This is the definition of and justification for inculturation in the 2006 Oxford History of Christian Worship “’Inculturation is the incarnation of the Christian life and message in a concrete cultural situation, in such a way that not only is the experience expressed with elements typical of the culture in question …but also that this same experience transforms itself into a principle of inspiration, being both a norm and a unifying force, transforming and recreating this culture…’”   “Every genuine attempt in church history to have the message and life of the Gospel appropriated into the lived experience of a given culture can be said to have been inspired by the spirit of inculturation” (683, emphasis mine).

The best argument for inculturation comes from this story out of Africa.  An African tells of an Irish Catholic priest celebrating mass in his village.  “When he presided at the Eucharist, he turned his back to the people and then bowed again and again – a gesture that was considered an insult to the villagers, who were accustomed to bow low for dogs to clean them up after they had relieved themselves in the forest.” (Ibid., 678)  Still I wouldn’t argue that the liturgical gesture of bowing or the  orientation of the celebrant needed to be dropped or changed only explained.  The priest isn’t offering you his buttock but God his adoration.

When I arrived in Detroit, I found a neighboring confessional Lutheran pastor using decidedly un-Lutheran Sunday School material.  I asked him why?  He said it was the only material he could find that showed black people.  I struggled with this at the time, and still do. The Last Supper by Mr. LI, Jinxing depicts all the participants including Jesus as Asians. (Ibid., plate 26).  Baby Jesus and Mother Mary have long been depicted according to local culture, and you can argue that this happened among Renaissance painters first.

My struggle continued when a missionary to New Guinea told me that in translating the Bible into the local language they had a problem with Jesus being the Bread of life.  Bread is not a staple of their diet, and if I remember correctly grains aren’t either grown there or used there (that much?).  So they translated Jesus saying, “I am the Sweet Potato of life.”  I should have asked, What then did you use in celebrating the Lord’s Supper?

This is the wall inculturation always hits.  There is an 18^th century painting in a Peru cathedral which replaces the paschal lamb with a local guinea pig and The Oxford History of Christian Worship says it “is a gesture toward inculturation” (plate 26).  They may not have wheat in New Guinea, but I’m pretty sure they have lambs in Peru.  But the issue isn’t really about having a lamb in a painting but having the Lamb on the altar.  Back to Africa.

Among some of the indigenous people there drinking wine and laying on of hands rank high among their religious and cultural prohibitions.  The incluturists [if there is such a word] argue, “If the dynamics of culture are to be respected in such cases, it would be inconsistent with the nature of inculturation, to attempt to impose such foreign and ‘ungodly’ elements on a people.  Evangelical, pastoral, missionary prudence would require seeking out and assimilating other practices and elements that bear the marks of both authenticity and gospel spirit.” (Ibid., 685).  The writer goes on to say the issue is whether God has blessed Africa with holy enough elements for the Eucharist? Then he concludes,  “What is wrong with palm wine and millet bread” (Ibid., 689 emphasis mine)?

When germs were first discovered to be the cause of disease, in came shot glasses (Ibid, 618).  When alcohol was first “discovered” to be the cause of society ills by the Temperance League, out went the wine and in came the grape juice (Ibid., 618).  It wasn’t called inculturation, but that’s what it was.  The church adapted to culture and then even went so far as to adopt it.  So rather than being those who turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6), she has become upended by it.

But always there have been those standing on the bank of the river that is spewed out of the serpent’s mouth and readily swallowed by the world (Revelation 12: 15,16) saying, “No don’t jump in; the current is too strong; you’ll be swept away.”  You hear this voice even at the Fourth World Conference on Faith and Order in Montreal, 1963.  In the paper “Worship and the Oneness of Christ’s Church,” we read, “’We ought not to be so much concerned with adapting worship to the local culture that we forget that the culture itself is to be transformed’” (Ibid., 738).

I’m not saying that Rev Waddell is saying, “Jump.”  He would never say jump into what Satan spews, but neither would he say inculturation comes from Satan’s maw.  Is that what I’m saying?  Really smart people always answer a tough question with another question.  I’m not that smart, so I’ll say I know there is river that comes from Satan and is swallowed by the world.  Watch your step around that river, and if you happen to fall in (I surely have before.), don’t swallow.  And finally I don’t see the difference between the call to be contemporary and the call to incluturation.  The latter seems to be a five dollar word for the former.

Take a page from Redeemer Lutheran Church, Austin, Texas.

