During the funeral process for my dad, my congregation took a vote and switched to Missouri Synod.
I grew up Missouri Synod.
A lot of ELCA congregations are switching over to avoid the endless textual harassment of the ELCA (they changed all the pronouns from masculine to gender neutral in the Lutheran hymn book, so now God and Jesus are no longer Father and Son, but Creator and Redeemer, and they somehow squirrel around all the third-person plurals to make a hilarious mess but nobody wanted to sing that stuff we just stared at it!).
Missouri Synod is very two kingdoms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_the_two_kingdoms
But they believe in Creationism. Was it God who was responsible for the Big Bang?
The ELCA had become a bunch of flying communist squirrels with masks. No, ELCA had been infiltrated by Natasha and Boris-style communists. Bullwinkle felt alarmed.
So now we're Missouri Synod. The vote was 44-2 (secret ballot).
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
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14 comments:
Just curious....your congregation has only 46 members?
WW
Only 46 voted. You had to stay after church, and there were a few speeches and such. There are probably about 500 members, in total. but not all of them make it every Sunday, esp. during the summer months, but the vote was not taken during the service itself, but after.
For those with children, like me, who first take the kids to Sunday school and then to the church service, another hour or two in the basement was probably not an option.
Lots of churches are splitting -- Episcopalians don't have the option of leaving their bishoprics because the churches belong to the bishoprics. So all that can be done is individual members can leave, and join other churches.
But Lutheran congregations own their individual churches, so whole congregations can leave one tent, and go and join another.
I grew up LCA, which formed about half of the ELCA in the merger. My theology tends more toward Missouri Synod, though (although I don't have a problem with female pastors). I am in the local ELCA church, though, since the Missouri Synod church here isn't very, well, Missouri Synod. They are all "modern" in their liturgy and have this big group who is all into speaking in tongues, which I just don't care for. They just don't seem very Lutheran to me. On the other hand, the local ELCA church is quite conservative in many ways, and I feel at home there. I don't think there's any agitating for going Missouri Synod, although we'd probably be happy there (especially since we have a lot of members who used to be members of the Missouri Synod church before they wacked out). Maybe if the Missouri Synod church joins a Pentecostal group first or something.
i suppose a catholic corollary to this shift would be the ardent latin rite folks some of whom under the spiritual direction of archbishop lefebvre were excommunicated because they left the roman hierarchy and sought to install their own bishops
pope benedict has recently made steps to re-instate these folks under certain conditions
other latin rite reactionaries to vatican council II stayed within the fence and merely sought the right to attend latin masses most bishops allowed for some sort of avaialability for that
but within the broader practice we see the extremes co-existing for instance in mpls there's a church which has become the safe haven for the happily intrinsically disordered folks ( i don't know what else to call them) and then there's st agnes church in st paul which is 19th century high roman latin rite but they do mozart masses and palestrina they claim to have the truth in liturgy then there's the rural parishes which have settled into a late 60's routine of bad music adn bad liturgy but they like it like that
we tend to allow for some extremism in hopes of guiding everyone to the narrow gate
good luck with the old conservatism pal
i've been reading paul's letters and he sure makes a big deal of the churches being infused with the spirit of christ and living in a new way which is to be evidence of the kingdom of god come to earth
i wonder if luther wasn't blind to some essential ideas in paul
maybe in the next go 'round you'll all just hop on the roman bandwagon and we'll whoop it up till kingdom come
j
Lutherans consider themselves to be quite close to Catholicism, we think we are the closest of all the Protestant groups. What say you, JH?
I didn't know what George meant by the wacking out of the Missouri Synod.
I don't know much about it. It was all the endless sexuality studies I think that nailed the coffin of the ELCA for us. People just got tired of that endless badgering, and the threats it posed that they would then send their communist agents and force us to listen to them.
Kirby,
I didn't mean that the Missouri Synod wacked out. I meant that the local Missouri Synod church wacked out with having people speaking in tongues during services and running around in the aisles and about half the time having skits instead of sermons and stuff like that. I worded it badly.
Oh, Luther and St. Paul were against people speaking in tongues because they argued that you should make sense to other people.
That's a silly way to behave in church. People ought to speak in known languages, at ordinary volumes, if they're trying to make friends and communicate something.
