Lutheran National Championship

Christ Lutheran Boys and Girls Basketball teams have both qualified for the National Championship Tournament tomorrow at Valparaiso University. Both teams play opening games at 7:30 a.m. central time.

See the brackets here

Do you "get it"?

When I was a young pastor, I thought that patience and persistence would pay off. And in some ways it has. However, now as I approach the late afternoon of my ministry, I have become more and more frustrated with Christian people who just don't "get it." Get what? Who Jesus is and what He came to do for us. Law and Gospel. Sin and Grace. Death and Resurrection. Repentance and forgiveness.

It doesn't bother me so much that unbelievers don't get it. It bothers me when Christians in other denominations don't get it. But what really bothers me is when Lutherans don't get it. This affliction is not only found among the lay but more and more among the clergy.

Somebody who seems to "get it" is Chris Rosebrough. At least he has posted an insight filled article on his blog.

In part it reads: "Tragically, the "Jesus" that is presented in the sermons that promote this definition of being a Christ Follower isn't the savior of the world who died on the cross for the sins of the world and calls all nations to repentance of their sins and the forgiveness of sins won by Christ on the Cross. Instead, the "Jesus" that is presented in these sermons is a "life coach", a training buddy and the supreme example of an emotionally well adjusted risk taking leader who lived the ultimate life of significance and purpose. This purpose-driven "Jesus" is there to help you achieve what he achieved and invites you to follow his examples and methods so that you can be Christlike too."

So do not lose heart!

Read the entire post here

Two of My Favorite Things

Two of my favorite things came together this month. Old Time Radio and Pat McManus. If you have never read Pat or listened to OTR then this might just wet your appetite.

Pat Online ~ March 2010

I don't think that I'll give it all away if I quote his last paragraph:

"The reason radio comedy worked so well is that the audience was a participant in it, running the visuals on the screens of its minds. It’s entirely possible that the imaginations of television audiences has atrophied so much that radio drama and comedy are no longer possible. Pity."

Truer words were never spoken!

Doctrine

A number of months ago I received a letter from an individual who chose to leave the Lutheran Church for a denomination that denies infant baptism and the sacramental presence of Christ's body and blood in the Lord's Supper. (I'm sure you know the rest of the story since it is repeated many times over across our land.)

Apparently social contacts, etc. trump the word of God. It saddens my heart that people are so easily deceived by emotionalism and so called status. Of course this is nothing new. Satan will use whatever means at his disposal to cause faithful Christian people to abandon the pure teachings of Scripture. Thankfully there are faithful people who by the power of the Spirit resist such pressure.

Paul McCain shared again today a translation provided by Rev. Joel Baseley that help put this issue in its proper light.

Doctrine is the chief matter in which I am defiant, not only against princes and kings, but also against every devil, and indeed, apart from that there is nothing else that preserves, strengthens, cheers, and can make my heart even more defiant. The second matter, my personal life, I myself know to be sinful to such a degree it is not worth defending. I am a poor sinner and its fine with me if my opponents are pure saints and angels. Good for them, if they can maintain it. Not that I want to be that kind of person before the world and those who are not Christians, but before God and his dear Christians. I also want to be good before the world, and I am, so much so that they are not worthy to untie my shoelaces. They shall also never be able to prove by the truth that I have lived or acted towards anyone before the world such that I was not teaching them what is good. In short, I am not someone who is too humble, nor too proud, just as St. Paul says: “I can be exalted and I can be humbled, I can suffer poverty or have enough.” Phil. 2.3. For the sake of my doctrine I am very much too stalwart, unbending and proud to the devil, emperor, king, princes and all the world, but for the sake of my life I am also humble and submissive even to every child. Whoever doesn’t know that should hear it now.

— Martin Luther, Reply to the King of England’s Blasphemous Letter. L. W. Halle. XIX. 510-11.

Printed by C.F.W. Walther in Der Lutheraner, Volume I, Number 20 (May 1845), p. 80; Translated by Rev. Joel Baseley. Register to receive copies of Pastor Baseley’s translations of Der Lutheraner, for free.