Consider the following ideas as ways that you might personally take a small step in your daily life to intentionally share Jesus with others in an even GREATER way!

At a Restaurant

• If it is your usual practice to pray before you eat, let your waitperson know you are going to pray and ask him or her if there is anything you can include in your prayer or a way that you might pray for God to bless him or her.
• Keep some pocket crosses in your purse or wallet. When you sign for your credit card and bill amount, write a brief Christian message such as “God Bless You” or “You Are Special to God” or “Nothing is Impossible With God” and include the cross as well.

In Your Car

• Make up some lunch bags with water bottles and peanut butter crackers in them. Include a Christian message in or on the bag. The next time you see someone on the side of the road with a sign saying they are hungry, you will have something to offer for them for the stomach and their soul! (http://www.redeemer.net/article240815.htm)

How about a page from the May 10, 2010 Portals of Prayer:

A young man who was valedictorian of his public high school class was given.…strict instructions about refraining from using the name of God in his speech.  Here’s what he did. He convinced ninety-two of his friends in the graduating class to sneeze at an orchestrated time.  The young man then shouted out, ‘God bless you!’  Contrary to instructions, he got God out anyway.”

And finally for pièce de résistance.  It’s from the Spring 2010 Ablaze! Update, page 3 under the headline “Ablaze! Covenant Congregation reaches out to the unchurched in Southern California”

The FamJam worship format is a unique and experimental one in which the whole family can learn about a “Big Truth of God” together at the same time and in the same place. This 70-minute experience includes six-minute blocks that share a message, drama, music, and activity. The interactive message is communicated in a variety of media and methods. In fact, it is normal for members to experience scooters racing down the worship center, masks, balls, and silly string during FamJam—all for the family to experience God together in a unique setting.

If the final piece doesn’t show that what Ablaze! has ignited ought to be resisted by the Synod that claims to preach only Christ and Him crucified, perhaps a little Théâtre de l’Absurde can. As I was sharing these things with my Sunday morning Bible class, one of the members told me of person they personally knew who legally changed their name to “Jesus Saves.”

Augustine became so frustrated with the Donatists for not participating in worship with the Catholics he justified the use of physical force from the parable where the king with more food than guests says “compel them to come.”  Apparently we are so frustrated that the Lord’s Food is going uneaten we have justified the use of frivolity, banality, and just plain silliness.  But what you win people with is what you win them to.

Every Lutheran pastor has been taught the following:

1) Luther thought immersing was the most fitting way to baptize.

2) The early church baptisteries prove they baptized by immersion.

3) You can’t prove from Scripture that Jesus or anyone else was baptized by immersion.  The Greek word baptize means to apply water somehow.

4) The only people in the Bible that were for sure immersed were the Egyptians.

5) Some faith groups insist that immersion is the only mode of baptizing and deny those not immersed have been baptized.

6) By not immersing, we are testifying both to the fact that we will not have our consciences bound by a manmade law and to the fact that neither the mode nor the amount of water contribute to the validity or efficacy of Baptism.

Every Lutheran pastor has been asked by someone to make an exception and baptize them or a child by immersion.  The reasoning is always that it is more Biblical (wrong) and/or more fitting.  When I’ve admitted, with Luther, that it is more fitting sign, they have without fail said that they meant it was more of a baptism.  I have never made the exception.  Why?  Because to do so would baptize the error that the mode or amount of water somehow contributes to what Baptism is or does.  Second, it could cause others who have “only been sprinkled” to doubt if their Baptism was enough.

Let’s give Chaplain Washington a pass here.  The photo says the Baptism took place in Iraq.  Perhaps this soldier was about to go out on a combat patrol.  Perhaps no matter how hard and well the good chaplain catechized the solider he couldn’t be disabused from the notion that the only fitting way to be baptized was by immersion.  Given such a situation I can believe that I too would immerse the solider.  However, by publishing the picture The Lutheran Witness has immersed our theology.

Isn’t that how it always is?  You identify one threat only to be surprised by another.  I thought our confessional theology was only endangered by the fires of Ablaze! Now the waters are rising against us.

St. Peter Chanel, the patron saint of Oceania, was martyred there on April 28, 1841.  I heard about him on Catholic radio, Relevant Radio.  I’m paraphrasing but this is what the  announcer said.  Initially St. Peter Chanel was well received,  but once the natives realized he was there to make converts and not merely to learn the language and the local customs, he was clubbed to death.

