Pastor Fisk challenged us all with a presentation on the need for the an old church and institution (the LCMS) to accommodate the new media and become leaner and more agile in bringing the Gospel to the world.

The dinner of Chicago style pizza was filling and a great addition to our weekend of cholesterol dumping – Grunt, grunt, grunt, grunt, grunt.

Before heading off to our No Pietists Allowed smoking and beer drinking parties we drank deeply of the word in the daily office of Evening Prayer (LSB) and the preaching of Rev. David Kind, who clearly bore the marks of persecution as he brought us the firm Word from Isaiah 62. In a very pointed fashion Pastor Kind asked “Where is the fulfilment of the promise of a Church that has a crown of beauty?” He also reminded us that St. Paul, Luther and Christians of every generation have asked the same question in the face of persecution. He then delivered to us the comforting Word of God’s promised forgiveness and new life in our Lord Jesus Christ. That Word will see us through the rest of the night and onto another day tomorrow of liturgy, eating and thinking.

Today the liberal Presbyterians, of the Presbyterian Church in the USA (hereafter PCUSA), might teach us a thing or two about second-class pastors.  Until 1997 the PCUSA required a post-baccalaureate M.Div. for all of its “Word and Sacrament ministry” pastors, just like the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (hereafter LCMS) once did.  The PCUSA now has fifteen years of experience with the office of “commissioned lay pastor,” a.k.a., CLP.  CLPs are congregational elders who have been trained and approved by their regional presbytery (similar in function to the LCMS districts) to carry out all the functions of clergy for the length of their commission in a “particular ministry.”  The “particular ministry” aspect is strikingly similar to the “specific ministry” aspect of the LCMS “Specific Ministry Pastor” (hereafter SMP).

Other aspects of the CLP programs are similar to the SMP program.  Few of the regional programs have educational prerequisites such as a college degree. Almost all of the programs require eight courses, whose total classroom hours (online or in person) are equivalent to three college courses–TOTAL.  Most programs require some sort of mentoring, but no supervised practice or field education.  Most often, all who choose to complete the requirements get passing grades.  When non-seminary educational “providers” give instruction, they are often prohibited from giving “failing grades,” due to pressure from the presbyteries.  Only half of the programs require psychological screening before commissioning.

The CLP program was “sold” to the PCUSA with the understanding that it would primarily be used for:  1) small churches in remote-rural locations (like Alaska), and 2) immigrant or ethnic congregations.  But this is very different from the reality that has developed in fifteen years.  10% of the presbyteries report that CLPs are commissioned to serve as associate pastors in large churches that don’t want to pay the minimum salary and benefits required for a normal M.Div. pastor.  Most CLPs are solo pastors of small churches in big cities or towns that can’t–or don’t want–to pay the minimum salary and benefits for an M.Div. pastor.  CLPs are also found as institutional chaplains, where funding is not available for an M.Div. pastor.  The smallest number of CLPs is found in remote-rural, immigrant, or ethnic congregations.  Thus the actual use of CLPs is quite different from the original intentions of the CLP program, as people in the LCMS are finding out with the SMP program.

How did I found about the CLP program?  Barbara Wheeler published an article in the Christian Century in vol. 127 #14 (July 13, 2010) titled “Ready to lead?  The problems with lay pastors” (pages 28-33).  If you don’t have access to the Christian Century, you can read the opening paragraph for free, and pay for the rest of the article here.

Barbara Wheeler is a highly respected voice in mainline Protestantism, and she definitely knows what she is talking about.  I was privileged to meet her a couple of times during my residential studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York.  She was at that time the President of Auburn Theological Seminary, which is located on the Union Theological Seminary campus.  She is presently the Director of Auburn Theological Seminary’s Center for the Study of Theological Education.  Seminary administrators will recognize this organization as the source of the authoritative “Auburn Studies” providing research on modern theological and seminary education.

If you are concerned about SMP, you really need to read Wheeler’s entire article, and consider its import for the LCMS.  I am just going to quote a few of her observations in that article.

With regard to the reason for in-depth seminary training, she writes: “Learning is important because the two functions that actually constitute a church in a Reformed understanding are the proclamation of the word and the administration of the sacraments.  The best insurance that the gospel will be rightly preached and the sacraments properly administered is to require that the person who performs these acts be well educated and personally formed by an intensive program of interlocking study and practice” (p. 29).  Sounds Lutheran to me!

