The power of the spoken word...

One of the by-products of the near collapse of private confession among Lutherans, its shift from regular to occasional use among Roman Catholics, and its eclipse from the rest of the Christian world is that sin has become an internal matter.  Christians have become accustomed to speaking their sins only in their minds instead of out loud.  For Lutherans this means that the closest we generally come to actually admitting sins are the words of the general confession found in the service books.  It is always easier to confess sin in general than it is to specifically name our sins and it is always easier to confess sin when our voice melts into the many voices of those who say exactly the same words we say than it is to speak into the silence the sins we have thought, said, and done.  But, I would contend, that just as only confess sin in the vague generalities of common words or in the quiet of our hearts, so we are only absolved in general and in the hidden thoughts and recesses of our hearts and minds.  It is often difficult to know this forgiveness when the sin has never been spoken out loud and the absolution has never been spoken out loud or spoken personally toward the sin.

The "I don't have to confess my sins to anybody" has come to mean "I confess my sins to nobody at all."  I believe that there is grave danger for our spiritual lives in treating sin as an internal matter.  One of the dangers is that sin is never really owned until it is spoken out loud.  I well recall the first time I went to private confession and stumbled around with words that helped me get this off my chest but did not really communicate what it is I had thought, said, or done.  In the end, my father confessor was kind enough to ask me pointed questions.  Then and only then did the sin come spilling out of me.  I am not sure whether it was primarily out of embarrassment to name these sins before someone I knew or the difficulty I had owning up to the fact that these were sins.  I tend to think the latter was harder.  It was not the first time I had confessed them.  I had prayerfully confessed them in my heart many times.  I had thought of them while confessing the general sins of thought, word, and deed, of commission and omission, on Sunday morning.  But I still carried their burden and it was not until I said them out loud and heard forgiveness for these specific wrongs that I began to feel the full measure of the freedom of the absolution.

Part of the reason that sin and forgiveness are so difficult for us to handle in our lives together is that we seldom speak the sin out loud to the person we have wronged.  We simply say "I'm sorry" as if that is all that needs to be said.  So that forgiveness may heal the personal breech on earth as God has healed it in heaven, it is most helpful to actually say what it is that we are sorry for -- to address the sin as something real and evil is to speak its name out loud.  Of course, the response is equally vague -- "It's okay."  Well, if it was okay, why in Sam Hill did you make me say my sin out loud?  If we confess that sin specifically, then the least we are owed is a real absolution.  Not "It's okay" but "I forgive you."

In the old confessional service of The Lutheran Hymnal, there were some questions and answers designed to pump and prod us a bit before simply making the general confession.  Half of those question on page 48 dealt with confession and repentance but the other half dealt with the absolution.  It was not a substitute for private confession but it was certainly a more profound act of contrition than the general words we speak on Sunday morning.  If the Exhortation was used, the individual sins were not mentioned but the effect of that sin was laid out in unmistakable terms.  It is not just that we screwed up but that we were complicit in evil.  Here I am reminded of Berhold Von Schenk's old line, "I know the devil and I have done business with him..."  By speaking our sins out loud we not only own them but we identify them as evil and wickedness.  This is seldom done much anymore.

If we do not take sin seriously, it might be, in part, because we seldom speak of our sin's out loud and we hardly ever identify them as evil or conspiracy with the devil.  If we do not take sin seriously, it might explain the way we excuse and justify what we have done while holding others to a much higher standard.  If we do not take sin seriously, it is easy to know why the cross is so quickly ditched in favor of other subjects. We treat confession and absolution are merely preliminaries to the bigger and deeper subjects of the faith instead of the very nature of the faith at work.  No, I vote in favor of speaking the sin out loud so that the absolution may be heard out loud and the matter resolved by the power of grace.

I recall an old movie about a Roman Catholic boys school in Brooklyn in the 1960s.  One youth was being honest and forthcoming as he stood in line waiting for confession.  When a hot shot came over and asked him what he was going to confess, the hot short insisted he could not say that to a priest or would spend eternity doing penance.  Instead, like a bookie keeping track of odds, the hot shot taught the kind to be less specific and more general and to admit only what seems reasonable.  In the end the kind received an absolution worth about as much as this half baked confession and it left him with no comfort before his guilty conscience.  The blessing may come through the confession but the blessing is the absolution.  Both need to be honest, forthright, and pointed or they too easily become just words.  Heaven help us, indeed!