Never has the sweet perfume of bodily suffering for the Name ever escaped these impious pores, but I have learned the lesson of Chanel Number 1.  When you bait and switch, you make people mad.  You think you’re baiting a nice, straying sheep, but when the switch comes you have a snarling wolf on your hands…more aptly at your heels.

A man in his 40s is dying of a terminal disease.  His wife is a member, she asks me to visit him so I do.  He accepts, welcomes even, several visits of the “Gee you’re a great guy, we have a lot in common, and I can lift your spirits” genre.  On the third or fourth visit, I bring out the real reason a pastor calls on the sick and dying.  As you know, Christ isn’t the sweet odor of Chanel Number 5 to some but the stench of death (2 Cor. 2: 15-16)…and who wants more death when dying?  When he found I wasn’t there to win friends and influence people but preach a crucified Christ, he said, and though it’s been a decade and more ago I’m pretty much quoting, “I want none of that @!#*.”  As he wished, so he received.

Go to someone in the name of mercy, hope, help, friendship, love, and good cheer, and you will be welcomed.  Go in the Name of Christ crucified, and you may find a sheep.  Go in the name of the former and switch to the latter and you will find someone who thinks you’re a con man at best or a weakling at worst.

Hopefully, if you conclude you’re one or the other, you’ll repent.  Lord help you if you think the problem was you brought out “the goods” too soon, or worse yet you learn not to bring them out at all.

This is a political sea change not a theological.  While I don’t share the incumbents view that since only 30% of the congregations sent in ballots it means the vast majority of Synod is happy with his leadership, I don’t think it means anything more than that the pendulum of politics has swung as it naturally does over time. What indicates that this is the same old Missouri is that only one percent of congregations sent in resolutions.

Brothers in the ministry have preached to me the virtues of sanctified politics, churchmanship, and battling for the faith for decades now.  However, they don’t use the agreed on weapons.  The swords and clubs the synodical battle is waged with are resolutions at the District and Synodical conventions.  It’s true I didn’t send in any this time, but I have in the past.  Check and see how many resolutions have come over the past 30 years from the conservatives being nominated for offices.  There will be very, very few.  Why?  Because they know it’s politically incorrect to do so.  Instead they bide their time, till the pendulum naturally swings back to conservatism.  It will be heralded as a victory for conservatism but really is only the swing of the pendulum.

This is not to say I wouldn’t vote for Matt Harrison.  If hell suddenly froze over and I was a delegate, I would vote the party line.  I would jump on that swinging pendulum too.  However, I am not oblivious to the fact that more than one pendulum is swinging.  This came to mind when I watched a video about Seminex sent to me by another pastor. He introduced it this way, “This is a promotional video for Christ Seminary in Exile from 1978. It is fascinating how many of the buzzwords and concepts they use in the video are employed in Missouri circles  today.”

http://www2.elca.org/archives/film/sent.html (It’s 25 minutes long.)

I watched it, and I emailed him that I had lived this history, and what I had learned from the liberal Lutherans is that when you’re theology is divisive or not compelling, lead with works of mercy.  That’s always popular.  The pastor who sent me the video immediately saw the other pendulum in motion.  If you don’t, you’ll probably be hit by it.

This is from the pen of Rev. Dr. William W. Schumacher, Dean of Theological Research and Publication at Concordia St. Louis.“Modern science demystifies the world.  We have come to regard most diseases as natural results of infection rather than as the malevolent actions of personal spirits.  Comets and meteors are generally seen as natural phenomena, not omens. We have abandoned the notion of spontaneous generation [Except when it comes to the beginning of life!] because we have studied the intricacies of the life cycles of so many living things.  Such demystification is not in conflict with the Christian faith.  On the contrary, a magical world-view can be seen as sub-Christian, since it admits rivals to God’s power, and fails to appreciate the richness of the Creator’s work” (“Science and Theology Continuing the Conversation, Concordia Journal, Winter 2010, 7).

This bothers me because this is about what Edmund Halley of comet fame concluded in the 17^th century on the edge of the Enlightenment.  He wrote in the Preface of Isaac Newton’s Principia, a poem that ended with these lines:  “’Now we know/ The sharply veering ways of comets, once/ a source of dread, nor longer do we quail/ Beneath appearances of bearded stars.’” (Dorothy Rose Blumberg, Whose What?, 68)

This bothers me because Genesis 1:14 says, “Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;” Halley’s and apparently Schumacher’s understanding squares with the NIV translation of this verse.  “And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.”  The only sign from the skies are seasons, days, and years.

