Here’s what it says about the service of women.  “The only restriction God places on women serving in the Church is that Office of the Ministry is not given to them” (113).  In one fell swoop 150 years of teaching about the order of creation is swept out the door.  Though quoting from I Timothy 2, the book doesn’t even say what the CTCR has said about the passage.  That it isn’t just about teaching but also about women exercising authority over men.

As for closed Communion, it only made it back to Galesburg not to the first four centuries of the church.  “Communion is an advertisement [?] to the whole world that says who we are and what we believe about Jesus.  This is the reason why we commune in a church that teaches what we believe.  It removes any doubt about God’s Word when we know what a church teaches.  We commune in a particular church, we are joining our confession with theirs; we are confessing, ‘We say the same thing about Jesus.’  Some churches believe that the Lord’s Supper is a symbol or does not bring forgiveness.  We don’t want to mislead anyone with our ‘advertisement’ of faith, nor do we want a church to misrepresent what they advertise.  This is why Lutherans commune at Lutheran churches; so that together we tell the world what God taught us” (161-162).

This is what those churches which would eventually become the ELCA said about Communion in the 1930 Minneapolis Theses.  This is not what the first generation of LCMS said about it.  This is LCMS 2.0, and if you want to know where this is going just look to the ELCA who trod this path ahead of you.  Or perhaps make like Bob Seger and turn the page. There we read “This Sacrament is celebrated by those who are communicant members of (in community with) the congregation” (163).  Being “in community with” is not defined nor is it ever stated who determines if a person is to be communed.

Now for what is more funny than sad.  On pages 86, 106, 126, and 146 this book on Lutheranism 101 has displayed the papal cross http://www.printeryhouse.org/ProdPage.asp?prod=G934 .  Finally, on the back cover, the book has either the audacity, the temerity, or both to praise itself as a good book.  Quoting Martin Luther they say, “’There have never been nor are there now, too many good books.’”  Methinks there is one less than they think.

World magazine reports in an August 13, 2011 article “Minnesota Twins?” this about Michele Bachmann: “For years Bachmann was a member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and attended the Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church, Stillwater, Minn.  The synod came under media fire this summer for a doctrinal statement calling the pope the Antichrist. While Bachmann has not been active in the church for the last two years, the press is raising questions about the timing of her family’s decision to seek an official written release from their church membership.  The synod [church?] granted that release just six days before Bachmann formally announced her candidacy.  Bachman now attends Eagle Brook Church, a nondenominational megachurch with a Baptist heritage…” (p. 38).

Representative Bachmann took care of business by not letting her membership in the WELS ride, and to be sure you ain’t seen nothing yet because this is definitely a LCMS megatrend.  Either apologize (not in the confessional sense but in the sorrowful sense) for our Confession, apostatize from it, eulogize it (the time and place for this or that teaching has passed), or just not vocalize it (See the blog “Unverifiable.”).

This I call Bachmannizing our Confession, and though it can and often is subtle, it shares with BTO not just the Bachman but the Overdrive.   Once you start down this road, since it’s downhill you gather speed.  The Cajuns call it “crawfishing.”  Northerners call it “hemming and hawing.” The more educated might call it “dithering.”  Politicians and churchmen call it “keeping your options open.”

Whatever you call it, I have done it before, and while you may blame me, can you understand why?  How many of our doctrines are just plain laughable to 21^st Century man.  From women not being pastors, to homosexuals not marrying, to a six day creation, to closed Communion, to the pope being the Antichrist, to a personal Devil and a real hell, to Bread being Body and Wine being Blood, to the dead really living, to angels being real, to salvation only in Jesus’ name, there is so much to apologize, apostatize, eulogize, or just not vocalize.

If we don’t Bachmannize our confession, we will be hated by the world that embraces the errors we’re confessing against.  Face it; you don’t, you can’t, grow a church without Bachmannizing our Confessions.  But prior to the Church Growth Movement, we never believed we could (or should) grow a Church.  Only the Lord did that through Word and Sacraments, through our teaching “all things whatsoever” He commanded us, through administering His Sacraments His way.