What a deal I have for you....

You won’t find a better opportunity to acquaint yourself with the hymns and songs of Martin Luther than this.
Concordia Publishing House’s set called, Martin Luther: Hymns, Ballads, Chants, Truth is available in MP3 download format at Amazon for only $5.49.

This set features 39 pieces composed by Luther, interspersed with some of his spoken quotes about the Divine gift of music to encourage our faith and express our worship. I bought this a few years ago and have enjoyed it immensely.

The blurb at CPH says:

This monumental recording project presents, for the first time, a complete recording of all the hymns, ballads, and chants composed or authored by Martin Luther. This four-CD set provides numerous vocal and instrumental settings combining Renaissance, Baroque, and modern instruments.
Many hymns are preceded by preludes composed by significant historic and contemporary composers. All texts are sung in English by a choral ensemble noted for vocal clarity. Historic narrative is provided, quoting Martin Luther concerning music, worship, and liturgy.

The CD retails for $44.95 (on sale now for $34.95 unless I am mistaken), so this is a great deal. If you click the link above, you’ll be taken directly to Amazon’s page for this recording.

HT to the Internet Monk for pointing this out!

Looking for Mr. or Miss Right...

I have written of this before -- both the thinking that neither male nor female really needs the other so that marriage can be defined as we choose, that marriage is optional unless we decide for it, that no one should ever surrender any part of self in marriage for in it two independents merely cooperate out of common interest, etc..  Marriages are being delayed and marriage is being rejected at and, dare I say it, unprecedented rate (see earlier blog post).  Let me quote some statistics.

• Currently of women under 35, only 40% have ever been married [1]. 
• Seventy percent of African American women and fifty-one percent of Hispanic women are currently unmarried. 
• Forty-five percent of white women (non-Hispanic) and 
• Forty percent of Asian women are unmarried [2]

There are now more single than married women in the US. Women in American society are less likely than ever to have a husband.  I am only picking on the female statistics here but you can see parallels for the men as well.

Some have suggested that the cause of this is romance -- the desire to find the perfect mate.  Others say that marriage is not only optional but seen in negative terms.  Still others point to the high divorce rate and suggest that fear of failure is one reason why young people are so cautious about marriage.  No one can deny that the acceptability of co-habitation has had a profound impact upon marriage.  In the end, perhaps we have taught our children too well to be independent and not to settle for less than perfect  -- oh, wait, are these the same young people who are moving home in, well, unprecedented rates?  I guess my point is that the whole discussion is fraught with issues and problems so that no single or simple answer can be found.

For the Church this presents a profound challenge and opportunity.  I am not sure when we will begin talking again about marriage as divine intention and mean it.  We are so worried about offending people that we act like marriage is something like the choice of side items to go with your entree -- some like and some don't -- when according to Scripture, marriage is the entree.

The sad truth is that many churches today have decided that you cannot argue with the idea that sex is the expected choice and marriage is the occasional option, that marriage is for all things you decide and, may also, for children, or that you getting what you want is the goal and purpose of life (vs you giving and serving anyone else).  We have stylized worship to make it fun and we have adopted and baptized the self-centered approach to  things so that faith is primarily a matter of self-interest or personal choice.

And then we wonder why we have so few weddings.... or why Sunday school attendance is down...

Posting problems today...

For those who cannot begin their day without a fix from Pastoral Meanderings (is there anyone who fits that bill????), I had posting problems today but I am up and running again!

This is who I am... for now, at least.

I read:

In his Confessions of an Ecumenical, Evangelical, Baptist Christian, Roger Olson unfurls a dizzying list of the various Christian denominations with which he has taught, served, studied and participated in ecumenical dialogue.  “What I want to say,” Olsons insists, “is that I am anything BUT a dyed-in-the-wool, separatistic, sectarian Baptist. But I am a convinced and committed Free Church, evangelical Protestant and Baptist.”