We’ve outgrown looking to the stars for ideas bigger than ourselves.  We understand and have quantified all 100 billion stars in our own galaxy and all the stars in the 1 billion galaxies in the observable universe.  We know why comets come when they do, where they come from and where they go.  We know the numbers of hair on the human head – at least the average for redheads, blondes, and brunets – and we know why each sparrow falls.

And yet why, while we no longer “quail beneath appearances of bearded stars,” do we so quickly quail at the latest news from Washington, Wall Street, or medicine?  Why is the modern era of information and technology so haunted by dread compared to pre-modern times?  Because a single fear of God drives a host of others away.  When that goes in come the demons of dread and despair.  “He who fears the Lord has a secure fortress” (Proverbs 14:26).

It is true, as others have observed, that understanding God has created and redeemed you and placed creation under your rule and dominion is what got the spirits out of creation so it might be studied.  It isn’t true that because we think we “know” where comets and diseases come from that our world is demystified.  Nor is true that believing there are still mysteries aplenty in creation make you a follower of magic.

The laws of physics and genes don’t govern the course of this world.  For the Deist they do, but not for the Christian.  Yes the rainbow can be explained as a natural phenomenon, but it remains a sign of something else according to God.  Granted God has not said what every comet, supernova, or pandemic definitively means (though I think Luther would argue they always say “Repent!), that doesn’t mean we can cease to be mystified by them.  We are to go on “owning the mystery” as opposed to “owning” it the way young people use the expression.

The March 2010 Reporter’s banner, front page headline reads “Non-white leaders share concerns, seek voice.”  This un-Gospel, un-Lutheran assumption upon which the ELCA was erected has at last reared its ugly head in the LCMS.  (Now I’m exaggerating; it’s been here since at least 1981. 1981 Resolution 6-20A “To Consider Employment of Black Faculty and Professional Staff,” (1981 Proceedings, 193)  encouraged all colleges and seminaries to consider “employment of at least one Black faculty or professional staff member.”)  So in some respects when the ELCA, founded in 1988, was built upon a quota system for synodical conventions they were yesterday’s news.  But they carried it a step further; they made racial representation a law.  There had to be a certain percentage of women, minorities, etc.  In light of last summer’s convention, does that mean a certain number of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people must now be delegates?

From whence the impetus to establish the multi-headed Leviathan of “equal representation” in the LCMS?  You can’t say LCMS World Relief started the idea; you can say they paid for the event where the idea was spawned.  According to the Reporter, The “multi-ethnic symposium” was sponsored by “the Synod’s Board for Black Ministry Services, the Black Clergy Caucus, National Mission Affiliates, the Center for Hispanic Studies, and national Mission Executives, with funding from LCMS World Relief and Human Care” (March 2010, 1, emphasis added).    I would have thought the majority of their funds, not loaned to Ablaze!, would be in Haiti and Chile. Silly me.

Again I ask,  who told our non-white brothers and sisters in Christ that they were missing something essential?  Are they really lacking because they don’t have enough seats on the convention floor? Is their Lutheranism or Christianity second class because they don’t have them? I’ve been a pastor in the LCMS for 26 years; I’ve never been a delegate to a synodical convention.  Moreover, of the twenty-something resolutions that I have sent in not one has made it to the convention floor. Where are my concerns?  Where’s my voice?

This road is not easily retreated from or repented of.  From now on we’re going to have to start hyphenating what type of Lutheran we are.  And to be “fair”, a word of Law not Gospel, we’re going to have everyone represented according to the exact percentage their group is found in the LCMS.  If all the Black Lutherans in America (70,000) are members of the LCMS that means they should have about 3 % of the delegates.  For the 2007 convention of the 1,250 delegates about 38 would’ve been black.  But is that 100% black or can some be less; than again should we have another group for mixed race?

The travesty here is that we white people will think we’re really addressing the problem of racism by the LAW of delegate representation.  And it will be impossible to put this genie back in its bottle.  Now no matter who you are, unless you’re clothed with the mantle of equal representation your concerns are not known and your voice is not heard.  Yes, while there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female in Christ (Galatians 3:26), He doesn’t clothe skin color.  White is white and non-white is lacking something.

When I arrived at a parish in Detroit, I was admonished by the school principal that I had to be color blind.  I could not think and certainly not speak in terms of black and white, and until I did I was really still a racist.  Some twenty years later, the official organ of the LCMS speaks this way in the name of equality.

