Still open. . .

 

I have been asked to teach a continuing ed course in August in two locations.  The information is listed below.  Take a gander and if you are interested, sign up and join us.  It is not only for pastors but also for lay folks as well.

August 4–6, 2025 in Auburn, MI &

August, 12-14 in Cupertino, CA 

The Rev. Larry A. Peters is a native of Nebraska and graduated from St. John’s College, Winfield, Kansas, Concordia Senior College, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne (1980). He vicared on Long Island and served his first call in Cairo, New York, before moving to Clarksville, Tennessee, where he has served Grace Lutheran Church as senior pastor for thirty-two years. He is now pastor emeritus of Grace. In 2017 Concordia Theological Seminary recognized him as alumnus of the year. He has served as a circuit visitor in the Atlantic and Mid-South districts, is currently chairman of the Synod’s Commission on Constitutional Matters, sits on the Synod’s Commission on Handbook, and is also secretary of the Mid-South district. He has also served on the planning committees for the Synod’s Institute for Liturgy, Preaching, and Church Music for the last ten years. Pastor Peters has published many periodical articles and served as a contributor to a number of CPH volumes. He is the author of the popular blog, Pastoral Meanderings. Pastor Peters has been married to his wife, Amy, for more than forty-six years, and they have three adult children and two grandchildren. He is currently trying to figure out what retirement means.  

At All Times and in All Places: All God's People Pray 

More words about prayer can be found in the Scriptures than about most other topics, and yet God’s people struggle with what it means to pray. This course will examine the practice of prayer among God’s Old Testament people, through the time of Christ, through the history of Christianity, and down to the present day. What is prayer? What does it mean to pray? How do we pray? How did the people of God order their prayer lives before us? What is the difference between and what is the connection with the individhttps://witness.lcms.org/the-magazine/ual prayer lives of God’s people and the common prayers of God’s people together? What does God’s Word teach us about prayer? This course will help participants learn and appreciate the lessons of the past on the practice and discipline of prayer both as individuals and as a people gathered together for worship and prayer. All of us are both amateurs and professionals when it comes to praying, and this course is both for those who lead and teach God’s people to pray and for the people of God in their discipline of prayer throughout the circumstances and places of life.  

Location:    Grace Lutheran Church 303 Ruth St. Auburn, MI 48611 To download the registration form, click here.  

Lutheran Church of Our Savior 5825 Bollinger Rd. Cupertino, CA 95014  To download the registration form, click here.

Coordinators:  Rev. Aaron T. Schian Email: aaronschian@yahoo.com Phone: (607) 972-5792  & Rev. John Bestul Phone: 408.252.0345 Email: pastorjbestul@lcos.org 

Schedule Class begins the first day at 12:00 p.m. and concludes at 12:00 p.m. the final day.

Not privileged. . .

When Washington state Gov. Mike Ferguson signed a controversial bill into law last week making reporting of child abuse mandatory, it went one step further than ever before.  Now, "mandatory" leaves no room for clergy and the seal of the confessional.  The state has required reporting of child abuse leaving no exemptions even for information disclosed during private confession. Confessions had been considered privileged and therefore exempt from the requirement and still are nearly everywhere else.  Confession, like attorney client privilege, has always been carved out an exception to such reporting requirements.  Now that exception has been closed.  Though this is certainly an issue for Roman Catholic clergy, it is no less an issue for Lutherans.  We have always observed and honored the seal of the confessional and the governments reach has always stopped at this point -- deeming it as encroaching up the separation of church and state.  One of the consequences of the breaching of the wall is not simply the influence of religion upon government but government upon religion.  This will undoubtedly be overturned by the Supreme Court of the nation as a violation of the constitutional restriction against laws that infringe upon religious freedom but the signal is pretty clear.  In a world in which there is no respect left for religion, there will be no popular support of the rights of religious against the backdrop of the heinous crimes of child abuse.  In this case, no one wins.  While some may point to the $5,000 fine for not abiding by this intrusion, the money is the smaller issue here.

Some years ago the local county jail instituted video visits -- even for lawyers meeting their incarcerated clients.  I was asked by a member to come to the jail and was given a small closet and a screen but I quickly surmised that this was in no way going to be a visit in which any confidence could be guaranteed.  I warned the member upfront of this and suggested that others might be listening.  After the visit, I waited to be let out and could hear lawyers in their closets talking with clients and knew that walls had ears -- even if they were intended to be soundproof.  It effectively prevent much of any meaningful conversation and pastoral care.  Later I asked other lawyers and clergy about their experience and they shrugged their shoulders.  "It is what it is," they said.  The guarantees of our liberty are only as solid as the ways in which that liberty is exercised or prevented.  In this case, it did not amount to much.

