Every time I think I’m taking a swipe at Reformed theology, I find I’m hitting the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Since I come from the land of LCMS-dom, I may be hitting other conservative synods and not knowing it. This started with my Reformation 2020 sermon.
Continue readingI always wanted to write something like “The Sunscreen Song” (1999) or better still Gordon Sinclair’s 1973 “The Americans.” However, I would be greeted with the platitudinous insult, “Okay Boomer.” Okay, then, I’ll let someone else do it.
Continue readingYou know the brackets for the various named generations fluctuate depending on who’s doing the categorizing. I think we can go with the Bellamy Brother’s definition of “Kids of the Baby Boom.” If you didn’t watch John Kennedy die one afternoon, you’re not a Boomer. And according to the Internet – and my sourcing of this is telling (see below) – if you grew up with the Internet, you are a “Digital Native.” My kids are not this. They we’re all born pre-1995. They just might be able to rescue both DN’s and Boomers.
Continue readingI now know who is forking over 70 bucks to buy a shirt that looks good untucked. It’s the pastors of Antioch Community Churches. I virtually attended Antioch, Waco on 10-11-20 and Antioch, Bryan in person on 10-18-20. And every pastor I saw – and they have lots – save the female ones and there are lots of them too – wore the same uniform: untucked shirt, blue jeans – perhaps the skinny kind – and colorful tennis shoes. And that says something, but what?
Continue readingWhen teaching on the three ways Man tries to know the True God and fails, philosophy, mysticism, and moralism, I appeal to Oz and Zhivago. Perhaps I should substitute or at least add bacon to the latter.
Continue readingI don’t know the pastor who said this about me, but you do. He is all over the LCMS. He is a fence-sitter posing as pastoral, compassionate, Gospel-oriented to cover his ambiguous confession. I really don’t know the man, so I’m taking out any identifying characteristics of the email concerning him which another man I never met sent me.
Continue readingThe story begins either with an outdoor writer, a district president, or a secretary but culminates with a journalist and an organist.
Continue reading20th Century Confessional Lutheran theologian Sasse said that the offense that once rested on the Cross now rests on the Altar. What follows are quotes and thoughts collected from many sources over many years that help to retain and glory in the offense rightly.
Continue readingDr. Horace Hummel has this story in his wonderful commentary on Ezekiel. He tells of the church in Nebraska where he spent his childhood. He describes the reredos having a statue of Christ flanked by Peter and Paul and accompanied by a lion and ox respectively reflecting the early association of Peter with Mark the Evangelists and Paul with Luke. He had many childish fantasies about those animals, but no one ever explained to him what those two animals were doing above the altar. Much later his own studies informed him.
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