From Pastor Lydick

Since our last bi-monthly newsletter, the course of human events have once again altered the configurationof the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s [LCMS} relationship with the Evangelical Church in America [ELCA].

Many, if not most of you are unaware of the outcome of the ELCA‘s recent church-wide assembly in Minneapolis, MN.,this past week. First of all, by a significant majority, the ELCA has adopted an agreement to establish fellowship with the Methodist Church. This additional fellowship is added to their already existing fellowship withthe Moravian Brotherhood, the Unitarian Church, thePresbyterian Church USA, and the Roman Catholic Church.

The following day the ELCA discussed and approved a memorial that has further widened the theological chasm between our two church bodies. On Saturday, August 22^nd,the ELCA approved the ordination of same-gender people who are living in committed homosexual relationships. In their apostasy, the ELCA has overthrownGod’s Word and replaced it with man’s.

What follows are responses from Pr.Gerald Kieschnick, president of the LCMS, the Reverend Uwe Siemon-Netto,and the Reverend Paul Weber. Of course their comments are but a small sampling of a greater commitment by other faithful and committed Lutheran pastors.Time and space have limited the number of opinions contained in our newsletter. Even so, it will be a significant adjustment for many of our brothers and sisters who are members of the ELCA, to reconsider staying in the ELCA. I personally would encourage them to move to other Lutheran Churches, including Christ Our Savior,even if it is “way over the bridge. “

Address to ELCA Churchwide Assembly, August 22, 2009.

Presiding Bishop Hanson, Members of the Assembly, Special Guests, Friends in Christ, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Over the years of my life and ministry, these words from St.Paul in 2 Corinthians 5 have become especially meaningful:

God was in Christ,reconciling the world to himself, not counting mankind’s sins against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2Corinthians5:19-21 ESV).

What a blessing it is to know that our sin is forgiven, removed from us as far as the east is from the west, because of the atoning sacrifice of Christ on Calvary’s cross.And what a humbling privilege and huge responsibility it is to know that God is making his appeal, through people like you and like me, people with feet of clay, that the world might be reconciled to God through faithin Christ.

I bring you these greetings on behalf of the 2.4 million members of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod at a difficult time in the world and in the church. Economic pressures bring great burdens. Strife finds its way into the LCMS, the ELCA, worldwide Lutheranism, and the Christian Church as a whole. Mankind’s inhumanity to mankind manifests itself in global unrest and worldwideterrorism. Peace is often elusive, both in the world and in the church,as sin and Satan continue to rear their ugly heads in both venues.

Lutherans are no strangers to discord and divisiveness. The Lutheran church was born under such conditions. Yet we also know the path to concord, expressed in these rather straight forward words in The Formula of Concord, written during a notable time of doctrinal controversy and discord in the church. Hear these words from the Kolb-Wengert translation:

“For these controversies are not merely misunderstandings or semantic arguments, where someone might think that one group had not sufficiently grasped what the other group was trying to say or that the tensions were based upon only a few specific words of relatively little consequence. Rather, these controversies deal with important and significantmatters, and they are of such a nature that the positions of the erring party neither could nor should be tolerated in the church of God, much less beexcused or defended.

“Therefore, necessity demands explanation of these disputed articles on the basis of God’s Word and reliablewritings, so that those with a proper Christianunderstanding could recognize which position regarding the points under dispute is in accord with God’s Word and the Christian Augsburg Confession and whichis not, and so that Christians of good will,who are concerned about the truth, might protect and guard themselves form the errors and corruptions that have appeared among us.”

The writers of this Formula pledged themselves,and I quote, “to the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments, as to the pure, clear fountain of Israel, which alone is the one true guiding principle, according to which all teachers and teachings are to be judged and evaluated.”Discord can become concord when Christian individuals and Christian church bodies are faithful to the Holy Scriptures, which reveal the Gospel of God’s grace, forgiveness, and salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

The very fact that I represent a denomination known as The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod at an assembly of a denomination known as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America bears witness to the fact that,sadly and regrettably, in spite of the holy Word and mercy of our God, the Confessions affirmed by the constitutions of both our church bodies, and the faithful example of those who have gone before us, schisms remain, not only in the Christian church, but also in the Lutheran church. We have doctrinal differences that separate us. That is no secret.

I speak these next words in deep humility, with a heavy heart and no desire whatsoever to offend. The decisions by this assembly to grant non-celibate homosexual ministers the privilege of serving as rostered leaders in the ELCA and the affirmation.Ofsame gender unions as pleasing to God will undoubtedly cause additional stress and disharmony within the ELCA. It will also negatively affect the relationships between our two church bodies. The current division between our churches threatens to become a chasm.This grieves my heart and the hearts of all in the ELCA, the LCMS, and other Christian church bodies throughout the world who do not see these decisions as compatible with the Word of God,or in agreement with the consensus of 2000 years of Christian theological affirmation regarding what Scripture teaches about human sexuality.Simply stated, this matter is fundamentally related to significant differences in how we understand the authority of Holy Scripture and the interpretation of God’s revealed and infallible Word.

