A Jesus Centered Community of Scripture, Faith, and Grace
Worship Like A Lutheran
I have heard that some people, when asking about your church will ask the following question, “what does your pastor wear to church?” The best answer is probably “underwear,” or if you want to get a little more specific, “socks”. (Sundays only, sometimes I come in wearing flip flops during the week.) As fun as…
Here’s your big word for the day, “Adiaphora”. “Adiaphora” literally means “it doesn’t make a difference”, and it is the Latin word used by the Lutheran Reformers to talk about things that don’t have a necessarily Biblical basis, but are a part of church practice. Confirmation is a good example of this. Nowhere in Scripture…
One of the aspects of worshiping at a liturgical church is that it has an ancient feel to it. That’s on purpose. Liturgical churches seek to connect the present day with the ancient reality of the faith. The sainted Robert Webber wrote a whole series of books on this topic called “Ancient-Future”. So our worship…
If you’re here on a Sunday morning, right after the Words of Institution (“On the night in which He was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ….”) and right before people come up to receive communion, you will hear something to the effect of “we believe that this meal is truly the Body and Blood of our…
One of the questions I get from time to time from non-Lutheran students is, “hey, what are all those ‘Lutheran’ holidays about?” I try to explain that they are more than just “Lutheran” holidays, but that most liturgical Christians celebrate these things. Those holidays include things like Pink Candle Sunday, Pentecost, Reformation Day…and of course,…
When my family moved to St. Louis in my teens, we went “church shopping”. It’s probably the only time that I’ve done this since I was relatively unchurched for much of college and then I was assigned my churches from that point on without much choice in the matter. I remember that we would go…
“The fightin’ Missiourians….” I’ll never forget someone telling me that our Lutheran church body was nicknamed this in the past. It makes sense. Lutherans can be a contentious bunch, it’s in our DNA. We told the Roman Catholic church to go fly a kite over indulgences, and we haven’t necessarily worked out all of our…
This comes from a question we received: “Why not use grape juice and a loaf of bread? Wouldn’t any liquid/solid food combo do?” So once upon a time, I remember this theoretical coming up in conversation: What if I’m with a church group and all we have with us is some grape kool aid and…
Little closet boxes, tiny little purple ribbon stoles, elaborate screens that hide collared men behind them, prescriptions to say 452 “Hail Mary’s” and 312 “Our Father’s”, starting off with the line “Forgive me, Father, it has been x amount of days since my last confession…” etc etc…. Those are the images that come up when…
On any given Sunday during worship, I am playing two different roles. Those roles are sacrificial and sacramental, and you can tell the difference by the way that I am facing. It explains one of the questions that I get quite often from people who didn’t grow up in the Lutheran church, “why do you…