The Book of Concord is a historical document. Its place and time are set forth in this preface. All too often, this preface is overlooked in studies of the Lutheran confessions. In it one can find the historical problems and context which the early Lutheran reformers were speaking into.

Image: Emperor Charles V at AllPosters.com

Saying that the Book of Concord is a "historical document", however, should not lead us to think that what Lutherans still "subscribe" (sign under) to, is a bunch of worthless junk from another era. It is from another era, but since it has Scripture at its core - it speaks into our present age and the ages to come.

However, on the other side, it may be important to note that these writings of the early Lutheran reformers are not "timeless". Scripture affirms that there is only one timeless document in this world, and that is the Bible. Because of that, we will examine not only the historicity of this document, but its place in society today.

You can find a copy of the preface to the Augsburg Confession by clicking this link.

A Common Enemy
Not unlike today, the rulers of nations with large amounts of Christians in them feared the expanse of a Muslim (Turk, in the parlance of the 1500's) influence on society. The preface alludes to this expanding alternative to generally Christian governmental systems, saying that one of the purposes of writing such a document is to discontinue infighting within Christendom for the sake of establishing a unified front.

Today, it is not quite so easy to establish a "common enemy" amongst Christians. It could be argued that it wasn't nearly as easy to establish an honest "common enemy" even during the 1500's. The Muslim advance was present, but much like today, was often blown out of proportion. Other "common enemies" of Christianity exist today as they existed then: Biblical literacy was a joke, certain churches were teaching doctrines that were either un-Biblical or just seemed to appear out of thin air.

As a political move, the Lutheran reformers sought to play ball with what the ruler of their nation thought was the biggest problem - Islam. If we were to drop this document into the lap of the United States in December of 2001, months after the Twin Towers had fallen, it would probably make lots of sense.

Us and them
This preface proves what the Augsburg Confession and then several other later documents within the Book of Concord are - a polemic. A polemic is a specific genre that seeks to prove that one "side" of an argument is better than another. This is certainly the case with the underdog Lutheran reformers who are writing this document as a complaint and defense to the ruling powers of their day.

Similar documents could perhaps be found amongst the members of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. If you don't recognize that name, you would likely recognize the pastel colored dresses of their women. This sect of Mormonism that held to older Mormon doctrines such as polygamy desperately sought to show the world that they had a right to exist and to practice their religion freely as they felt it was the best expression of what they believed. The difference here, obviously, is that I think the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints is a cultic sect and that I'm pretty sure that Lutherans are orthodox Christians who deserve(d) to practice freely.

The Notion of Subscription
The Lutheran reformers were the "under signed" (subscribed) people who brought these items to the attention of the Emperor Charles V. Today, when a Lutheran pastor "subscribes" to these documents of the Book of Concord, it is as if that person joins the ranks of the original signers of the document.

It would be as if every time we elected an official in the United States government, that the elected official would sign a document such as the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.

Seeking a Solution
It is very clear in this document (and less clear in later documents in the Confessions) that a solution is actively being sought out by the Lutheran reformers. The "reformation" is called what it is because it sought to "re-form" the Church, otherwise it would have been called "the revolution".

This was an attempt to find a solution through an outside third party making a judgment call on the theological treatises that follow.

This idea is anachronistic because in today's society, a member of the government would rarely make such a judgment call. The only poignant examples would be cases in which the government would make a judgment call on whether or not a religious group was inhibiting the constitutional rights of a citizen.

Questions to think about
+ What does the historicity of a document tell you? That it is reliable? That it is unreliable? Why do the creeds allude to a historical person, Pontius Pilate?

+ Who or what are the contemporary competitors of Christian thought today? Do you see movements across denominational lines that address these competitors? What issues does the "One Prayer" movement address?

+ What are some of the "us and them" movements within Christianity today? Do they function like the "us and them" movements of the 1500's?

+ At what point would the government of a nation today step in to a battle between two church bodies?