Only by the mercy of our Almighty God does hope remain for us poor, miserable sinners. By His grace,through Word and Sacraments, the evangelical witness and authentic message of sin and grace, Law andGospel, must resound to a troubled world so desperately in need of His love in Christ.

May God grant each of us sensitivity, humility, boldness,courage, faithfulness, and forgiveness as we continue to strive toward God-pleasing harmony and concordin what we believe, teach,and confess. We have much to accomplish in the mission our Lord Jesus has entrusted to us.

May God have mercy on us all, and grant us His peacein Christ.

Rev.Gerald Kieschnick, president The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

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The Reverend Uwe Siemon-Netto

As one whose profession it has been for many years to observe the plight of Christianity, I am always grateful forsigns that God is truly a Jewish God - one with a hilarious sense of irony. This happened again duringthe ELCA’s national assembly, which will go down in history as a singularly boneheaded display of unfaithfulness.

Just as delegates worked themselves up to their decision to allow homosexuals in commiUed relation- ships to serve as pastors, a highly selective tornado knockedthe cross offthe roof of Central Lutheran Churchin Minneapolis, where some of their shameful meetings took place.

I could not help grinning: This was truly Old Testament-style: God sometimes uses natureto make a point. Of course you will have to believe in these things in order to grasp their ramifications. If on the other hand you accept Biblical truths only selectively, as did the majority of the Minneapolis delegates, then thisincident could only have been a random occurrence-you know: as random as the beginning of the universe.

I was then reminded of another display of God’s irony40 years ago in East Berlin when a television tower,the tallest building in thewhole city, went into operation.Walter Ulbricht, the East German Communist party leader, had ordered it built to symbolize the superiority of the Marxist-Leninist worldview thatwas the state religionin his land.

When the tower was inaugurated on a sunny day, the Communists were aghast.Its rotating ball-shaped dome consisting of hundreds of thousands of metal prisms reflected the sun in the shape of a huge cross regardless of the time of the day. Ulbricht’s regime invested millions of marks to rid their edifice of this embarrassing phenomenon.They did not succeed. To this day,an enormous shining cross keeps dominating Berlin,which has alas become the most godless capitalcity in Western Europe.

To Christians in Germany this amusing episode serves as a reminder of who is still boss-even after 56 years of Nazi and Communist dictatorship and the de- mented two decades of secularization that followed Germany’s reunification in 1990.

Until then, East Germany called itself German Democratic Republic, or GDR, for 40 years. Germans used to quip that this acronym stood for a threefold lie. The GDR was neither German, nor Democratic, nor a Republic.One wonders whether a similar analogy could not bemade for the ELCA now that its national assembly of this denomination supposedly committed to the “Sola Scriptura” principle stressing the authority of Scripture.

Is it still “evangelical”? Is it still “Lutheran”?  Is it infact still “Church” in the original sense of this word deriving from the Greek vocable “Kyriake” belonging to the Lord? That said, which Lord are we talking about-a wimp who does not care whether His word ismocked? The Greek word for church is “ekklesia,” meaning “called out.”In the light of the ELCA’s new sexuality decision we must ponder the identity of the Spirit the largest Lutheran church body in the United States seems to follow these days.

To state it bluntly, there is nothing Lutheran about what has happened in Minneapolis. We have witnessed 19^th century cultural Protestantism gone wild-the view held that Christ and the highest expressions of aspirations of culture are in agreement. But what are at any given time the highest expressions and aspirations of culture? Do they not come across as Zeitgeist, or spirit of time? And where not Nazism and Communism powerful murderous manifestations of a Zeitgeist? The genocidal“choice”ideology that has slaughtered’more than 50 million unborn children in America since the Supreme Court’s Roe v.Wade ruling in 1973 certainlyfalls into this category.

Aghast, faithful Lutherans wonder: “Lord where shall we Lutheran go?” Why is it that we Lutherans so oftenlose our way just at a time when no message is more needed than ours? Let it be known that there is a paradoxical tension between Christ and culture:

The certainty of being forgiven sinners through Christ’s redeeming work on the cross frees us to engage the world with all its foibles but not to embrace them as the ELCA has just done.

I observed the ELCA’s Minneapolis proceedings on my computer and murmured,“Lord have mercy!” Then I remembered one of my favorite lines in the Psalter: “He who sits in the heavens laughs” (Psalm 2:4). It’s really good to have a Jewish God occasionally sending selective tornados and marking a godless edifice with a shining sign of the cross.

Uwe Siemon-Netto Ph.D., D.Litt. Director,

Center for Lutheran Theology &Public Life

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Greetings in Christ Jesus!

Is homosexuality wrong because this is what our church teaches, or, because this is what I think about the subject? Or do we confess and teach that homosexuality is wrong because this is what God thinks about the subject? Without a doubt God is a God of love. And one of the principle ways in which God loves us is by speaking the truth to us on this and many other subjects. The Catechism [1] nicely presents what God teaches on homosexuality.

By now many are aware of the decision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) “to open the ministry of the church to gay and lesbian pastors and other professional workers living in committed relationships” (ELCA News Services, Aug. 21, 2009). This vote received a 55% majority 559-451 on Friday, August 21^st,at their 2009 Church Wide Assembly in Minneapolis.

