Sermons

What is preaching? St. Paul writes in Romans: “Whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14-15)

Therefore our Lutheran Confessions state: “It is also taught among us that one holy Christian church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the Gospel.” (Augsburg Confession VII:1-3)

There are 256 posts filed in Sermons (this is page 26 of 86).

“The Apostolic Will” Trinity 8 2012 Matthew 7:15-23

29. July 2012
Trinity 8
Matthew 7:15-23

I believe in one, holy, Christian (that is, universal or catholic), and apostolic church. We say this each week as we confess the Nicene Creed. You might notice that rather than rush through the creed, we give each phrase and word weight. Why? Not a single word or phrase of the creed is incidental. The confessors chose their words carefully, seeking both clarity and precision. They sought to confess the doctrine of the Scriptures with brevity and accuracy. And in many cases, they died rather than give up a word of the Creed.

One word in particular should catch your ear: apostolic. We are saying that our faith is the same faith as the apostles. Our church is the same church as the apostles. Our Lord is the same Lord as the apostles. Our doctrine (teaching) is the same teaching as the apostles. We are confessing with one little word apostolic that our altar and pulpit are in full agreement with the apostles, just as Jesus taught them, who then handed it over to the church.

It is a bold claim and not one to be taken lightly. What we believe, teach, and confess is nothing less and nothing more than what Jesus has given us in his very own Word. Unfortunately, there are those who confess the creed and yet have abandoned the doctrine of Jesus and the apostles. Some of them even call themselves Lutheran. One obvious example is that they reject Jesus’ prohibitions on adultery, homosexual acts, cohabitation, and other sexual sin. And while this is easy to recognize, it doesn’t stop there. The doctrines of faith, grace, justification, sanctification, and the church are also corrupted. These are poignant rejection of God’s holy Law.

Jesus said to His disciples: Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Ouch. Some people who call themselves Christian will not enter into heaven. Some who call Jesus Lord will be cast into the lake of fire. By what standard? By the standard of the Father, that is, the one who does the will of the Father.

Want to know what God wills of you to do so that you may enter the kingdom of heaven? The Father gave His will for you on two tablets of stone, inscribed with ten holy commands. The will of God is that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. That means you cast of everything you trust in more than Him, whether it be your cushy home, your love of the internet ladies, your trust in the bottle. You cannot love stuff and love God.

It also means that the Father wills you pray without ceasing, casting all your cares upon Him. He will answer them as He has promised. And finally it means you come to church to hear his Word preached. You receive the Word in your mouth. And you don’t bolt past me and the rest to avoid Bible study. You rejoice at every opportunity to study is available and you attend. You frequent the pastor’s study with your tough questions of faith and life. That’s His will. Have you kept it? No, not one has. The prospect of the kingdom of heaven is looking dim.

Then the Father reveals more of His will for you. He demands you love your neighbor as yourself. You honor your parents, obeying them and cherishing them. You help your neighbor preserve what He has. You love your neighbor, casting off all hatred of him. You do not lust after other who is not yours, married or unmarried. You protect your neighbor’s reputation. You are to be content with what God has given you, whether family, property, or the like. The Father’s will screams for righteousness. His demands are like the amplifier that goes to eleven. If you thought you cut the mustard, think again. Not one one of you has treated your neighbor completely in the way the Father would have you.

Faced with the gates of heaven and the unattainable Father’s will, you have two options. One, admit defeat or two, get creative. The first way is the apostolic way. The second way is what you see too often in Christian churches. Let’s get creative! Jesus loved everyone, right? Are we to say to our neighbor “you were born that way” even if that way is immoral and contrary to the expressed will of the Father? That’s what we hear from churches. Love becomes the excuse for ignoring the law. Creative but wrong-headed.

You could get even more creative and start to make new laws in attempt to get off the hook from the Father’s expressed will. Maybe its the law of eco-friendliness, or social justice, or gay rights? Maybe you’ll make the law of big churches, saying that a church like ours is silly? Maybe the law of powerful ministry, boasting in how many people “you worship” each week? Or maybe the law of the food bank and the Habitat for Humanity homes, taking comfort in all the good things you’ve done in the community? Surely that is the Father’s will and will get you your golden ticket into paradise?

