Plus ça change ("The more things change...)

By Larry Beane


"All this skepticism, uncertainty, and experimenting has unfortunately unsettled only too many pastors in the church around us.  These pastors themselves have lost faith, more or less, in the divinely ordained means of grace.  They are casting about for new means and methods by which to reach and hold men.  They are experimenting with all sorts of novelties and attractions.  Their churches and services are becoming more and more places of entertainment.  They try to outbid and outdo one another in sensations calculated to draw.  And so the church, like Samson of old, is shorn of her locks, and is degraded to make sport for the Philistines of the world.  No true Lutheran pastor can stoop to such prostitution of his office and of his church."

~ G.H. Gerberding, 1903
The Lutheran Pastor,  p.124