Why “Created to Be?”
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…
November 6, 2022–Across the Divides
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,…
A More Responsible Way to Think About Biblical Eschatology: Engaging with Karl Heim Through TF Torrance
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…
Preaching and Teaching “With Love and Respect for the Jewish People”
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…
Prompts for Prayers of Intercession – November 6, 2022
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…
On Being a Dialogical Rather than a Static Christian Thinker
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…
Prompts for Prayers of Intercession – October 30, 2022
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…
New Horizons for Episcopal-Lutheran Relations
By Richard J. Mammana The Episcopal Church’s 80th General Convention in Baltimore this summer was a watershed moment for relationships of Lutherans and Anglicans around the world. The triennial gathering was delayed by a year because of the global Covid pandemic, but the bicameral legislative process (one house for bishops and another for priests and lay deputies) has been in place since 1785. The General Convention makes decisions about the mission and governance of The Episcopal Church, the official name of which is the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America….
The Lutheran Connection with TF Torrance: The Kerygmatic Christ as the Concentration
The Gospels of the New Testament witness all present Jesus via His historicity, and the facts of His life as they unfolded in particular frames of reference. John the evangelist ended his Gospel with the quip, “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.” Clearly, Jesus was a historical personage, but this is not how the Christian has come to know Him at a first order; nor is it the way that the Evangelists…
Spina bifida awareness?
Today’s blog post comes from Rev. Lisa Heffernan, ELCA Disability Ministries coordinator I’m just going to be honest here. All month I’ve been procrastinating on writing this blog post. Why? I’m not sure, I guess. Perhaps it’s because it asks for a bit of vulnerability on my part. You see, it’s October, and October is spina bifida awareness and disability awareness month. Spina bifida is the neural tube disorder I was born with, so I can tell you all that I am intimately “aware” of it every day. Do I hate it? No. Not at all. Are there challenges/frustrations that…