On the other hand, if they want to make a spectacle of themselves, or seem special or something, they should speak in tongues, and writhe about on the floor. In which case, I wouldn't go back to such a church either.
since the 60's the church has made an opening for soem outrageous activity and the tendency is to sort of abide with it until it quiets down on its own
the charismatic craze is still with us and in some ways it coud be arued that in so far as they have acknowledged a humble place within the experience of the church and not stood in complaining why they aren't more recognized they have contributed something by way of building up the church...i know people who have returned to practice in the faith by going through a pentacostal phase where they had an emotional reawakening
pandemonium is starting to quiet down but it got real crraaaayyyyzeeee there for awhile...it seems to me people are coming around to the importance of what pope benedict calls "sober inebriation' the continued and sustained quality of prayer in the church
the fervency of pietism can always get to be a bit much adn that's why we must always enter into the necessary dialectic between the ongoing intellectual tradition and the spirit of the gospel as we hear it
sola scriptura has tended to deny the great force and contribution of the intellectual...that beautiful balance sustained as in a marriage...sometimes difficult but always forcing the issue of respect
the gospel
the intellectual tradition
culture
a threeway dance
we have one monk here who keeps a portrait of luther on his door and refers to all lutheran congregations as parishes in the same terms as the catholic ones down the block...and...he calls himself a canadian monarchist - he's all for all the reforms
slowly it seems the catholics are returning to a sense of right worshipan agreement that it is important to give praise in a way that is edifying and beautiful for all
we have another monk who occasionally goes off toe wroship with local lutherans but also fills in to say the latin mass at the cathedral once a month or so
go figure
how to live peacefully with ambiguity
j
typing too fast
coffee hangover
i bow humbly
j
And you're a monk who hangs out with Lutheran Surrealists. What's going on, JH?
I have a Catholic friend in Philly who I have a terrible hankering to phone up. I think I'll do it.
I got a question for ya Kirby, Since I only really went to chuch as a kid on Easter and Christmas and as an adult before I joined the LDS church I was agnostic I really don't understand to much about how other churches function. How did you church come to the conclusion that they were going to switch Synods?
And I can't understand why someone would want gender neutral words in the scriptures. That doesn't make since either. Can you enlighten me?
Many feminists feel that if God is male it's discrimination against women. So they want God to be a woman. But since they can't quite have that without becoming actual Wiccans, they try to snip off the gender, and thus neuter God. They do the same thing to Jesus.
This kind of thing is going on in all the left-wing churches, and has been going on for at least fifty years.
It's now reaching critical mass, and all the people who don't like it are shooting over to Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or some more stauncher tradition.
We've lost practically all our intellectuals in the ELCA -- they've all gone. Richard Neuhaus, and many many many others, have fled the onslaught.
The seminaries have turned into Marxist training centers, just as all the graduate teaching programs have. It's all well-intentioned in a way: and about equality.
But it's a disaster, many feel. In our particular congregation you have a lot of older Germans in which the father is still the authority in the family and the wife is called the best friend. But she is meant to obey.
I'm married to a Finn, to whom that would be a joke (or a choke, as it's said, in Finnish accent).
So basically the Bible is being bowdlerized, and the intentions are changed so that all that Jesus really said is enjoy yourself (the Sermon on the Mount is the last thing he said, and so they argue, that love is all you need, da da da da).
You seriously haven't heard of this?
You must be lucky.
At any rate, Missouri Synod is a synod composed largely of Germans, and is more or less intact, holding to a more or less 19th century vision of things.
ELCA on the other hand ordains women (which I don't mind, to be honest), but they are about to ordain homosexuals (which is another real sticking point for many who are leaving the ELCA), and the theology is getting more and more squirrelly.
Basically, all the lines are being erased. Masturbation is ok. Serial marriage is ok. Homosexuality is ok. I don't actually know of anything that isn't ok, within the ELCA. Anything goes, baby.
One wag joked that for our bishop the calendar has never left May 1968.
On the other hand, Missouri has never left October 1517.
The whole thing is disconcerting to me. Total rigidity on the one hand, and on the other hand: absolute chaos.
I think I finally prefer total rigidity, out of these two options.
It's funnier.
Are you referring to rigidity of doctrine, or rigidity of worship?
I for one am glad that LCMS doctrine has not changed since October 1517. IMHO, political correctness and trying to become more like the world is what has torn the ELCA apart. Your church doctrine will have predictable consistency. Hope that is not a bad thing for you.
One thing to watch out for in the LCMS is worship wars. Many older people clash with younger members over the Sunday worship songs. Fortunately, we go to a mixed Sunday service at our LCMS church. The video projector with contemporary Christian songs and a modest praise band alternate with traditional German hymnal songs throughout the service. Great compromise! Your church will hopefully choose this approach.
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