Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Advent & Christmas

The Feast of the Nativity of our Lord, Jesus Christ


In my previous post, entitled Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about the Reformation, I promised in this final installment to feature the evangelism mailing our congregation had developed for Advent/Christmas – and in the case of this mailing, Advent definitely made a prominent showing. We did this on purpose – just as we recognized of the term “Lent” (see my post covering the development of our Lenten mailing), we realized that most folks in the upper midwest have probably at least heard the word “Advent,” and have maybe even heard it used in connection with Christmas, but probably don't really know what it is. Since our congregation takes the season of Advent as seriously as it does Lent, holding mid-week Advent services in the weeks prior to Christmas, and since most folks have already heard of Christmas (though many are confused about its true meaning), we decided to develop a mailing that would share the message of Law and Gospel by making use of the term “Advent” in a way that prominently connects it to Christmas and to as many of the other topics we shared throughout the year as possible – using and reinforcing terms and concepts from our Lenten, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost and Reformation mailings. Thus, it begins by both telling and depicting the Old Testament prophecy of the Messiah, continues by depicting the fulfillment of that prophecy with the birth of Jesus Christ, and then concludes by telling the reader of His second Advent – of His imminent Return as a victorious King and righteous Judge – and pointing the reader to his very real need for Righteous standing before God, to his very real need for Faith, in order to be prepared for that Day.

But I also promised to share some brief personal thoughts regarding the vocational needs of the evangelizing congregation and the Evangelical Church at large.

Nurturing the Fine Arts in the Church

If the Church, or the individual Christian, has any “job to do,” if there is anything which the individual Christian, or the Church, ought to become “effective” at, or strive to become excellent at, it is this one thing: communication. The Church is a herald, and Christians tell, of the Good News of Jesus Christ in the Message of Law and Gospel. The Holy Spirit works through that Message to create and strengthen Faith and to teach and remind its hearers of all that Christ taught. We communicate the Message. Period. The Holy Spirit does the rest. But we do communicate.

As was discussed at length toward the end of the 2011 Christmas Season, in my post, Music for the Twelve Days of Christmas, Part 2: Heinrich Schütz ... and other thoughts to ponder over the New Year Holiday..., true Art isn't just dazzling technical skill, it's compelling conversation or communication; and in the comments of that post I elucidate further that skilled communication, as represented in true and compelling Art, represents mastery of the highest stage of learning: the Rhetoric Stage. Thus, true Art isn't “unbridled natural creativity,” which often succeeds in communicating little more than gibberish. Moreover, developing creativity has very little to do with nurturing a child's “natural creative instincts” with a box of crayons or by providing “outlets for creative expression” – although this sort of thing may well develop some technical skill while providing enjoyment and developing interest. The fact is, almost no one has enough creativity of their own, “nurtured” or not, to produce anything compelling, on its own. On the contrary, and as also discussed in that post, true creativity is nurtured by studying the Masters, the very best that Western Civilization has produced throughout its history, by understanding their idiom in its context, and then adding to it one's own pittance of creativity as he communicates in his own context. In other words, the creativity required to to produce a widely compelling work, is not just one's own, it is mostly the creative genius of others plus one's own. In this sense, true Art isn't radical. It's conservative. That is, it is conserving something, namely, the creative genius of the past, carrying it forward through the present and into the future.

This emphasis on “conserving the past” comes up frequently on this blog. In fact, it was the major theme of the paper I delivered at the 2012 Conference of Intrepid Lutherans. That is because it is in this sense that the very character of Lutheranism is historical. As Charles Porterfield Krauth explains in his monograph, The Conservative Reformation and its Theology, the Lutheran Reformation was not a radical reformation, it was conservative. His Preface helps to explain the difference:

