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Dave Delaney, Salem, VA Warm-up Questions 1. What’s the most impressive building you’ve ever seen or visited in person? What was the effect on you? Why do societies build such big, solid, expensive, and ornate buildings?  What’s the giveaway signal that someone is trying to sell you a dubious story  – a politician or a sales spokesperson or even a teacher? Why are some people drawn to believe fantastic claims that really should raise people’s suspicions? When do know to trust rather than doubt what someone is saying? How worried or confident are you about the security of your own…

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. Feedback invited We would especially value your feedback regarding how these prompts for the prayers of intercession are used in your context by your responding to a brief survey.https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/M6HNQT6 The survey will close on November 23, 2022. Thank you!  Intercession prompts: For newly…

The following comes from a post I wrote on August 13th, 2012 that I posted at another (now defunct) blog of mine. It was in response to another blogger’s series of posts on theological exegesis (he is a biblical studies guy). The following was a comment on one of his posts engaging with someone else in that thread. I still like most of what I wrote here. One thing I would add is that I think all of the Literary, Grammatical, Historical tools can and ought to be deployed, even within the Christological exegetical approach I am describing below. In…

A message from the Director of the ELCA Youth Gathering, Deacon Tammy Jones West–  I have been a part of many theme discernment spaces for synodical events, but this was my first time bringing together young people from around this church to discern a theme for an event that is two plus years away. What might be relevant at that time? How might the theme speak to the young people attending the event? In the room were four youth, four young adults, and two adults. It was a diverse group, and it was pure joy to watch them wrestle with…

Emily Edenfield, Irmo, SC Warm-up Questions Who do you consider to be an enemy?  For whom do you usually pray? Across the Divides Open any news website and you’ll see a world divided into groups. Some people have what they need and others don’t. There are wars and political parties. Some live in cities while others are in the country. There are generational, racial, and religious divides.  Some divides are natural.  Some are made or exaggerated by those who use conflict to gain power or money. In an election season, we see parties and candidates sharpening the divides among voters,…

The following is a repost from September 25, 2018. It is this kind of thinking that moved me from a premillennial understanding of the last times, to an amillennial perspective (although I still retain the right to a historic premillennial perspective depending on the moment). The following post sounds like I have no interest or time for paying attention to geo-political and theopolitical trends as those might or might not pertain to God’s inbreaking into the world in an end times type of way. I am a futurist, I think you have to be because Jesus was; because the Old…

By Rev. Peter A. Pettit We have just navigated our way through Reformation Sunday once again and many in the church will have wrestled with the appointed texts of the Revised Common Lectionary. Jeremiah’s “new covenant,” Paul’s “faith apart from works of the law,” and John’s “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” all lean into the problematic posture of the church’s millennia-long anti-Jewish rhetoric. Few among us want to go there; any echo of that rhetoric in our preaching and teaching is usually unintentional. The ELCA in 1994 spoke explicitly, in “A Declaration of the…

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. Election Day Resources: ELCA prayer and worship resources for Election Day are available here. Intercession prompts: For the global missionaries of our church, including pastors, educators, medical personnel, and Young Adults in Global Mission (YAGM)… For our nation’s veterans, all who have experienced…

This post deals with some technical stuff that might not be interesting for all readers, but I find it quite instructive in better understanding why it is that Thomas Torrance rejects the determinism that shapes frameworks of thought like that found, theologically, within Arminianism and Calvinism. And it should also help to illustrate an alternative route to thinking about things in causally determinative ways; which implicates the ways that, in the West, in general, we have become most accustomed to think, even though someone like Einstein and his theory of relativity has demonstrated that reality, in fact does not work in…

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. Election Day Resources: ELCA prayer and worship resources for Election Day are available here. Intercession prompts: For those grieving in the aftermath of the shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, Missouri… For all affected by school shootings…