“We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing.” 2 Thessalonians 1:3

The congregation of St. Paul located in Pensacola, Florida began the discernment process of leaving the ELCA in 2018. We had the 2^nd vote to leave the Florida-Bahamas (FB) Synod of the ELCA in 2019. We expected some challenges in leaving because of the small group of members who wanted to remain in the ELCA. The congregation voted with a super-majority to leave the FB Synod. St. Paul applied to and joined the North American Lutheran Church (NALC) in 2020. Shortly after being received into the NALC, the congregation council received a letter from the FB Synod informing us that we could not leave.

The congregation council of that period were faithful in their commitment to Christ. They had a strength in faith that was unwavering. It proved to be a blessing for us as the FB Synod attempted to stop the people of God from leaving. To resolve the issue of St. Paul leaving the ELCA, the congregation council filed a motion in court. This was to maintain our rights to the building and the financials of St. Paul. During the legal process, letters with false statements were sent to the church members of St. Paul (NALC). Slanderous statements were made against the council and me. The ugliness of letters from the FB Synod showed a lack of Christian love for others and did not speak the truth of the intentions within the ELCA. The object of the ELCA was and I believe still is to “suppress the truth” of what they are doing or what they have done. We had suggested that the majority (us) and the minority (them) could share the building. But that was met with another ugly response. The Bishop of the FB Synod stated in words like these: Any other denomination but the NALC would have been okay. But not the NALC.

Eventually after many legal disputes the FB Synod Bishop filed a summary of judgment with the claim of ecclesiastical hierarchy. Taking the matter away from the civil court and giving it back to the FB Synod to make the final determination. The ruling gave our building, bank accounts, and endowment funds to the FB Synod and the small group of people who wanted to stay in the ELCA.

This could have been crushing for us if it were not for “faith.” Instead, the ruling of the judge based on the ecclesiastical hierarchy was freeing! Shortly after we lost everything to the ruling, God founded a new name for us. Led by the Spirit, Epiphany Lutheran Church became our new name. In 2021 we sought and found a new location for worship. I was introduced to Rabbi Tokajer in September, and we began worshipping at the Synagogue on Nov. 7, 2021.

In faith we left the building in Pensacola for a new beginning. With our vision clear and our faith steadfast in Christ, we began rebuilding and evangelizing for God’s church in the new location. With little financial stability we stepped out. In our faith journey, we didn’t think about what was lost. Instead, we recognized how much God was providing.

I encourage pastors discerning their call to contact the General Secretary of the NALC. The threats from the ELCA that place fear into individual pastors is nothing more than evil. If you want to remain faithful to the Word of God, I encourage you to place your assurance in Christ not the ELCA. The letters I received informed me that I was nothing without their endorsement. The ELCA didn’t call me into ministry. God called me into the ministry of Word and Sacrament. What about my pension and medical benefits? Have faith! As God is my witness, this question came to my mind too. It was a fleeting thought as I discerned the call to serve in faithfulness. 

In March of 2023, I spoke to the congregation about our faith walk. I referred to the summary of judgment and the loss of our assets and property. In the message of faith I said, “We lost everything for the sake of Christ.” It is in this loss that we found out just how strong and faith filled we were. As I’ve said many times, “It’s easy to have faith when everything is going well in your life.” With the help of God, we’ve grown in number, in spirit, and in faithfulness. Like the letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, we lift up the church and all those who continue their journey in “faith.” We share the love of Christ with new believers and all visitors at Epiphany Pensacola. All are welcome to experience the love and joy of Christ in worship.

As I am writing this article it just dawned on me that on Nov. 7, 2023, when we break ground on a new church building it will be our 2^nd anniversary of this new start congregation in Pensacola, Florida. God has blessed us with generous financial support for the church property. The mission and ministry have been financially supported by several NALC churches. We’ve received domestic mission partnerships from other NALC churches. The congregation has grown, and the people of God have been generous in supporting the mission and ministry of Christ. Losing everything for the sake of the Gospel has been transformational to the members of Epiphany Pensacola.   

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9)

Photos courtesy of Brenda Ekstrom and Donna Busarow.

Don’t play with dead fish! Mom said don’t bring it home thinking we’ll eat it! A dead fish is useless and worthless.

What are we to do with dead faith? Since a fish is a symbol for a Christian, maybe we can see how a dead faith isn’t much different from a dead fish.

Why do we declare a dead fish dead?  Most obvious is that it doesn’t move. Ever poke someone who was still to see if they were still alive? I try poking motionless Christians to see if their faith is alive. They don’t like it.