“The history of Christianity, in common with all genuine history, moves under the influence of two generic ideas: the conservative, which desires to secure the present by fidelity to the results of the past; the progressive, which looks out, in hope, to a better future. Reformation is the great harmonizer of the two principles. Corresponding with Conservatism, Reformation, and Progress are three generic types of Christianity; and under these genera all the species are but shades, modifications, or combinations, as all hues arise from three primary colors. Conservatism without Progress produces the Romish and Greek type of the Church. Progress without Conservatism runs into Revolution, Radicalism, and Sectarianism. Reformation is antithetical both to passive persistence in wrong or passive endurance of it, and to Revolution as a mode of relieving wrong. Conservatism is opposed to Radicalism both in the estimate of wrong and the mode of getting rid of it. Radicalism errs in two respects: in its precipitance it often mistakes wheat for tares, and its eradication is so hasty and violent that even when it plucks up tares it brings the wheat with them. Sober judgment and sober means characterize Conservatism. Reformation and Conservatism really involve each other. That which claims to be Reformatory, yet is not Conservative, is Sectarian; that which claims to be Conservative, and is not Reformatory, is Stagnation and Corruption. True Catholicity is Conservatism, but Protestantism is Reformatory; and these two are complementary, not antagonistic. The Church problem is to attain a Protestant Catholicity or Catholic Protestantism. This is the end and aim of Conservative Reformation.”

Thus, the Catholicity claimed by the Lutheran Confession is necessary to what it, and True Christianity, really is – it represents the outflowing of two thousand years of Christian faith and practice into the present, and projects it into the future.

But this character is not independent of the times and influences in and under which the Lutheran Reformation took place. It was the period of the Renaissance, the guiding principle of which was “ad fontes”, or “to the sources.” The Renaissance rediscovery of the past, and re-acquaintance with the Masters of previous millenia through study of their works, not only gave birth to the Reformation, but gifted the world with a veritable explosion of creativity in every area of study, and resulted in some of the finest works of art the West has yet produced. In fact, one could say that all great accomplishments in the West since the time of the Renaissance, has flowed from the principles of Renaissance Humanism, of “returning to the sources” that we may be carried forward on the shoulders of history's giants.

Not only that, and as also explained in last year's post, Music for the Twelve Days of Christmas, Part 2: Heinrich Schütz ... and other thoughts to ponder over the New Year Holiday..., the Renaissance, and the Lutheran Reformation in particular, produced the kind of education that is necessary to conserve the past in this way: called “The Great Tradition” until the time of John Dewey's “Education Revolution” early last century, which entirely overthrew the “conservative” education of The Great Tradition and replaced it with his pragmatic task-oriented theories of “Progressive Education,” it is today making a comeback under the banner of “Classical Education”. As I had also explained in that 2011 Christmas Season post:

“To be sure, there are those in the secular world who yet value this form of education: St. John’s College and Nova Classical Academy are two such examples. Among Lutherans, Classical Education is making a comeback as well: ...the Consortium for Classical and Lutheran Education has made significant progress in advocating and effecting a return to Classical Education in the LCMS [and among other Lutherans as well]. To the shame of confessional Lutherans everywhere, however, credit for the return of Classical Education to American Christianity really belongs to the Reformed, who, influenced by the leadership of groups like the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, have about a two decade head-start on Lutherans in bringing Classical Education back to Christianity. Christian Home Educators are well-known for having adopted this model of education in great numbers early on. In fact, many of the underground Home Educators of the 1970’s were Roman Catholics who wanted their children brought up with Latin and the Classics, but found that both had swiftly disappeared after Vatican II mandated that the Mass be conducted in the vernacular. Yet it remained essentially Evangelical Reformed sources which, apparently being far more attuned to and suspicious of educational movements in secular academia, developed educational resources and supplied encouragement and assistance to Classical Home Educators. The trend proceeded a little more slowly among Christian day schools, but these days the number of Christian schools adopting Classical Education is nearly proliferate... Even the subtitle of Veith & Kerns’ well-known work on the subject, Classical Education, was changed by their publisher in its recent second edition, from 'Towards the Revival of American Schooling' to 'The Movement Sweeping America' – and this is true, largely due to the efforts of the Reformed and of Home Educators.”

To engage in the kind of compelling conversation in which the Gospel of Jesus Christ naturally belongs, it behooves the Church to nurture the Fine Arts, rather than the contemporary entertainment arts (which are “compelling” only as much as they are, and only for as long as they are, entertaining, and thus are in their very nature entirely contrary to the serious Message of Law and Gospel, which confronts its hearer with the weight of eternal significance). To engage in “excellent communication” befitting the nature of the Gospel's message, the Church needs competent thinkers, it needs competent writers, it needs competent poets, it needs competent orators, it needs competent musicians and artists; and to acquire them, it must engage in the difficult task of preparing them with a competent education, one which seats students of the Liberal Arts directly at the feet of history's finest examples and conserves their excellence for our use and for the benefit of those who hear and engage our attempts to communicate with them.