Let me end by quoting another BTO song “Let’s Roll Down the Highway.”  “Travel down the long and divided road/ Look on the map I think we’ve been there before…” The road has been divided since Cain killed Able and the City of Men started persecuting the City of God.  And I don’t “think we’ve been there before.”  I know we’ve been here before in 1969 when we gave up our Confession on the role of women and in 2004 when we gave up our Confession on closed Communion, unionism, syncretism, and more.  Set Bachmannizing our Confession to hard driving BTO music, and you have the passion, the energy, the zeal needed to attract a listless postmodern society that only knows and wants to know what it likes.  Yes, we’re driving somewhere or more accurately being driven somewhere in overdrive when we Bachmannize.  The question is where to and by whom?

To say “worship is adiaphora” is to say the high places in the Old Testament shouldn’t have been removed, the golden calf shouldn’t have been ground up by Moses, and the worship established at Bethel and Dan shouldn’t have been railed against by the Old Testament prophets.  All of these were styled as worship “as to the Lord,” but they weren’t His worship.

Is contemporary worship therefore equivalent to golden calves and high places?  Well, I know it’s not simply a matter of “taste” – you say potato I say potahto.   It’s not simply a matter of age – old versus new and the new or old by virtue of age has to be better.  It’s not simply a matter of style – hymn versus praise and the former being always more reverent and the latter always more heartfelt.

No, contemporary worship is a matter of experience versus faith, being justified by feeling better rather than by the promise of the forgiveness of sins.  The golden calf, the calf worship instituted by Northern Israel, and the worship at the high places were all more visible experiences than a God who dwelt invisibly in the holy of holies.  Those other forms of worship claimed to worship the only true God; they claimed they were “blending” elements of different worship style, but their claims were not accepted by God or His prophets.

Finally, we must note there was no room for compromise, no middle ground between the two styles of worship.  The calf worship of Northern Israel was not in fellowship with the worship of the Lord.  The high places were tolerated by some kings of Judah, reduced in number by others, and eliminated by one or two.  But even the high places where the true God was worshiped by God’s people under a different liturgical form were never something to be embraced.  They were the wave of the future, but they were not the way to go or to God.

Francis Schaeffer agreed.  He said, “From this time on [the time of Cain and Able] in the flow of history there are two humanities.  The one humanity says there is no God, or it makes gods in its own imagination, or it tries to come to the true God in its own way.  The other humanity comes to the true God in God’s way.  There is no neutral ground.”  (Genesis in Time and Space¸115)

It is adiaphora how one worships as long as the worship flows from God’s revelation of Himself and preaches, teaches, and confesses justification by grace through faith.  If worship teaches justification by feeling better, positive, happy, empowered, relieved, or hopeful, it teaches justification through experience not faith, that’s not adiaphora.  That’s wrong.

I attended a church that represented itself as confessional, traditional, liturgical.  It was certainly the last.  The pastor had just returned from a Higher Things conference.  Both in sermon and Bible class he emphasized emphatically, if you’ll forgive the tautology, that “they worshipped just like we do here at _________.  Chanting, sign of the cross, and incense.”  I wanted to raise my hand and ask, “So they do have women distributing Communion at Higher Things?”

There you have it; the cat is out of the bag, or perhaps more aptly put, the woman is in the robe.

When I turned toward the back of the church for the processional and saw the crucifer was a girl, I said, “Well that’s just how it is now a days.”  Besides at 10 years old there’s really not much outward difference between boys and girls, but there is between men and women, between priest and priestess.

This church had both up there: a husband and wife vested team of communion assistants.  Mind you; this was to serve a congregation of 40 worshipers.  You couldn’t plead necessity.  You could only plead political correctness; giving everyone their turn; letting people participate in the service. (Gee, I thought it was primarily Divine Service in the sense that Divinity serves me.  This idea that everyone has to be doing something in the Divine Service certainly erodes that idea.)

In Bible class the pastor explained how he gave two presentations at Higher Things to over 120 people each time.  He was humbled by the experience.  I was crumpled by the experience of worshiping at his church.  Prior to service when I simply announced by self as a member of the LCMS just passing through.  He had invited me to commune.  I demurred having had the experience too many times of being surprised at what I was communing with.