Recently, between Facebook and YouTube I've found two interesting stories about Christian "readiness". The first of these came from a Facebook message sent to me by my vicarage supervisor, Ken Babin. He got the story from an Associated Press story that was published in a New Orleans newspaper:

Image: passed out in car, classic by Kullpepper at Flickr

Shreveport, LA - Authorities say a body found in a car on the parking lot of Summer Grove Baptist Church in Shreveport is believed to be a missing 44-year-old Caddo Parish woman.

The woman's decomposing body was found Tuesday in the back seat of a Ford sedan. A worker at a nearby tire store near the church stopped to check on a car with a low tire and saw the body. The victim's name was not immediately made public pending notification of relatives.

A church member said he had noticed the car on the parking lot the past two Sundays. Police department spokeswoman Kacee Hargrace said there was no indication the woman had been murdered but an autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death.

The next "story" that I got was from checking out the Trendwatching Tuesday channel from YouTube, which publishes a weekly show about what the big trends have been on YouTube for the previous week. A couple of weeks ago, the trend was religious videos, this past week it was music tutorials. The last message in the religious videos post was this one about "Get Ready Jesus is Coming, part 1".



Ever since some very wise words from my father given to me around the time that my predecessor, the former pastor of University Lutheran Tom Dohrman, was passing away. My dad told me that I should be praying "Lord, come quickly" with him...but I thought, "you know, that's not a bad thing for me to pray for daily." I now try to fit that into my prayers at least once a day.

I don't know about you, but when I'm getting ready for someone to come visit me, if I am really excited about the visit, I am constantly catching myself glancing out of my window. Apparently, glancing out of the window isn't something that people at Summer Grove Baptist Church are doing much of...otherwise they would have seen the dead lady in their parking lot. It's not even something that Mr. Get Ready Ministries is doing too much of - he's chillin' in his easy chair stupidly comparing himself to Daniel because the stock market is falling and gas prices are up.

The sad thing about these stories is that they give a testimony to how Christians are currently "getting ready" for Jesus' return. These ARE extreme cases. I would never say that these things tell us how Christians are getting ready for Jesus' return as a whole - but maybe sometimes we should look at ourselves and ask,

"Are we getting ready?"

Lutherans subscribe to (or "sign under") the three historic or ecumenical creeds of the early church. These are:

+ The Apostle's Creed

+ The Nicene Creed

and

+ The Athanasian Creed

Image: Christmas 12: Drummers Drumming by rod lewis at Flickr

All of these creeds can be found at The Book of Concord website.

The Apostle's Creed
This is pretty much the baseline creed of Christianity and appears to be one of the oldest creeds of Christianity. Its sources seem to come from some of the earliest baptismal creeds of the early church. Those baptismal creeds would have been the statements of faith that adults were required to recite before they were fully initiated into a local Christian church. It remains one of the most succinct explanations of the Christian faith available to people that have questions about the overall belief of the Christian Church.

The Nicene Creed
This creed came out of some of the first wrestlings that the early church had with something that is very important to Lutherans even today, "doctrinal purity." The Nicene Creed was born out of some arguing about if Jesus is really a part of the Trinity and if He is, then what His relationship to the other members in the Trinity is.

The Athanasian Creed
There is some question as to if this creed was actually written by the person it is named after, Athanasius. Athanasius was an early church leader who championed the idea that all three members of the Trinity were co-equal but different persons.

If there is a creed that is routinely treated like an unwanted stepchild in Lutheran churches, it is this one. It's long and seemingly repetitive. It is normally read only once a year in Lutheran churches on Trinity Sunday. Still, it whole heartedly defends the historic ideas of the Trinity wherein God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all distinct persons, but the same one God.

Today's context:
In today's context, these creeds help people understand two things about Lutherans: a.) who they see as being Christians and b.) how they hold the Book of Concord/Lutheran Confessions that this blog is all about.

First of all, a Lutheran will grant that Baptists, Presbyterians, people from most non-denominational/emerging churches, et al are indeed Christians. For a Lutheran to understand another group as a Christian group, these are the first set of documents that someone would be checked against. For that reason, most Lutherans wouldn't see most Mormons as being truly Christian because Mormons don't understand Jesus in the same way that these creeds present Him. Similarly, there have been some people from the emergent church movement that have seemed to make claims about the Trinity that don't fall in line with these creeds and that makes Lutherans wonder about the "Christianity" of some of those churches.