If our faith has no action, is it faith? James declares that faith with no action is dead (James 2:17). A living faith moves us: moves us to worship and praise our living God, moves us to pray and read his word, moves us to share Christ and bless others for His sake.  A faith without the life-giving Spirit is dead (James 2:26). And a dead faith is as useless as a dead fish because it is not living the aliveness that God intends (James 2:20).

(A faith that is about making ourselves feel good about our righteousness is not faith in Christ. I will cover that in a future article.)

If our motionless faith is just words; an empty lifeless confession that we are a Christian but no swimming in life as a Christian, then our faith is dead. If our faith is just the stripes of ancestors and heritage from days gone by but does not inspire fresh living today, then, well, even dead fish have stripes. Knowing facts about God or Christ is like a dead fish skeleton. You can see the outline, but a skeleton alone does not manifest life. A static dead faith isn’t just infertile and lifeless. Not having a living faith means we lack life-changing love, but rather are full of worry, obligation and tedium.

Why bother having a faith that is dead? Should a dead faith Christian just become an atheist to become dead to God all together?  Should we just drop the farce of faith? NO!

Embrace your dead faith. Yes, you are dead in your faith and also dead in your sins where you stand. But God excels at dealing with the dead. “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”(Eph 2:4–5)

You have every privilege as a dead fish Christian to call upon God to make your faith alive. You are baptized. You are baptized into the death of Christ so you can be raised to a new life in Christ. (Rom 6:3-6)

Are you content to be a motionless, dead fish Christian or will you pray for your faith? God promises to give you life. “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” (Rom 8:11)

So, I invite you to drag your dead faith butt to worship. Sit there in the pew in your grave clothes of this dull, exhausting existence to hear the Word of God. Dead fish Lazarus didn’t come out of the tomb patting himself on the back but rose up because Christ spoke to him (John 11:43-44).  Christ calls you to be alive with faith.

“He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.” (1 Th 5:10)

Your servant in his Word, Pastor Douglas 

Lutheran CORE continues to provide monthly video reviews of books of interest and importance.  Many thanks to Maurice Lee, NALC pastor and theologian, for doing a review of Mark Mattes’ book, Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty: A Reappraisal.  Dr. Mattes is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Grand View University in Des Moines.

Dr. Lee begins by referring to Dr. Mattes’ “astonishingly prolific and insightful scholarship over many years.”  He then goes on to mention how Luther would have come to a conclusion similar to that of the philosophical tradition — that truth, goodness, and beauty are closely interconnected — but only on the basis of his rigorously Christological perspective, in that we can rightly see truth, goodness, and beauty only in the light of Christ crucified and risen.

Luther and the Lutheran tradition did not remove music and the visual arts from the church.  In fact, Luther’s praise for music was second only to his praise for the Word of God. This deep appreciation for beauty was in line with Luther’s understanding that God’s Word comes through earthly, physical, and bodily means.  The finite is capable of bearing the infinite.  The body and earthly things can be channels of grace when appropriated by the Word of God.

This review, as well as 18 others, has been posted on our YouTube channel.  A link to the channel can be found here.

PLAYLIST

If you would like to watch Lutheran CORE’s playlist of all of our video book reviews, click here, then scroll down and start the video by selecting the play button or click on the three vertical lines near the top right of the first video to select a new video from the list that will pop up. 

After reading two recent communications from ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, the only conclusion I can come to is this.  She just does not get it.

The first communication is dated September 3, 2021 and is entitled, “We Are the Body of Christ.”  A link to that communication can be found here. In that letter Bishop Eaton writes about the great, long-standing animosity between Jews and Gentiles, and about how in the early church, these two groups of people were able to be brought together.  She refers to the council in Jerusalem in Acts 15 as well as to the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and to how “the dispute between the two groups was healed.”  She said that this healing “went to the very core of what it meant to be part of the church.”  She then said, “They were one body.  We are one body. . . . Yes, we have significant disagreement about very important issues, but our cultural and political differences cannot dissolve this bond.”  I was absolutely floored by what she wrote next.  “We can take heart from the example of the early church.  If, by the Spirit’s power, they could set aside their differences – which were far greater than any of ours – then we, too, by the power of the Sprit, can live into the unity that already exists in Christ.”

