Note: This is one of the very first blogposts for Gottesdienst, from 2006 - and this one is a bit of an archaeological find. For it was posted at the first Gottesblog site, and was itself a repost of one of Fr. Eckardt’s essays from eleven years prior (which means this was written in 1995. That’s twenty-nine years ago. ~ Ed.

One Church, One Call

As the seeds of discord continue to be sown among us in the Missouri Synod and others regarding "the doctrine of the call", so also myopic declarations of "truth" continue to sprout.

There has developed a great uneasiness among us over "the doctrine of the call" in recent years, because, alas, our church­es have at last begun to act out the part that was so unbecom­ingly thrust upon them when we first began to think of them as something other than what they are.

When our fifteenth-century fathers pointed out so clearly the sacred significance of each local place were the word of God is preached and the Sacraments admin­istered, they did so in the interest of magnifying, ultimately, the word and the Sacraments themselves. It is preaching and the Sacrament which makes that place sacred. Jesus warned us not to forget this, when he declared, Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? The source of holiness, that is, is greater than that which it makes holy. The means from which the Church derives her holiness are of greater signif­icance than the Church's holiness itself.

In this regard we must ask whether there has been a misguided exaltation of the local congregation among us.

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