Regarding the experience of churches in her hometown with lay pastors, she writes: “The lay pastors (none of them at the moment Presbyterians) who serve congregations in the area are local residents who have limited educational background and training. . . . their sermons are typically a mixture of folksy, informal comments and tightly constructed sections that may have originated on the Internet.  These lay pastors do not have the self-confidence to do much teaching.  Their congregations tend to be insular and dwindle in size” (p. 31).  Sounds like an early warning of what LCMS can expect from SMP!

Regarding what needs to be done, to ensure that lay pastors are prepared for ministry, she writes:  ”Lay ministers must be examined carefully before they are deployed, with attention to character formation as well as knowledge, insightfulness, and judgment.  Especially today, with confidence in the integrity of ministry severely undermined, training programs must be long and intense enough for students’ personality strengths and weaknesses to become evident.  As in other fields, para-professional ministers must work under the close and ongoing supervision of experienced professionals, a condition that rarely pertains when lay pastors are assigned to be the sole ministerial leader of a remote congregation” (p. 33).  Sounds like a good prescription for reform of the SMP program.

Reading this article, it appears to me that the PCUSA has accepted “commissioned lay pastors” because in many places “needs are greater than the financial resources available to meet them” (p. 32).  So the bottom line is the bottom line.  But Wheeler asks the key question: “one wonders why denominations are covering the congregational landscape with lay pastors and other palliative measures rather than promoting alternatives more likely to create a durable presence” (p. 32).

Download your own copy of Wheeler article, from the link above, study it carefully, then pass it on to your district president, circuit counselor, and the people in our synod involved in pastoral training.  Maybe this will help the LCMS move toward forms of pastoral training and ministry that respect both the requirements of the office and the need we see in the world today.

Book of Concord, Triglotta, by Jonathan Lange

The recordings are public domain and are organized on archive.org in different formats. They can be put on your smartphone or mp3 player so you can listen to the BoC anytime.

The next day while recovering at home she would often break out into singing the common doxology.  This too has been a standard “quick” bedtime song used by mom and dad when it is too late to do anything more (like tonight, staying in a motel outside of Des Moines, IA).

Something often taught in our churches is that these little ones need to sing the easier hymns (if hymns at all) and only be exposed to those things “age appropriate”.  My daughter’s experience shows the wisdom of the ages, that a child’s brain is like a sponge, soaking up things which it cannot yet understand, but will nonetheless absorb and repeat.  Sometimes that is the very model of faith too – not being able to understand things at first, but simply taking them in and confessing them back in a childlike way (liturgy anyone?).  Learn the words first, Luther would say, the meanings take a lifetime.

In your homes, don’t be afraid to share those things of our Faith with even the littlest ones, you can know that their minds are absorbing it, and someday, even when the times seem dark and the crosses hard to bear, they may end up being great reminders of Christ that lighten the heavy load.

Dr. Robert Preus

Although Christ has acquired for us the remission of sins, justification, and sonship, God just the same does not justify us prior to our faith. Nor do we become God’s children in Christ in such a way that justification in the mind of God takes place before we believe.

Now, Jackson also likes to point out what Preus wrote on page 72:

When does the imputation of Christ’s righteousness take place? It did not take place when Christ, by doing and suffering, finished the work of atonement and reconciled the world to God. Then and there, when the sins of the world were imputed to Him and He took them, Christ became our righteousness and procured for us remission of sin, justification, and eternal life. “By thus making satisfaction He procured and merited (acquisivit et promeruit) for each and every man remission of all sins, exemption from all punishments of sin, grace and peace with God, eternal righteousness and salvation.” [quoting Quenstedt] But the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the sinner takes place when the Holy Spirit brings him to faith through Baptism and the Word of the Gospel. Our sins were imputed to Christ at His suffering and death, imputed objectively after He, by His active and passive obedience, fulfilled and procured all righteousness for us. But the imputation of His righteousness to us takes place when we are brought to faith. (72)

So Preus discusses here the distinction between procured and imputed righteousness. Jackson evidently does not see the procuring of Christ’s righteousness for all as part of Objective Justification. I suppose he is right that Quenstedt does not specifically say that God justified the world in Christ. Calov never used the term justification apart from faith. But this does not mean that they did not understand and teach the concept of Objective Justification. Preus gives a good explanation for the lack of outright Objective Justification language in the Lutheran Church Fathers. In his lecture notes, he writes (pg. 11):

Although the orthodox Lutherans do not make a great point out of a concept of universal justification, as they do against the Calvinists in the case of universal grace, universal atonement, redemption and reconciliation, they nevertheless do assert the doctrine when they believe the Scriptures demand it. Or they do so in passing when speaking in all sorts of contexts about the consequences of the work of Christ.

