It’s no exaggeration when I say I’ve been mulling over in my head for a great deal of time exactly how I was going to write this. There are so many ways in which this miniseries is just plain wrong that it was difficult to figure out which angle to take. When watching this latest installment of History’s series “The Bible”, I probably woke my sleeping daughters at least three or four times yelling at the TV. The easy and obvious tack is to pick apart each detail of Scripture that is incorrectly portrayed. There certainly are a lot of   More…

Why do we need Lutheran schools? Why do Lutheran schools need Lutheran teachers? Though these are simple questions, their answers get at the whole reason that the extensive system of Lutheran schools exists in the first place. Lutherans in North America have been school-builders from the beginning. In fact, the opportunity to establish schools apart from the purview of the State was at least as enticing to these first Lutheran immigrants from Europe as freedom from a state religion. But why? After all, schools are a lot of work. All the planning, budgeting, instruction, assessment, recordkeeping — operating a school   More…

We all know the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods” (or more literally, You shall have no other gods before My face). Although we don’t recite these words when listing the Commandments in the Small Catechism, Moses records what the Lord had to say about these words: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous   More…

Subscribers to the magazine Lutheran Witness, the official magazine of the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, are no doubt aware of recent improvements to that periodical. From clean and sharp graphics to new authors, Lutheran Witness has been putting out some high-quality material. The September 2012 edition, for example, gave a frank look at the “State of the Synod,” citing membership numbers and trends, the status of the synod’s financial position, education enrollment figures, and all sorts of other facts and figures that most members of LCMS congregations wouldn’t ordinarily know. And again to the credit both of Synod and   More…

or, Divine Revelation Evidently Done by Internal Polling and Focus Groups The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have launched a website and program to encourage LDS members to be compassionate when discussing homosexuality with homosexuals. From the website: This website is a collection of conversations; conversations with Church leaders, conversations with Church members who are attracted to people of the same sex, and conversations with the loved ones of gay spouses, children, or grandchildren who are dealing with the effects of same-sex attraction in their own lives. These conversations are not always   More…

nota bene: This sermon was preached on October 28 for the High Plains circuit Reformation festival, at King of Glory Lutheran Church in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The sermon is based upon the gospel reading from St. Matthew, chapter 11. Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of   More…

Here’s another question that came in using our Ask a Pastor button on the sidebar. I teach at a Lutheran high school, my children attended a Lutheran grade school. In both women are allowed to give chapel. This is not a foreign practice as I’m sure many Lutheran high schools and grades schools do the same. Does this practice align with I Timothy 2:11-12, I Corinthians 14: 34-35? Thank you for your question. As a matter of background, I am the associate pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church and School in Cheyenne, Wyoming. We have both a faithful congregation and a   More…

Those three words are what make a marriage tick. I may not have 60 years’ experience like both my sets of grandparents, nor do I have the 36 years’ experience my parents do, but in 11 years of marriage I can attest to the three words that make a marriage last. The world gets two of them right, but the middle one eludes the world. “I forgive you.” Any couple will say “I love you” uncountable times, as they should. But “I forgive you” reveals that the husband or wife values the marriage more than his or her ego. It   More…

One of the presenters at this month’s conference of the Consortium for Classical and Christian Education (CCLE) was Dr. E. Christian Kopff, whose list of accolades and qualifications to speak to such an audience is far too long to list. He presented a pamphlet written by John Milton in 1644, called Of Education. You might remember Milton by his epic poem Paradise Lost, or by the lament of how “boring” he seemed to Donald Sutherland’s character in the film Animal House. For the record, I have found Milton to be refreshingly straight-forward, even if a bit long-winded, and not in the least   More…

Author’s note: This post begins a series that describes those things necessary for classical and Lutheran education. Many confessional Lutherans, including me, see a strong commitment to Lutheran education with a classical pedagogy as part of our identity as confessional Lutherans. Since we are at the very beginning of our move to reclaim this part of our heritage, we would do well to understand what we are reclaiming for ourselves and for the church. About this time last year, I knew that I was headed to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and that my congregation had a school. Shortly after I arrived, I   More…

Recently, there has been some attention drawn to the advice of Dr. Bruce Hartung of Concordia Seminary to a reader’s comment as published in a recent edition of the Reporter: [Reader:]I have prayed in the Lectio Divina process for a number of years. This involves reading a scriptural text, focusing on a particular word or cluster in the text, meditating on the text, prayer in response to the text, and silent resting as the meaning of the text really impacts you. Following this is the development of how all this moves into my daily life. This is the classic lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio and,   More…

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Gilroy, California, is changing denominational affiliations from the LCMS to the ELCA. Although Good Shepherd is Missouri Synod, the congregation doesn’t function like one, says Ron. Callers “need to know that we use the worship book from the ELCA, that we involve women in our worship and that we welcome all the baptized to receive Holy Communion,” says Ron. “I need to say all of these things because Good Shepherd is not where it belongs.” So after years of feeling misplaced, members of Good Shepherd are finally moving to their rightful home. On March 18,   More…

In the comments section of Pastor Rossow’s recent post about President Harrison’s taking questions directly from the microphones at a district convention, Pastor Scheer notified me that the comments section was steering toward matters of Lutheran education, and as it would happen, that’s why he asked me to write for the Brothers of John the Steadfast in the first place. Specifically, many Lutherans want their parochial schools not simply to duplicate the work of public schools but actually to excel at education and catechesis. This is the work to which the Lord has called me, as the associate pastor of   More…

We Lutherans speak a lot about vocation. In a nutshell, these are the various callings the Lord gives to each of His children to serve Him by serving one’s neighbor: one person might be at the same time a son, brother, father, citizen, and worker. When the church instructs young people in how a Christian is to live, we don’t tell him to become a monk and disengage from society, but instead we praise those roles in life where the neighbor is served to the glory of God. But in the secular realm, vocation has gotten a rather bad reputation.   More…