Gottesblog

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

~ Gustav Mahler

We Lutherans are often accused of heresy by Roman Catholics by means of a clever and ironic rhetorical trick. Roman Catholics will sometimes claim that Jesus founded the Catholic Church, and therefore the Catholic Church is the only true church.

A woman “pastor” (Purpose Church, Pamona, California) will be speaking at an event at an LCMS church to teach the ladies about what it means to be a Christian woman.

I love our country, and I love the quirks of our culture - as well as its many unique subcultures. But we Americans often have a cloying habit of presuming that everyone in the world must surely think like we do. We are often ignorant of history to boot - and when it comes to our understanding of the Church - even of Lutheran Christianity - we sometimes embarrass ourselves.

There was a recent dust-up online (imagine that!) involving the question of who should commune the pastor during the Sunday Divine Service.

Church musician Jonathan Aigner wrote a piece at Patheos entitled “Why are you still going to a church that does bad worship?”

A fellow LCMS pastor recently stated:

The Rev. David Petersen’s excellent recent post about Pre-Lent made me think about the oft-levied false charge that Gottesdienst approaches liturgical tradition in a legalistic way.