Preus then goes on to show that Sebastian Schmidt confesses the concept of Objective Justification in his Romans commentary (Hamburg, 1704, pg. 350). Schmidt, in discussing Romans 5:18, finds a distinction between dikaioma and dikaiosis. The former is a justifying righteousness which came to all men; the latter, set in opposition to katakrima (act of condemnation), is “the very act of justification whereby God justifies us.” Preus also quotes Schmidt in Latin earlier in his notes (pg. 8): “Christ was given up for the sake of the sins of the whole world. In like manner he was risen for the sake of our justification, hic est of the whole world.” (Schmidt 328) Christ became the righteousness of all; His resurrection proves it.

Jackson acts as if Preus had a huge breakthrough in his “Justification and Rome,” failing to realize that the Calov quote was in his lecture notes long before he wrote his essay; in these lecture notes he clearly confessed Objective Justification. If one believes Jackson that Robert Preus used this Calov quote in support of an apparent denial of Objective Justification, one would expect Preus to follow up this quote with such a denial. However, he instead shows the significance of what Calov is saying (“Justification and Rome” n74, pg. 131; c.f. Quenstedt Systema), showing that the Roman Catholics could not speak of forgiveness and righteousness as “objective realities which are offered in the Gospel.” For the Catholics, as opposed to the Lutherans, righteousness and forgiveness are only possibilities which become realities when one begins the process of justification/sanctification. The Gospel therefore is efficacious because it delivers that reality of righteousness and forgiveness already procured to all. Preus, then, demonstrates the reality of justification before faith, only that it is not imputed to me personally prior to faith. The only way one can conclude from “Justification and Rome” that Preus denied Objective Justification is if one reads it not in the context of his theological and scholarly life, but rather in light of one’s own presuppositions and reasoning.

I have to say that this issue “hit” me yesterday, Sunday morning, before I started looking online here for other comments.  I just started attending a church and they do have a coffee cafe.  For the past couple of months, I have only been going on  Wednesday nights, but have decided to go on Sunday morning also, recently.  I got up early and went, and as soon as I opened the lobby doors, I smelled a great coffee aroma.

Here’s my argument: I’m a recently,single mother and I’m financially “broke”.  I smelled the coffee and it felt warm and inviting.  I went up to the cafe counter and asked if they have any free coffee ( I was hoping for an urn filled with some generic coffee that I could drop a couple of coins in for a donation).  The lady said, “no”.  So I walked away saddened, and that warm and inviting feeling ‘went away’.

So, you have all these people around you with a cup of coffee, but you can’t have one because you can’t afford it.  I’m telling you I didn’t make it into the sanctuary that morning because I couldn’t get past the whole coffee concept.  I sat outside the sanctuary in a chair for about 1/2 hr., then decided to leave and go back home.

I’m telling you.  They could buy a large container of generic coffee to put in an urn still and just take donations, if necessary.  And they would probably come ahead financially.

So why put something “out there” that is going to distract  people, before they get to the sanctuary – something like this? Oh, so I’m not solid in my faith, you may ask, for something like this to bother me???  Well actually, “no, I’m not”, but I am striving.  But why shall there be “brick walls” that are tempting and have to do with money when I enter the church?  How come I simply can’t throw a coin in the basket next to the coffee urn to have a simple cup of coffee.  Why is it there and I have to walk past it, feeling broke because I am broke.

This all just sounds about money.

Michelle – thanks for sharing your story. May it teach us all, whether we have a narthex coffee shop or not to be sensitive to where people are at. May it also teach us that the church is not about brewing coffee but about delivering the forgiveness of sins. Thank you for making the effort to tell your story and to share your experience in the narthex coffee shop. It has helped us all to continue to think through these important matters.

Let’s hear from our other readers what you think of this matter and of this lady’s experience.

Speaking of fun, much fun is had every year at our “No Pietists Allowed Parties.” Here is the line-up for this year.

Pastor Fisk and the Ninja Cigar Party - There won’t be any incense at our vespers service but there will be plenty of smoke at the cigar party. Join Jonathan Fisk as he and his fellow BJS’ers make a stink and stir up a cloud of smoke at one of our local tobacco shops. The party starts immediately after Vespers (around 8 PM). The tobacco shop has a dozen or so comfy seats and a large selection of smokes. Fisk warns that you may not actually see the ninjas because you don’t know they are there until you are dead.

Quigley’s Irish Pub – Bethany Associate Pastor Stephen Schumacher will be leading a group down to the local Irish Pub to raise a few pints of Guinness. The party starts right after Vespers. Quigley’s is in quaint downtown Naperville, the home of several other establishments with few pietist patrons.