I heard:

What I want to say is... I AM...  meaning ME, MY TRUTH, MY CONCLUSIONS, MY DEFINITIONS....  I am ME.  This is who I AM...  The only problem is that the faith is not about ME, whoever me is,  but the one who IS the Great I Am.  We are so quick to define ourselves and too quickly cast aside the God who has revealed Himself.  It is as if the Church is only ever one person wide and deep since everyone has differences.  Some tell us that those differences don't or shouldn't account for all that much.  Some are careful to define what is church dividing and what is not.  But the great weakness of Protestantism and Evangelicalism is that the faith is only ever one person wide and deep.  Their church exists where enough commonality or unity exists so that the individual beliefs can coincide with the churchly statement of faith.

I just about go crazy in the face of such individualism.  For sure we believe individually but it ends there.  We lay down our individuality to become one with Christ and through Christ one with the Father and one with all those who believe in Him.  We do not take up our individuality to parade it as if it were some mark of nobility.  It is not.  Lutherans have tended to give such individuality tacit approval or at least withheld disapproval but we should be talking about it.  We should be challenging such individuality.  We are creedal.  We are confessional.  We believe individually but our faith is anything but individual -- it is catholic and universal.  Our truth is not one heart wide and one mind deep.  We proclaim that which has always been believed, confessed, and taught.  The claim of catholicity is key to the Reformation and the Lutheran Confessions. 

We are not here to be who we are but to just get along.  We are here to lay down individuality before the common confession and the creedal identity which neither began with nor will it end with me (whoever that me is).  We believe "for us and our salvation" but believing sacrifices individuality and gladly so.  I hear so many folks, even some in my own parish, who seem more enamored with their own story, history, and conclusions than they are content to let them all rest in the evangelical and catholic identity of creed and confession.  We search for adjectives to describe us and end up comparing ourselves to others to pick a point on the landscape of Christian faith and thought and worship practice and this is how we say who I am.

An example of this lies in the way Pastors of the LCMS rate themselves.  Where are we on the scale from rigid to flexible to blown in the wind of change and chance?  Where are in comparison to others around us -- conservative, moderate, or, well, gosh, we cannot be liberal, so we'll call it progressive -- no better, lets say missional.  I am this kind of guy.  I am that kind of Pastor.  Maybe I am just too old and cantankerous but I am weary of defining me.  I am Lutheran.  Can that be enough?  I am a Lutheran Pastor of the books -- Scripture and the Confessions.  I am not trying to be me.  I am not trying to be someone else.  I am trying to be Lutheran in faith and practice.  In an age in which diversity and difference are celebrated, I want to be like those who came before me -- Lutheran in faith and practice.  I do not want all Lutheran clergy to be like me but I DO want them all to be fully and confidently Lutheran in faith and practice. 

We all want to be different but then we nuance our difference so that we are like this one or that.  There is no certainty or security in the rampant and radical individualism that has swept up so much of American Christianity.  We are given no continuum in Scripture on which to place the point where our faith and practice intersects the one, holy catholic and apostolic faith and church.  Truth does not have a range.  It has flesh and blood in the incarnate Christ.  I fear that this is one of the great undoings of our modern age.  It has surely been the great temptation in the past, as well, but at no time have we ever been so in love of defining ourselves and our beliefs in such individualistic terms as today.  Pray God we make it through the age of me.

Why do we spend so much time on wild goose chases?

We have heard it all before.  Jesus had a lover.  Jesus had a wife.  Jesus did not die.  Jesus was gay.  Jesus was not who the New Testament says He was.  Don't forget the Gospel of Judas the hero, the lost books of the Bible, the secret Gospel of Mark, etc...  We spend so darn much time and energy in the pursuit of what turns out to be fakery, deception, lies, and falsehoods.  Would that we spent as much time and energy simply reading and believing the Word of Scripture!

Yet the work of apologetics must go on.  People have itching ears (to use Scripture's metaphor) and we actually want to believe the strange and inane.  Unless we challenge the lies with the Truth, the lie gains credibility with those who want to believe but who are inclined to also believe every lie, falsehood, and deception.  Yet this is not the work of the Kingdom -- defending Scripture from its mockers and challenging the faux gospels that purport to be the real Gospel.  It must be done, to be sure, but the work of the Kingdom is speaking the Gospel not engaging in a war of words with its naysayers.  We certainly cannot prove the Gospel beyond any need for the risk of believing, what Kierkegaard (later Tillich) deemed the grand "leap of faith."  I am no follower of either and yet I understand their point.  Faith is not proven by principle or arrived at by simple deduction.  It relies upon the Holy Spirit to build up the evident facts of the faith to grasp them, trust them, and believe that these objective facts were "for me." 

