A blog of the Evangelical Lutheran Liturgy
Jackson reports, for example: “2,900 searches/month are done for "churches in St. Louis." 2,400 searches/month are done for "Fort Wayne churches. Neither Fort Wayne nor St. Louis have LCMS churches on the first page of Google.” He also states that, “80 percent of first time visitors will check out a church's website before visiting. Of the biggest metro areas in the United States, an LCMS church doesn’t show up until you get to Omaha, NE (King of Kings), the 55th largest metro area.”
Read MoreI received this link to a fine assessment of the Seminex history afforded by an interview on the online Eric Renn show, with astute layman Eric LeFevre. It’s definitely worth a listen. It comes at an appropriate time, just about 50 years after the St. Louis walkout (in January 1974). And as he wrote to me, "it is very important that we pass this history on so that we can learn from mistakes.”
Read MoreBy nearly every measure, Christianity is in decline in America.
Read MoreSo the 2023 election is shaping up a lot like the 2019 election in this regard: the Coalition of the Dissatisfied is once again afraid and/or unable to make the election about anything overtly theological. They will not campaign on reinstating Wichita 1989. They will not openly state a desire to overturn closed communion or a male-only clergy roster. They can’t: their coalition is too theologically diverse. Instead, they will stick to platitudes about being “evangelical” and “loving” and trust that each faction of their coalition will interpret those words according to their own lights.
Read MoreYour conscience must be ruled by God’s Word regardless of how many vaccines you’ve received or masks you wear.
Read MoreThe dethronement of theology in the church is the attempted dethronement of God in the church. The church speaks definitely because it understands God’s revelation in Holy Scripture to be definitive in its source and in its relevance.
Read MoreOne of the things that I like about the Gottesdienst Crowd is that we are not advocates for the liturgy because of personal taste or effete sensibilities, or an intellectual devotion to historical marginalia. Pastors and laypeople involved in the life of the church understand that as the blood of Christ is the lifeblood of the Church, Sunday morning Divine Services are the vessels that carry the blood of the Lamb to us. Hence our name Gottesdienst.
Read MoreOne of the candidates for synod president released his four-point campaign platform. One of his planks is that we need to “Improve Law Gospel Preaching.”
Read MoreI have never been a synod delegate before. I should have known that I would be targeted by mail and email by ecclesiastical lobbying.
Read MoreSobering news out of the Great White North.
Being a little more European than we are, and lacking a Bible Belt, the National Trust for Canada is reporting that a third of the churches in Canada will likely close within a decade.
