Another great post by Pastor Peters over on Pastoral Meanderings:   Again, First Things has a good piece on liturgical renewal and the return of one raised in the liturgy to that very liturgy that gave him life.  It is a good read and I urge you to take a look.  I appreciated his personal take on the journey back to his beginnings and Leroy Huizengais a good writer.  I stole a quote from his article: In recent years, however, while continuing to play in worship bands, I began to become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of “contemporary worship.” As   More…

Another great post by Pastor Peters over on Pastoral Meanderings:   It is no secret that many are thinking what we have done in youth ministry has not born the desired fruit of adult faithfulness.  There is no shortage of critics of what has become a rather sad mixture of entertainment, fun, and baby sitting which substitutes for honest catechesis and faith development.  I have said the same thing perhaps a half dozen times on this blog.  So you should not be surprised when I find a quote that illustrates many of the very fears I have about what usually   More…

Another great post found on Pastoral Meanderings:   Many believe that Christianity is largely theoretical and not very practical — unless you are just about to die, of course.  It seems to me that there is some truth to this.  Christians have spent a wad of cash and not a little ink to prove that Christian faith and life is eminently practical.  The purveyors of this pragmatic faith have become the most successful entrepreneurs of Christianity — the Rick Warrens and Bill Hybels and Joel Osteens of this world.  They are bottom line kind of folks.  If the Church is   More…

Another excellent post by Pastor Peters over on Pastoral Meanderings. I don’t know about other Pastor’s experiences in pre-marital counselling, but the pastor in our church says when he started in the ministry he would see 1 in 10 people coming in for marriage were in a co-habitation situation; today he’s surprised if people aren’t doing this. It’s even become common for the parents to approve of such a living situation. For those doing this for “financial reasons”, we offer space in an older couple’s home for one of the couple .. as far as I know noone has taken   More…

Found over on Pastoral Meanderings .. Pastor Peter’s blog:   Here in the MidSouth, the majority of congregations tend to be small but people of the book.  They are not exactly liturgical but they are Lutheran and Lutherans use the book, so they use the book.  Their Pastors vest, they have altars and pulpits, pews and an organ (or maybe piano), etc…  They are certainly not bastions of the full ceremonial of the liturgy but they are comfortable enough with a familiar page number in a familiar book to use it pretty much straight off the page. In contrast to   More…

Found over on Pastoral Meanderings .. Pastor Peter’s blog:   Smallness is often under appreciated. I like it when the folks at my local branch remember my name and know who I am. I do not like it when I have to call through a menu que to speak with someone a thousand miles away when I do certain business with that same bank. As much as I see benefits to a multi-national bank, I do not want to be one customer number in a bank too big to fail. I want to talk to Jeanette and Kat. It reminds   More…

Another excellent article from Pastor Peters on his blog Pastoral Meanderings:   I did not come up with that title.  I borrowed it from someone more creative.  But it is a powerful statement of the problem with most inclusive language.  It does not stop with the inclusion of women with men in those places where men clearly is inclusive of all people.  Inclusive language is most dangerous when it seems either a balance of male/female terms for God or it seeks to remove God from any terminology which might be considered gender specific (never mind that God in His gracious   More…

I found this through a facebook posting of a friend of mine — another great post from Pastor Peters’ Pastoral Meanderings blog. Keep Pastoral Meanderings in your RSS reader to follow more great posts by Pastor Peters!   We were continuing our way through the Augsburg Confession in my Sunday morning study and we had just ended the first section (Articles 1-21).  Then before beginning Article 22 we read: Inasmuch, then, as our churches dissent in no article of the faith from the Church Catholic, but only omit some abuses which are new, and which have been erroneously accepted by the   More…