On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

On the surface this unnamed “many” will look pretty good but inwardly are ravenous wolves. They do everything for Jesus and in His name. They preach boldly, cast out demons, and do mighty big stuff. Everyone knows who they were, where they are located, and what good services they offer. And in the end, none of it matters a lick for heaven.They weren’t workers for Jesus but are workers of lawlessness. Why? They had abandoned the will of the Father. You can tell the corrupt tree by its evil fruit.

No one escapes this condemnation, even those who know the will of the Father from the Ten Commands—that’s you—even you are workers of lawlessness. Everything you do is filthy rags, filled with the blood and sweat of your attempts to follow the Father’s design. That’s what Paul the Apostle said and its true, like it or not. Whether you’re the creative type who makes new laws or you’re like most of us and simply ignore what God has said, when it comes time to standing before the judgment seat, we’re all workers of lawlessness, equally damned.

Yes, you may have ignored the Father’s will. You may have come up with alternate ideas of what the Father has in mind. You may be slumped down in your chair, defeated.  You’ve probably listened to every false prophet, clothed in glorious mantle of wool. You are dead. As a matter of fact, the Father’s will is that you be dead. Dead to your self-righteousness. Dead to your self-made laws. Dead to thinking your good enough, holy enough, or lovely enough. Dead to your boasting in your church and your mighty deeds. And you might think dead is wrong.

That would be the case if you cease to follow the dogma of the apostles, cease to be apostolic. As I mention often in Bible class, the sermons of the Apostles in the book of Acts and the epistles written to the churches by the Apostles all have a particular someone as their center and a particular event as their central focus. Crack open your Bible sometime and read through Acts. You’ll probably be shocked. No self-help sermons, how to get ahead sermons, how to get rich sermons, or even how to be the better you in forty days sermons.

Every sermon of Acts has Jesus Christ crucified at their core. The bulk of content of Peter or Paul or even Stephen’s sermons are entirely abou Jesus. Ah, but that is not enough to be apostolic. The sermon must have as its focus the apostolic message, summarized as St. Paul said it: “we preach Christ and Him crucified.” Every sermon recorded in the Scriptures see Christ at the center and the cross as the focus of the apostolic message. Why? We’re dead in our sins, utterly unholy and unrighteous. We need the perfect lamb of God to redeem us. Dead to the flesh and made alive in Christ.

The Spirit by the will of the Father puts to death the deeds of the body. From this grave, He calls you to a new life of sonship, children of the Father, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven entirely through the work of Christ. There is no one who has done the will of the Father in heaven but the perfect son of God. He is the righteous one who obeys all the Father’s commands to the bitter end. Yes, Jesus prophesied, cast out demons, and worked mighty things. But unlike the false prophets of this world who do such things to puff their egos in misguided attempt to gain a stronger hand with God, Jesus Christ did these things only to benefit you.

Jesus prophesies to you a bold word that calls you to repentance, a change of mind. He has not abandoned any of the Father’s good and gracious will but fulfills it himself. He loves both the Father and his neighbor perfectly. Jesus casts out demons, first at your Baptism, when the bonds of slavery to the devil were broken and you were named with Him. He still casts out demons that haunt you by His Word. Even when we are tempted to fall back into fear, He gives us himself—the Bread of Heaven and the blood of the once-for-all-passover-lamb.

The fact that any of us are still Christians is the mightiest of works and a work still being worked in you. Indeed you may have been or still struggle not to be a wolf, ravenous to devour. Hear Jesus! You are forgiven and now clothed in the wooly flesh of Christ. You have received this as a gift of his perfect obedience.

We might be tempted to listen to our own inner false prophets or others in churches far from apostolic. Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. The means of the Spirit to call, gather, and keep you as members of the body of Christ are not immaterial or secondary. They are the very gifts that slay the wolf and call forth lambs for the Shepherd to tend. Sheep don’t boast, not in power, or miracle, or even in might. Sheep follow their shepherd, clothed in Him, and content with His Word and His gifts. Let us graze joyfully in our Lord’s green pastures, rejoicing not in ourselves but in the perfect son of God who was obedient to the Father’s will for us, even unto death on the cross. Thanks be to God.

