Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Good news from the MO Synod

It's hard not to be discouraged in the Church Militant. Especially here in our little corner of North American Lutheranism. Horror stories abound. But we should also remind ourselves of the good things.

In a couple days, Dv, I'll be heading down to the SID district convention. This time around the convention is being built around the Daily Office rather than just being peppered with silly "devotions." There will also be a chapel set aside for prayer with various pastors scheduled to be in there to hear confession and pronounce absolution - 5.5 hours' worth of this scheduled C&A time over the course of the convention.

The DP (Fr. Timothy Scharr) and his chaplain (the dexterous and melodic Rev. Dr. Fritz Baue) have decided that a convention should be a Church gathering with business on the side rather than a business meeting with Church on the side.

The Confessional movement within Missouri has been a bottom up effort powered by pastors teaching the Word of God to their flocks. In pockets here and there this bottom up effort has led to top down results: after decades of work, enough parishes and enough pastors are interested in being Lutheran that now, in several places around the Synod, the Districts themselves are being guided in that direction by men who have arisen from below through this Confessional movement.

So if you are one the men who have been working for decades for this to occur: thank you. Your efforts have not been in vain. And while we always bear a cross, the Lord also promises us blessings through those crosses. The crosses you have borne have made our Synod a better, more Lutheran, more godly place. Everything is far from perfect, but there is plenty of evidence that things are, in fact, improving.

+HRC

6 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am so happy to hear this, especially from my home district.

    ReplyDelete
  3. As an SID native and having served there for over 4.5 years, I'm glad to hear it, too. I hope my current district (NID) will do something like this in, say, the next two decades.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wonderful news. As a new Lutheran, I'm thankful for all the fighting confessionalists have done to help Lutherans prize their distinctiveness.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The East Region of the NID has followed a conference model like this for 6-7 years now. The pastors who participate enjoy very much.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated. Neither spam, vulgarity, comments that are insulting, slanderous or otherwise unbefitting of Christian dignity nor anonymous posts will be published.