Secondly, this is a good case study in understanding how Lutherans can say that they "subscribe" to a set of documents that are not direct quotations from Scripture. When a Lutheran says that he or she "subscribes" (meaning "signs under") the Confessions of the Lutheran Church, it means that they believe that they believe that the document that they are signing under - although not a direct quotation of a Bible verse - is an accurate representation of what Christianity is all about. In this sense, these documents that we're going to be discussing are "the creed" of the Lutheran church in that we believe that these items are an accurate representation of what Scripture has to say.

Discussion:
+ Isn't this an exercise in making what Scripture itself has to say more complex? Why don't we simply use direct quotations?

+ If a friend believes that Jesus isn't God, but believes that Jesus died on a cross and because of that their sins are forgiven, are they to be considered a "Christian"?

+ It has become hip to say "I'm not a Christian, I'm a Christ Follower," could someone who "follows Christ" still not be considered a Christian by way of these creeds?

+ Does the whole "subscription" thing make sense to you?

I'm about a year old. That is, it has been about one year since I made a promise that I would subscribe to and hold up the Lutheran confessions as a pastor in a Lutheran church.

Image: Book of Concord by Terrible Swede (who has commented here before) at Flickr

Not being someone who makes light promises, and being utterly disgusted by some Lutherans that I know that hold these confessions above other people as a club and other Lutherans who simply have no clue what these documents say - I present my newest blog category: Missional Confessional.

I understand that we don't live in the 1500's, but I still think that these documents still speak some truth in Christian circles. I have heard that the confessional documents that I will be blogging about "should be rewritten." I don't think that is the case - but I think that there is a lack of contemporary usage of these documents as we live in the current age and are beginning to deal with a world and a generation that has often never heard what the "historic" (and current) Lutheran position is on such topics as "grace alone".

I will be posting a link to the items from the Book of Concord via the Book of Concord website found at http://www.bookofconcord.org

Hope you enjoy!

in Christ,
jW

If you look to the right of this message in the sidebar that says "Blog Services" you'll find a little button that says, "BBOV Listed". The "BBOV" is the "Big Blogroll O' Vark". It's basically a huge list of Lutheran bloggers.

Image: The BBOV at Aardvark Alley

From time to time, I like to peruse through the BBOV and see who is new to the list, and who has been taken off (as well as making sure that I'm still on the list). It usually turns out to be a pretty informative trip for me, as I get to see the blogs of people that I don't normally communicate with on a regular basis. I get to see what is "hot" in confessional Lutheranism (Confessional Lutheranism is Lutheran theology which holds to the Book of Concord, the founding documents of the Lutheran reformation. It also normally doubles as a term that means "conservative" Lutheranism, but this isn't always the case.)

Here are some nuggets from my trip:
+ Well over half of the sites I visited had links, buttons, or feed-widgets for "Pirate Lutheran Radio", which is the web-a-lized version of the radio show "Issues Etc".

+ I read some really horrific sermons written by a seminarian who just got ordained. I think I'm going to pray for him and start sending him links to sermon illustrations.

+ It is big news that the Texas District of the Missouri Synod has invited a non-denominational female worship pastor to help at its district youth gathering. Her title at the gathering is apparently going to be "lead worshiper"...whatever that means.

+ "Worship wars" are still alive and well in Lutheranism as people still talk about how evil, not evil, or kinda evil contemporary worship music is.

+ Apparently a big topic is "when Jesus' Body and Blood cease to be in the sacrament" which I was always taught was a question straight from Scholasticism that Lutherans laughed and spit at instead of answering.

Where do you go to get a slice of something new?

p.s. Many thanks to "Aardie" of the BBOV who has done a great thing by making so many different Lutheran links "findable" all in one place.

One of the initially counter-intuitive mantras of professional fundraising is that your volunteers are your donors. Initially, most people make the mistake of thinking that volunteers support organizations by volunteering, and donors support organizations by giving. Any good fundraiser will tell you, however, that when you look at the names on the volunteer list and the names on the checks, they are the same names.

