“We train you here to be stewards of life’s crises.” Former chaplain and seminary professor Martin Scharlemann preached those words in chapel at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis decades before I was born. Not much has changed in pastoral ministry since he did. Pastors exist, whether I like it or not, to steward the crises …
Losing the Power to Question
Some time ago, a ladies bible study at the congregation I serve invited me to come and spend time with them because they had some questions and hoped I had some answers. I disabused them of that notion rather quickly in part because the questions they had didn’t have clear cut answers. Why? Because they …
The Cake Itself
“God makes music. It is inevitable, therefore, that the men of God whose words we hear in Scripture are singers and poets. They are not poets accidentally, not ‘also’ poets, but poets because they are men of God, the prophets and apostle[s] whose word the church receives and embraces. It is misleading to speak of …
A Christmas Prayer
LITANY OF THE INCARNATION O Jesus Christ, the Lord of all good life, who hast called us to build the city of God, enrich and purify our lives, and deepen in us our discipleship. Help us daily to know more of Thee that through us, by the power of Thy Spirit, Thou mayest show forth …
Grateful
I know that the week of Christmas is not the time many go around the table and say what they are thankful for but it probably should happen more than just one day a year. This year, one of the things I am grateful for is a church body that cares about doctrine and those …
Real Love
“A love that left people alone in their guilt would not be real love.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1990, 1995), 217. Bonhoeffer was speaking about the love Christ had for humanity. By taking on human …
What happens when they are touched by the breath of God?
From its inception nearly two centuries ago, my church body, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod was known to be a church body that, despite all the caricatures (negative or positive, rightly or wrongly attributed) was a church body that had been, to borrow from a father in the faith, grabbed by a book that would not …
Continue reading What happens when they are touched by the breath of God?
A New Year; An Old Prayer
Advent begins on Sunday and I'm ready for it—not just professionally but personally. I love the hymnody, I love the collects, and I love that the church pulls me out of the cultural moment through a season that can be both penitential and joyful, anticipatory and nostalgic, rooted in what was and confident of what …
Asking Paul’s Question to the LCMS
Videos are dropping. (See this one and this one). Statements are being sent out (See this one). Times are fun in the LCMS. The topic of the day is pastoral formation and the restrictions regarding the SMP route to ministry. This is insider language and indeed the struggle is internal to the LCMS. I supervise …
The Kingdom Comes
The other week I buried a woman. She was advanced in years, in her mid nineties, and her death did not come as a surprise or a shock. At the close of the service I spoke two stanzas of a hymn I learned sitting in the pews of Lent midweek worship services. There was a …
an occasional theologian 