In Name of the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
Grace Lutheran Church
Dyer, Indiana

Festival of St. Mary Magdalene 2012 – Luke 7:36-50

22. July 2012
Festival of St. Mary Magdalene
Luke 7:36-50

The appointed lectionary and calendar of festivals and commemorations of our Lutheran Service Book offered us a unique opportunity this weekend, that is, to celebrate the festival of St. Mary Magdalene. Why bother? First, St. Mary Magdalene is not well known. Increasingly, Christians lack basic Bible knowledge nor do they crack open the Scriptures during the week for prayer and meditation. Despite Mary being one of the chief female disciples of Jesus, she is relatively unknown.

Second, much of what passes for knowledge of St. Mary Magdalene is really idle speculation and often contrary to the faith. Consider The DaVinci Code continued the millennia old speculation Mary was somehow Jesus’ wife. Author Dan Brown drew on sources hundreds of years after the Apostolic era and drudged up this long disproved theory to make a buck. Of course, people are gullible and easily fall into error when they stop reading the Scriptures and have no answer for such fictional nonsense.

Knowledge of the story and characters of Scripture is essential because it is your story and they are your family. An article in the Smithsonian Magazine in 2005 sought to disprove that St. Mary Magdalene is the model for Christian devotion, defined as a life of confession and absolution. True! Yet, certainly, the understanding and tradition surrounding her is often sketchy. This ought not stop us from trying best to know her from the evidence of the Scriptures alone. Why?

Every disciple of Jesus is an embodiment of the Christian discipleship and thus your life with Him. Even in Judas, we see how our sinful nature clings to our bones and given a willing heart can overcome the gift of faith. To ignore or confuse St. Mary Magdalene, is to ignore and confuse a model example of faith. Any distortion of Jesus’ own disciples is a confusion of Jesus, just as author Dan Brown, his friends in the scholarly world, and the gnostics of old have done. They get Mary wrong and thus get Jesus wrong.

What do we know of St. Mary Magdalene? First, there are many named Mary in the Scriptures: Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus, Mary, mother of James and Joseph, and Mary, wife of Clopas. Plus, there are three women identified as sexual sinners who come to Jesus. There are many other women who follow in the train of disciples of Jesus, whom Luke says were cured of evil spirits and ailments. (Luke 8:1-3) Here, the Evangelist lists Mary, called Magdalene, from who seven demons had gone out.

This comes immediately following our Gospel reading for today, of which, St. Augustine, Gregory the Great , and others agree is about St. Mary. But because the account of Magdalene’s exorcism is not recorded, nor is she given a name in our Gospel, many have come to assume that today’s Gospel is not an account of Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet with her tears but rather some generic woman sinner. Yet, we know that Jesus had already exorcised her seven demons. We also know from all four Evangelists that St. Mary Magdalene was at the cross with the other Marys for the crucifixion and also went to the tomb early on the first day. While the accounts are slightly different, all agree she saw the resurrected Lord. Thereafter, she went and told the disciples.

Even if our Gospel for today is not a literal account of St. Mary Magdalene, it does demonstrate precisely what a disciple of Christ is like, both male and female. It also shows exactly how Christ our Lord deals with us with His Word. We know St. Mary fits the mold of Luke chapter seven, as she is one of the few, all women, who persist to be with our Lord to the bloody end and even thereafter, caring for his body. This is the duty of Christians, especially those who serve in roles of mercy and service. They care for Christ’s own body, the church, with their tears, their crowning glory, their wealth, and their kisses of friendship.

One of the Pharisees asked [Jesus] to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.

Mary is a virtuous example for every Christian of discipleship. This woman of Magdala followed after Jesus whom she knows is her savior. She shuns all social norms and taboos and serves her savior. This woman of ill repute does not belong at table with Jesus, nor in the house of the noble Pharisee. She

“Ah, what of that!” she says. “I am a sinner and I must meet my savior. My sins have brought me to the point of despair. I have violated God’s holy law and deserve punishment. I will go to Jesus with tears of sorrow and pleas for mercy. For surely, He will be gracious and forgive me, underserving as I am.”

And so she does, wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair wet with tears, and kissing them with affection, and anointed them at great cost. So it ought to be for the Christian. We come before Jesus humbly, acknowledging our sin, confessing we deserve death, but trusting in the promise of mercy, the forgiveness of sins, and thus serving his body with tenderness and compassion. This is self-sacrificial love, love as our savior Jesus has shown to us.

Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” Simon the Pharisee is far from the kingdom. Jesus did come to save the righteous, especially the self-righteous, but the sinner. He does not desire to see the sinner dead but that they repent and believe in Him. Such holier-than-thou attitudes are unbecoming of the Christian. Why?