She just does not get it.  The differences between confessional Lutherans today who hold to the authority of the Bible and who believe that the Lutheran Confessions are a reliable interpretation of the Bible and those who would call themselves the “progressives” are not far less than, instead they are far greater than the differences between Jews and Gentiles in the early church.  For example –

No one in the early church led the young people of that church in denouncing the views of the more traditional folks as a lie from Satan that needs to be renounced – unlike what happened at the 2018 ELCA youth gathering. 

The apostles did not ignore, dismiss, minimize, or marginalize the Hellenists when they expressed their concern that their widows were being neglected (Acts 6).  Instead, they appointed seven deacons to resolve the matter.  In contrast, those with traditional views are usually totally ignored when they express their concerns to those in positions of power.    

Heresies in the early church were dealt with (for example, see Colossians 2) rather than just accepted or even celebrated as culturally sensitive ways to contextualize the Gospel.

After the early church made their decision in Acts 15 as to how uncircumcised Gentiles could be a part of the church, they did not then a few years later claim to have decided something else.  Their honesty and integrity in holding to what they had decided stands in sharp contrast with the way in which the ELCA has expanded and re-interpreted what was actually voted on and approved in 2009 so that they are now able to embrace the full LGBTQIA+ agenda. 

The apostles did not break promises and ignore commitments as the ELCA has done by its not giving a place of honor and respect to traditional views and those who hold them.  I have heard of white male seminarians with traditional views being told to put tape over their mouths and not speak.  I also know of people whose ordination candidacy process was cancelled or who were denied entrance into the candidacy process because of their traditional views.   

Yes, Bishop Eaton just does not get it.  The differences between confessional Lutherans and those who would call themselves the “progressives” are not far less than, instead they are far greater than the differences between Jews and Gentiles in the early church.

Even more out of touch with reality is what Bishop Eaton wrote in the second communication, which is dated October 20, 2021, and is entitled, “A pastoral letter from the ELCA presiding bishop regarding the actions of the Reformed Church in America General Synod 2021.”  A link to that communication can be found here.  In that letter she told about one of the ELCA’s full communion partners, which had recently met in General Synod.  The final Vision 2020 Report was presented to the assembly, with its recommendations for the future of the denomination “with regard to staying together . . . and grace-filled separation.”  Bishop Eaton commended that church body for “adopting regulations to provide an unobstructed pathway for those local churches that will depart the denomination.”  She praised their actions, which she says “reflect the RCA’s commitment to walking together, respecting differences, and affirming common mission and ministry.”  She described the spirit of the synod as “conciliatory and hope-filled, as delegates shared their disagreements in the bond of peace.” 

What she then says in the next paragraph is totally out of touch with reality.  She talked about how the ELCA has “traveled this same road.”  She uses language from the 2009 social statement, “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” when she says, “It is possible, by the grace of God, to be a church that makes an active choice to live with the disagreement among us, and ‘to accompany one another in study, prayer, discernment, pastoral care, and respect.”  How out of touch can you get?  There may have been those who – back in 2009 – were deceived into buying that line so that they were willing to vote in favor of the human sexuality social statement and the changes in ministry policies.  But I do not know anyone today who continues to believe that the ELCA has any plans to “honor bound conscience.”

I know that there are ELCA bishops and synod councils who have been gracious in their dealings with congregations who were voting to disaffiliate from the ELCA.   But I have also heard many stories of bullying, intimidating, threats to take property, and efforts to get as many dollars as possible from congregations who wish to leave.  I know of retired ELCA pastors who were told by their synods that they would be removed from the ELCA clergy roster if they did not leave a congregation that has voted to disaffiliate from the ELCA.  I know of a seminarian who was no longer welcome at an ELCA seminary once the congregation that she was affiliated with began the process of leaving the ELCA. 

Too many ELCA congregations have not experienced a “grace-filled separation.”  Too many ELCA congregations did not find “an unobstructed pathway” when they began the process of voting to leave the ELCA. I am certain that what Bishop Eaton wrote in her October 20 communication is something that she wishes were true and that she desires to be true.  But why does she not know that it is not true?  Does she really think that people will believe what she wrote?   

Many of you know that I write intercessory prayers that are posted on the Lutheran CORE website and sent to many individual pastors and congregations. I’ve done this for over 10 years, motivated to improve on clunky, theologically weak, or odd prayers provided by various resources. Additionally, pastors and laity charged with leading intercessory prayers are often terrified by the prospect of “winging it” or writing prayers every week, and appreciate good resources. Occasionally, pastors repurpose their sermons in the guise of intercessory prayers –advising God to help parishioners get the point made earlier, expand on it, and Just Do It. Laity (and some pastors, especially in informal settings) often want prayers to be plainspoken and down to earth. That’s a laudable goal not well served by a “Lord Father God I just wanna” style! Finally, when left to our own devices, we sinners focus on Us, Ourselves, and We, rather than “the Church, the world, and all people according to their need.”

