20060513
    I usually try to avoid using this weblog as a sounding board for my personal experiences. Indeed, there are too many things going on that need to be discussed in a wider context for me to much up these pages with my own otherwise unexciting life, but today I am taking the liberty to deviate from that rule.
    Last Sunday was one of the greatest Christian experiences I’ve ever had, as my youngest sister, twenty years my junior and having Downs Syndrome, was confirmed in my parents’ church, which I until recently attended.
    This was a great experience because of the fact it was not so long ago, or so it seems to my hindsight, that no one really knew whether my baby sister was going to live, let alone that she would be able to eventually be confirmed and receive her first communion. It is with great praise and thanks to God that I watched her affirm our universal confession of the Apostles Creed and receive Christ’s body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine.
    It was also an experience that I will never forget because of another reason that I never suspected I would face. This was the first time I have returned to my parents’ Lutheran Church- Missouri Synod church, the church of my own youth, since I broke fellowship with the LC-MS by joining the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. As a result, this was the first time I really had to face the reality of why I left and why I continue to stand by the reasons I left.
    The truth is that the LC-MS is a church in crisis because it is a church that is slowly losing its identity to the encroachment of ecumenicalism, evangelicalism and secularism. Where the LC-MS was once a solid bastion of orthodox, confessional Christianity, it has become a collection of disunited congregations, championing a plethora of doctrines and teachings, only a few of which remain true to the confessions upon which the LC-MS was founded and at least superficially still claims to believe.
    These fractures, this disunity of belief and confession, are reflected even in my once home church, which is accounted as one of the more confessional and orthodox churches in its district, if not the entire synod. Slowly, the malaise that has infected the larger synod, which has called into question the very Gospel that makes us Christians, has begun to seep into that congregation through the calling of teachers for its school that do not adhere to the doctrine the congregation proclaims, through members of the congregation questioning why they still adhere to the traditions of the church which have preserved its confessionalism and orthodoxy, and as the fellowship of the congregation as reflected in its willingness to volunteer and to give has slowly diminished.
    While I reflect upon a dismal picture, have no doubt that this church still struggles on under the weight of what is happening to the LC-MS. The Gospel is still being preached in its purity and truth, and the core of the congregation still works to retain its identity of orthodoxy and confessionalism, but one must ask for how long such a struggle can continue when it is assaulted so from within and without.
    What is the point of all of this? Am I condemning the church of my youth, of my family, where I was raised and confirmed, where I was active and energetic as part of that core until recently? On the contrary, I bring all of this to light because I pray mightily for that church, for its members, and for the synod to which it belongs, that God may rescue them from the peril they have placed themselves in because they have not looked up from themselves to realize that they are engaged in a fight not just for their own church but for the entire body of which they are part.
    My own choice to leave that fight was a spiritual one, but just because I am not in those trenches does not mean that I do not continue to carry on that cause. It is my fervent and heartfelt desire that the LC-MS and the church of my youth are able to overcome the threats of Satan and sin that are currently breaking it down. In the mean time, I have removed myself to a place where my own spirit and faith can recover, with the sincere hope that someday the fellowship of the LC-MS can be restored, both within that synod and with the confessional, orthodox, body of Christ, wherever it may be found.
    All of these things bring me back to the beginning, as I sat in the pew for the first time since I was confirmed, not going to receive Christ’s body and blood with my family and friends, with people I have known almost my entire life. Instead, I sat in that pew and I prayed, and I will admit I cried, for that congregation, for the church as a whole, yes even for myself, that we may all remain true to the Gospel, not just as individual Christians, as congregations, or as synods, but as the one, true, holy, Apostolic Body of Christ. I prayed for the day that I can return to the Lord’s Table with my family and friends because once again we hold to the same confessional, orthodox faith, the faith of all Christians in all times.
    I continue to pray for that unity to return to the church of my youth and the church I have come to be a part of, and I ask all of you to pray for the same that all Christians now may be united with the one confessional, orthodox faith of all Christians of all times in their journey toward Heaven.
DLH
praying…