So is it a confessional position to have woman communion assistants?  It’s surely not traditional.  It’s surely not apostolic.  While we may have a hard time agreeing what is catholic.  Can’t we agree that what has never been done at any time, in any place, by anyone heretofore certainly can’t be catholic? But it can be cute, kitsch, and contemporary.  And you know, I’ve been all of those things from the pulpit at times.  Now I see how it plays in the pew, and I repent.

I attended their convening convention in Kearney, MO, March 1-3 with an official lay delegate from my congregation.  We agreed to join along with 7 other intrepid congregations.  Let me tell you what is different about ACELC other than for once we in Missouri have a pronounceable acronym: Ace-Lick.

The men who started this ball rolling, up hill I might add, are not filled with the acrimony and vitriol that you often find in these sorts of groups and in people like me.  I didn’t hear one cheap shot or one expensive one for that matter on past or present LCMS officials.  There really was a genuine evangelical spirit about these men.

I didn’t find the spirit of bravado among them either.  There was a sense they were doing something important, but no one thought we were storming St. Louis with a hammer and 95 theses.  No one evidenced delusions of Luther, Chemnitz, Walther, or Piper.  I found this refreshing.

Though in part what got me there was a sinful, prideful, ultimately impotent feeling of “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” these men aren’t that way.  However, if you want to get that way and that way is to be preferred over, “I’m ever so the slightest bit warmer in this pan of water, but surely no one will turn up the flames of error any higher,” then read their Evidence of Errors documents found here http://www.acelc.net/message2.php?topicID=6891&

The ACELC is not a synod within the Synod.  It’s not an association of malcontents.  It is not, thanks be to God, a bid for political clout.  I rarely heard at this meeting that the answer was to submit good resolutions to your district convention and elect good people.  Been there; done that, and all I succeeded in doing was killing trees.

So let’s be Libyans.  Let us band together and call for ecclesiastical supervision from our ecclesiastical supervisors.  Let us band together and point out just how far we have slip-slided away as a Synod.  Let us band together that we might not go the way of Pasty Cline and fall to pieces.

While a member, and that enthusiastically, I am not an official spokesman for the ACELC, so you must do them the honor of taking this as an unofficial, opinion of one who was there when the people took to the streets.

Originally this blog was entitled “17 Minutes that Could Save Your Soul.”  It was about a sermon I had heard online from an LCMS pastor on “Get out of the boat; get out of your comfort zone.”  I couldn’t find it again, but you will have no trouble finding one like it:  long on clichés; short on doctrine; and thick with jokes.  I was going to point out that a steady diet of such sermons will wither your soul as certainly as thin gruel will your body.  What I really was warning about was churchyard saints.

In Luther day these were people who were content as long as they saw the trappings of the Roman church.  They didn’t care about doctrine.  They cared only that the externals were there.  Long ago I railed against Lutherans who were content as long as all the ‘L’s” were there.  As long as AAL, LWML, and LLL were in their church, they were church.

I wasn’t looking for anything to rail against when I stumbled upon the boat sermon.  It wasn’t from a pastor or church I knew.  As I set listening, I wondered why people didn’t rise up against such tripe.  Why didn’t they in good Lutheran fashion compel that pastor to preach to them the Gospel?  I can see how a person can get inured to such preaching and finally lose the ability to protest, but this prosperous church continues to bring in the sheaves.

Churchyard saints don’t care what is being said from the pulpit as long as there is a pastor saying something.  They’ve punched their ticket by being in church.  As long as they got something out of it: entertainment, motivation, instruction, they were content.  Luther says churchyard saints are only five cubits high. “This means that their holiness is circumscribed by their five senses and their bodily existence” (238).

Luther knew as well as you do that a cubit was about 18 inches.  He knew then that a churchyard saint was 7 ½ feet tall, but that’s not tall enough when it comes to righteousness.  We need a righteousness that reaches to the skies, that fills the void of hell, that extends way beyond what I can see, smell, touch, taste, or hear.  That is found in the genuine things of God not the things of men.

The pastor that points his people away from organizations, away from what they do, away from what they can think, feel, or opine to God’s righteousness won for them by Christ and distributed to them by His Water, Words, Bread and Wine, a pastor, who in Luther’s imagery takes them out of the courtyard, through the nave, and into the sanctuary, whether he does it with or without stories, jokes, or wit is a godsend.

