When we got back to St. Louis I moved one of our inkjets out of the way and setup the Brother. Setup was a snap. I put the printer on the desk, installed the toner cartridge, plugged it in to power, and connected the printer via USB to our Airport Extreme. All I had to do was add the printer in OS X and I was up and running. I didn’t have to use any of the install disks or instructions that came with the printer.

After almost three months here is what I have to say: the printer is fast and it just works. I’ve had zero problems with paper handling, print quality, or speed. The only complaint is that the printer is loud when printing and it takes some time to go to sleep. If you are in the market for a small laser printer check out the Brother HL-2140.

Golf is a sport with tons of rules. Some of them can benefit you and some of them can hurt you.

For example, if you play a non-comforming ball in a tournament you can be disqualified. You can be assessed a penalty for grounding your club in a hazard.

At the same time you can also seek relief from certain situations if you know the rules well. For example, when I was helping with the golf team while I was student teaching one of our golfers got in a dispute with a golfer from another school. Our golfer argued that because an area was “staked” (marked) a certain way he was legally allowed relief without penalty. He was right. He knew the rules well and it benefited him that day.

Phil Michelson knows the rules of golf and knows them well. The other golfers can argue all they want about the “spirit of the rule” and whatever that means. What I do know is that Phil knows the rules and if they benefit him in this particular situation, fine by me.

The fact is that I have been busy with the end of vicarage and school starting back up again. With that came a move from Wisconsin to Missouri, visiting with my family, Thanksgiving with Lisa’s family, and prepping for being a student again after a year of “work.” Then classes started up again after Thanksgiving. Christmas was with my family and then New Years was with Lisa’s family. We also made a trip up to Wisconsin to visit friends and my vicarage congregation. Now classes are going again (fast and furious) ending in a few weeks.

I make no guarantees about how much I will post in the coming months. Hopefully I will through up some stuff from my classes. If you want to see more of a real time stream of what is happening, check me out on Twitter.

In case you are curious, here is what I’m taking:

• Pastoral Theology
• Pastoral Leadership
• Service Planning
• World Religions
• Biblical Theology

He says:

The Ten Commandments preach repentance, i.e., they show us our sin (2nd use of the Law, as a mirror), revealing to us that we are idolaters, misusers of God’s name, Sabbath breakers, people who dishonor parents, murder, commit adultery, steal, lie, and covet.

The Apostles’ Creed is just the opposite of the Commandments; the Commandments show us what God demands, while the Creed shows us what God does, gives, promises. So the Creed preaches faith, trust in God and His salvation.

The Lord’s Prayer, then, is our response to the faith preached to us in the Creed. In the Lord’s Prayer, we ask, in essence, that God would keep us in the pure teaching of His Word and help us to lead holy lives according to it (see the explanations to the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer in the Small Catechism).

This brings up a major problem in catechesis today. Many choose to split the catechism in half and cover one half one year and the other half the next. To break up the catechism removes the flow that Dr. Luther designed. To simply cover the sacraments one year without the 1st half does a disservice to our catechumens by removing the emphasis on the Christian life. In the same way, covering the Christian life and not moving through the Sacraments is dangerous as well.

• Rev. Kevin Golden of Village Lutheran Church: A video entitled “Where was God?”
• Rev. Gary Dunker from CPH: a post titled, “Haiti. Focus of God’s Wrath?“
• Rev. Thomas Messer: a post titled, “Pat Robertson is…“
• Rev. Matt Harrison: an article from Kevin Leininger titled, “Pat Robertson and Theological Malpractice“

You can read on the scene reports from Haiti  Rev. Matt Harrison’s blog, Mercy Journey’s with Pastor Harrison.

Going off to college at Concordia University, Nebraska opened up a whole can of worms. Suddenly there were lots of people with “Rev.” in front of their names. What to do? Some people just called them all “Pastor” and went with it. Some referred to them as “Dr.” or “Professor” if the situation warranted.

It all was put in perspective when during my sophomore year I was beginning my Christian Doctrine I course that was being taught by an area pastor. Someone asked what we should call him and he replied “Professor.” Someone asked why and he replied, “Because I’m not your pastor. You have pastors back home and you have a chaplain here at Concordia. I’m your professor.” Those few sentences by that professor really hit home for me. It bugs me to hear students call their professors “pastor” because they are not pastors. They are teachers and doctors of the church who have been called to teach the faith. While noble and necessary, they are not shepherds of God’s flock. This also goes for those who work in our synodical administration and organizations. They aren’t pastors. Period.