I have taught sessions on intercessory prayer at several Society of the Holy Trinity (STS) local retreats, and in congregational study groups. I want to share some of what I’ve learned and taught, in two articles. Because I’m drawing from notes used for those presentations, there aren’t any formal citations in this article. However, I drew from three major works on liturgy: by Dom Gregory Dix (The Shape of the Liturgy), Luther Reed (The Lutheran Liturgy), and Frank Senn (Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical).

In this month’s article, let’s begin with some historical background. Many elements of first-century synagogue worship were retained by the early Church. The whole pre-communion liturgy –Scripture (including Old Testament), psalms and other hymns, exposition, prayers, and benediction – retain the shape of worship that would have been familiar to Jesus and his disciples. As the Church spread and developed, there were local peculiarities but unity in the essential parts of the liturgy. With regard to intercessory prayers, an early church father, Cyprian, detailed the solemn need to pray for the Church, catechumens, penitents, the emperor, magistrates, those in affliction, travelers, prisoners, and any local concerns.

Intercessory prayers were dubbed “The Prayer of the Faithful.” Following a sermon or other exhortation, and after short prayers for catechumens (who then left for instruction), the faithful would continue in intercessory prayer. As the Body of Christ, the faithful prayed to the Father, in Christ’s name (more, in his person, as his Body), by the power of the Spirit. Like the recitation of the Creed and Lord’s Prayer and the reception of Holy Communion, these public, intercessory prayers were therefore only for the baptized.

Here’s how Gregory Dix explains that.

 “The church is the Body of Christ and prays ‘in the name of’ Jesus, i.e. according to the Semitic idiom which underlies the phrase, ‘in his person.’ The Spirit of adoption whereby the church cries to God in Christ’s Name, ‘Abba, Father’ with the certainty of being heard, ‘Himself makes intercession’ with her prayers. The world had a right to hear the gospel; but those who have not yet ‘put on Christ’ by baptism and thus as ‘sons’ received his Spirit by confirmation cannot join in offering that prevailing prayer. All who had not entered the order of the laity were therefore without exception turned out of the assembly after the sermon.

Now this notion was a revelation to me! All the baptized participate in one of the “orders” of the Church. An “order” might be described as a recognizable “group identity” based not in race, gender, or class, but in “priestly role in worship as part of the Body of Christ.” These orders included laity, deacons, and priests/bishops. This “priesthood of the baptized” gives each order its proper role in all aspects of worship, perhaps most prominently in the Prayers of the Church. Some of that sense is lost when only the priest or pastor prays, and the laity are reduced to saying “Amen!”

In fact, deacons were especially important in prayer – the Prayers of the Church were sometimes called “the deacon’s prayer.”  The deacon spoke on behalf of all the people, whose participation and responses in these prayers were critical.

Certain types of public intercessory prayer explicitly featured all three “orders” – laity, deacons, and priest, each with their role. You’ve probably prayed “the bidding prayer” on Good Friday. It’s one of few remaining vestiges of a once-common family of bidding-type prayers. These were important in East, and recovered by Reformation churches. The laity are instructed by the presiding minister to kneel. The priest/pastor announces the “bid” – the topic, such as “The poor, the sick, our enemies, the government,” and so on. There is silence for private, personal prayer by each person, for each “bid.” Kneeling was the posture of private prayer.  The people rise to their feet as the deacon prays a collect (pronounced COLL-ekt) for each bid. I’ll talk in more detail about collects in the next installment of this work. Why did the people stand at this point? Because just as the deacon’s Collect “collected” the thoughts, privately offered up by many pray-ers, into one prayer, so also the deacon “collected” all of those individual pray-ers together as the Body of Christ, offering up prayer as one body. The people stood to indicate that now they were participating in the prayer of the whole body, as the one Body. The priest often finished the Bidding Prayer with one final collect.