Chicago’s Finest Micro Brews – Our annual wine-tasting party will be at its usual place, hosted by the Gavins but instead of hoity-toity wines, we will be drinking hoity-toity micro brews. There will be three of Chicago’s finest micro brews to choose from all on tap: Goose Island “312,” Two Brothers “Prairie Path Ale,” and Two Brothers “Resistance IPA.” We are also getting a case of fine red wine and a case of fine white wine for those who don’t “hop.”

As always we will have lots of fun and great camaraderie with the brothers and the sistern! See you in Naperville this Friday and Saturday.

I’m curious how our readers find articles on our website, and if there might be other improvements that would help you find posts or articles.

Yesterday, on a pastors’ e-mail list that I’m a part of, one of the men, Pastor Jay Webber of Arizona, brought a prayer request to our group on behalf of his son Paul and daughter-in-law Ruth. He’s given me permission to share this with you, by the way. His daughter-in-law, Ruth Webber, is 23 years old, and she is six months into her first pregnancy. However, she has been diagnosed with advanced gastric cancer, stomach cancer. Her chances for survival, Pastor Webber reports, are not good. Right now she’s up at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The baby’s birth will be induced in a day or so, and the child will be rushed to the neonatal unit–and baptized, too, I might add. The baby’s name will be John. Once the baby is born, new mother Ruth will begin aggressive treatment for her cancer, undergoing radiation and chemotherapy.

Pastor Webber writes in his e-mail, “This is a nightmare. But we are not waking up from it.” He then adds these words, though, quoting in Latin the words of the Canaanite woman who came to Jesus begging for help for a sick daughter, “Domine, adjuva me!” “Lord, help me!”

This is the kind of story that rips your heart apart, even if you’re not the one living it. But it also touches your heart, deeply, to see the faith in the Lord’s goodness that God has given to the Webber family. “Domine, adjuva me!” “Lord, help me!” The question is, Will he? Will the Lord help this pastor and his son and daughter-in-law and their newborn baby? And what will that help look like?

These are the kinds of questions raised as we consider the Holy Gospel for today, a portion of Mark 1, in which Jesus goes about helping and healing lots and lots of people. “And he healed many who were sick with various diseases,” it says. OK, fine, good for those people back then. “And He Healed Many.” But our question is, Will he heal us?

As I say, Jesus was pretty good at healing people back then. No daughters-in-law in this story, but there is a mother-in-law. Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. She was flat on her back, sick with a fever. But Jesus comes in, takes her by the hand, and lifts her up. Bing, bang, bong. Fever is gone, just like that. So does Jesus only do these things for his friends? Or does he heal the lady just to get her to wait on him? It says, “she began to serve them.”

No, I don’t think that’s it. Because lots of other folks get healed, too. “That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons,” our text says. “And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons.” Jesus seems to be healing all sorts of people with all sorts of problems, and rather indiscriminately. Not just friends. Not just fevers. Not just mothers-in-law who can get up and bring you a nice cup of tea and some cookies. No, Jesus looked to be in the healing business back then, and really heavily into it.

That was then, this is now. So what are we, chopped liver? Don’t our needs count? God knows, we have enough of them. There’s no lack of sick people among us. I mean, look around. See some of those people who are not here this morning? There are a number of them who are at home, sick. And even among the people who are here this morning, I bet you we could find enough hurting people who would appreciate a healing or two.

Oh, I know, it must be our lack of faith! If only we would believe harder, then we would get a healing. Or maybe it’s some unconfessed sin in our lives. We’ve got to obey better, in order to earn our healing. No, those are the high-pressure techniques of the charlatan faith-healers, with their built-in, ready-made excuses for why they can’t produce healings for all the poor souls they’re fleecing.

But that still leaves us with the question: Did Jesus go out of the healing business? Why the favoritism for those folks in the first century? Has Jesus lost his touch? No, none of that. OK, so what about the young mother with the stomach cancer? What about the old man on hospice? Or even the middle-aged guy with the creaky joints and bad eyesight? Can’t Jesus muster up some miracles for his followers today? What happened to the healings?

Here’s the deal. All those people who were healed back then in the first century? They all died. Peter’s mother-in-law? Dead. You see, Jesus healed them, yes. But then they all went on to die later on. The healing was only temporary. And so it would be for us. To quote the eminent theologian Joycelyn Elders, “We’re all probably gonna die of somethin’.”

So what was the point of Jesus doing these healings? If it was only a temporary stop-gap measure, and if it was only for a few years during his public ministry, and only for a few folks in Galilee, then what was the point?

