Outer Rim Territories

A number of posts popped onto the web today, recalling their grandfather’s church. We’ve been told that our church is not our grandfather’s church. Is this a call to change for the better or a reflection of negative change and a restoration of the old? We are told that times have changed so we must change for the Gospel to be preached effectively. But lets back up and see whether our our grandfathers church was different than our own.

I’d provide you with an excerpt from the pastor of my past. Unfortunately his autobiography is packed up. Maybe I can convince my uncle to send me an electronic copy? I’m not sure if he’s a great great uncle or grandfather. In any case, the content is vivid in my mind. He laments the kind of catechesis he received. His “Lutheran” pastor was a higher-critic. He denied the inerrancy of the scriptures. He promoted Christian living over the one ministry of Word and Sacrament. He did not properly distinguish between Law and Gospel. And all this from a “lutheran” in America shortly before the creation of the Missouri Synod. From his writings, the church of his day is similar to ours and the the ancient church. The church hasn’t changed but struggles with the same age-old heresies of pietism, gnosticism, and rationalism.

Pr. Walter Otten (formerly of Woodfield, IL, now retired) shares his memories:
“Your Grandfather’s Church” is a Litmus Test of the Steadfast

Ernst’s ministry led him to serve a congregation in Eden, New York. From there he made mission trips to surrounding districts. National borders were no obstacle for Ernst and in Rhineland, Ontario, Canada. he found a group of Germans that did not know whether they were Lutherans or Calvinists. History records that there “he was instrumental in bringing about an organization that was truly Lutheran.” St. Peter Lutheran Church of Rhineland was founded in 1854. My ministry began there in 1959.

From St. Peter in Rhineland Pastor Ernst was called to serve in Elmira, Ontario. The Lutheran church in nearby Berlin, Ontario (now re-named Kitchener) was served by the liberal Pastor F. W. Bindemann. The writer of Bindemann’s obituary in The BERLINER JOURNAL of Dec. 7th, 1865 brought forth this response from one of its readers, “Pastor Bindemann was one of the great figures in early Canadian church history…He does not appear to have made any pretence of being Lutheran…He played a lone game, was independent of every synodical connection, and was subject to no law but his own. In his preaching he was an advocate of liberalism in theology, and was styled by some as a universalist.”

The members of St. Paul of Kitchener, now without a pastor, came to Pastor Ernst and asked him either to help them find another pastor, and if that were not possible, “to undertake to serve the congregation himself.” Ernst could find no pastor for St. Paul of Berlin but he sought and obtained permission of his own congregation to serve St. Paul, Berlin. He would do so, however only under the provision “that matters coming into question could be reconciled to God’s Word and will.” This vacant church formerly served by a liberal universalist, would now be served the true word of God.

Whew! Sound similar? Consider the Pew research report from last week, previously blogged. Universalism hasn’t gone away either.

Aaron Wolf offers another critique of this slogan with reflections upon his grandfather:
Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture | Your Home for Traditional Conservatism » Out With the Old

My grandfather has congestive heart failure. I hate to say it, but I probably won’t see him this time next year. “Gramp,” as I’ve called him since I can remember, taught me how to shoot and hunt, taught me how to change the oil, taught me how to drive a truck, taught me how to run a trot line and how to shake a catalpa tree for worms. He helped me buy a hotrod and a Fender strat. His daddy’s gun sits by my bed, and I have paper money from Okinawa that he brought back from the War. For half of my life, we lived in the same house. I named a son (Carl) after him.

I sometimes wish he would have joined me in going over to the Lutheran church, but Gramp is a hardcore Baptist and just never was interested in learning why we do all of that standing up and sitting down, why we say some of the same words every week. (“The Lord be with you. / And with thy spirit.”) On the other hand, had he joined me in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, I wonder what he would have made of the LCMS signature slogan: “This is not your grandfather’s church.”

A good question. What do you think? Should we be changing or reflecting that things really haven’t changed?

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