The Nihil Rule

Pastor Dan Berg provides daily Bible readings and reflections for families on the  Kitchen Table Catechesis  page. He also has short one-minute catachesis  lessons for the littles. Excellent!

When you come to church... #chalice #communion #sacrament #jesus Pastor Dan Berg at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Hendersonville, Mo, frequently posts reels on their church's Facebook page. The last half dozen or so have revolved around elements of the Divine Service (and you can find the rest on youtube ). This is really good stuff, and easily shareable. One of them talks about communion. Pastor Berg clearly declares the very Lutheran doctrine that when the Lord's words are spoken over the cup, the cup then contains the blood of Christ. However, all was not well in the WELS Discussion Facebook group. Pastor Robert Williams, the pastor at English Lutheran Church in Viroqua, Wisconsin had the following response: "So I watched the video several times and I am a little uncomfortable with how he describes what is going on in communion. He states that “when the words of institution are spoken this cup now contains the blood of Christ”. While you can understand that correctly ...

  "The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate Neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remotest circumference to people he really does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary... Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, is intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy." -C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters

  Youth Rally Attendee Booklet 2024 (welsyouthrally.net) Your humble host is, as usual, fashionably late. The WELS International Youth Rally took place six months ago in Fort Collins, Colorado. The attendee booklet linked above has a number of advertisements in it, including the page shown above, advertising the chance to win one of three $100 Amazon gift cards in exchange for filling out a survey about sex.  The youth rally is aimed at 8th grade through exiting Senior students: the bulk of the attendees are minors. The data were collected by Conquerors through Christ, a WELS organization, funded in part by your congregations' congregational mission offering (CMO). Their  organization chart  shows them as a subsidiary of  WELS Congregational Services .  (Filed under 'Woke' because surveying and data collection is a key component of Social and Emotional Learning , which has taken the WELS by a storm. No doubt the data collected will inform a future Bible stu...

I read Taboo, so you don't have to. "With all sincerity, I can say that few things make me happier than seeing diversity in my church." I mean, the Bible tells us that the angels rejoice over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:10). I would hope that is one of the few things that makes Mike happier than his congregational demographics. And Paul tells us his joy is fulfilled by having members of the church be like-minded, being of one accord (Philippians 2:2). Paul preached to diverse audiences in his missionary trips, but he never expresses a concern about the diversity of a particular community. Why does Mike derive happiness from skin color? I thought we were supposed to not judge by the color of a persons' skin but by the content of their character.

  I read Taboo, so you don't have to. "If you love diversity, you will adore eternity. If unrepentant racists were allowed into heaven, they would hate the VIP section" This is the *only time* I find Novotny using the word "unrepentant" and insinuating someone going to hell for their sin. He wouldn't dare use it in proximity to the lifestyle sins of the LGBTQ+, unwedded pregnancy or abortion. He also seems to pedestalize diversity, since apparently the VIP's are diverse... but more on that in next weeks' installment.