 Truthfully, I will never be free of the sin of racism or any other sin apart from robes of Jesus’ blood and righteousness.  This is what I need to be clothed with not the fig leaves of synodical representation.

That’s what they said August 21, 2009.  They gave State Senator Kirk Watson their 2009 Concordia Excellence in Leadership award “which recognizes an outstanding Christian leader.”   Watson is a leader all right.  NARAL rates him very highly as a leader for abortion rights.  They laud him for being the author of pro-choice bills.  Let me say that that again.  Senator Kirk Watson is lauded by a pro-abortion group for authoring bills that help to kill unborn babies.  His voting record is 100% Pro-Choice. http://www.prochoicetexas.org/instate/2009legislativeguide_sen01-02.shtml

A national group recognizes Texas state Senator Kirk Watson for his promotion of baby killing while Concordia University Texas lauds him as an outstanding Christian leader. This mean an institution of  higher learning owned by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod thinks it meet, right, and salutatory to fete, to laud, to honor a staunchly pro-abortion public official.

Remember what happened when President Obama was invited to speak at Notre Dame?  Remember how the Catholics protested?  Remember how some refused to get their diploma on that stage? Imagine what would have happened had they given President Obama a prestigious award?

When Concordia University gave a Christian leadership award to a man known for leading the way to kill babies, to my knowledge there was not one ruffle or flourish, not one whisper of protest; no students spoke out, no faculty did either.  And pastors and lay people alike continue to send their kids to Concordia University Texas.  What for?   A good Christian education.  So they might be trained to be Christian leaders. 

When the current president, Dr. Thomas Cedel, took the helm he announced in local papers that Concordia was going to focus on educating Christians not Lutherans.  Concordia has successfully transitioned from Lutheran to Christian by dropping the name Lutheran from its name.  The transition (perhaps transformation, mutation, or ruin might be better) continues now that they have dropped an award on a pro-choice, pro-abortion, pro-baby killing State senator. 

Can you be in favor of killing babies in the womb, and still be a Christian? At Concordia University Texas you can be an outstanding Christian.  Everything is bigger in Texas,  even our sins.

The Rev. Dr. Samuel H. Nafzger, former head of the LCMS Commission on Theology and Church Relations and now Director of Church Relations as an assistant to the president, has written an article entitled “Relating to Other Christians Charitably and Confessionally” (Concordia Theological Quarterly 73 (2009), pp.347-363).

To begin with, I would transpose ‘charitably’ and ‘confessionally’ and I would make the “and” epexegetical.  “Relating to Other Christians Confessionally that is  Charitably.”  I think the best way to be charitable is to be confessional.  However, Dr. Nafzger is, with no sarcasm intended, a much brighter theological light than I.  However, he doesn’t always shine brightly.

In the 90s, the CTCR produced a document called “Levels of Fellowship” under Dr. Nafzger’s headship.  Confessionals, myself included, were up in arms, and we wrote papers in protest.  I never recall a retraction or even a redirection.  In went the way of many LCMS fundraisers and Puff the Magic Dragon.  It went back to wherever it came from never to be seen or heard again.  So I was stunned to read Nafzger saying, “Church fellowship means ‘agreement in doctrine and practice.’  But since this is true, then there can be no ‘levels of church fellowship,” for there can be no levels of ‘complete agreement’” (357).  Bravo!  Well played old man!

Now tell me; what are these two sentences of his saying? “Where there is agreement in the confession of the gospel, it would be separatistic for church bodies not to commune together, to exchange pulpits, to lead public worship services together (i.e., to remain apart from one another).  But where there is disagreement in doctrine, the basis for church fellowship as the church has defined this term throughout its existence, does not exist” (357).

Where have you gone Dr. Nafzger?  I’m pretty sure there is broad agreement among Christians about the confession of the Gospel, but not the doctrine and all it articles that Formula Concord, X, 31 speaks of.  It seems to me that the second statement should again refer to the Gospel somehow.  Where there is disagreement in any of the articles of the Gospel fellowship doesn’t exist.

Finally, Dr. Nafzger refers to the well-known fact that Paul had Pastor Timothy circumcised by not Pastor Titus.  He says, “The same principle that the gospel be purely preached was applied in differing ways in different circumstances, but it was the same principle” (361).  No, this wasn’t about purely preaching the Gospel; it was about exercising one’s Christian freedom or not.