Cyberbrethren: A Lutheran Blog by Paul McCain

Defiant in Doctrine, Repentant in Life

On Being a Pastor

In some ways the pastor is like the prow of a ship cutting the waters of the churning sea. One never knows what he will encounter when the next wave crashes.

One of the waves that this pastor encounters is a multiplicity of false notions about the Christian faith. These notions seem to come from Lutherans immersed in the "evangelical" media (I use the term "evangelical" in the sense of the popular media and not its proper meaning.) or enamored with the commercial church. This is one of the reasons that I tackled the project of introducing the Lutheran Confessions to Christ Lutheran Church. It is my belief that when people read the the Book of Concord (devotionally for edification) that they will be purged of this self-help, self-righteous, Gospel of Success theology.

Of course "the road is long with many a winding turn" but one key trait of a pastor (and Christians in general) is perseverance. Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, and Jesus all confronted the same mode of self-centeredness.

Today I came across a post on Cyberbrethren: A Lutheran Blog by Paul McCain in which he quotes Nicolaus Selnecker on faith. If anyone would like to understand my ideas concerning the work of a pastor, he would do well to read these six points. Rather than only link to the blog, I am posting it here in its entirety:

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One of the authors of the Formula of Concord, Nicolaus Selnecker, penned these thoughts to help those who were suffering particular trials and temptations because of their weak faith. It was reprinted in Der Lutheraner. Thanks to Pastor Joel Basely for his translation.

When our faith is experienced very weakly in our hearts, we should, as God’s Word itself teaches us, do the following things:

1. Recognize that faith is God’s work and his gift, 1 Thess. 3.; John 6.

2. Inquire and examine ourselves if we gladly want to believe, and if we wish that our faith would be stronger and better. If this desire is present, then God’s work and his power is present, as St. Paul bears witness, that God also works this desire in us. Therefore even a weak, poor desire is God’s work.

3. Pay attention to the foundation and the bedrock of our faith, which is not our feelings, our nature, our strength, worthiness, word and service, but rather solely the service, innocence, satisfaction, obedience, suffering, bleeding and death and the blood of JESUS Christ, which we grasp, hold and appropriate to ourselves by faith, as through an instrument, a means, a hand. Obviously, a little weak toddler grasps an expensive ring with his weak little fingers just as surely as a big, strong Sampson can grasp that ring with his big fist. Yet it is one and the same ring that is not made less through the child’s weakness nor made greater by the strength of mighty Sampson. It is and remains one ring, that is, the ring of the service, of the satisfaction of Christ for the weak and for the strong, yes, even more for the weak than for those who let themselves imagine they’re strong.

4. Realize that the dear prayer from out of a humble heart is heard above all after the example of that afflicted man who had a poor child who was possessed and to whom the LORD said: “If you could believe then you would be helped. For all things are possible for those who believe.” “Oh LORD, (said the beleaguered father, weeping fervent tears), I believe, help my unbelief.”

5. Know that the Holy Ghost himself works and supports, heats up and gives courage to our prayer, sighing and tears, that it proceeds effectively and presses through the clouds and fills God’s ears. As Paul bears witness in Romans 8 that the Holy Ghost aids us in our weakness and advocates for us with unutterable groans and we cry out through him, “Abba, Father.” Therefore he is called the Spirit of prayer and of grace, Prov. 12, who bears witness with our spirit that we are God’s children.

6. Receive the comforting promise that God the LORD will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoldering flax. Mt. 12.

If we would take to our hearts these six little points, we will be able to endure and overcome by God’s grace the trial that comes to us by our weakness of faith or, at last, after all, we will arrive at our salvation through the greater adversities yet to come. For as we live, so shall we die and so shall we be saved.

Source:

Instruction for Those Who are Afflicted because of their Weakness in Faith. (Taken from Nicol. Selnecker’s Conc. Funeb. I. P. 130.) Reprinted in Der Lutheraner, April 1845.

What to Do When Your Faith Feels Weak

Cyberbrethren: A Lutheran Blog by Paul McCain