Over time, the Western and Eastern Churches diverged in language and liturgy, including prayer. In the Eastern Orthodox churches, prayers were long and poetic. They touched on virtually every station of human life.  The role of the deacon and laity were emphasized in the liturgical intercessory prayers. The Western Church derived much of its style from its ancient Roman roots. It tended to be polished and pithy rather than wordy and poetic! The deacon’s role was greatly reduced, often because the intercessory prayers were scattered through several portions of the Mass. Primers were published – devotional prayers to be read by the laity during Mass while the priest read the Latin service. This at least acknowledged the deep need for the laity to offer their “priestly sacrifice of prayer,” but it reduced it to personal, private devotions rather than as an intentional offering of the Body of Christ.

Northern Europe in the late Middle Ages, and into Reformation era, retained and developed the “general prayer” or “prayer of the faithful” through something called “Prone.” After the sermon but before Communion, and in the vernacular (unlike the liturgy done in Latin), occurred a Collect, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, occasionally the Decalogue, sometimes a brief form of corporate confession and absolution, intercessions for the living and the faithful departed, announcements of the banns, parish notes, etc. Lutheran reformers were relatively conservative in altering the Mass.  They retained a form of Prone, often by means of a formulaic General Prayer (prayed by the pastor) between the sermon and the offertory, preceded by Creed and concluded by Lord’s Prayer, all spoken by the people.

Lutherans also re-introduced frequent use of litanies. A common form is used in Evening Prayer, but there’s a longer one called The Great Litany that can be a stand-alone intercessory prayer, chanted by the deacon or assisting minister with chanted responses by the people.

However, Lutherans and Anglicans for many decades often replaced the classic form of intercession or litanies by a “General Prayer” led by the pastor. This could be broken down into individual “chunks,” with the congregation saying “Amen” or “Hear our prayer” after each section, but the role of the laity in public intercessory prayer was being obscured, leaving laity only with whatever private devotional prayer they chose to indulge in. As Luther Reed noted: “18^th-century Pietism failed to distinguish between the personal, subjective prayer of the individual Christian and the objective common prayer of the assembled worshippers, or church prayer proper. Rationalism lost all right conceptions of the Church and of prayer alike!”

In the last 75 years, there have been liturgical reforms (sometimes unfortunately followed, in my opinion, by liturgical malpractice!). An assisting minister often takes on a diaconal role. The intercessory prayers may properly be done by that person, with pastor praying a concluding petition or collect. That’s the form I follow when composing intercessory prayers. We’ll delve into that next time.

Some major take-aways of this history: the intercessory prayers have a very long history as the prayers of and by the whole people of God, the Body of Christ himself. They are the Church praying for the Church, the world, the ruling authorities, and those in any tribulation, distress, or sorrow; for peace, for the propagation of the Gospel; for our enemies; for every manner and estate of humanity; for children and catechumens; for favorable weather and harvest; for deliverance from every affliction, wrath, danger and need; for the faithful departed; and for the salvation of those praying and for all people.

Such intercessory prayers as we write and speak ought to be mindful of this long history, and the cloud of witnesses with whom we are praying. They rightly should possess the Roman virtues of terse, simple, elegant directness, and the Eastern virtues of intense devotion, evocative language, and reverence. They ought not to be mini-sermons, private opinions, lectures, or casual, off-the-cuff “Lord I just wanna’s”!

A final take-away comes from Dom Gregory Dix, from whom I will quote at length.

 “Many of the more devout of our laity have come to suppose that intercession is a function of prayer better discharged in private than by liturgical prayer of any kind, so unsatisfying is the share which our practice allows them. The notion of the priestly prayer of the whole church, as the prayer of Christ, the world’s Mediator through his Body, being ‘that which makes the world to stand,’ in the phrase of an early Christian writer, has been banished from the understanding of our laity. Their stifled instinct that they, too, have a more effective part to play in intercession than listening to someone else praying, drives them to substitute private and solitary intercession for the prayer of the church as the really effective way of prayer, instead of regarding their private prayer as deriving its effectiveness from their membership of the church. So their hold on the corporate life is weakened and their own prayers are deprived of that inspiration and guidance which comes from participating in really devout corporate prayer.”

Greetings in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Ethiopia Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) no longer receives support from the ELCA due to the 2009 ELCA churchwide assembly.  Prior to that point, the ELCA had been among the greatest supporters of the EECMY.  The EECMY is now the largest Lutheran body in the world, growing by over 60,000 per month.

On August 17^th, 2021, an unprecedented flash flood on the campus of the their main seminary destroyed 96 dormitory rooms as well as the homes of 21 families including 5 missionary families.  Damage is in the millions of dollars.  Eight lives were lost from the seminary community.  Here is a link to a video showing damage.  We grieve the loss of our brothers and sisters, yet not as the world grieves (1 Thes. 4:13ff).