Doubt is our natural condition since the fall.  More than this, our skepticism for the truth of God is accompanied by our desire for the strange, curious, and even borderline crazy.  So every time a newspaper presumes to have found the proof that the Jesus of history was never the Jesus of Scripture, we must stand ready to dispute its lies.  All the while we argue, the work of the Kingdom goes on -- speaking the Word of the Lord without fear or embarrassment and faithfully.  Where the Word is spoken, God is at work -- whether His works are seen to us or remain hidden from out eyes to await another time or another set of eyes to behold.  I understand this.  I also understand the need to challenge the next scrap of papyrus that claims some outlandish and boorish falsehood.  It is just that I also know how jaded people become to the competing claims and to the tempting lie that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

We listened to one presidential debate and there were heard competing claims, disputed facts, and characterizations as much fancy and reality.  Even the truth has trouble changing people's minds.  We have grown so accustomed to the shouting of the warriors in battle that we believe neither side and presume the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  The same is true of religious battles of words.  The end result is hardly ever that the Truth wins but that the idea of unassailable and consistent and eternal truth grows ever weaker.  I will never forget the fellow who read Scripture with me in a Bible study as we challenged some of the then lies of the DaVinci Code era.  "Well, the truth is out there somewhere but we'll probably never know it..."

Even when we win and the lie is exposed, skepticism has won.  By now most are pretty sure that little bitty papyrus with the four words claiming Jesus had a wife is a forgery and a fake.  But that never hits the front pages like the lunatic claims of its finding did.  In the end, we won the battle while the tide of the war keeps moving toward the position that no truth can ever really be known if it exists at all.  Maybe we should have let stand the idiocy of a piece of paper with claims that fly against unbroken Christian tradition and Scriptural truth.  While we were battling this out in the media, some of our own people and those not yet of the Kingdom wondered if we ever will or can know the truth... that perhaps all we have is what we want or choose to believe.

Pardon me if there is no real conclusion to post... just the mere frustration that defending the Bible against its critics is a never ending work that can sometimes, perhaps often, get in the way of the real work of the Kingdom in speaking the Biblical Word to the world.  Just a few odd thoughts after a debate....

Where have all the youth group folks gone?

I grew up when Walther League was still the name recognition of LCMS youth.  It did not last long and soon more than the name was gone.  I am not writing a nostalgia piece here.  The last thing we need is someone telling us that we need to go back to the way it was done 40-50 years ago.  I realize that the world is different, that kids are different, that the challenges are different.  What concerns me is that all our energy in making youth group fun and exciting, all our efforts to incorporate music that sounds more like what our youth listen to on the radio (make that their Ipods), and all our money spent on rooms, recreation, and relevent stuff has not done much.

• 20-30 year olds attend church at 1/2 the rate of their parents and ¼ the rate of their grandparents.
• 61% of churched high school students graduate and never go back! (Time Magazine, 2009) 
• Even worse: 78%  to 88% of those in youth programs today will leave church, most to never return. (Lifeway, 2010)

Now, granted, these are not the statistics of LCMS youth but they probably are not that far off.  We have coddled them with entertainment, we have made over the church to reflect their supposed musical taste, and we have bought into the idea that youth ministry needs to be hip and fun... all for what?  Many of them are falling away like leaves off the tree in the Fall.  Are they coming back?  I don't know...  Marriage and children were once the great wake up calls to recall the distracted youth from their wanderlust but the postponement of marriage and the fewer children born to young people has left us with fewer built in alarms to the need for connection to the Church and the faith.  We could debate this until the cows come home -- the point I am trying to make is that those redesigned youth programs of the 1980s-today have not connected the youth to the Church nor have they catechized our youth to instill the value of belonging and being together around the Word and Table of the Lord each week.