Surely we all get it.  We live in an age in which Dateline and Snapped teach us that things are not what they seem and of cop and courtroom dramas in which the guilty too often are able to beat the system.  Then we watch the news of egregious crimes committed on video for the world to see but the media carefully calling the guilty the "accused" -- as if we could unsee what we saw.  The world begs for justice in a system that will render a verdict after too many years have passed that probably will not have much to do with actual guilt or innocence, and a punishment assigned that will be set aside because jails and prisons are crowded and the enlightened have decided that everyone deserves another chance.  So we are gravely tempted to forego the provisions which provide a small modicum of privacy and privilege to such seemingly irrelevant things as religion.  But in our haste we find ourselves in grave peril.  The world which no longer has respect for privacy for religious purpose will no longer respect any privacy and in that world religion will suffer but so will freedom.  I am a nobody with a relatively transparent life but it still makes me uneasy to think that my life is an open book for anyone with a screen.  If we are not ready to honor the confidentiality of the confessional, we should not complain when all the details of our lives are published in social media and sourced for scammers who are working to profit at our expense.  

Washington's governor and legislature may be well-intentioned but they are wrong.  The sooner we realize that such protections are not infringements upon our freedom but the pure exercise of liberty the sooner we may get some semblance of order back for us and all our institutions.  Governments are not our masters but our servants.

Less to miss. . .

I recently read an article about how those most orthodox in their Christian faith are the least likely to depart the Church and those least orthodox in their Christian faith are the most likely to leave.  Some probably hailed this as a great insight.  It is to be expected.  Those who do not hold to the creedal and doctrinal formulations of the faith and, in particular, to the truthfulness and factual character of the Scriptures, have less to leave and therefore less to miss.

If you already have doubts about or rejected Scripture as God's Word and infallible in what it says (not only in matters of salvation), there is less to miss by jettisoning the Scriptures and the Church called into being by that Word.  If you already have rejected the voice of God speaking through His Word ordering all things into being and keeping them, there is less to miss by taking the off ramp from religion and its theocentric shape of all things.  If you have already departed from the morality flowing from God's Word and His creative and redemptive work, you have also pretty much given up on the idea of sin and evil in favor of some vacillating standard and so there is less to miss.  If you have already supplemented with or given the primary nod to culture and popular opinion as a standard for truth against God's revelation, there is less to miss by giving it all up in favor of what feels good in the moment.  If you have already come to the conclusion that your life is mostly accident and primarily about what you do or do not do in the present, it is easier to give up on God's will and purpose and any thoughts about eternity and therefore there is less to miss by leaving it all behind.  I could go on and on and on but I think you get the drift.

Of course those least catechized and those whose faith is less in accord with the creedal and doctrinal formulations of Christian orthodoxy are more likely to leave.  They hold to less and it is easier for them to give up that as well.  For all the talk about the nones and the declining numbers of Christians, the painful and yet honest truth is that the orthodox Christians (no matter the tradition) are always the least likely to depart the pew and the most likely to stay.  It is the obvious truth which we do not seem to want to admit.  Christians who hold to the faith once delivered to the saints and who practice that faith with regular (dare I say weekly?) attendance are hardly likely to depart.  The ones we lose are always the ones whom we do not quite have now and the future merely reveals how little we had them in the beginning.

Let me dispel a myth, however.  We will always have the cultural Christians who come on Christmas and Easter and weddings and funerals and such.  They may be distant from the actual believing part of it all (though whom I to judge) but at least they recognize the value of holding on to the dream.  I suspect there is more hope of these becoming more orthodox and devout than there is any real hope of those who have to swallow hard when they hear the Christian faith as it has always been confessed.  They have no dream left to hold onto and their anchor within the pale is always in danger of slipping.  It will not take much for them to slip out the back or even perhaps to throw a public fit about the narrowness of the orthodox faith in the face of a wider world of opinion and truth.  They hold to less and have less to miss.

Childlike clarity. . .

Age and experience are supposed to impart wisdom.  Sometimes they also bestow a cloud or fog around things that should be clear.  I see it in myself.  I heard it in others.  It is hard to miss and even harder to overcome.  The child sees life through a rather uncluttered lens but the adult has all sorts of caveats that fill the landscape of life.  Even more, they make it often hard to see virtue and evil, good and bad, right and wrong.  Instead of clarity and fine lines, there are degrees of muddiness and gray that undermine the whole idea of right and wrong.

One of the places where it happens most clearly is confession.  When a child comes to private confession, they know what they have said and thought and done and they know one thing more.  They know it is wrong.  They do not like it.  Who does?  But they know the elephant in the room and they do not ignore it.  Sometimes a youth at confession ends up with swelling emotion and tears as they say out loud what has tormented him or her for too long.  Perhaps a careless word was said to a beloved parent -- I hate you; I wish you were dead.  Unlike adults who can minimize the power of words, these words live in their minds and hearts and they hear them over and over again with every glimpse of the parent.  Like a dam giving way to the flood, confession allows this to all come out unvarnished and without nuance of explanation or justification.