The future of their main seminary is now at risk.  Much of the campus needs to be rebuilt.  Students and faculty no longer have places to stay.  Serious steps are being taken to guarantee such flooding does not take place in the future.

In the words of Bishop Dan Selbo in the September NALC newsletter, “We will also be inviting ‘every pastor, congregation and member to enter into intentional and intensive prayer for Ethiopia’”.  The story needs to be told and retold, as the EECMY has no other full-communion relationship with other bodies in North America.  The NALC has only 500 congregations.

You can help.  Tax-deductible disaster relief contributions are being received by the NALC.  

It is likely that short-term relief efforts will still not adequately rebuild the campus.  Thus, if you feel called to support the seminary in their efforts to recover and achieve long-term self-sustainability, a noteworthy building project on higher ground, untouched by the flooding, has been underway in partnership with Lutheran Bible Translators.  This project provides much needed assistance as well as creating an ongoing revenue stream of $225,000 per year to the seminary.  (Details and how to give are included in a separate handout, “God is on the move in Ethiopia!”)  If 250 congregations, or one from their membership, respond with a $4,000 donation, that project will be completed, generating revenue starting early in 2022.

Both of these opportunities provide much needed assistance to Mekane Yesus Seminary at this critical point in time. 

With a heavy heart for our brothers and sisters in Ethiopia,

John Conrad,

Chair, Mekane Yesus Seminary Advancement Team

Pastor, First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Floresville, TX

JTCSwede@gmail.com

Mobile: 830-534-3139

Here’s a true story, related to me by someone who witnessed it.  A small church, considering departure from the ELCA, solicited questions from the congregation.  One question surprised people, but it was, apparently, asked in earnest: If we leave the ELCA, will we go back to being a church that bans people of color?

Wait—what?  “Go back”?  “Ban”?  Some questions require their own hour to answer.  Did the questioner believe that her congregation had once banned persons of color?  Why?  Also, had the questioner never heard that the ELCA is “the whitest denomination in America,” as one of its own pastors has called it (not that other Lutherans are far behind)?  What string of pastors had neglected to teach, not only Lutheran failures in racial reconciliation, but also the Lutheran church’s rich contribution to civil rights, refugee resettlement, and the fair treatment of all people in congregation, school, and institutions of care? 

I don’t know how the congregation’s leaders ultimately addressed that question, but it proves that the question of race is on people’s mind.  Lutherans want to know where it resides in their faith and church’s life.

You know this.  You can’t breathe in America and not know it.  It has dominated the news, and one particular development has especially captured recent attention: critical race theory (CRT).  In general, conservatives have balked at CRT, criticizing instances of “CRT training” that seem to demean and unfairly condemn people of European descent.  States have begun passing resolutions banning its use in government and public education.

That criticism has echoed in the church’s halls as confessing Lutherans of various stripes point out where CRT differs from the Gospel’s more liberating message of “neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).  Yet a question lingers: if not CRT, then what?

How shall denominations, congregations, and believers critique the biases that linger within their own hearts and minds?  Are there aspects of Lutheran church culture that have made it one of the whitest denominations in America, and how might the Gospel overcome that culture?

Real Forgiveness for Real Sins

I don’t pretend to have hard and fast answers.  But as I’ve reflected on the question—and if you haven’t reflected on the question, it’s time to start, for the sake of the church you love—a few thoughts have struck me as worth sharing.  You probably already know them, but it doesn’t hurt to see them in print.  As St. Paul told the Philippians: repetition doesn’t hurt the author, and it’s good for everyone else (Philippians 3:1). 

It would all seem to start with real forgiveness for real sins.  It’s one thing to say, “We don’t rely on CRT; we preach the Gospel” (and that statement is fair and true enough), but it’s another thing so to preach that Gospel that it forgives a real sin brought to light.  Where have you, your congregation, and your denomination been blind to persons of color?  How have you or your church harmed them or rebuffed them, even if unintentionally? 

These questions are safe for you to ask (that is, they may hurt, but they are ultimately secure and good), because you know the One in whose presence you ask them: Jesus, who has carried the sins of the world.  You may let them have their way with you, critiquing, judging, and enlightening you, because you know that the more real the sin is, the more real the forgiveness that comes in Jesus’ name.  So let the sins take shape, in even startling contour, and then let the grace of Christ clothe them in a brilliant mercy that overcomes them.