Earlier in their convention ‘” ... the assembly also approved a resolution committing the church to find ways for congregations that choose to do so to ‘recognize,support and hold publicly accountable life-long,monogamous, same gender relationships,’though the resolution did not use the word ‘marriage.’’’(ibid.)

Many have spoken to me regarding this situation asking how did or do things get to such a point? When dealing with all issues and people in the church and world, we are to be loving and kind, especially when the issue is such a volatile one. We all are sinners-there is no doubt about that. Therefore theissues is not whether one is “practicing”or not “practicing” a specific behavior. The issue is whether one is repentant or non-repentant about their sin. This decision of the ELCA however, has reached a new low that serves to mainstream,or legitimize that which ought not to be in “the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).

Issues of homosexuality fall under the moral law which still stands today while the ceremonial law is no longer embraced for it has served its purpose pointing us to Christ.The ceremonial law came to and “end” as can be seen in Peter’s vision in Acts 10:9-15(see also Mk 7:19). Also, the political law of Old Testament Israel no longer has any bearing upon us for we live in the United States. We are no longer to follow the political law of Israel as Jesus directed his disciples when he was tested in Mt.22:15-22.Jesus always upheld the moral law throughout his three year incarnate ministry as did his apostles while Christ’s Holy Spirit led them to write the New Testament.Our Catechism [2] nicely summarizes these distinctions of the law found in Scripture.

Needless to say the ELLCA did not arrive at this place overnight. Like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot of water things were slowly though consistently changed. Tragically, for many Scripture has become a play thing to be squeezed and twisted to one’s fancy much as a child will do with silly-putty or play-dough. The Holy Spirit speaks of this dark spirit when he wrote people will become “ . .lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God ...“ (2 Tim. 3:4), for people “ ... will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth ... “ (2 Tim. 4:3-4a).

Sadly, this illustrates that what a church believes, teaches,confesses will eventually be practiced. Once a church no longer insists on doctrinal precision and faithfulness, it no longer cares about the authority of Scripture and hence like this will occur.Next time somebody in the LCMS raises the specter that “we are too concerned about doctrine,”or “we in the LCMS are too concerned with incessant doctrinal purification,” one simply can point to this incident and say,“How is it possible ever to be ‘too concerned’about doctrine?” When you hear somebody decrying concern for doctrine, or damning.With faint praise, be warned! This is an irresponsible statementthat only puts us on a slippery slope. Where there is no pure doctrine there is then no Biblically faithful evangelism and souls are lost.

The acceptance of the sin of homosexuality is simply the step-daughter and the natural outgrowth of a church that accepts the sin of women’s ordination. Proponents of women’s ordination reason that since, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal.3:28) women may occupy the Pastoral Office. After all, there is no longer male and female-so goes their rational.Consistent practitioners of this false interpretation that there is no longer male and female have followed through in their thinking and are now advocating lesbianism and homosexuality. It is sad but true that as far as I know it is only the churches that ordain women-contrary to Scripture-that are legitimizing and mainstreaming yet another departure from Scripture-the sins of lesbianism and homosexuality. (see Gen.19; Lev. 18:22; Rom. 1 :26- 27;1 Cor. 6:9-11).

Many promote this lifestyle with talk about the “Gospel” removing guilt. Liberalism seeks to remove guilt by removing the moral law but this is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.The gospel of Jesus Christ removes the guilt of sin by repentance and confession and absolution where the shed blood of Jesus hides the guilt of our sins for our guilt was transferred to the scapegoat-our Lord Jesus Christ.This is the Gospel of Sacred Scripture.

Additionally, the horror of the lesbian and homosexual lifestyle is yet another attack on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.In other words, it attacks or destroys yet one more way in which Christ Jesus shows his love for the world. The rite of Marriage in the Lutheran Agenda [3] says it well: “This is an honorable estate ..by which he gives us a picture of the very communion of Christ and his bride the Church.” Granted all earthly marriages fall short of the ideal.However,at the same time, the Scriptures teach us that an earthly marriage of a man and a woman is a physical flesh and blood picture or representation of Christ’s love for the Church. No wonder Satan works to overthrow God’s ordained institution of marriage-Christ have mercy!

Most ELCA parishioners are just like you and me. They desire to be as faithful as possible to their Lord and God wanting to receive all the gifts Jesus has for us. Befriend these people for I am sure they must have a heavy and confused heart at what has transpired.Let them know there are still LutheranChurches which by the grace of God have remained faithful to the truth of Scripture. Invite these people to St.Paul’s in Richville or St.John’s in Ottertail where they may be loved and nourished by right doctrine, warm hearts, and kind words from our parishioners.

What ever happens and develops we are always to conduct ourselves in a manner “worthy of the Gospel of Christ” (Phil.1 :27). This is done when we are kind, respectful and patient, and when we speak the truth in love.May this be so.

In Christ, Pastor Weber

ED Note-I would invite those affected to attend the Divine Services at Christ Our Savior instead of St. Paul’s in Richville or St. John’s in Ottertail! Pastor