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 Marie Meyer When a layman asked Luther for guidance in being a God-fearing ruler, Luther directed him to Mary of Nazareth, a master teacher in understanding how God works through human instruments in the Church and in the world. Luther, God’s instrument for reforming the Church, wrote to the young man while waiting to…
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By Stewart Marshall As a member of synod I am relatively young. As a pastor, I am part of the largest age group within Synod. I attended my sixth convention this year. I have been a delegate or observer to the conventions of the Synod since 1998. This was my third time attending as a…
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By F. Dean Lueking In an unguarded moment recently I agreed to write this article on a subject of no small scope. Unguarded, I say, because I’m writing this piece by the seat of my pants while out of the country and away from needed resources for references and documentation. Of necessity, then, I must…
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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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By Stephen Krueger Martin Marty sets out on an enormous enterprise in his new biography of Martin Luther as anyone who has seen the recent “Luther” movie can attest. How does one do a satisfactory biography of Luther within the space allotted? The movie, “Luther,” was roundly criticized, among other things, for its patchy coverage…
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By Stephen Krueger Introduction When editor Bob Schmidt asked me to do a piece on the new collection of essays by the sainted Robert W. Bertram, A Time for Confessing, Bob the editor made clear the effort was to be something more than a standard book review. That would have been imposing enough—to try to do…
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