The church has its own language for this kind of preaching, distinct from the vocabulary of secular justice warriors.  The Bible may not speak of racism and inequality or inequity, but it does speak of old-fashioned, rotten things like enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, pride, divisions, envy, greed, and the like.  How do these works of the flesh, unearthed for us by the Spirit, illumine our problems with race, and what is Christ’s forgiving word for them? 

Preach it, and expect that preaching to change things, including you.

“You Do Not Have Because You Do Not Ask”

St. James has his moments. The second verse of his fourth chapter might be one of the better ones: have you tried asking?  Once God has spoken to us in our sin, we speak to Him by His generous grace. Only by His Word do we have words to speak, and when His Word calls out our sins and tells us, “These sins are forgiven; there is a limit to their power; you need not live under their bondage,” then we know what to ask.  Ask Him for what He desires; ask Him for the sin to be overcome and healed; ask for your soul, your congregation, and your church to welcome the people of every nation.

There’s really not too much more to say about this call to prayer, I don’t think, except do it.  Pray daily for the Gospel that we preach and the doctrine we confess to be the means by which the Lord draws all nations to Himself.  Maybe you pray from a place where God’s answer to that prayer won’t change how your congregation or life looks very much—congregations reflect their neighborhoods, after all, and so not every congregation has to be a microcosm of “The Church,” somehow ideally diverse, and thinking that it does actually denies the catholic nature of Christ’s body—but you’re not praying for only parochial concerns.  You’re praying for the whole Church, and for the Fisherman’s net to be cast across the world.

Pray, and say the amen in the confidence of God’s faithfulness. 

The Grass Isn’t Always Greener

This last suggestion (I know: there are lots more things to be said; what we have here is just a smattering) runs afoul of certain strands of church critique.  I call it (fairly, I think) the anti-institutional critique, which insists that buildings and polity and such things are irrelevant to faithfulness in mission, if not harmful to it.  To be sure, the faithfulness of a church is never measured by its stuff.  But stuff is no more irrelevant to the conduct of the ministry than our bodies are. 

God will raise our bodies, and so He calls us to steward this flesh in a certain way.  So also will He liberate creation from its bondage to decay, and so we steward creation in a certain way.  In particular, the Lutheran church should probably start paying more attention to where it lays its foundations, as in, its literal foundations. 

The church has always needed buildings for its mission.  The fact that the church first met in homes wasn’t a rejection of public buildings as much as it was the commandeering of private buildings for public use.  Throughout the church’s history, wherever missionaries spread the Gospel, they quickly built a shelter for its public proclamation, and they chose the placement of those shelters wisely.  It was an incarnational move, seeking to proclaim by the place wherein the Body gathers who and what the Body is. 

How our churches continue this ethic today may be key to understanding our problem with race.  That is, looking at our buildings and where we put them may be one way both to identify our real racial sin and to welcome God’s gracious balm for it.  For how we build has everything to do with how we use our money and why, and those economics may be the deeper root of Lutheran racial woes.

A case in point (another true story, and one repeated other places): a church in a mid-sized city had a beautiful neo-Gothic church in a busy, even crowded downtown.  Because that downtown had grown so busy, and so few of the people at the church lived there any longer, they decided to sell that building in favor of building a new house of worship far on the city’s margins, surrounded by a lush, green campus—it’s fair to say, not too different from a country club.  I knew this church a few years ago and just recently drove through its city.  I decided to check on it, and what did I find?

I found the downtown church, still a bit crumbly but nevertheless standing and beautiful,  purchased by another congregation with a more evangelical thrust and looking very well visited by a variety of people. As for the new Lutheran church—well, I almost didn’t find it.  Surrounded by beautiful green trees and a busy, suburban commercial center, it was easy to miss.  It would take effort, in fact, to find.  It would also require a car to attend, and it would take some personal courage, I imagine, to drive up to such a very nice church with anything less than a very nice car.

So in the city where this church stands, where white people comprise the Very Nice Car classes and blacks and Latinos fill cheaper housing downtown near the bus lines, which of these churches will have a better start to overcoming racial barriers?  In order to overcome such barriers, the church must be present as its Lord is present—and how present is a church hidden behind well-manicured trees?

I’m not saying, “Build it, and they will come.”  We’ve seen that approach fail so many times.  There’s no gimmick here, and the soul-work of preaching and prayer is more than everything else.  I’m also not suggesting that persons of color are always poor or whites always rich.  But I am saying, as many others have said, that racial divisions may find their deeper roots in class divisions, and the Lutheran church’s recent architectural history may illustrate the truth of it (as does the fact that that our churches appear to lack poor and working class whites as much as they lack persons of color!).  The church must be present to those whom it seeks.  It must bring the font and Bible and altar to them, clothed in their own neighborhood. 