The adult is often more likely to rationalize the context and to say why it was said and to make sure that the father confessor knows they did not mean it.  But of course they did.  Everyone means the words that come spilling out of our mouths but later need recalling.  We meant it in the moment even though we may live with a lifetime of regret for having actually said it.  But the adult tends to soften the evil of the words and the intent and to smooth the rough edges of the sin.  Because of this, it is harder for the adult to leave confession having felt the full release of the absolution for as much as you make relative the sin, you also end up making relative the forgiveness.  If you are honest, you have heard it in yourself.  I have.

There is another aspect to this.  The child almost always confesses concrete sins.  They sins they have said, thought, or done.  The child does not have the advantage of living with intentions and lives more comfortably in the realm of words, thoughts, and deeds.  The adult lives easily in the arena of intentions and the confessions of adults are more about the things they could or should have done but did not instead of the concrete of the things they said, thought, or did that were evil.  In this way, evil itself is distanced from the everyday life of the adult in a way that it is not for the child.

Something to think about when you go to private confession.  Try not to explain your sins to the pastor hearing your confession or to God.  Simply confess them.  Confess them as concrete realities and not what might have been done that was not.  Believe you me, this is the key to walking away with a clear conscience and it is for this that know Christ and Him crucified.  He takes our sin away not by diminishing its wrong or giving it a context to be understood but with His blood that cleanses us and makes us clean.  Thanks be to God!

The Pope for agnostics. . .

I have heard it said and written many times that Pope Francis is held in high esteem by non-Roman and even non-attending self-proclaimed Christians because he gives a kindly human face to their own problems with the Scriptures, doctrine, and truth.  Certainly this must be so.  After all, this is the man who refuses to judge, who goes the second mile to talk to those on the fringes of the faith while calling believers in the traditional faith rigid and uncaring, and who expresses his own doubts so openly.  Who living on the fringes of the faith would not feel welcomed by someone who seems to have his own struggles with the words of Jesus and the doctrines proclaimed in Scripture?  He is a Pope for Doubters and Progressives but the real test is whether he is bringing them back into the sphere of the truth that endures forever or merely making them feel better about their own rejection and uncertainties.  He has given the liberal wing of his church permission to depart even further from the faith but he has yet to show any evidence that his laissez-faire attitude toward doctrine has welcomed anyone back to the pews.

My own suspicion is that he is not bringing many back into the fold but is certainly helping those who insist upon living on the fringes of doctrine and life feel better about their tenuous position on the edge.  While some will say that is good, unless the olive branch brings them closer to the faith flowing out of Scripture and confessed in the creed, it remains a rather empty gesture. Without a bridge designed to bring those who struggle to accept and confess the faith into a fuller life within the communion of faith, it is a bridge too far.  While I am not at all suggesting that the faithful should be callous or cold in their treatment of those on the fringes, the whole enterprise of evangelization is to bring people into the full embrace of Christ and not to confirm them in their doubts or approve of their own rejection of the core of Christian faith and life.

This Pope is not quite the figure of a Fulton Sheen.  Where you like or dislike the Archbishop, he went to where the people were and challenged them to come where Christ is.  That is the goal of apologetics.  It is not to defend a weak and fragile faith but to reveal the strength and power of Christ and Him crucified to those who fear trusting Him or anyone.  We engage the doubter not so that he might be confirmed in his doubts but so that they may be answered by the Word of the Lord that endures forever.  Yes, the Lord woos and wins us over, persuades us (as the KJV put it in Romans 8), but He does so not with a weak of fragile truth.  Christ engages us with a truth so strong that it is without comparison and with a love that is not mere words but arms outstretched in suffering for us and for the whole world.  

Our Lord does not join the sinner in his sin in order that he might feel less guilty or convicted by that sin.  He offers to those living in shame and in the shadow of death forgiveness and life.  He does not leave sin to the darkness but calls it out to the light where forgiveness can overpower it.  He does not join the doubter in his doubts or the smug in his prideful rejection of God's Word but confronts them with truth so strong it can save not only one soul but a whole world.  He does not live an immoral life so that those who do might feel better about their words and actions but addresses the immoral with more than a word of judgment in the mercy that rescues and redeems.  He does not tell the sinful woman that she is okay but sends her forth in mercy and calls her to "go and sin no more."   It is precisely this that is missing in Pope Francis' words to those on the edge of Christianity.  There can and should be more.  Rome already knows more in the stunning witness of a John Paul II against the cheapening of life, marriage, sex, and family.  And there it is.  While Francis is out bringing roses and chocolates to those who reject the core of Christian faith and life, his other hand is gutting what is left of John Paul II's legacy of life and virtue.  While no one wishes another to die, perhaps it is true that Francis' passing would relieve the faithful of a leader who has taken them in the wrong direction.  Unless, however, he is replaced with someone better, it is merely the change of watch on a ship already sinking.