Image: Get Involved at Connections UK

The reason for this is that the people who are volunteering are involved. They see the needs of community and they see the potential of the community and they have fully bought in with their time and with their pocketbook.

Churches, all too often, assume that there are two categories of people: the people who are involved, and the people who give. The "people who give" are allowed to be just that. They aren't often invited into any new project unless it specifically deals with their money (i.e. a capital campaign for a new building). In reality, what most churches find is that their most active members are more likely to give higher amounts to the church because they will more likely give in higher percentages - because they are fully connected.

Removing the dichotomy of "those who are involved" and "those who give" does two good things: it eliminates a money-based approach of looking at people and it gets everyone more involved in ways that they feel comfortable with. Too often a check from a pew-warmer doesn't come out of feeling comfortable, but feeling guilty for not doing anything else. We would rather not have that guilt check.

Stage Four: Involvement
Jen has become a member of University Lutheran and is awaiting when the "new member box" is full enough (usually around 4 people) for her day to be officially welcomed into the community in the worship service. In the meantime, she has checked a few boxes that she would like to become involved with at University Lutheran. She checked "Helping the Homeless", "Music", and "Reading".

From this list, she has been invited by the pastor or someone else to do three different activities. First, she was invited last week to help feed people at a housing complex which helps people transition out of homelessness. Second, she was invited to the choir. Third, she was invited to join a group that reads a book and gets together at Starbucks to talk about the book.

During those events she meets other people from the community that she possibly hasn't connected with before and begins to widen the number of people that she can truly say she has a relationship with at church. Additionally, after helping out at the homeless shelter, she has been invited to an "art night" at church which wasn't in her initial list of interests...but now she is curious about because she met someone who had that as one of their interests on their list of interests.

Some practical junk:
Small groups are/were all the rage in Christianity during the mega-church days. They sought to provide one thing that a 3,000 person church couldn't every Sunday morning - the feeling of an intimate connection with those around you.

Because of that many churches, no matter what their size, began implementing the Willow Creek model of small groups. It's not an easy thing to get people to meet outside of church, especially if they come from a church where there is already some sort of sense of connection.

In order to get these groups together, leaders are needed to take on small leadership roles of putting together an art night or a trip to Starbucks to talk about a book. There are two things to watch out for practically here - a.) make sure that the church is adequately supporting each and every meeting of the group with snacks/leadership/books/etc. b.) the first step for a leader is always going to be the hardest, so it might be better to start each group off with a staff member who then hands things to someone.

The Big Idea:
As Jen becomes more involved with things that interest her, she grows new ties with members of the community. Because of those ties, she has a greater variety of people to talk to about Jesus and about spiritual matters and questions. The "interest groups" are really just an outside structure given to what University Lutheran really wants to foster in its members - a living relationship with Jesus and His Body (the Church). Whether Jen is talking to someone at the homeless shelter about Jesus as she's feeding people or if she's talking about a book at Starbucks - the connection to Jesus is the most important aspect of what she is doing.

All too often churches assume that volunteers and people who give by way of money or involvement are there to support the church and nothing else. That should not be the case. Your pastor doesn't serve the church entirely because of what the church is, as great as what your church may be, he serves the church because of the relationship that he has with Jesus. We do our best to foster a relationship with Jesus first and in any "interest group", and then however a member of our community connects with Jesus is a valid move.

This is a part in an ongoing series of posts on "Community" rather than "Membership" based way of looking at a local church...please read the earlier posts.

Questions and comments are always responded to.

When a baby is baptized in a Lutheran church, most churches give that baby a membership status of "Baptized member". After that, the church will normally wait a number of years until the child can take confirmation classes (base-level doctrine classes) and then go through a rite called "confirmation". At confirmation, that child makes some promises about holding to the faith that he or she has been brought up in. This system is a great system for people that are born into a church and stay there until they are "of age" to make some other decisions and then fully commit to those decisions.

Image: You're invited by anetz at Flickr

However, what often happens is that the confirmation student makes the decision out of a sense of obligation rather than out of what they truly believe. Membership in the "confirmed" status is not offered as an option for faithful people, but rather a requirement to follow through on the traditions of one's family and friends. Because it is presented as something that it is not - a choice, teenagers who are especially keen at perceiving hypocrisy tend to drop out of Lutheran churches in great numbers after confirmation.

