By Robert Schmidt What is the best preparation for understanding and communicating the Gospel to people of another culture? For the most part missionaries and church leaders have relied upon seminary education. As soon as congregations are planted, efforts are made for the education of the native clergy to serve the fledgling congregations and make…
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By Robert Schmidt The 46th Convention of the LCMS passed this resolution in 1965: “Resolved, That we affirm as Lutheran Christians that the Evangelical Lutheran Church is chiefly a confessional movement within the total body of Christ rather than a denomination emphasizing institutional barriers of separation.” In the intervening years that resolution has been challenged again and…
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By Carol Schmidt For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that the one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. From now on,…
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By Harold Roellig He has made the earth by His power, He has established the world by His wisdom, And has stretched out the heavens at His discretion. Jeremiah 10:12 NKJV A Scientific Revolution Over three thousand years ago, God revealed through His prophet that the universe is not eternal; but that it had a…
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By James Moore I remember hearing Robert John Russell, founder and director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, California, argue many years ago that science and religion is now a field of study. He meant by that not only that students can actually arrange a degree program in science and…
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By Karen Miller I should have considered myself warned. When I began as a teacher I was not in Lutheran schools, so it wasn’t an issue. I simply skipped that chapter and bypassed the entire argument. However, here, in my first home visit for a Lutheran elementary school, the question caught me off guard: How…
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By Karen Miller We spend most of our waking hours looking through the lenses in our eyes, but we rarely look at them. Similarly, we look at the world, the Scriptures, the church and each other through the lenses of our attitudes, but unfortunately we rarely examine our attitudes. Not too long ago I heard one pastor…
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By Charles Kunert Introduction The question of origins is central to our understanding of who we are and what we can know about ourselves. The developers of the biblical canon recognized this fact in placing the book of Genesis and the biblical account of origins at the very beginning of Scriptures. Secular philosophers and scientists…
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By Stephen Krueger By now, it is common knowledge that a group of President Kieschnick’s critics have done what was once unthinkable in the LCMS. The group of 100 or so (mostly pastors) have filed a lawsuit, presumably on behalf of the synod, against President Gerald Kieschnick, First Vice-President William Diekelman, and the synod itself….
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By Stephen Krueger When I was a second year student at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis (’72-’73), I happened to catch a course offered by Dr. Oliver Harms, the then past president of the LCMS. The course was entitled, “Christian Churchmanship.” The course was a treat, offered by that Texas, Christian gentleman who oversaw some of…
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