ProtestantBeliefs.com

These prompts are provided for worship leaders as they prepare the prayers of intercession for weekly worship. The prompts are prepared by several leaders in the ELCA and reflect current world and national events. You are encouraged to adapt and add other concerns for your local context, including staying informed of events and concerns in your synod. Intercession prompts: For all in crisis as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues… With gratitude for the first combined heart and thymus transplant, for all advances in the field of organ transplantation, for all organ donors… For all who suffer in the wake of…

When Divine grace is separated from its reality in God, when grace becomes a thing, a substance, a quality infused into the accidents of humanity, it is only one small step removed from being integrated into the essence of what it means to be human. If this step is taken, and it has been in the ‘modern-turn,’ the turn-to-the-subject, the Gifter of grace no longer remains necessary, in a transcendent sense, as grace becomes materialized, immanentized, horizontalized into an ‘immanent frame,’ as Charles Taylor grammarizes. Indeed, Taylor writes with reference to what it means to be human in a frame wherein…

ELCA World Hunger’s 40 Days of Giving Lent 2022 In English and en Espanol Week 2: Wandering in the Wilderness “I must be on my way” (Luke 13:33). Read Genesis 15:1-12;17-18 Psalm 27 Philippians 3:17-4:1 Luke 12:31-35 Reflect As we saw in the reflection for Week 1, Lent is a story of the journey of God’s people. It is our story, or more appropriately the story of “God with us.” During Lent, we remember the ancient Hebrews’ journey from slavery in Egypt and a generation spent wandering in the wilderness, as recounted in the offering of the “first fruits” in…

ELCA World Hunger’s 40 Days of Giving Lent 2022 Week 1: Journey in the Wilderness “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor” (Deuteronomy 26:5). Read Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Psalm 91:1-2, 9 -16 Romans 10:8b-13 Luke 4:1-13 Reflect We have a curious set of readings for this first Sunday of Lent. Biblical scholars believe that Deuteronomy 26:5-10 is a script for someone making an offering of what was called the “first fruits,” a religious practice for farming communities. Following the first harvest that the Israelites reaped in the Promised Land, they were to gather a basket of select produce from the fields and…

What they aren’t telling you is that when you receive Aristotelian Christianity, when you recover Thomist theology, particularly in the Protestant Reformed scholastic flavor, for our purposes, you’re getting a doctrine of grace, and thus God, that thinks grace as a quality, a substance. Grace is depersonalized in this frame, as such the person of Christ is ruptured from the work of Christ allowing for a ‘natural’ space to obtain within a God-world relation. This is the combine of ‘grace perfecting nature’ ‘revelation perfecting reason.’ This is what the scholastic Reformed are pushing onto the “unbeknowing” masses, particularly the younger…

These prompts are provided for worship leaders as they prepare the prayers of intercession for weekly worship. The prompts are prepared by several leaders in the ELCA and reflect current world and national events. You are encouraged to adapt and add other concerns for your local context, including staying informed of events and concerns in your synod. Intercession prompts: March 6, 2022 For the people of Ukraine, for conscripted Russian soldiers, for war zone reporters, for the leaders of the nations…that all your beloved might live in safety and freedom from fear… For bold, adaptive leadership in the face of…

By the Rev. Amy E. Reumann, ELCA Senior Director for Witness in Society “Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’” (Joel 2:17) The prophet Joel doesn’t hold back when sounding the alarm about the coming Day of the Lord in today’s Ash Wednesday reading. It will be “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.” Joel goes on to remind…

I used to do these more frequently; especially back in the good ole’ days of blogging, when the blogosphere was actually alive. If you’re a reader of the blog who just lurks here, and even if you don’t just lurk (Richard ) this is your chance to reveal yourself. I always like to know who is reading here. According to my stats many still are, but you don’t let me know by saying hi. How rude ! As a heads up I have my comments set to moderate, which means I have to manually approve each comment (which is easy)….

  After heads of churches in the Holy Land voiced their objections to a proposal to expand Jerusalem Walls National Park to include property owned by several churches in the city, Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority announced on February 21 that it was freezing the plan. The text of the Feb 18 letter from Patriarchs about the Mount of Olives can be found here. The Feb 23 World Council of Churches article about the situation can be found here.   ELCA Blogs

These prompts are provided for worship leaders as they prepare the prayers of intercession for weekly worship. The prompts are prepared by several leaders in the ELCA and reflect current world and national events. You are encouraged to adapt and add other concerns for your local context, including staying informed of events and concerns in your synod. Intercession prompts: For peace to prevail, especially between Russia and Ukraine… For all firefighters working to contain destructive wildfires in Argentina… For all members of the LGBTQIA+ community, especially beloved transgender women and girls at the heart of recent legislation… For an end…