All during my growing up years I experienced God’s faithfulness and His guiding me to become a pastor. And yet I realize that many of the Lutheran ministries that used to engage young people with a high view of the authority of the Bible and the challenge to consider a career in Christian ministry no longer exist or no longer function in that way. Because of that reality the following are among Lutheran CORE’s greatest concerns –

How can we help raise up a whole new generation of Lutheran pastors who will be Biblical and confessional in their theology and who will be committed to fulfill the Great Commission to make disciples for Jesus Christ?

What can we do to reach young people for Jesus? How can we present the Gospel of Jesus to them in a clear, compelling, and engaging way? How can we help them feel and be connected to the church?

As a pastor, I have always worked carefully and diligently to make sure that people of all political stripes feel welcome in my congregation. I encourage each person to live out his/her vocation as citizen by voting, volunteering and advocating for those causes that he/she believes are in accord with God’s will. However, I have made it clear that the congregation and its ministries cannot be used as a platform to advance partisan causes. For instance, the congregation does not pass out voting guides or endorse amendments to the state constitution.

You can understand my dismay then, when I have seen the annual assembly of my synod used as such a political platform. Several years ago, members of St. Paul were shocked when they listened to a report given by our synodical VP. They expected to hear about how the synod planned to proclaim the Gospel. Instead, they heard a laundry list of political tasks the VP insisted the Church must undertake. To add insult to injury, the VP suggested that those who were skeptical of or opposed to her agenda were in the same moral category as Nazis and White Supremacists.

Have you ever preached the Gospel to people who don’t care about anything but the present moment? Or to put it differently, can you imagine sharing the good news with people who don’t believe that the past and future have any claim on today?

According to Thomas G. Long, homiletics professor at the Candler School of Theology, the so-called “narrative” mode of preaching has become less effective in recent years because fewer people view their lives as a story with a past, present, and future.   

Stories typically connect the past, present, and future, making sense of how one event touches another. What if the culture to which you preach lacks that sense of time? That is, what if it lacks not only knowledge of the biblical narrative but also what Long calls narrative competence , the ability to view things in chronological relationship and locate oneself within that timeline?  

Go, and do not be afraid. At once these instructions are both so easy, and yet for many Christians they are also so difficult. Despite God’s clear command to teach others about our faith and His reassurance that He will be with us, American culture is in the midst of a staggering trend against evangelism. In 1993, a Barna Group study showed that 89% of Christians believed it was the responsibility of every Christian to share their faith. By 2018 that number had dropped 25 points to only 64%. 65% of Christians said they share their faith by the way they live instead of (not in addition to) talking to people about Christ.

Why are people so hesitant to open their mouths and declare the name of Jesus? Yes, we should be living out our faith with our actions, but Jesus specifically said to “teach” people. That requires us to talk to them. Yet so many Christians are afraid to do so.

Have you ever heard any of these statements?



Conversations about religion always become so heated.

What if I don’t know how to answer their questions?

How do I even get the conversation started?

These are all common refrains that hold people back from talking about their faith. The reason they hesitate isn’t because they don’t know they should be evangelizing. It’s because they’re afraid they don’t know how .

Twenty-five years ago the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau (ALPB) published For All the Saints (FATS), a four-volume prayer book that always seems new and is still in demand today. Each individual volume can be purchased for $38 plus shipping or the entire set can be purchased for $140 (shipping included).

To keep up with demand, the ALPB is going to reprint FATS in 2020 with a few minor changes.

For more information, click here .

The Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology (CCET) will sponsor the 2020 Pro-Ecclesia Conference at Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland from June 8-10. This summer’s topic is The Sermon on the Mount.

The CCET is “a theological enterprise of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians whose goal is to promote faithfulness throughout the Church to the Word of God in Jesus Christ.”

Click here for registration and hotel information.

© 2019 Lutheran Coalition for Renewal

Email Editor (Kim Smith)

PO Box 1741 Wausau, WI 54402-1741

1-888-810-4180

www.lutherancore.org

Lutheran CORE's mission:

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.