Additionally, for people who are re-entering or entering church for the first time, this process becomes a baffling game of "where do I fit in?" While they haven't been given an absolute chance to look at Lutheran theology and make some appropriate decisions, they don't feel like they "really fit in" with the 10 year old who hasn't gone through confirmation yet (just so you know, I think an "appropriate decision" is not "do I accept Jesus to be my Lord and Savior" but rather "do I agree with the things being taught here").

At University Lutheran, we offer membership to people who come to three community events in a row. This isn't an entirely worked out process, and there are some mulligans out there that we have to deal with.

Stage Four: The Offer
Jen has been going to University Lutheran for a little while now. She has begun to recognize people on Sunday mornings, and others have begun to recognize her. It has been two months since her first visit and her attendance has been pretty regular, but with a few spots in between. She has received a couple of notes/emails from the pastor thanking her for worshiping with University Lutheran. This past week she just attended her third Sunday in a row.

There is a list of who is attending University Lutheran for every week. It's a pretty simple table and when you attend, you get a "check mark" next to your name. Visitors who get three check marks in a row get something new, an invitation.

This past Sunday Jen got an email from the pastor saying, "Jen, it has been great having you with us for these past few weeks, University Lutheran would like to invite you to be a member of the church since you've become a part of our community already, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me."

A few days pass by and Jen hasn't called, emailed, or stopped by the church to ask any questions. She receives an email with a statement about what University Lutheran believes, a form to fill out some basics (birthday, address, phone, what she's interested in, etc), and three forms of membership:

a.) Baptized membership (non-communing) - Membership without communion, usually seeking more instruction about what University Lutheran believes.
b.) Communing membership (registered) - Membership with communion that requires a transfer from another church (if applicable).
c.) Communing membership (student) - Membership with communion that does not require a transfer because the person will be leaving in a matter of years.

Jen checks "c", since she's a student and doesn't know how long she will be at University Lutheran. She's a little confused about why there is a "communing" and "non-communing" membership. She didn't grow up Lutheran and so these terms seem strange to her. She shoots off an email to the pastor asking what the categories mean.

She receives a quick email response that the difference between the communing and non-communing membership involves a "full buy in" to what University Lutheran believes and an offer to talk about some of those things with the pastor.

Some practical junk:
Our system of tracking members and visitors could possibly be seen as archaic. We've tried to use "church management software" but we have found that pretty much nothing fits a campus ministry community. Our "church management software" is a binder kept by the parish assistant at church who gets the sheets from the "fellowship books" (record of attendance books) after the pastor is done using them to contact visitors. In this binder there is a table with every member listed, and then a listing of visitors' names at the end. Depending on how many check marks are or are not there, some action is taken by the pastor. In this case, the parish assistant gave Jen's name to the pastor under the heading of "visitor been here 3 times".

The explanation of University Lutheran's beliefs is not exhaustive, but hits all of the major points of what Lutherans believe. It comes from our value statement - "A Jesus-Centered Community of Scripture, Faith, and Grace" and explains the items "Jesus-Centered," "Community," "Scripture," "Faith," and "Grace" as they are used at University Lutheran.

The Big Idea:
The biggest idea here is that the decision to join or not to join the community is not initiated by the potential member, but rather that it is initiated by the community. "We want you to be a member, because you're already a part of us," is the idea that we want to get across. However, we are open to questions and realize that this may seem like a bigger decision than it already is. Just like asking someone to "go-steady," when a church asks someone to become a member, it is a question that very well may result in disconnection. We want to offer as many opportunities to talk about what "membership" means to us.

Your help:
I still am not entirely 100% on this aspect of what we do. I wholeheartedly believe that it is better to do the things listed in "the Big Idea" but I'm not sure that we are doing those things as well as we could. I have also noticed that we still haven't provided a more user-friendly or even user-understandable idea of membership here. Help?

This is a part in an ongoing series of posts on "Community" rather than "Membership" based way of looking at a local church...please read the earlier posts.

Questions and comments are always taken seriously.