The Pharisee wants all grace and no correction. He wants the benefits of God’s abiding presence in Jesus without either the knowledge or correction of the holy Law. He wants his preacher to turn his church into a social club of like-minded and righteous good people. He doesn’t want the adulterer, the idolater, the prostitute, the hypocrite, the gloomy and depressed, the alcoholic, the crack-head, or anyone not like him to come and sit at table with him.

He wants a church without acknowledgment of sin, without godly correction, and most especially without forgiveness of sins. He doesn’t want his church to turn him off by telling him he’s a miserable sinner. He doesn’t want anyone to disturb his perfect little dinner, especially anyone who makes him uncomfortable, be it woman, black, hispanic, child, or whatever.

And Jesus answering him, said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.” A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” 

While Magdalene has already been brought low by the holy law, this Pharisee has yet to acknowledge and confess his sin. He cannot possibly understand why St. Mary who give of her tears, her hair, and even expensive ointment to serve her savior. He cannot comprehend what has moved her with such great love for this man. Yet, Jesus, out of compassion, tells the man a story to help him know. The woman has had a great debt forgiven in Jesus. And even he likewise has had his debts, though fewer, forgiven. All are debtors. All need the lender to forgive.

The turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

We do well to follow our savior and heed His every word. When He speaks a crushing Word of Law that humiliates, disgusts, or is shameful, we dare not hide this sin away like Pharisee. Nor should we act as if its nothing of consequence. Quite the opposite, we heed this sinful woman’s example and bring everything that burdens our conscience to the feet of our savior, even to the foot of the cross. We weep and mourn our sin, true, but our Jesus would never leave us in despair.

Jesus has granted his church the authority to bind and loose sins. (John 20) This does not mean we turn away the sinful woman from the door of this house, where a feast is celebrated and Jesus is the host, butler, and meal. Quite the contrary, we recognize her despair and grant unto her the forgiveness of sins just as Christ has forgiven us. She may come with “baggage,” whoring and six other unnamed demons. She might make us uncomfortable. So what? She who has been forgiven much loves much. She may be 100 denarii worth of sinner but listen to Jesus. You’re 50 denarii worth or worse.

For those who only want to feast with Jesus like this Pharisee but don’t want anything to do with sinners, they need to hear the holy Law. Those holy Ten Commands, good and right, are proclaimed, calling even the 50 denarii “righteous” sinner to repentance. All righteousness is obliterated first, and then all come to the feast with tears of sorrow and gifts of humility.

Luther says: “Neither of these can be neglected. The call to repentance and the rebuke are both necessary to bring people face to face with their sins and humble them. The proclamation of grace and forgiveness are necessary too, lest the people lose all hope. Therefore, the office of preaching must walk the middle way between presumption and despair, to preach so that the people become neither proud nor despairing.”

Therefore, it might be said that your story is the story of St. Mary Magdalene. But it is also the story of this Pharisee. The Christian, while he may not be an adulterer, murder, or thief, yet has sins that wage war against his soul (1 Peter 2:11), that is, against faith and a good conscience. Everyone according to the flesh remains a sinner in the eyes of God, hearts full of it, not delighting in God or His word, nor loving neighbor as himself. Its a sort of demon-possession, like St. Mary Magdalene, of which only Jesus can free us. Indeed, it sticks to us until the day we die and only then will be finally free of the horrible burden.

But as much as we are like the Pharisee, we are also like St. Mary Magdalene, who trusting in the promise of God fled to Jesus for refuge. While we know and feel the sinful nature, we do not let it rule over us or rage against the hope we have in Jesus. Nor do we let it drive us to despair nor drive us back to the Pharisaical pride, presumption, or arrogance against God. This is a life of struggle, waging each day in our prayers and meditation upon the Word and each week in the confession of sins and forgiveness of the Gospel.

Our hope is not in a righteous life. There is no one righteous, no not one. There is no hope for those who refuse to confess their sins, but on the contrary, defends them and refuses correction. Our hope is like St. Mary Magdalene’s: even while feeling our sins, we confess, submit to the discipline of the Word, and resists all our foes, confident in her sins are forgiven.

