Congrats

Congratulations to Issues, Etc. and Lutheran Public Radio on their one year anniversary! The show continues to prosper, boldly going where no (LCMS sponsored) show has gone before. In the photo, Wilken makes an exception to his long-standing "no autograph" rule at the after-the-show bash.

photo credit: Thomas Hawk

Continue on to Part 2, A Case of Mistaken Identity?

The Sacramental Life

Quoting Pastor Todd Wilken from the listener Comment Line portion of the May 29th Issues, Etc. show:

...the shape of the Christian life is the shape of the Sacraments that Christ has given the Christian to live by. The word of absolution, the water of Baptism, the bread and wine, body and blood of the Lord’s Supper – this is the shape of the Christian life. And Christians who think that their life resides some place else than in what Christ gives in those Sacraments are looking for life in all the wrong places, and they’re not gonna find life. They’re gonna find busyness. They’re gonna find themselves. Worse yet they won’t find Christ.

The Essential Function of the Church

Quoting from Dr. Ron M. Garwood's essay "The Nature of the Church With Reference To Its Structure," presented to the Wyoming District Convention this year:

So, there are many things going on in the visible church, some which should not be going on, and other things are good and positive and a blessing to many. But the essential function of the church is preaching and teaching the Word of God and administering the sacraments. The Word and sacraments are what create the church, sustain the church, and grow and extend the church. In fact, Richard Klann wrote in the Abiding Word, “that the function of the Christian Church does not extend beyond the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments.”

Now in observing the visible church in the world today, it is obvious that the visible church struggles with and against this understanding of the function of the church. Even in our Lutheran Church we claim that we believe that it is the Word of God and the sacraments that create and sustain the church, but then we act as if we don’t really believe this as we introduce other teachings, programs, and features by which we maintain the church is created and grown. Dr. Eugene Klug, commenting on this inclination, and quoting Luther, writes:

This notion, that it is not only God but also man with his energies and innovations that avail for the church’s progress and continuance, is…an ongoing plague upon the church. “Everything that God does they must improve.” Such leaders sound every so pious and their programs ever so heavenly minded; but their actions belie their words,…This self-willed piety and officiousness, Luther states, “may be seen in all heretics from the beginning of the world.” Whether you look at “Arius and Pelagius, or now in our time the Anabaptists and anti-sacramentarians, and all fanatics and rebels, the story is always the same: “They are not satisfied with what God has done and instituted, they cannot let things be as they were ordained to be.” The tragic story in the church is that “conceit keeps the dance going.”

It’s Just a Color

Zach, Paige, and I are warming up before our run, talking about heading back to Colorado this summer. Paige says that people from Colorado are the most loyal to their state of anyone at her school. She thinks that’s because it’s so beautiful in Colorado. Zach says Washingtonians are loyal to their state as well - they’d have to be to put up with eight months of overcast and rain every year. Paige mentions that she’s heard the usual company line at her school about how all that rain is what makes it so green in Washington.

We all agree that it’s green elsewhere without the eight months of overcast and rain. Zach doesn’t see what the big deal is about the green, after all, “it’s just a color.” All of us laugh long and hard at this statement. So true.

Going on a run in our family can be a pretty wacky experience. The nutty conversation is matched by the route we run. Zach is leading, which I know will be trouble. I mention as soon as he opts to choose an unusual course that taking a route that wanders all over the place results in a run that is shorter than it feels. Off we go, heading first through Wildwood Park. Wildwood has very dense forest with steep trails that go up and down like a roller coaster - it’s gorgeous today with light filtering down through the canopy of the forest. Zach has run a couple of his cross-country meets in this park, so he knows the trails well. He’s running downhill too fast. If he doesn’t slow down he’s going to become a permanent part of the landscape by missing one of the frequent serpentine turns in the trail. I taught him better – rest on the downhill and pass your opponents on the uphill.

We survive Wildwood without anybody wiping out, and then head in a direction that’s vaguely reminiscent of a homeward bound course. We run through one spot that’s a short familiar trail, and find that it’s completely overgrown, plowing through nettles and other assorted botany to get to the other end.