Where have you gone Dr. Nafzger?  Have you gone back to the 2001 prayer service in Yankee Stadium that no one is supposed to speak of?  In the January 2003 “Kiss and Make-Up” conference sponsored by the LCMS in the Texas District, this same way of doing theology was used.  The question officially posed to us all was how could one and the same thing be viewed by some as serving the Gospel and by others as denying the Gospel?  I said then, and I still say now, this can only happen if there is a different understanding of what the Gospel is. 

The Gospel doesn’t care if you circumcise or not.  The Gospel only comes into play if you circumcise or not as a requirement for salvation.  To make Paul’s two different decisions a preaching of the Gospel is to make the Gospel two different things.  As I have said all along in regard to the Yankee Stadium prayer service (Blast! I mentioned it again.), the disagreement in the LCMS is about nothing less than what the Gospel is.  We are free to circumcise or not but we aren’t free or not to participate in a pagan prayer service.  The Gospel says both things, and they really aren’t different. 

Where have you gone Dr. Nafzger?  Away from levels of fellowship into a muddiness about what the Gospel is?

I was at a birthday party for a member’s child 15 or more years ago.  It was at a local rec center.  There was a clown.  He was doing a great job clowning around as one would expect from a clown.  He came up to me rapidly magically, twisting a long balloon into a short animal.  His opening words were, “You’re going to love this.”  If you are in a clerical collar and a stranger says this to you, it is almost a given that you will not “like” let alone “love” whatever is about to be proffered.

Still holding the animal formerly a balloon, he says, “I hold up the balloon, and I make like I’m sprinkling water on it.  Then I say, ‘There I’ve baptized it.  Now boys and girls is he saved?’  Then I say, ‘No he needs to have a personal relationship with Jesus.’”

In fairness to this theologian formerly a clown, I can’t remember after all these years what his final words were.  It might have been, “He needs to ask Jesus into his heart,” or even worse I vaguely remember the clown saying, “No, what could a little water do?”  In fairness to my memory, it might be do more to a rage blackout than a memory lapse.

I launched.  “How dare you make these little children of Jesus doubt the power of their Baptism to save!  How dare you deny what Scripture plainly says, “Baptism does also now save us.”

At this point, the clown/theologian was physically backing up from the pastor/pit-bull.  “Hey, hey I didn’t mean anything.  I wasn’t trying…” I didn’t let him finish.  I said,  “Do you see me going around trying to make balloon animals?  Why don’t you stick to making them and let me do the teaching.”  At that we parted.  He to clown and me to explain to the hostess why there were “tears” from this clown when so many people were around.

As I said, a clown first said it.  Fast forward to the October 24, 2009 issue of World magazine, page 75, and the article “Pioneering saint” by Andree Seu.  She is telling the tale of Thein Htay a Burmese doctor turned evangelist.  Converted to Christianity by The Navigators he was removed from “his Sunday School position, the pastor being uncomfortable with his suggestion that salvation lies in relationship with Jesus and not in being baptized.  Htay looked around in horror at his church and realized, ‘They are all going to hell.’”

Seu relates this tale with no qualification, no innuendo, no apology that perhaps Htay was wrong.  She goes on to praise him for his starting of “ministries” and orphanages and how he lived and was supported “’by faith.’” 

Here is the divide between Reformed and Lutheran.  Many think it is a mile wide but only inches deep.  No, it appears only a mile wide because the Reformed are willing to speak about Baptism in the same terms we do even calling it a means of grace.  But the width of the divide is not near as important as the depth.  It’s not inches deep but miles.

From the deep gulf between Baptism being your salvation because it puts Christ on you (Galatians 3:27), and believing that trusting in your Baptism means you’re going to hell a whole Babylon of errors can and do multiply and thrive.  It’s the difference between an act of God saving you and your actions doing it.  What we do, decide, and even believe is always riddled with uncertainty.  What God does is certain.

Even though a clown first said that Baptism doesn’t save you, it’s not funny; it’s sad.  Clowns may or may not tear up when no one else is around, but simple, baptized children of God will tear up when this sort of clown is around. 

Worthy of more than misty eyes is the fact that the official Pastor’s Conference of Texas District of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod’s had Max Lucado as keynote speaker.  Lucado is a pastor in the denomination which goes out of it’s way to attack baptismal regeneration (Church of Christ).  Google his name; see how many LCMS churches regularly use his books for “Bible” study.

“But we don’t study what he has to say about Baptism.”  Only a clown would fail to see that what you believe makes you a Christian impacts the rest of your Christianity.  This error is like a clown car.  You won’t believe how many “clowns” will come out of it, but not a one of them will be funny.