If parents were counting on youth programs, they dropped the ball.  If the churches were depending upon youth programs, they have been left wanting. There is no replacement for strong family faith and values, reinforced by solid catechesis, and reflected in the regular and normative practice of Sunday worship.  Part of the reason each succeeding generation seems less attached is that their parents were less attached than their parents, and so on.  In addition, we went through a period in which we thought relationship building was more important that teaching the actual faith and our catechesis did not match up to our confession.  The point that I am trying to make is that competing for the endless choices in the marketplace of pleasure will always leave us a distant fourth or fifth to the more exciting options for entertainment, excitement, and fun.  Youth programs have got to stop trying to compete with the vast entertainment options already available to middle and high school age youth and need to start teaching and reinforcing the truth and values of the faith (not in the least of which is why weekly worship is so important for us).

Making church fun and having music you can dance to on Sunday morning is not going to capture or keep our kids.  Segregating our kids from adults and telling them to trust their feelings is not going to help them believe or remain faithful.  Parental teaching and example, dedicated catechesis, and good church going habits in the family are still our best hope to pass on the faith.  The people who think this is about style have it all wrong.  It was and it will always be about substance and about substantial commitment and example on the part of the adults in our kids' lives.

I just thought I would beat the drum on the familiar bandwagon again.... but if you are tired of it, you can move along to something else...

The taming of the wild...

C. S. Lewis reminds us that Aslan is not a tame lion.  But we try to tame him.  In the same way, as we move from St. Michael and All Angels, I am reminded how hard we have worked to tame the angels of the Lord, to transform them from the powerful warriors of Scripture to the cute and sentimental cherubs that are more like pets than anything else.  Angels have become a comfortable subject to us and you do not have to believe in God to love the idea of angels who watch over, protect, and care for us -- in the spiritual realm.

The lessons for St. Michael and All Angels are not the comforting words of sentiment or sweetness but words of war, of fierce battle, and of wining and losing.  There is not much room for tame angels or soft images here.  We long to see angels but if we saw them as they are we would certainly be terrified.  I am reminded of a friend who described the implementation of the armaments of war and said he expected to be exuberant over the accomplishment of our technology.  Instead he was sick and fearful.  Angels that conform to the sweet image of our sentiment are worthless to us.  I am not saying that they cannot be compassionate or gentle but that the warriors whom God calls His messengers are beneficial to us precisely because they are powerful.

Sadly, we do not want to interrupt our playful imagination with the stark reality of Scripture.  We would do well to listen more to the Word than to tear up at the chubby little cherubs sold to us in the marketplace.  If we knew what they were, we would desire less to see them and be comforted more by their labors on our behalf as God has promised.

I recall the movie City of Angels about 15 years ago.  It is surely not faithful to the Biblical teaching on angels and yet the image of angels portrayed in that movie is closer to reality than the standard image of refrigerator magnet and Christian book store print.  The movie image of those brooding angels hanging around the library watching folks oblivious to their presence still sticks in my mind.  Those who watch over us at God's behest are filled with mystery and that mystery is as much a cause of fear as it is wonder.  But we do not need figureheads.  We need the reality of those whose heavenly battle with Lucifer and his legion banished evil from heave.  We need the might of those who have the power of God on their side -- for us whom God calls His own.  We need wild angels who wield the spiritual power of God against our powerful enemies.  Remember when Jesus said if He wanted He would send for His angels and nothing could be done to harm Him.  These were not show angels.  Tame lions are for zoos.  Tame angels are for fiction.  God is not tame and cannot be house broken and neither can His angels.  Thank the Lord for that.  They do not serve us but they serve the Lord on our behalf.  Let us never forget it...

Read the article and note how "Lutheran" comes up...

In May of 2005, Archbishop William Levada—who had headed the Archdioceses of Portland (Oregon) and San Francisco—was appointed prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In July of 2011, having reached the age of 75, Cardinal Levada duly submitted his resignation from that important curial post. Almost a year later, on July 2, the Holy See announced that Levada’s successor at the CDF would be Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Regensburg.  

With these words the Catholic World Report introduces us to the Bishop who is prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (arguably among the most important -- if not THE most important -- of the Congregations or Offices of the Roman Catholic hierarchy).  The introduction reveals a person well equipped for the great responsibilities assigned to him.  What is significant, however, is to read through the CWR article and see how "Lutheran" figures in the background and presumed future of this man and his new office.