Down the road a ways I suggest to Zach that instead of saying “It’s just a color,” he could say “It’s just a specific wavelength of light.” This new angle launches a whole discussion about color blindness, cones and rods, dogs seeing only in black and white, and Paige’s psychology professor saying it’s all in your mind, or something like that. Now we’re getting into metaphysics.

We round the final curve in the road and coast to a stop in front of our house. I check my watch and note that we’ve run at least a mile less than our normal distance. Zach! That’s O.K. though. I wouldn’t trade the mileage for the company. After all, the next time I hear someone bragging about how green Washington is, I’ll have a great, if somewhat cryptic response, “It’s just a color!”


photo credit: someToast

I Agree with the SP

I agree with the Synod President. One of the questions President Kieschnick was asked at the Northwest District Convention in the canned question and answer session was related to the challenges the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod faces, and what needs to be fixed. His answer, and he emphasized this as the most important challenge we face, was to change the spirit of distrust and mistrust in the Synod. I wholeheartedly agree with our Synod President. There is a pervasive spirit of mistrust that causes us to spend more time defending our own “turf” than going about the “business” of the Church. This attitude could certainly be seen at times during the proceedings of the convention, though it was most often hidden by a thin veneer of piety and cordiality.

As a follow-on to his answer, you might ask an even more important question, why is there a spirit of distrust and mistrust? Of course, he didn’t address that question, because the answer would have contradicted his previous opening statement, in which he claimed that the LCMS is “exceptionally united in what we believe, teach, and confess.” No Synod whose most important challenge is to deal with a spirit of distrust and mistrust can be walking in doctrinal unity.

In World War II, the Allies fought a common enemy, yet there was an underlying distrust between the American and European allies and their Russian counterparts that at times made it difficult to hold the alliance together. After the war, the smiling faces of joint summit meetings ended. The huge political differences could no longer be papered over, and nations that were once allies became enemies. As long as our Synod President continues to maintain we are “exceptionally united,” true unity will never be attained. We may lurch along the path for a time, putting on a smile for the press release, but unless true theological dialogue is begun and our differences resolved by the Word of God and our Confession, disaster will loom not far beyond the next hedge row. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

One of the softball questions that President Kieschnick answered illustrates this doctrinal division. The questioner stated that a Ft. Wayne professor commented that the Great Commission applies to the apostles only, and the questioner asked President Kieschnick what he thought of that interpretation. He replied that he’d heard that was being taught, and strongly disagreed with it, and that it was not the official position of the Synod. The question did not seem to be particularly relevant to the occasion, and the answer certainly left no room for anyone who exegetes Matthew 28 differently. The whole question and answer seemed to be more of a jab at those who don’t agree with the everyone-a-minister concept, and would never have been asked, or answered, in a Synod that was truly united in doctrine.

President Kieschnick pointed out that unless he is an idiot, he thinks he understands what’s going on in our Synod. He stated that not all of our pastors want to be pastors. I wonder how many of those pastors, as well as those who still want to be pastors, despair because of the doctrinal divide which confronts us. There are congregations and pastors that have left the LCMS solely for legitimate doctrinal reasons. As Martin Luther put it, “...My conscience is captive to the Word of God. ...To go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” There are, right now, confessional LCMS pastors who are wrestling with these same issues, trying to answer these questions that should never have been needed to be asked. Perhaps now is the time to elect a Synod President that will confront our differences, rather than trivialize them, so that we no longer have to wrestle with these tough questions, and even tougher answers.

Keeping Track of District Conventions

Pastor Tom Chryst on his blog Preachrblog is keeping track of all the District Conventions. He's got a hyperlinked list to various reports of each convention. You can find it here.

Report on the NOW District Convention, The Verbose Version

The Northwest District Convention met June 18-20 in Portland, Oregon. We began the Convention being one of the more liberal Districts, and we departed in the same condition. President Warren Schumacher retired after 15 years of service as the District President. Give him credit for longevity in a tough role. I hope President Schumacher and his wife Judy will enjoy their retirement, although he still has a bit of work left ahead of him, since he was elected to the Synod Nominating Committee. While he’s certainly a nice guy and ran an on-time convention, Rev. Schumacher’s theology and practice left many confessional Lutherans shaking their heads – especially those confessional Lutheran pastors whom President Schumacher called (in the Fall 2008 edition of “Northwest Passage”) “past-oriented museum-keeper colleagues.”

