Quotable Blog Quotes #6

Quotable Quotes From Around the Blogosphere

Cyberstones-A Lutheran Blog
Pastor David Petersen

We find it awkward to say things like "The Holy Communion is the beating heart of all our life in Christ, the center of our faith, defining everything we believe." We still have this hang up of scholastically numbering the sacraments and setting up equalities. So that we are afraid to speak so highly of the Sacrament of the Altar. We are afraid that to do so is to somehow lessen the importance or richness of preaching or Holy Baptism. The problem here is that when we try to hold these things equal, communist-style, we lower all of them. People who "come for the sermon" miss the point of the sermon. Preaching and the Holy Communion are misunderstood when they are understand as separate things.


Mercy Journeys With Pastor Harrison
Pastor Matt Harrison quoting LCMS Pastor Wilhelm Sihler

"It is certainly of great necessity that the inexperienced minister of the Church already begins to live and move in the highly valuable and highly important article of justification. Otherwise he is merely a doctrine machine [Lehr=Maschine], an orthodox watch mechanism, a lifeless and loveless clanging cymbal, and a ringing shell. He is like a wooden figure pointing the right direction, but which cannot go that way itself. Thus the faith of the Church proceeds from his mouth, but his heart is far from it."

Cyberbrethren
Pastor Paul McCain

Over the years I've come to realize that is is precisely a Christ-less Christianity and a No-Good-News Gospel that is truly at the heart of every crisis, challenge and problem facing the Christian Church. We are at war against sin, death and the devil, and without the actual good news of Jesus Christ, we may as well be using sticks and stones against the principalities and powers of this age, whose only goal is to crush and destroy our faith, and the Christian Church. We forget that with "might of ours" we can not prevail and soon will be undone.



Brothers of John the Steadfast
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway

Lutherans are known for preaching the Law and Gospel, administering the sacraments properly, conducting a proper liturgy and having the best hymns in the universe. They should not forsake these things.


Laughing Martin
I. M. Abaldy II

May the Spirit lead us to spend less time seeking to be purposeful, relevant, and impressive to the world and our people and more time confessing and leading our folk to confess our lack of purpose, relevance, and impressiveness in order that we may be given the form and fullness of God in Christ.


Brothers of John the Steadfast
Pastor Klemet Preus

It’s been a couple of months since one of the district presidents referred to liturgical pastors as “Museum keepers.” I thank God he is not my district president.


thinking-out-loud
Pastor Rick Stuckwisch

So the preacher of repentance must be swallowed up and spit out, before he can preach the death and life which are in Christ Jesus, our Lord. The preacher must be humbled and exalted by the Word that he is called and sent to preach. For his preaching and baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins point to the flesh and blood of the Crucified One, who bears the sins of the world in His own Body from the waters of the Jordan to the Cross. It is when the preacher suffers the Cross and dies that the Kingdom of God is at hand in the preaching of Christ Jesus.