This came to me from a dear friend who faithfully serves without a helper (yet) suitable for him.  I post it here to help those who are single and those whom they serve.  – Pastor Scheer The first preacher, the first head of a household, the first man to catechize his children in the truth of God and His promise had a helper suitable for him. Today, God continues to raise up men to fill the preaching office in His Church and a good number of them have a helper that is suitable to him, much like the first preacher   More…

Posted over on Cyberbrethren this morning:   CPH is very happy to announce that the bookstores on the campus of both of our two seminaries are now available for you to shop from, 24/7/365, via their online store. You’ll enjoy browsing the textbook selection and buying your favorite seminary logowear and other items, etc. Check them out! Here is the link to our bookstore on the campus of Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the link to our bookstore on the campus of Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis.    

Another excellent article from Wild Boar from the Forest found here. It was bound to happen. The fiction that teachers are “Commissioned Ministers”, executing a ministerial and religious role (kingdom of the right) instead of a secular (kingdom of the left) has been found out by the sixth circuit court, and may even be adjudicated by the Supremes themselves. What happened? A congregation “fired” (word used by the court) a so-”called teacher” who then filed suit under the ADA retaliation law. (Actually the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission filed suit, but the teacher joined in.) The Court of appeals ruled that   More…

A year or so back former LCMS President Kieschnick started publishing a weekly e-mail letter. As an interested observer of all things LCMS I subscribed to his letter and still get his weekly postings. I read them with curiosity. This week’s post raises an interesting question. Volume II Number 26 “Miss Me Yet?” This past Friday I drove from home in Georgetown to a speaking engagement for the 50th anniversary of Our Redeemer Lutheran School in Dallas. The event was a great one, giving thanks to God for a half century of blessing at this very fine center of Christian education. It’s   More…

A congregation has just gone vacant. It used to be that a vacancy pastor was assigned. Now I hear of “Intentional Interim Pastors” going into vacancy congregations. I have seen the intentional interim process from a distance and have had some serious questions about it. I have recently had opportunity to view it a little more close-up and have even more reservations about it. A congregation is in a very fragile state during a vacancy. They may have just lost a fine pastor or just gone through a difficult pastorate. Either way, it is a fragile time. Some of the   More…

This article is about an often neglected part of a congregation, the pastor’s wife.  A man who is called to be a pastor has the first vocation of being a husband and then also a father (if God has blessed their union with children).  This first vocation supersedes that of being a pastor, and so it is only natural that Satan would attempt to shut the mouth of the preacher by hurting him in another vocation (isn’t that what he did to Adam in the garden?). Ask any pastor, and he most likely knows another pastor who had to stop   More…

Pax Domini has some great stuff for VBS and other programs at church. We encourage you to check them out.   Pax Domini Press – VBS Programs Should VBS present Jesus as a cartoon character based on last year’s Hollywood trends? Recent evidence suggests that presenting Jesus in this way is one of the reasons why so many young people leave the Christian faith in their 20′s. Christianity becomes something they grow out of. At Pax Domini Press, our motto is “Giving children something to grow into…not out of.” Our materials have all the elements of a traditional VBS, but   More…

The Carolina Lutheran Loci will be meeting this Saturday, February 26th. We will begin at 10:30 a.m. and end around 2:30 p.m. Our presenter will be The Rev’d Greg Alms from Redeemer Lutheran in Catawba, NC. His topic will be “Docetism”. All participants should bring their own lunch. All Saints is located at 17030 Lancaster Highway in Charlotte, NC. www.allsaintslutheran.org If you have any questions feel free to contact me at any time (Send me an email and I’ll forward it) Pax Christi, Pastor Kent Schaaf     2011 Schedule Carolina Lutheran Loci – Cristo et Ecclesia The Early Church   More…

On Sunday, March 6, at a special voters’ assembly, our congregation will be voting on two proposed amendments to the Constitution of our Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. (The deadline for the ballot to be received is March 15.) I am recommending that we vote “against the proposed amendment” on each. Let me tell you a little bit about these amendments and why I’m inclined to vote against them. Both of these proposals came out of former President Kieschnick’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Synod Structure and Governance. They then went through Floor Committee 8 and were presented as resolutions (8-10 and   More…

Pastor Karl Weber wrote this for his March newsletter and gives his permission to share it wherever. Feel free to copy it or modify it for your own newsletters if it’s not too late, or sending it to friends. BJS has posted articles on previous Ash Wednesdays in 2010 and 2009.     Greetings in Christ Jesus! Ash Wednesday will soon be here. As in past years the imposition of ashes will be offered to those who so desire. In our age of Botox and our culture’s pursuit of perpetual youth ashes made in the sign of the holy cross   More…

Are there too many pastors? Should a seminary student have a back up plan for employment when he registers his enrollment? Is the practice of “lay ministry” bringing harm to the office of the ministry. These and other questions are addressed by Rev. Heath Curtis in a post on Gottesdienst Online. He has kindly invited BJS to consider posting a link to it. Without hesitation we encourage you to check it out by clicking here.

Since BJS is dedicated to helping restore fatherhood, I thought I would share a moment from the BJS Conference this past weekend.  While attending the first lecture on Witness, my wife and children accompanied me into the sanctuary of Bethany in Naperville (our family vacation time was originally around Symposia week, but chicken pox stopped that from happening, so BJS provided a second chance). The picture in this post is of President Harrison interacting with my oldest daughter, who was reading “The Magician’s Nephew” by C.S. Lewis and also spending time being artistic with the BJS place mats from the   More…

LCMS President Matthew Harrison gave a presentation to the Lutheran Church-Extension Fund Leadership Conference in November 2010 at Nashville, Tennessee. His topic was about being ourselves as “creedal Lutherans,” and doing this in the ways of Witness, Mercy, and Life Together. Here is the recently released video:

Here is audio from the various segments of the 2011 Brothers of John the Steadfast conference. We may be able to get more audio or video out; so keep an eye on this post. Information prior to the conference can be found here.   Friday Evening Banquet from Pastor Harrison   Session 1: Witness by Cantor Phillip Magness   Session 2: Mercy by Tim Hetzner, Director of Lutheran Church Charities   The sermon from Divine Service by Pastor Fisk   Session 3: Life Together by Rev. Dr. Timothy A. Rossow, Director of the Brothers of John the Steadfast

One of the questions going around at the Conference this past weekend was …. what does Pastor Fisk look like in real life? Does he have the Samurai Swords behind him, does he jump around as he goes from phrase to phrase, is he really that hyper? So .. for those who weren’t able to make the conference, I thought that I’d get a quick clip up showing Pastor Fisk in person. For more about him, see WorldView Everlasting Sorry for the poor quality audio; we may be able to generate videos with better audio in a few days/weeks.