Thus, our Lord still ministers to us. He rebukes all sins and forgives them, and will do until the Last Day. We will never achieve in this life absolute purity and sinless perfection. We will be like St. Mary Magdalene, a sinner in need of forgiveness, and also the Pharisee, a sinner in need of rebuke, until the day we die. May God grant us His grace, that we may not fall into such error as to reject Him or His name, but rather let God be just and his words right, so that he may justify us.

In Name of the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
Grace Lutheran Church
Dyer, Indiana

(Adapted from Luther’s House Postils, volume 4.2 p. 365ff)

What’s Wrong with LCMS Congregations?

Pastor Martin Noland helpfully answers the question that is on the mind of our congregation.

Steadfast Lutherans » What’s Wrong with LCMS Congregations?.

Nothing is “wrong” with 99% of the congregations of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod! That means one of out of a hundred might have a significant problem.Nothing is “wrong” with 98% of the pastors that serve this church! That means one out of fifty pastors might have a significant problem. These are my observations after nearly thirty years in the LCMS pastoral ministry. Those are actually pretty good percentages, compared to any other industry or institution. Yet ever since I have been in the ministry, we have been led to believe by some synodical “leaders” that something is “wrong” withnearly all of our congregations, because most aren’t “growing.”

When the laymen in LCMS congregations hear these synodical leaders, or the recommended consultants, and then do some “navel-gazing,” they conclude it can’t be their fault, so it must be their pastor—and out he goes! I have witnessed far too many situations like this. And the results are predictable. The next pastor either proves to be just like the previous, which is no “improvement—and out he goes. Or the new guy “turns over all the apple carts” and scares away the best and the brightest laymen in his congregation, with the net result being real decline—and out he goes too, soon enough.

More and more LCMS congregations are seeing “revolving door ministries,” i.e., pastors who only stay a year or two because they don’t “grow their church,” which only aggravates the decline in membership. The Lutheran way of being the church requires pastors with long tenure in the parish, since the chief pastoral function of privatseelsorge requires years of getting to know people and earning their trust. The bad counsel of some synodical “leaders” is, in fact,accelerating the numerical decline of our congregations and is the direct cause of bad morale all around.

What, then, is the true story about numerical decline and what’s “wrong” with LCMS congregations?

The June 2012 issue of Christianity Today has a short article titled “Mainline Conservative’s Dilemma” (see page 7). It reports on a study conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. The study proves that in the matter of growth “it’s the denomination’s theology that tends to matter, not the congregation’s. Churches in evangelical [i.e., conservative] denominations are more than twice as likely to grow as churches in mainline [i.e., liberal] denominations, but within those denominations theological orientation doesn’t have much effect.” This presents a dilemma for conservative congregations and conservative pastors who are members of liberal denominations; but is encouraging news for churches like the LCMS. It also confirms the results of the 1970′s study by Dean M. Kelly titled Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is a conservative denomination and is defined by many as an “evangelical” one. Why, then, as Gerald Kieschnick argued, has it “experienced a slow but steady decline in numbers of members of our 6,160 congregations” (Gerald Kieschnick, Waking the Sleeping Giant: The Birth, Growth, Decline, and Rebirth of an American Church [St Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2009], 16)? The causes are complex, and cannot be reduced to one or two factors. But, let me say up front, there is nothing “wrong” with 99% of our LCMS congregations, in spite of what our so-called “church growth” experts tell us. Those “experts” are simply wrong and/or incompetent.

LCMS “church growth” experts will typically point to the change in baptized membership in the LCMS from 1971 to the present (latest statistics are from 2010). In 1971 we had 2,886,207 baptized, the highest number for that statistic on record, and in 2010 we had 2,278,586 baptized. That is a loss of 607,621 members in about 40 years. It is a loss of 21% of the members we had in 1971; or a loss of about half of one percent per year. That is a significant figure, but numbers don’t give explanations for why these things happen. Let me give just four factors that explain this decline; admitting that there are many more that could be considered.

The first, and most obvious, explanation for this statistic is that LCMS membership peaked in 1971, because that was the last year of the United States’ demographic “baby boom.” One way of explaining LCMS growth from 1944 (1,567,453 members) to 1971 (2,886,207 members) was that it was caused by the abnormal “baby boom.” Once the “baby boom” stopped, the denomination started shrinking back to its “normal size,” due to normal and unavoidable factors of attrition.