What the reader of this series has seen is a very meager attempt to communicate the Message of the Gospel to the general public in just this conservative fashion, by using the language of the Church and speaking as the Church speaks. This is obvious from the words and phraseology used in the prose itself. It is equally obvious in the artwork used throughout this series, where, again, the artist made use of the familiar artistic language of the Church that it has developed over the millenia to simply represent complex theological Truths and communicate the weighty and joyous Message of the Gospel. For example, in the mailing featured in this post, we see, quite obviously, the Nativity of Christ depicted, with the Protestant use of the nimbus to designate the divinity of the Christ child, and the woman holding the Baby Jesus as His mother, Mary. This is still a familiar image. But I stated above that not only was the Nativity depicted, so was the Old Testament prophecy of the coming Messiah. Where is that depicted? Here is the specific prophecy from the Old Testament that may give the reader a clue:

“There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots... And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, Who shall stand as a banner to the people; For the Gentiles shall seek Him, And His resting place shall be glorious.” (Is. 11:1,10 NKJV)

The dead stump, or “stem,” with a new live branch growing out of it, is a common image long-used by the Church to represent the Old Testament prophecy of the coming Messiah. This image is reinforced with the use of leaves and berries from the Holly Oak, another common Christmas symbol, used by the Church to symbolize the Passion of Christ, specifically, the crown of thorns because of its thorny leaves, and Christ's blood because of the red berries (Holly, being an evergreen, is also said to have been the tree of the Cross, but that is only legend). While some of this artistic language may be lost on the viewer – just as the meaning of the prose may be lost on the reader – this would be the case no matter the artwork or the prose. One thing is clear, however: the Church is speaking, and it is directly speaking the Good News of Jesus Christ. The reader knows this the instant he sees it, and any continued reading and viewing of this content is nothing other than his willingness to hear what the Church says about Jesus. We have every confidence that the Holy Spirit will use those aspects of the Message received by such a hearer to perform within him His work of creating and sustaining faith, and that as his faith grows, he will be compelled by love of God and His Truth to learn more – from whatever source to which the Holy Spirit may guide him.

No, the unregenerate do not need to be tricked into hearing the Gospel through community events, social groups, the allure of entertaining worship, or educational services offered by the congregation – those so-called “pre-evangelism” techniques promoted by the Church Growth Movement are just crutches to prop up a visible Church in steep decline, that has lost the art of compelling communication, that has lost the compelling art of communicating Wisdom with eloquence.

Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about the Reformation

The Festival of the Reformation

Celebrating that Event in History which Returned Justification
to its Central Position in the Teaching of the Church


In my previous post, entitled Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Pentecost, I featured the tri-fold brochure that was scheduled for delivery the week before the Feast of Pentecost. Going back to the first post in this series, Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Lent, I explained how we had decided to use

...the Seasons and Festivals of the Church Year as a pretense for initiating unsolicited communication with members of our community through mail – to tell them about the Season or Festival (it was educational) and why it was important (it was evangelical). Each mailing included not only words, but, since we had a competent artist at our disposal, custom artwork that was designed to tell the same message as the words.

There aren't any major holidays, or even a change in season, in the Church calendar between Pentecost Sunday and the beginning of Advent, so rather than wait until the beginning of Advent, we decided to chose one of the minor festivals of the Church Year that seemed to us to provide a good opportunity to share an important teaching of Scripture. The “Festival of the Reformation” was the holiday we chose, but the topic we chose to share wasn't Dr. Martin Luther. It was Justification.

In this card, not only was Justification spoken of in direct terms, not only was it delivered through the use of direct application of the Law along with direct application of the Gospel, but both Law and Gospel were represented in the image as well. In this particular case, it was thought that Message of the Law, complete with images and reminders of sin, of the Devil and his accusations, of the Righteous Judge and the Final Judgment, and of the certain prospect of Hell, would resonate quite well with what is on the minds of most folks during that time of year, anyway – the ghosts, goblins and haunted houses of Halloween. Thus, picturing and speaking so directly of eternal torment would not be as offensive as it might be at other times of the year, and, we thought, people would be more apt to hear and consider such a Message. But of course, the Message of the Law is only part of what is pictured and spoken here. The majority and focus of what is communicated is mankind's hope of salvation: the completed work of Jesus Christ on behalf of all of mankind, and His promise that through faith we have forgiveness of sins and righteous standing before God. That is, even though the Law is prominent, the focus and greater prominence is the Gospel.