Some have much of the mentions, others think it may be much ado about nothing.  It occurred to me, however, what irony it would be if Rome actually determined that the Augustana was indeed a catholic confession but at the same time could not find a Lutheran body that confessed what the Augsburg Confession said and practiced in accord with this Confession.  I for one have no doubt that what was presented in Augsburg is indeed a catholic confession.  My doubts and fears lies with those who have either deliberately violated its spirit and words or redefined them to justify their own indulgence with mainline Protestantism on one side and Evangelicalism on the other.  Even in Missouri, which is the last great hope for Lutheranism in the US, we have left unchallenged those Pastors and congregations whose stated beliefs and well documented practices are in conflict with the doctrinal standard every parish constitution affirms.  We have a long way to go and before we worry ourselves about how Rome might judge our Confessions, we need to rekindle confidence in their words and reform our own practices to conform to them.

Membership Optional...

Is membership even a category associated with church any longer???

The Background: Grey Matter Research surveyed American adults who attend a local church or place of worship once a month or more. The study asked people whether their place of worship offers "any kind of official membership in the organization, or not." Among all worship-goers, 48% say such official membership is offered, 33% believe it is not, and 19% are not sure.

The Story: A new study finds that fewer than half of Americans who attend church are aware that their place of worship offers any sort of official membership.

According to the study, while some denominations and individual congregations have no official form of membership, most of the largest religious bodies do. All of the ten largest denominations in the U.S.---as measured by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies---measure some form of official membership: Roman Catholic Church, Southern Baptist Convention, United Methodist Church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Assemblies of God, Presbyterian Church U.S.A., Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, Episcopal Church, and National Baptist Convention USA.

I must admit that I sort of resonate with this story.  You can read the whole thing here.  My own experience seems to parallel what the surveys have found.  Serving as the Pastor of a congregation close to a large army post only confirms that for many membership is not something high on their priority list or even much in the thoughts of folks today.  I grew up in a place where church membership meant everything.  I fear that it has come to mean little more than formality today.  I have mixed feelings about this.  While a part of me laments the callous disregard to commitment and belonging, I understand it.  I belong where I attend -- so say most of the folks I encounter.  I have had people argue with me that they were already members of my parish since they attended there and I have had people insist that they were members even though they had not set foot in the door for a decade or more.  Maybe the latter kind of folks are influencing my frustration with keeping up the idea of membership which was clearly shaped more in a time when people were less mobile and when membership counted a great deal.

I struggle with this all the time.  We carry a high number of members who no longer have a local address.  Some of them are children of members not yet fully settled (if they ever will be) and others are due to military families who think they might return to Ft. Campbell or who just cannot find another church to join (think Lutheran and think liturgical).  It is not so much that we have a ton of folks who wake up on Sundays and think, "Nah, I'll stay home today" as much as have people who would attend IF they were here.  We also have a higher than usual number of families in which spouses belong to different churches and for whom the issue of belonging is often settled by a visitation of congregations in the general vicinity of either religious preference OR in one that might represent a compromise.  Still, they have not yet fully settled on a choice and so they do not technically belong.  Finally, we have the normal folks who have historic ties to this congregation but for whom attendance is no longer a part of their vocabulary of faith.  They feel like they are doing just fine without attending but they hold on to the belonging part because of legacy, tradition, or familial connections.

So what do we do?  In order to mean something, membership must be taught and restored both to the church and to the Christian culture.  To be frank, I am not sure it is something I want to spend the bulk of my time teaching -- especially when Lutheranism is such a foreign brand in the part of the country where I live.  We emphasize belonging.  We confirm adults.  We catechize all ages.  We formally receive members on Sunday mornings 3-5 times a year.  But it does not have the same cache as it once had and I am not sure whether those who join do so because they are convinced it is a good thing to do or because we have encouraged such a conclusion.  Or do we simply give up on this ancient and laudable concept -- belonging, joining, covenanting together as a congregation, the people of God in this place...

In the end we are left with one more hurdle -- to re-invent the idea of membership -- or one more noble goal left unfulfilled -- if we give up the idea of membership.  Parts of me are attracted to both sides of this issue -- I want to reap the benefits of membership renewal while skipping this labor to make it happen.  Ultimately, however, membership means nothing without greater catechesis in the doctrine of the faith and training in righteousness (to use a Biblical term) for living the faith...   What think you?

 

Toke the Ghost

It would be funny if it were not so sad, pathetic, and blasphemous....