Just the Gospel Please

Dear LCMS Pastors,

I think I’m writing for the majority of laymen in the LCMS when I say thank you for bringing us the Gospel each week, and nothing more. We need to hear that we’re sinners, and that for Christ’s sake we’re forgiven. [If you kept a record of sin, Oh LORD, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness.] We don’t expect you to be the most articulate, or the best looking or well-known pastors around. We just expect the Gospel, and you deliver Christ’s Word through the power of the Holy Spirit.

What we don’t need is photos of you in that pensive pose, as though it was all about you. Or the striking professional photo of you with the three-day beard – you know the one I’m talking about – where we have to wonder what exactly it is that you’re doing. When any little bit of your “ministry” starts to be about you, it is no longer about Christ. When it’s no longer about Christ, bad things happen.

And while I’m at it, no internet squabbling please. And no sermons with the slightest responsive whiff of the latest pastoral scandal addressed to your colleagues who don’t quite “get it.” Just the Gospel. The evangelical world has pastors aplenty for stuff like that.

Enough said.

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