So what was left? I went home to the Lutheran Church. Or so I thought. Trinity had long ago voted as a congregation to bolt the Missouri Synod for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a much more liberal conflation of several Lutheran churches. (And my former pastor is now a much beloved Roman Catholic priest.) The Missouri Synod numbered far fewer congregations in New York City, and those geographically closest to me either had no pastor or a pastor who was far too, shall we say, creative. I sat through puppet shows (children’s church being folded into the regular worship service), pastors strolling up and down the aisle culling prayer requests and improvising “stirring†appeals to the Almighty, guest preachers stopping cold in mid-sermon to turn on a boom box so they could break into song, praise bands fronted by garishly loud “cantors†as Powerpointed lyrics flashed on screens that now obscured the old wooden hymn boards—in short, orders of worship that were neither orderly nor conducive to worship.The historical resonance and dignity of the old liturgy that had struck torpor in my heart as a youth was the exact thing I was craving in my middle age—but it was now history itself. What I could not appreciate as a shallow teen was now unavailable to me, the hymnal replaced by a bulletin, the means of grace downplayed for a more gregarious fellowship, the authentic traded in for pastiche and performance art. Even the sermon, reborn in the Lutheran Reformation as a means of grace, had now lapsed into emotionally manipulative entreaties, personality self-assessments, and quasi–altar calls. Twenty-five stragglers on a good Sunday, Starbucks in hand, grumbling begrudgingly through another chorus of “He Shall Make Me Gladâ€â€”this was the upshot of the new LCMS. Ah, sweet success!
I understand the drama of demographics in modern urban America: Missouri Synod churches could no longer count on families staying put, staying Lutheran, or even staying Christian from one generation to the next, and so it had to compete for spiritual consumers along with the Redeemer Presbyterians, the Times Square nondenominationals, and the pentecostal and Baptist storefronts. But rather than throwing open to the seeking, the emerging, and the skeptical something unique within the Church catholic—something distinctly Lutheran—Missouri Synod churches were too often settling for second-rate evangelical status in the name of ecumenism and in reaction to dwindling attendance, especially among the young. The grand paradoxes that Lutheran theology wrestled into neat but potent reflections of our faith in the God/man—law/gospel, sinner/justified, bread and wine/body and blood, the kingdom of this world/the kingdom of God—were rarely if ever mentioned, except perhaps as an occasional sop to the scarce old-school parishioners. But these dichotomies spoke to my life as a Christian, not merely as a Lutheran, which is why coming back to the Missouri Synod was no mere sentimental journey but a coming together of what had been fragmented as a mere evangelical.
This is a sad but true real perspective on the state of affairs in our Synod. Read it and weep. Do click through to his full article for context and his optimistic ending.
Related posts:
- Baltic Lutheran bishops: some Lutheran Churches departing apostolic doctrine
- Special Texas Lutheran Youth Gathering Edition of “The LCMS in Her Own Words†by Pastor Rossow
- Diversity in Lutheran Worship
- One Lutheran…Ablog!â„¢: Things in the Reporter that need Commentary
- Here We Stand: Lutheran Identity Crisis