This has affected my personal practice. I do my best (and do often slip up) when referring to those faculty and staff members at the seminary by “Professor,” “Dr.” or Reverend. They have honorable callings and duties and I don’t want to detract from them, but they are not pastors and do not claim to be one, so why give them the title?

We have pastors and we should make use of them and honor them. Why detract from their noble callings by giving away their titles to those not serving a congregation?

Ingredients

• 1 lb or more of ground beef
• 1/4 teaspoon chopped onion (optional)
• 1 envelope McCormick Spaghetti Sauce Mix
• 8 oz can of tomato sauce
• 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 8 oz can refrigerated Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
• 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 2 tbsp butter or margarine, melted

Directions

1. Heat oven to 375
2. In fry pan, brown ground beef and onion together and drain any excess fat
3. Stir in envelope of sauce mix and tomato sauce
4. Heat until hot and bubbly
5. In a separate bowl, combine mozzarella cheese and sour cream
6. Pour and spread hot meat mixture into 12×8 or 13×9 baking pan
7. Spoon cheese mixture over meat, cover evenly
8. Separate crescent doug into 2 rectangles
9. Place dough over cheese mixture
10. Bake 18 to 25 minutes, until dough is lightly browned
11. Combine parmeasan cheese and butter and spread evenly over dough with a few minutes remaining in the baking process

MMMMmmmmmm nom nom nom

“False doctrine is poison to the soul. An entire banqueting party drinking from cups containing an admixture of arsenic can drink physical death from its cups. So an entire audience can invite spiritual and eternal death by listening to a sermon that contains an admixture of the poison of false doctrine. A person can be deprived of his soul’s salvation by a single false comfort or a single false reproof administered to him. This is all the more easy because we are all naturally more accessible to the shining and dazzling light of human reason than to the divine truth. For ‘the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them’ (1 Cor. 2:14).

“From what has been said you can gather how foolish it is, yea, what an awful delusion has taken hold upon so many men’s minds who ridicule the pure doctrine and say to us: ‘Ah, do cease clamoring, Pure doctrine! Pure doctrine! That can only land you in dead orthodoxism. Pay more attention to pure life, and you will raise a growth of genuine Christianity.’ That is exactly like saying to a farmer: ‘Do not worry forever about good seed; worry about good fruits.’ Is not a farmer properly concerned about good fruit when he is solicitous about getting good seed? Just so a concern about pure doctrine is the proper concern about genuine Christianity and a sincere Christian life. False doctrine is noxious seed, sown by the enemy to produce a progeny of wickedness. The pure doctrine is wheat-seed; from it spring the children of the Kingdom, who even in the present life belong in the kingdom of Jesus Christ and in the life to come will be received into the Kingdom of Glory. May God even now implant in your hearts a great fear, yea, a real abhorrence, of false doctrine! May He graciously give you a holy desire for the pure, saving truth, revealed by God Himself! That is the chief end which these evening lectures are to serve” (Walther, Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm; Dau, William Herman Theodore; Eckhardt, Ernest: The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel: 39 Evening Lectures. electronic ed. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2000, c1929, c1986, S. 20).

To combat this you have to identify yourself in the book. Some people write their names on the inside cover along with the date of purchase. However, this can be a problem if you have handwriting that might be compared to chicken-scratch.

Solution: make your own book plates. Book plates are what libraries use to identify their books. They are normally placed on the inside cover of the book and are held on by some form of adhesive. They can be big or small, color or black and white, and made of many different kinds of material.

For me there were three options:

1. Buy some small labels and makes some small book plates. This is the cheapest option, but not necessarily the cleanest looking or the “classiest.” Cost: varies.
2. Buy larger labels and use a free template from Avery. This allows you to customize to your hearts content. Cost: $10.92 for 60 labels (plus the cost of printing).
3. Buy LSB Adhesive Bookplates from CPH. These work perfectly for me since the books that I’m putting these plates in are theology books. They are the right size and the cost is $12.95 for 150 labels (plus the cost of printing).

I was really surprised to find out that it would be cheaper to buy the nice labels from CPH. These are the perfect solution for the person who needs to mark their books. If you have any other solutions, go ahead and leave a comment.