Luther closes his sermon by saying that there has never been a people on the face of the earth with a bigger atrium than the Christians of his day (242).  I think our courtyard is bigger.  There is so much in our courtyard to keep people distracted and thinking they are getting all that they need, so they never think about reaching the sanctuary.  They live and move in the cube of their own self-made holy of holies.

Does everyone now tag their signature with a Bible passage? I thought it was corny when Al Barry did it; silly when Jerry Kieschnick copied it, and laughable that Matt Harrison continues this “ancient” tradition of synodical presidents.

Actually I think Harrison’s “Let’s Go!” from Mark 1:38 might be tongue in cheek.  However, the conspiracist in me notes that “Let’s Go!” is also the latest slogan for Shell Oil. I was, kicking it old school as young people of the aughts use to say, i.e. I was reading Time magazine and there it was big as life.  A two page ad for Shell saying, “Let’s keep delivering heat to our cities,” and then it closes with the LCMS president’s personal motto.  “Let’s Go!”  Same punctuation. Same emphasis. Synod president in bed with big oil?  Rock-ribbed Lutheran my eye.  Big oil player or lobbyist, more likely.

Putting the best construction on this: since everything is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer, I suppose signatures can be.  And VDMA was a Reformation rallying point.  And finally, because “Let’s go!” reminds me of Bud Light’s “Here we go!” it makes me smile.

Does or does not the papacy have a false understanding of Church?  They still confess that only Christians under the authority of the Pope are fully in the Church.  “Those ‘who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 838).  The rest are “separated brothers.”  Moreover, they state that even those outside the Church can be saved if they are sincere in their own faith. ‘The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. ‘ The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day’” (Ibid. 841).  The papacy’s salvation extends even to unbelief. “’Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation ’” (Ibid. 847).  This is a false understanding of the Church.

Do they still have a false understanding of marriage?  Do they not forbid marriage to their priests and other religious?  Is forbidding marriage still a doctrine of demons (I Timothy 4) or not?

Do they still have a false understanding of family?  They still bind consciences with their stance on birth control.  It is not about a concern for life but a concern for power.  How convenient for those who do not have to deal with the vicissitudes of conception and birth to make binding pronouncements about these things!

Do they still have a false understanding of economic and political matters?  When the cardinal of Chicago pronounced the first Gulf War as unjust, I’d say he made a mess of political matters.  When the American bishops issue letters about wealth distribution, I’d say they are misusing their authority.

If we would divest ourselves of the notion that the anti in Antichrist doesn’t have the primary notion of “against” but “in place of” we would stop thinking that since the papacy is so nice in comparison to Luther’s day (i.e. they don’t seem so anti) that it can’t be the same entity that our Confessions speak about. Wrong.  The pope still bears the title Vicar of Christ.  He still claims the obedience of all Christians.  He still claims to be infallible.  He prays to Mary and the saints for help, still offers indulgences for sins, and keeps souls in purgatory.  That’s a whole lot to ignore.

Check out a concordance and an English dictionary.  A witness is always one who has seen something firsthand.  I cannot be a witness to the life, death, resurrection, or ascension of Jesus because I did not see any of these first hand.  I can and do, however, confess these things happened.

The 70s and 80s were the decades of the “Witness Workshops.”  In the seminary I was sent to learn the Kennedy Evangelism method at a local church.  Everything was about your witness, witnessing, being a witness, what is your witness.  It’s was a pit that long before the Jehovah Witnesses had claimed, plowed, and harvested this ground decades before.

We are not the church of the witnesses but the church of confessors.  We don’t assert in our confessions to witness to anything.  No, we believe, teach, and confess things.  The very magazine Harrison’s article is published in, The Lutheran Witness, is a witness to the state of Lutheranism in the LCMS.  I’d say that historically this witness testifies that we are shallow, ashamed of our Lutheranism, and panderers in the extreme.