The general consensus among the confessional delegates is that neither of the two most confessional nominees was elected as President or a Vice President. Rev. Paul Linnemann was elected President. I wish him and his wife Cindy well as he transitions from parish pastor to District President.

The resolutions that were passed, as well as those that weren’t passed, offer another indication for how the Convention went. Resolution 2-07, “To Work with Other Christians to Reach Those Who Do Not Know Christ and Memorialize Synod to Do the Same,” which I previously discussed as being unionistic, died a well deserved death, since the allotted time expired before it could be passed. We were in the process of amending it to make it less objectionable when its timely death occurred. This was the brightest spot in the resolution story.

Click HERE to continue reading >>

NOW Convention, Days 2 & 3

The original resolutions can be found on the District Website. The District daily newsletter for days 1 and 2 are currently available.

Day 2

Day 2 included a “Worship Service with Holy Communion,” with the sermon preached by President Kieschnick, followed by President Kieschnick’s presentation to the convention and a question and answer session.

Click HERE to continue reading >>

Happy Father's Day

Being a dad is great!

Here's the Wordle from the front of the card my daughter made for me:




Bonus points if you can figure out what WOTW, TOTS, or DPM means.

Here's the cover from my son's card - a bit of a contrast:

NOW Day 1

Yesterday concluded Day 1 of the Northwest District (NOW) Convention. The only significant items of action included elections and an initial foray into the resolutions. For anyone who doesn’t already know, the NOW District is one of the more liberal districts in the LCMS.

Elected:

District President: Paul Linnemann
1st VP: Jonathan Dinger
2nd VP: Jonathan Rockey
3rd VP: Ted Werfelmann
4th VP: Mark Hoelter
5th VP: Dan Kunkel
6th VP: Phil Bohlken

You can email me if you’d like more info on these gentleman.

Regarding resolutions, the resolutions in their initial form are posted at the District website, although they aren’t being kept up to date, which means you don’t know exactly what you’re voting on until right before you vote on it – a very inconvenient truth.

Only three resolutions were voted on today. 1-01a passed, the resolved of which reads:

RESOLVED, that the Northwest District in convention urge the Synod in Convention and the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Synod Structure and Governance to provide Commissioned Ministers an opportunity to serve as voting delegates in convention.

Omnibus Resolution A passed. (An omnibus resolution is one in which multiple resolutions are combined into one, and voted on as though it was only one resolution). It included 1-05 (To Establish a Process By Which Commissioned Ministers May be Elected for DISTRICT), 1-06 (To Establish a Process By Which Commissioned Ministers May be Elected for SYNOD Conventions), 1-11 (To Memorialize Synod to Abandon Its 'Guttenberg' Ways and Embrace our "Google' World), and 1-06a (which was a better-worded replacement version of 1-13, To Recognize Synod Trained Workers not On Synod's Roster for IRS Purposes). Omnibus Resolution C, which is the Omnibus that the floor committee uses to try and get rid of resolutions it doesn’t like, was referred back to the committee by the delegates for further consideration. It includes two resolutions related to the Blue Ribbon Task Force lumped into it, 1-04, To Exercise Appropriate Care in Considering Structure Changes, and 1-10, To Memorialize Synod to Exercise Due Diligence in Implementing Structural Changes. It’s good that this omnibus was referred back to the committee rather than be dispensed with, but my guess is that it won’t reappear because we will run out of time before all resolutions are acted upon.

This is a bare-bones post, that will be followed by another bare-bones post regarding Day Two. I’ll ultimately follow these up with something more substantive. I’m rooming with our Vicar, which is a good thing. It’s not too often I find someone else who wants to talk theology 24/7, so it’s a special treat for me, and I’d rather do that than type. I’m trying to write this post while we’re sitting here deciding the future of the LCMS. You can email me on that too if you’d like to know how it turns out.

On a very sobering note, one of our lay delegates, Mr. Bill Brackman, sustained head trauma from a fall while here for the convention and died some time later. He was the lay delegate from Lutheran Church of St. Paul in Graham, Washington. We prayed for his family in convention. He is survived by his wife, children, and grandchildren, who I’m told were at his side when he died in the hospital. We mourn with his family, and at the same time rejoice with his family, as he now looks upon the face of his Redeemer.