What was the Process of Composing and Approving these Mailings?
One may ask, “How were these mailings composed? Did you download the content mostly from the internet, and fix it up? Who decided when it was good enough to be mailed?” Regarding composition, the answer is that all of the content – both the prose, formatting and accompanying artwork – represents the collaborative effort of individual members from the congregation. It is all original work. While Pastor could have easily written all of the content himself, he expressed desire that someone else do it under his guidance. He was concerned that his prose was a bit too terse for our purposes. So I was selected to work with him on the content. There were always improvements to make throughout the composition process, usually they were minor, sometimes they were more significant. For example, the sentence which in the card now reads

“Jesus did on behalf of man what man could not do for himself, and He promises that through faith in Him we are justified – or declared righteous by God.”

was initially written as follows:

“Jesus promises that His righteousness would be ours, and that our sins would be forgiven, if all we do is believe that promise.”

When I sent Pastor that initial version of the wording, he replied, saying, “I could understand you ...correctly especially since I know how very, very hard it is to talk about faith without making it into a good work we do to accomplish our salvation,” but, he went on to say, that reference would need to change, because it amounted to synergism. I called him on the phone, and inquired further. What he had to say was very interesting, prompting me to change my thinking. He said (and I quote from memory, consolidating his comments from a long conversation):

“Lutherans don't typically use the English term, 'believe.' It is an active verb and always imperative. When a person hears the phrase, 'You must believe,' the message is clear to him and conclusive – he thinks he must do something, and that 'doing' results in his own justification. So he immediately sets about the work of 'believing' – whatever he may think that is, like stop drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes, or start going to church every Sunday, or selling all his property to give to the poor, or quitting his job to join a ministry somewhere, or whatever he thinks 'believing' is. That kind of 'belief' is synergism. In English, we Lutherans get around this by stating it in the passive voice, 'have faith.' While it's still imperative, it isn't conclusive, and necessarily leads, not to doing something, but to asking another question: 'If I don't have this faith, but need it, how do I get it? Where does it come from?' That answer, of course, is 'You don't need to do anything to get it, it is a free gift from the Holy Spirit.' This is not synergism. It's monergism. In fact, if a person is already asking out of concern for his eternal welfare, 'How do I get this Faith?,' instead of rejecting the whole business, they've probably already received it. So in English, the word 'believe' almost immediately leads a person to rely on his own work, while 'have faith' almost immediately leads a person to focus on the Holy Spirit's work. And that's what we must be careful to always keep before us, the fact that from start to finish, our Justification is entirely God's work, from Christ's finished work on the Cross to purchase our Redemption, to the Holy Spirit's continuing work through the Means of Grace to give us the Faith through which we receive His Promises. It's all God's work. If we think at any moment it is even partially our own work, if we think believing is something we have to do, then our religion is really just a partnership with God to gain our own salvation, rather than what He does for us and in us entirely out of Grace. Such a religion is not God's religion, it is man's religion, and it does not save.”

So I thought about that, rewrote that section, and when I passed it by him again for his opinion, he simply responded, “I like it!”

Anyway, once we settled on the prose itself, an artist in our congregation was commissioned to create a piece of artwork that attempted to communicate the same message as the prose. Once this was acquired, the artwork and the prose were brought together and formatted for the medium we were using (postcards/pamphlets, etc.). Sometimes this required further alteration of the prose so that it would fit nicely around or on top of the image, which would result in renewed, usually brief, collaboration between Pastor and myself. Once this was complete, we moved to the approval stage of the process.

The entire congregation was involved in the approval process. First, obviously, Pastor approved the message that newly developed mailings contained. Then before they were mailed to anyone, they were either brought to the church Council for review and approval, or mailed to the councilmen before the meeting, so that they could review them at length beforehand. Since the congregation's name was going on a mass mailing, it was important to give the congregation's leadership the chance to object before such materials were sent to anyone. I don't remember a single instance where the Council objected to what was written in any of these mailings. In fact, I only recall enthusiastic approval. Then, with the first mass mailing of newly developed materials, we also sent them to the entire congregation so that they could provide us with feedback. While we never received any negative feedback from the congregation regarding the message these mailings communicated, we did get plenty of suggestions on how to improve their formatting and appearance – like improving the clarity of the images, shifting the text around, or making it larger and easier to read, spelling and punctuation, and, of course, reducing word count. Of all the mailings we sent, this one seemed to be the congregation's favorite, as it garnered from them the most positive feedback, the most unsolicited feedback, and the least negative feedback of them all.