The point was to demonstrate what would be the ultimate outcome of Jesus’ coming among us. The healings were a sneak preview, if you will, of the permanent healing to come. In other words, what Jesus came to do, the purpose of his mission, will result in complete healing and wholeness forever. Nothing temporary about it. Eternal healing, that is what we’re headed for. And on the basis of Christ’s coming, where’s he’s going with all of this, as he walks about Galilee, dispensing blessing left and right. There’s a place he’s moving toward, there’s a direction in which he’s going, and when he gets there and does what he came to do, then that is going to issue forth in complete and total restoration for all those who trust in him. That’s you, sister, and that’s me, brother. That’s the young mother with stomach cancer and the old man on hospice who’s taking it a day at a time.

You see, all these afflictions and ailments we suffer under, the sicknesses and sorrows–they all have one cause, and they all have one cure. The cause is sin, and the cure is Christ. Now when I say the cause is sin, I do not mean that this particular sickness is caused necessarily by that particular sin. That would be tying cause and effect too narrowly. But in a broader sense, yes, generally, all sickness, all death, is the result of sin. Our sin. The fallen sinful condition that we all share. You and I have sinned against God, in many ways breaking his commandments, and we reap the brokenness and the consequences and the curse that our race of sinners has come under.

So Christ came to deal with this root cause that produces all the bad results. The only way for that root of sin to be dealt with is–well, it’s precisely what Jesus did. The Son of God came as our brother, keeping God’s law in our stead. Jesus Christ is the only one who has earned God’s favor by his works. No cause for death in him. But to deal with our death, Jesus had to take it upon himself. Paying the price for our sins on the cross, God’s own Son won forgiveness for everyone–yes, even you. Nothing you have ever done wrong is too big or too small for Christ not to have included in his death on the cross. All of it has been covered. You are completely forgiven, for Christ’s sake.

So when you are sick, when you are suffering, it’s not as though God is punishing you. That punishment Christ already took in your place. No, God is doing another work in your life, drawing you close to himself, inviting you to take refuge in his infinite, yet intimate, mercy. Your heavenly Father is holding you in his loving arms, enfolding you in his loving embrace. This is a time to be reassured of his goodness, knowing that Christ Jesus died and rose for you and that your eternal future is secure.

Yes, Jesus is still in the healing business. It’s not like he’s lost his touch. The healings he did long ago were enough to show that this is what is in store for all of us, and with no expiration date on it. Dear Christian friend, our Lord Jesus has touched you, forgiving your sins and claiming your body as included in his healing. It happened when you were baptized, when you were joined to Jesus’ resurrection, and God washed that saving water over your body. It happens every time you receive Christ’s body and blood into your mouth–again, God is saying, “I have redeemed your body, as well as your soul.”

God is committed to the healing of your body–indeed, of his whole physical creation–all of which will be restored new and glorious when our Savior Christ comes again. These old bones of ours will be made new, no longer subject to disease or decay or death. I don’t know yet exactly what all that will look like, but I do know that it will be great, and it will be forever, and it will surely happen.

For right now–for right now, if you are faced with a devastating illness in the family, the nightmare is very real, and it doesn’t go away when you wake up in the morning. And so, of course, we rightly cry out, “Domine, adjuva me!” “Lord, help me!” And we pray that the Lord will, in his mercy, grant healing to the sick, even here in this life. Sometimes the Lord does this healing work through doctors, to whom he has given such wisdom.

But should that not be the case, should the physical healing not come, we know that the Lord has something even better in store for us. There will come a morning when we will wake up from the nightmare, and the pain will be no more. Just as our Lord Jesus Christ arose on Easter morning, so too all who trust in him will arise “in that great gettin’-up mornin’.” This is our sure hope. This is what we are looking forward to. This is what all those healings in Jesus’ ministry were pointing ahead to: The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

Jesus is still in the healing business. He’s doing it here today, among us, every time his gospel comes to us in Word and Sacrament. Total forgiveness, total healing, for sick and dying sinners. Complete wholeness, in body, soul, and spirit, begun now and completed at Christ’s second coming.

“And he healed many.” Hey, he has healed, and he will heal, all of us, too! Young mother, old man, daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law, and even a few outlaws: There is healing–real, final, forever healing–for all who belong to Christ.

I have some extra copies of the Christian Book of Concord bonded-leather-cover edition from Concordia Publishing House, and thought I’d try to give away one of them here on Light from Light in conjunction with my attendance at an upcoming Lutheran conference. This is similar to the regular hard-cover second edition, except it has a bonded-leather-cover with gold trim on the page edges and it comes in a gift box. The condition is new, never used.

If you would like to enter the drawing for a free copy, just fill out the form on Rick’s website.