The second, and usually unmentioned, explanation for the 1971-2010 decline statistic is that the LCMS was hurt significantly by the “Seminex” walkout and the resulting exit of congregations and pastors into the AELC (Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches) in the late 1970s. The AELC consisted of 680 pastors, 279 congregations, and 112,169 baptized members. Although that membership loss is only 18% of the 1971-2010 decline statistic, it also included a disproportionate number of young and middle-aged adults in child-bearing years. The AELC also had a disproportionate number of large and wealthy urban and suburban congregations. Over the years, the LCMS had invested much of its resources into these large and wealthy congregations, so that their transfer into the AELC was more of a blow to the LCMS than mere numbers can tell.

The third, and never mentioned, explanation for the 1971-2010 decline statistic is that the LCMS’ outreach to youth and young adults was dealt a mortal blow by the controversies in the 1960s and 1970s. The Junior Walther League (for high school students), the Senior Walther League (for college age people), the Gamma Delta Fraternity (for college and graduate students), as well as full-time and part-time campus ministries were a BIG part of LCMS mission and ministry, until it all came to a screeching halt. The Walther League was banned by most congregations, because of its political activism in the 1960s. Nothing of significant size or impact replaced it at the local congregational level. Campus ministry went “on the back burner” of priorities in districts and is still there, as witnessed by the recent case of the Minnesota South Board of Directors’ actions against University Lutheran Chapel in Minneapolis.

All this down-sizing of youth and young adult ministry in the LCMS happened at the same time that the evangelical and conservative churches were up-sizing their youth and young adult ministries. Thomas E. Berger in his “When Are We Going to Grow Up? The Juvenilization of American Christianity” Christianity Today 56 #6 (June 2012):18-24, rightly credits the youth ministries of the Evangelicals for some of the growth of Evangelical churches in the last forty years. He states “Some of the growth of conservative churches over the subsequent decades [post-1960s] would come from this expertise in recruiting and retaining young people. . . . The white evangelical churches that are growing the fastest in America are the ones that look most like the successful youth ministries of the 1950s and 1960s” (pp. 22-23). The purpose of Berger’s article is to point out how this success has resulted in spiritual immaturity in those Evangelical churches; nevertheless, they are the churches that everyone points to as examples of “success.”

I am not saying or even implying that the LCMS should imitate these Evangelical churches by providing an “informal, entertaining, fast-paced worship experience set to upbeat music.” (Berger, p. 23). Certainly not! Berger doesn’t recommend that approach either. I am saying that the lack of effective, local youth ministry in LCMS congregations led many LCMS youth to leave the Lutheran church in the period in question. This has had a double or triple impact on membership statistics, since the same young people who left soon had children, and now some of them have grandchildren. Youth ministry and campus ministry of a Lutheran sort needs to get back on the front burner of priorities, folks, and it needs to come back at the local and congregational level, not just the national or regional level!

Finally, the LCMS decline has been partially due to national demographic shifts, because the LCMS is not equally distributed across the United States. Something like 85% of the baptized membership of the LCMS is located in an area bounded on the west by the 105th parallel, on the north by the Canadian border, on the east by the 80th parallel, and on the south by the Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas Rivers. This same area is designated, with slightly different boundaries, the “Midlands” by Colin Woodard in his recent book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (New York: Viking, 2011). The “Midlands,” where Germans, Scandinavians, and Central Europeans once settled, are the one region in the US that has seen significant population decline in the last forty years. And that region may not see a recovery in population, for a variety of reasons, for many years.

Where people live and settle is determined by where they can make a living. LCMS leaders can’t change that. What they can do is look at demographic studies, both locally and nationally, and plant new congregations where the population growth is happening. No great rocket science there and the LCMS leaders are doing that! But if the LCMS leaders are smart, they will also study the “Regional Cultures” described by Woodard (read his book, guys!). It will help them understand the regional history and cultures of the areas they are trying to serve. Dividing the LCMS into five regions was, perhaps, a good idea, but it is only half-baked. The resulting boundaries don’t match the American cultural boundaries, because the regional division was done for political purposes, not for mission and evangelism purposes.

In closing, there is nothing “wrong” with LCMS congregations. Let’s get over the “guilt trip” and “fear” that “leaders” use to exploit us and our pocketbooks. Instead let’s work on improving what we have in our local congregations. There’s always room for improvement, enough to keep us busy until our Lord calls us home.