The next, and final, post in this series will feature the postcard we sent in time for arrival during Thanksgiving Week – the week before the beginning of Advent. That card will speak for itself, but I will also include some brief personal thoughts regarding the vocational needs of the evangelizing congregation and the Evangelical Church at large. More on that next time.

Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Pentecost

The Feast of Pentecost

We Lutherans Believe in the Holy Spirit!


In my previous post, entitled Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Easter, I promised to feature the tri-fold brochure we mailed to new residents in our community for the Feast of Pentecost – the third most important holiday of the Church Year – and as the reader can see, Pentecost was used as a pretense to talk about the second and third person's of the Trinity. And we had much to say! Part of the reason for this is that the Bible's teaching about the Holy Spirit is not just located in a few conveniently located sections of Scripture, but in many places and in many contexts. Another reason is that the work of the Holy Spirit is so broad and so important that it is difficult to be meaningful in only a few words. Most important, however, is the fact that in contemporary times, with the confusion over the Holy Spirit wrought by Pentcostalism, Charismaticism, and Holiness Movements within Christianity, and the growing dominance of wretched Eastern and New Age “spirituality,” we felt that to discuss the Holy Spirit at all, meant that we also had to remediate the rampant false notions surrounding “God's Spirit” and how it is that we “commune” with Him.

There is a big smile on my face, as I chuckle to myself while writing this. This was the last straw for the pamphlet format. Mostly for good, or at least justifiable reasons. These 8.5x11 inch tri-folds, and the 8.5x14 inch quarterfold we used for Good Friday, were full-color, double sided prints. Up to this point, we had relied on a printing service that provided us an astoundingly good deal on printing costs, making it possible for us to print enough pamphlets and envelopes to send them to all residents in our community who had recently moved there. That source became unavailable to us, causing costs to rise sharply, and making it impossible for us to continue distributing the message of Law and Gospel to all new residents in this format. A second reason was the labor involved. A team of us spent quite a bit of time for each one of these pamphlet mailings, just preparing them to go in the mail – inserting the pamphlets in the envelopes, affixing labels and stamps to envelopes, and sealing them. While we enjoyed the work, and were happy to do it, there was also a desire to reduce the labor involved, if possible... A third reason – well, let's face it, there's simply a whole lot of words on that page. Who would ever read such a thing? Many folks in the congregation expressed some embarrassment over this fact. After some investigation, we found a service that, if we could reduce/redevelop our mailings to 5x8 inch postcards, would print and mail them for around $.67 per card – and that included full color printing on both sides (the opposite side containing the addressee and the return address of our congregation, which in our case included a color logo, service times, directions, etc). With the cost of data around $.30 per address, that was a total cost of about $1 per mailing, resulting in a significant reduction in labor and cost, and allowing us to continue sending these mailings to all new residents, and even others if we chose (like those on our prospects list, or special names that people in the congregation asked us to include). And, for better or worse, we were forced to be more concise.

But there is another reason for smiling.

Just WHAT were WE expecting?
Nothing. We were expecting nothing in return for our effort. We, by this point, had completely rejected any and every notion that, as a result of our efforts, God owed us an increase of some sort – either in visitor count, prospects, church membership, or the church revenue such increases inevitably result in. Since we weren't owed an increase, we weren't looking for one. Rather, out of pure Joy and Gratitude, our “mission” was simply to share that which made us joyful: the completed work of Jesus Christ on behalf of all mankind, and the continuing work of the Holy Spirit through the Means of Grace, to distribute the Eternal Blessings He earned for us. We “expected” only what God promises us in the Bible: that His Word will not return to Him void, but accomplish that for which He sent it; that one man plants, another waters, but God gives the increase. In sending out the Word, in using the Means through which the Holy Spirit exclusively works, we knew that among those who came into contact with these materials, who actually read them, some would merely have had a seed planted in them (seeds are not ready for harvest), some would be nurtured (plants that need nurturing are not ready for harvest), and some would be ready for harvest. Of those ready for harvest, we fully admitted, we may see them or we may not. But “harvest” actually does mean harvest, whether they come to our church or not. So, we had complete confidence in the Holy Spirit to produce an increase where, when and if He willed it, and we could only have this confidence given that we used the Means through which He works to accomplish it.

