CORE Voice Newsletter, Issue 4, July 2020
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In This Issue
- The purpose of unity
- A fence against heresy
- Where is unity found?
- Misuses of Scripture
- Veterans and moral injury
- Website wisdom
- Confessional resources
Scroll Down for More
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Unity, Truth, and Renewal
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The stuff of a thing must match its purpose. “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” (Luke 11:11-12) If I set out to bake your child a birthday cake, I wouldn’t use beet mash and kippers. I’d use flour, water, sugar, eggs—the things that make for a blessed moment of contentment in a room full of reveling toddlers. Sweetness for sweet moments, or something like that. So also the Father, in seeking to make the world righteous, did not send us a sinner, but an innocent, to make us what we were not.
Would we expect the church to operate differently?
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This Crisis Calls for Unity in Christ
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Editor’s Note: Jacob Moorman is 22 years old and hails from Mt. Airy, MD. Jacob is finishing a business management degree and plans to attend seminary.
He is a member of the NALC’s
River’s Edge Ministries
pastored by K. Craig Moorman. We are delighted that one of our future seminarians is thinking and writing so passionately. We are honored to publish his reflections, and look forward to his faithful leadership in the Church for many years to come.
Just after the protesting and rioting began after the death of George Floyd, my father asked me, “Jacob, if you were to preach tomorrow, what would you say?” This is how I answered:
“I would preach the Gospel. I would preach that we, apart from Christ, are indeed dead in sin. I would say Christ’s scandalous, unfathomable, incredible love is most evident when shown in situations like this. With death, riots, looting, violence, anger, and vehement hate; the only response we should have is that which Christ had ... "
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One of the things that should be most alarming to Christians who take seriously the authority of the Bible as the Word of God is the way in which the LGBTQIA+ movement views, misuses, and misinterprets Scripture.
Reconciling Scripture for Lutherans: Sexuality and Gender Identity
is a booklet distributed by
ReconcilingWorks
to give a Biblical basis for affirming the LGBTQ+ lifestyle and for fully welcoming
LGBTQ
+ people into the life of the church, including as rostered leaders of the church. The booklet covers eight Bible passages, which it describes as the “clobber passages” that have been “used to exclude LGBTQ+ people from the body of Christ,” and eight passages which it claims “offer inclusive and expansive understandings of the nature of God’s welcome” (page 7).
I have written an article which responds to the way in which ReconcilingWorks has misused and/or misinterpreted each one of these sixteen passages. In this article I cover two things –
First, the way in which the clear and obvious meaning of Scripture is set aside in order to get Scripture to support the LGBTQ+ perspective.
Second, the way in which the booklet never adequately addresses the fact that whenever the Bible speaks of same-sex sexual behavior, it always speaks against it.
A link to the full article (PDF format) can be found
here
. Two of the groups of people whom I especially had in mind as I wrote this article are these –
- People who hold to the traditional, Biblical view, who are looking for resources to help them defend and advocate for that view
- People who are genuinely seeking and wondering—with so many voices to the contrary—if the traditional, Biblical view is plausible and defensible
I urge you to read it and to share it with others.
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List of Confessional Resources
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Many thanks to all the pastors who have contributed to the List of Confessional Resources which Lutheran CORE has prepared. This list includes books, videos, commentaries, ministries, and movements. Click
here
for a link to this annotated bibliography of confessional resources.
If you have a resource that you would like to see added, please let us know. May you be blessed by and during your summer reading.
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About the author:
Rev. Dr. Cathi Braasch STS serves as Chaplain to the LMVFM Board of Directors. She is a retired pastor in the NALC and LCMC. She lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
“We never close.” These three words demonstrate how Lutheran Military Veterans and Families Ministries (LMVFM) fulfills its mission: In ‘normal’ times and times when pandemic illness, economic downturn, and social unrest increase Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS) reactions in veterans, military contractors, and their families. These reactions range from heightened anxiety and severe depression to uncontrollable anger and even suicide.
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Your Online Ministry Presence Matters!
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by
Dr. Don Brand
t, Director, Congregations in Transition for Lutheran CORE
The pandemic is not only still with us, it is currently surging in areas of the country which, until recently, were not seriously impacted. And while churches in many states are just now resuming in-person, indoors worship, the future of our congregational ministries can still seem precarious and uncertain.
While we never want to minimize the importance of believers' being able to experience Christian worship and fellowship in each other’s physical presence, we do need, now more than ever, to pay attention to the
online presence of our ministries.
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If you prefer reading the print version (PDF format), please click the button below.
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© 2020 Lutheran Coalition for Renewal
PO Box 1741 Wausau, WI 54402-1741
1-888-810-4180
Lutheran CORE's mission:
- A Network for Confessing Lutherans
- A Voice for Biblical Truth
Our purpose can be summed up in two words–
Network
and
Voice
. As
Network
for confessing Lutherans, we support and connect Lutheran individuals and congregations who seek to live in accord with Biblical and confessional teachings and practices. As a
Prophetic Voice
, we advocate for Biblical authority and confessional fidelity among churches of the Lutheran community.
We support local gatherings and communicate Biblical truth through our newsletter, mailings, and various forms of social media.
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