That is what the upcoming season of Lent is about. But without a little military background, you might not know how foreboding, far-reaching, how significant those three little words are. Continue reading
Adult Confirmation Classes – First Class
After looking around the internet and seeing what pastors, particularly my generation, were posting, I decided that my audio only catechism classes were better than some of them, even the video ones, that sounded liked the biology professor in Wonder Years. What started me thinking in this vein was a Confessional Lutheran college student who in a sea of meh Lutheranism remained firm and is now a parish pastor. He grew up in a remote area; he said that he learned Confessional Lutheranism from the internet. That was 7 or 8 years ago. I’ve been thinking about doing this ever since.
For the next 15 Fridays you will find my classes on Luther’s Small Catechism. The edition I am going through and referencing is the NIV version of the 1991 Catechism published in burgundy color in 2005. You can use an earlier version, published in blue, but the pagination is different. You can also you the 2007 (I think) edition also in burgundy but with ESV Bible translation. I would not recommend the 2017 Catechism. Confessional Lutheran pastors I respect studied it and were very critical. I did not study it because I knew that after 35 years of teaching the ’91 catechism, I wasn’t switching. Continue reading
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Domestic Tranquility, The Trad Wife, or Feminism – The enemy of the female and femininity
Without a doubt Domestic Tranquility [i]is the best book I’ve read on feminism. It’s subtitled “A Brief Against Feminism” because she was a lawyer by training. She was about the same age as Ruth Bader Ginsberg the feminist icon, heroine, and example. She pooh-poohs the idea that opportunities were limited for the women of her generation, and she faults feminism for breaking the woman-code and ridiculing women who could be happy with a loving supportive husband and raising their children. Continue reading
Posted in For Anyone who dares, General, Missouri Megatrends
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Egalitarianism
This is a picture of one of my son’s over 30 years ago in my LBE, Load Bearing Equipment. I’m sure they have other names for this gear now. In fact in the 70s it was called something else too. Anyway, isn’t he cute, adorable, and in some sense laughable as when children try on adult shoes or clowns wear oversized ones? Continue reading
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Sobriety, Ecstasy, Revivalism, and Church Growth
Here’s a title to rival Lutheran sermon titles from the 17th and 18th centuries. Let’s see if I can make it make sense. Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Worship, Missouri Megatrends
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The Relationship Between Trophies for all and Elitism for None
All my kids (I think) played Little League in Louisiana. It was in the mid to late-nineties that one of them came home from his last game with a foot or taller trophy. I know his team was not in the running for winning, placing, or showing, what was it for? “Oh everyone got one.” He was delighted, and why shouldn’t he have been? Neither of his brothers even when winning divisions or tournaments had come home was something this big. I neither encouraged or dissed the “award”. Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Worship, Families, Missouri Megatrends
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Back-Alley Abortions and Murder
Now that abortion “rights” have become a states’ issue and no longer a federal right you regularly hear rabid young women (mostly) fairly frothing at the mouth foretelling back-alley abortions and the butchering that entails. On the right, you will hear rabid young men (mostly) fairly frothing at the mouth that abortion is murder and women who get them so must be charged. Neither are right. Continue reading
Posted in For Anyone who dares, For Pastors Only
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For Millennials and Gen Z who know the “Truth” about Science and Religion and Christianity’s Collusion, Approval, and Support of Slavery, Witch-Hunts, and Suppression of Science
If you think you know these things, you need to read this 2003 book by Rodney Stark For the Glory of God – How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery. These are notes I took from this book of his. He passed in 2022. Continue reading
Posted in Families, Psychology - Knowledge Falsely So Called?
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Some Divine Truths Can Only Be Illustrated by Human Absurdity
I’ll give you an example of this: David’s overwhelming love for Absalom which leads to his open rebellion, eventually hanging by his hair/head plucked from his running horse by a tree branch, and pierced through with many arrows, illustrates God’s complete insane love for us. The kind of love that sends His Son to killers on a “Perhaps-they-will-respect-Him-whim” (Luke 20:13) to give those killers another chance. Continue reading
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A Christmas Blog
I searched in vain for the sermon of bygone years where I said we really shouldn’t be too critical of the 1969 invented holiday of Kwanzaa since our American Christmas – the cards, the tree, Santa, and the snow-covered landscape – we’re all if not invented at least embraced in America’s 19th century. The funny part to me has always been the last, the snow-covered landscape. Continue reading
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