Taking up that calling will mean that those already in the church may have to dedicate their resources and wealth for local ministries and houses of worship either not in service of themselves or at a distance from their own homes, requiring them who are more equipped to travel to do so.  Why not?  What checks the sins of enmity, pride, greed, and rivalry more than for those with the most to take up a weekly pilgrimage to gather with those who have the least?  Wouldn’t such a pilgrimage confess, “These sins are forgiven, and therefore, they no longer set the limits and conduct of our devotion”?

Yes, I know that persons of color are guilty of their own sins of enmity, pride, greed, and the like.  I also know that they aren’t the ones most likely reading this article, and I know it because most of you are Lutherans, and Lutherans are one of the whitest Christian traditions in America.  It needs some new and more Biblical attention.  CRT is not the way, and so what is?  Preaching, praying, and showing up to be present, all of it concrete and real and down-to-earth, seems to be the way I know, the way that I’ve been given to confess.  What are some other parts of that way?  I imagine you know, or that God will show it to you if you ask.

Editor’s Note: This piece was written by a Luther Seminary student earlier this spring.

I can’t tell you what spring is like in places beyond the Midwest — I’m sure they have it but it certainly pales in comparison to the spring that we enjoy in Minnesota. Saint Anthony Park and the ever-creaky Bockman Hall were covered in snow one day this week and basked in warm sun the next. Through open windows a new breeze blows in and with it the promise of a new age. A new age not held by the chains of ice and cold but one dominated by the warmth of the sun.

It is on to this odd state of transition that I cannot help but project my own faith. We as believers live in a time of transition. We have felt the warmth of the Son but are all too familiar with the cold and death of sin. Yet just like those experiencing spring in Minnesota, we know that the days of sin are numbered. We may not know for certain what that number is but that God has assigned it.

There is a moment in early March (and yes, I am a hardy one) when we first feel the warmth that God has given us. It is a feeling unlike anything else as it brings us to the end of our reality and then on to the next. That first warm day in March announces that winter is ending and summer is soon to follow. It is a sweet promise but one that loses its meaning if we spend the rest of the season behind closed windows and in a dorm. There, away from the sun, the promise becomes stale.

I remember the moment when I first felt the warmth of Christ. It brought me to the end of my reality and onto the next. Yet it is a warmth unappreciated when it is followed by distance and silence; by greeting the new breeze with closed windows and walls. Like students in spring, we as believers must live into the warmth and not merely observe its effect through a double-paned window. We will never replace the experience of when the Son first broke the cold but we can continue to live into the promise of that which the Son brings.

How do we live in the sun in a time when winter looms so close? I really couldn’t say but certainly we must first step from our dorms and houses and into where that light shines. We know darkness because we have seen light; cold because we have felt warmth. There is wisdom in that simple pairing — now that we have known, we should know.

The snow on my window’s ledge is gone but, without any regard of my own attitudes, it may return tomorrow. Spring is a time of transition, one that aims to break us of winter and usher in a period where we need not worry about snow. Until that time, I will have to wait and celebrate the warmth as it is given — that is the reassurance that allows us to hope for summer even when winter surprises us again.

A. Nestenprest

Thursday, December 14, 2017 Devotion

“He will abide before God forever; appoint lovingkindness and truth that they may preserve him.  So I will sing praise to Your name forever, that I may pay my vows day by day.”  (Psalm 61:7-8)

Lovingkindness and truth are the two characteristics that define the life of the believer.  It is these that God will plant in the one who comes to Him humbly.  It is this likeness of Christ which is the promise God gives through grace to those who believe in Him.  The result will be singing praise, giving thanks and being the obedient child of God as Christ modeled.  This is the gift God gives for those who believe.

Lord, let me see the simplicity of the faith You offer and give for those who turn to You.  Take me beyond myself to come to the place where I simply look to You for all things.  Guide me in the grace You have given that I may abide in You as You abide in me and live in the way You created me to live.  Preserve my life according to Your purpose that I may be with You eternally.

Lord Jesus, You have modeled the godly life and called me forward through Your grace into the life of the believer.  Grow me each day into the attributes of lovingkindness and cause my heart to always pursue truth.  Lead me in the way I need to go and grant me a heart that willingly follows where You lead.  Help me through the obstacles that get in the way that I may become like You.  Amen.