Dr. Nestingen on the ELCA

During the September 23 Issues Etc. program, Pastor Todd Wilken asked Dr. James Nestingen, Professor Emeritus of the ELCA’s Luther Seminary, a rather pointed question:

Has the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, at least in this action [dropping the ban on openly gay clergy and approving of gay marriage], forfeited, properly, the name “Christian Church?”

Dr. Nestingen’s response:

Oh, it’s, of course. I mean, God did not call us to be judges of the Word. He called us to be proclaimers. He didn’t call us to vote on whether or not we consider His sexual limitations viable or desirable. I mean, He said, He did not say “Here are the ten options,” or “the ten values waiting for clarification.” I mean all of this stuff is just clear as the nose on your face, and the pathetic thing, of course, the ruefulness in my laughter, and the pain in my laughter is the people I belong to have betrayed their heritage. This is not a church any more, it’s a joke, it’s a religious pretense, you know, a pious fraud, as if another one is needed.

Listen to the whole show:

Great Numbers Do Not Make the Church

Dr. Ron M. Garwood quoting Luther, in his essay "The Nature of the Church With Reference To Its Structure," presented to the Wyoming District Convention this year:

Great numbers do not make the church…We must look to the Word alone and judge on the basis of that. For only those who embrace the Word are the ones who will be as immovable forever as Mount Zion, even though they are few in number and very contemptible in the eyes of the world…The church is a daughter, born of the Word;… Therefore whoever loses the Word and instead eagerly looks to influential persons ceases to be the church and lapses into blindness; neither numbers nor power will do him any good. Those who keep the Word, as did Noah and his family, are the church, even though they be very few in number....

King David's Prayer

Therefore David blessed the LORD in the presence of all the assembly. And David said:

"Blessed are you, O LORD, the God of Israel our father, forever and ever.

Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours.

Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all.

Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all.

In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.

And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name.

1 Chronicles 29:10-13 ESV

photo credit: regeniabrabham

Stock Up

Concordia Publishing House, in honor of its 140th anniversary, is having a 140-hour sale through September 14th. STOCK UP! Selected books are 50% off or more.

Examples:

- Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, $14.

- The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, by Charles Porterfield Krauth, $15.

- A Seminary in Crisis, by Paul Zimmerman, $20.

Happy shopping.

Where’s Waldo?

Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated. I’ve had several people call or email wondering if I’m all right. Yep, I’m fine. I’ve been taking a break from blogging to spend time with the family this summer and attempt to pare down the “honey-do” list. I’ve been successful in the former and not so successful in the latter. I get one thing knocked off the honey-do list and two more pop up. I guess that means I shouldn’t do any of them, to keep the list shorter. Well, maybe that wouldn’t fit in with my call to be a husband now would it.

Just to eat up a little extra time, I put a new hard drive in our oldest computer, and put a new hard drive and display screen in my laptop, which is now my old laptop, since I just bought a new one. Now I can blog in style. Sorry Mac fans, it’s a PC. At least one of the aviation programs I’m likely to use wouldn’t run on a Mac, even if it were running Windows. (Who would do that to begin with?)

Another speed bump I need to tackle is my annual training at work next month, which takes up two or three weeks between preparation, ground school, and simulator.

One down side to taking a break is that I haven’t been keeping up too much on reading the blogs I normally read either. I just checked my Google reader - 709 unread posts. Hmm... Time to do a little speed reading. Hope y’all had a good summer.

How Is Our Spirtual Life Preserved?

Since all our daily sins automatically register in our conscience as guilt, our spiritual life is preserved only in this way that the handwriting of our guilt is daily and continuously blotted out by faith in the reconciliation which Christ has accomplished.

Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, Vol. II (St. Louis: Concordia, 1950) 411.

A Bag Full of Mercy, Grace, and Love

Quoting Pastor Matt Harrison on the June 30th Issues, Etc. segment on mercy:

God is mercy. He is compassion. He is eternal love, and in Jesus Christ that mercy and compassion is planted in our hearts. We’re forgiven, we cannot help but forgive. We’ve been loved, we cannot help but love. Luther says, “When you go to church, you come with an empty sack, and in the confession and absolution, you confess ‘Dear God, I’ve got an empty sack,' and God piles it full with forgiveness, and He gives more forgiveness and grace and mercy in the lessons, and then the sermon preaches you full of forgiveness and grace and forgives you, fills your bag up. You go to the Lord’s Supper - ‘take and eat for the forgiveness’ of your sins. Your bag is even heaped fuller, and then at the end of the service, ‘The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace.' Your bag is packed full overflowing. You tie it up and you say ‘Amen, Amen, Amen, it’s in the bag.’ And you leave church, and then you meet somebody who sins against you or needs something, or your children, you can’t help but open the bag and say ‘Here. I’ve got a bag full of mercy and grace and love. I can’t help but give it to you - it’s who I am. That’s what God has created me to do. I’ve been given this rich treasure,’ and you come back to church the next week and you pray, you say in the confession, ‘Dear God, I got an empty sack.’”

Pastor Harrison is Executive Director of LCMS World Relief and Human Care, and author of the book Christ Have Mercy: How to Put Your Faith in Action, and the soon to be released At Home in the House of My Fathers. His personal blog is titled “Mercy Journeys with Pastor Harrison.”

VBS 2009 - Jesus Makes All Things New

120 little sinners at our church this week for Vacation Bible School - every one with an angelic face. It's great to see such enthusiasm on those little faces as they hear and see the Gospel. Here's a few photos.

Click HERE to continue reading >>

Take Hold of the Promise

Quoting Dr. Martin Luther from his lectures on Galatians:

Therefore the afflicted conscience has no remedy against despair and eternal death except to take hold of the promise of grace offered in Christ, that is, this righteousness of faith, this passive or Christian righteousness, which says with confidence: “I do not seek active righteousness. I ought to have and perform it; but I declare that even if I did have it and perform it, I cannot trust in it or stand up before the judgment of God on the basis of it. Thus I put myself beyond all active righteousness, all righteousness of my own or of the divine Law, and I embrace only that passive righteousness which is the righteousness of grace, mercy, and the forgiveness of sins.” In other words, this is the righteousness of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, which we do not perform but receive, which we do not have but accept, when God the Father grants it to us through Jesus Christ.

Martin Luther, Luther's Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann. vol. 26, Lectures on Galatians, CD-ROM (Saint Louis: CPH, 1999).

Is Your Sword Blunted?

Worn out from passing all of those resolutions on evangelizing this or that demographic at your District Convention? Tired of hearing Evangelical speeches about “vision” and reaching the “unchurched?” Worried that your ministry may not be “effective?” Feeling like your Confessional sword has been blunted a little? Not to worry. Time for a little “revitalization!” Listen to Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller, the Pastor of Hope Lutheran Church in Aurora, Colorado and co-host of Table Talk Radio, on this excellent Issues, Etc. segment, where he answers the question: “Is it possible to care more about evangelism than the Evangel?”

It’s 20 minutes in length. Go ahead, give it a listen. I guarantee you your sword will be sharpened up after listening to this, restoring it to its pre-convention knife-edged readiness. You’ve got 20 minutes don’t ya?





photo credit: th3ph17