This is the first in a series meant to let the Christian tradition speak for itself, the way it has carried Christians through long winters, confusion, and joy for centuries.
The crisis is not merely that people are leaving. The crisis is that we have relinquished what is uniquely Lutheran and deeply needed.
The ethos of the church’s worship is found in poor, needy, and desperate sinners finding solace and relief in the God of their salvation.

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God is the God of failures, for He became one for you. There is no failure of ours that is bigger than Jesus’ cross, no sin of ours that can overshadow the cross.
There is a difference between preaching about Christ and preaching Christ.
Mordor’s bleak existence and the successful salvific mission of Frodo and Samwise is what makes Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings such a psychologically enjoyable epic.
Jesus is the great Houdini of the grave for us. And through His death, He gives us the Great Escape from death that leads to the great joy of the Resurrection.
The absence of a feeling is not the absence of Christ, but as emotional, rational, and spiritual beings, we cannot say that the presence of Christ necessitates the absence of emotion.
A good place to start is to work hard at loving those no one else seems to love. I can’t think of a more Christ-like action.
Heaven is as near as the Word proclaimed from the mouth of the preacher into the ear and heart of the sinner. It is as near as the bread and wine in your mouth. For, you see, Word and sacrament are where Jesus is.
We thus come together to eat and drink, exchange gifts, serve one another, and even while celebrating, we proclaim the Gospel of Christ to one another.
The empty space in our hearts that we try to fill with stuff is filled only by the Maker of all things. An iPhone won’t fill that gap. Only a crucified and resurrected God fits in there.
We strive, in short, to master the art of swatting mosquitoes. And all the while, we remain blind to the fact that in pulpit after pulpit, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is as rare as Merry Christmas inside a synagogue.
Whether we realize it or not, all these online, self-editing actions are nothing more than our admission that we believe that we are so deeply flawed that no one will love us just as we are.
Recovery helps us see beauty in the ordinary; the miracle and wonder of creation in the oak leaf or the evergreen needle.