Anyway, the Kittel quote Harrison uses doesn’t say what Harrison wants it to, i.e. that we need both witnessing and confessing today.  Kittel refers to I John 4: 14ff and concludes, “’Witness’ and ‘confession’ merge into one another.”  I don’t know if it’s Kittel’s point but I know it is John’s: apostolic witness is to give way to the confession of what the apostles witnessed.  Read for yourself:  “And we have seen and testify [witness] that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.”

But papering over what he believes to be a false dichotomy is not my problem with President Harrison.  Not recognizing the true dichotomy that exists in the LCMS is.  There is a dichotomy: between those who believe praying with pagans is a denial of the gospel and those who believe it’s a furtherance; between those who believe closed Communion is to be practiced and those who believe it is to be ignored; between those who believe the Order of Creation applies in all of Creation and those who believe it applies in the pastoral office and the home; between those who wish to save a Synod and those who wish to save souls, their own included.

I, a confessing Lutheran, can live together doing acts of mercy with other confessing Lutherans who believe witnessing is the church’s prime directive.  I may not be able to marry them, but I can live with them.  I can’t live together with those aren’t in the same house as I am because at the end of the day we each go home to our own.

Pascal said, “’A man does not prove his greatness by standing at an extremity, but by touching both extremities at once filling all that lies between them’”(The Pilgrim’s Regress, 95).  This is true when you’re talking about two things that are true but not when you’re talking about truth and falsehood.

On Friday, November 12, 2010, in a meeting at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Kansas City, Missouri, representatives of the Steering Committee of the ACELC, !st Vice-President. Herb Mueller, and District Presidents Russ Sommerfeld and Ray Mirly agreed that there is urgency for a comprehensive study of doctrinal and practical issues within the LCMS. We therefore strongly encourage the Council of Presidents to recommend to President Harrison and 1st Vice-President Mueller to consider the incorporation into a Koinonia project the topics addressed by the “Ten Concerns” of the ACELC. We further suggest that a high priority be given to develop in-depth Bible/Confessional studies for laity and for clergy that lead to a Synod-wide study of Worship and Holy Communion. We ask that all clergy and their congregations commit themselves to participate in these studies. It is further encouraged that these studies will be expanded to be conducted at a Circuit Forum level to engage clergy and laity in this effort.”

This would be an admirable step, a sign of hope, of progress, of better things to come if we were talking about people gathering to see if they could form a synod.  But as it comes from a 150 plus year-old-synod, it’s a pity, a shame, yea maybe even a travesty.

We already have accepted, agreed upon, resolved, dedicated ourselves, pledged ourselves, to unity in worship and closed Communion.  By agreeing to talk and study issues that are already settled among us we are admitting they are not settled.  We are saying that those engaged in jamming for Jesus and opening their altars to anyone who wishes to come have legitimate points that need to be considered.  Liturgical worship isn’t for everyone; Communion is.

Or am I wrong here?  Are those practicing open Communion going to be called to repentance?  Will they be called back from their revival style worship services?  Or are we in the wrong here?  Romans 16:17 doesn’t justify closed Communion, and doing everything decently and in order (I Cor. 14:40) doesn’t argue for a divine service with form and order.  Or will the approach be that we really have no previous agreed upon, resolved, position about worship and Communion?  Did you notice that no mention of praying with pagans or women in the church was made?  Thankfully all of the LCMS believes and practices the same way on these two issues!

These studies can only be approached one of three ways.  The confessional side is wrong; the American side is wrong; both sides are wrong.  But I thought we had already decided these things already.  Entering into a study of them is to say we’re not sure any longer.  And if we are sure, where’s the middle ground between open and closed Communion, between bands in the chancel and liturgical worship?

A pastor who was involved in the 70’s split told me that the conservative liberal confabs always went the same way.  After the first meeting, the liberals said it was great that we were finally talking.  After the second meeting, the liberals said it was good that the conservatives were finally listening to the liberal position.  It was at the third meeting that the wheels fell off.  The discussions always broke down at the third step which was the conservatives accepting the liberal position as valid as their own.

It’s amazing to me that the ACELC which was formed to call for action from the LCMS should be convinced by the LCMS that what is needed is more talking.  Especially when in their own documentation they show this “let’s talk” approach has led to the erosion of our positions. You talk to form a faithful synod.  You discipline to keep a faithful synod.  You walk from a synod that will not discipline.