If, instead, we had bound ourselves to the expectations, and thus the methods, of the Church Growth Movement, our “mission” would not have been to “simply” share the Message of Scripture – it would have been far more complicated, far more calculating on human behaviour (i.e., “stimulus and response”), far more exploitive of human wants and weaknesses (i.e., “felt needs”), far more confident in the organization to measure and meet them. If we bound ourselves to the expectations and methods of the Church Growth Movement, and took the advise of those luring Lutherans into such bondage, the congregation as an organization would completely displace any Message of Scripture – completely robbing those who were reached using these mailings of the Means through which the Holy Spirit works by replacing the Message telling how God has met every man's eternal need through Christ, with a message telling how the congregation can meet the temporal needs of some people in its community, through educational services, social groups (men's/women's groups, youth groups, etc.), or opportunities for involvement in various activities, like music, sports, or community philanthropy. Instead of the Means of Grace, through which the Holy Spirit works to Call, Gather and Enlighten His Elect, we would be forced into using the means of man, through which the congregation struggles, like a fast-food chain or supermarket, to call gather and enlighten new visitors and loyal patrons.

Rather than submit ourselves to the “Bondage of Expectations” that the Church Growth Movement would place on us, we refused, choosing, instead, the liberty to freely speak the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This Message, which starts off by offending it's hearers with the Law, with the reality of their own sin, further offends by pointing them to the Rock of Offense, Jesus Christ, declaring that they cannot save themselves before a perfectly Just and Righteous God, that only the Righteousness of Christ avails before God, and that this righteousness and the forgiveness of their sins is theirs only in Christ. Such a Message completely defies the thoroughly human logic of the Church Growth Movement, which requires that an individual, or collectively “the public,” be ingratiated to the evangelist, or to the church as an organization, before the Gospel can be fed to them in bits and pieces, being careful all the while to avoid communicating anything that might be “offensive.” In other words, the public has to like you first, before anyone will trust you enough to listen to what the Bible says. This sort of “friendship evangelism,” though logical, is complete unbiblical garbage.

The unregenerate are estranged from God. They are at war with Him. They hate Him and they hate what He has to say. The Bible tells us this. The Evangelist, just like the congregation, represents God. They are His Messengers in the World, and they speak the Message He has given them to say. As a result, the unregenerate hate God's Messengers just as much as they hate God, and they hate the Message He speaks through them. The Bible tells us this, too. It doesn't matter if you make friends first, they are still going to hate you on account of Christ! In fact, they may hate you all the more once they find out you only became friends with them in order to “more effectively” proselytize them! This sort of “friendship evangelism” promoted by the Church Growth Movement is nothing but a rickety crutch to avoid the discomfort of the Truth – that the World hates us on account of Jesus – and ultimately, leaves the Christian unprepared to face the inevitable: conflict with the unregenerate, the enemies of the Gospel, who reject and revile God, His Message, and His Messengers. This kind of unpreparedness, perpetuated by the Church Growth Movement, which requires friendship with the World in order to “grow the church,” is demonstrated in the shallowness of contemporary American Christianity, and has equipped Christians with only a partial Gospel that is supplemented by services and social activities offered by the congregation. No wonder Christians run and hide when called upon to share their faith or to confidently speak their convictions! CGM does not equip them with the biblical Gospel. Not by a longshot. And not having the Truth, they lack the boldness to stand and speak.

So, rather than the wisdom of this world, we chose the foolishness of God. We chose to rely exclusively on the Holy Spirit's work through the Means of Grace. Thus, this tri-fold pamphlet represented a major fist in the air, raised against the Church Growth Movement and those pushing its lies. In fact, so complete was our rejection of Church Growth, that, though we had the data in our possession, we refused on grounds of principle to use that data to calculate and report statistics on “visitor rate,” “baptism rate,” or “ average cost per new member,” that might be associated with these evangelistic efforts. We also feared that if we started doing so, we may be tempted to begin binding ourselves to the human expectations of measurable numeric increase.

But, there is yet another reason for me to smile. And even chuckle a little bit.

Even though we refused to keep statistics, the few of us who were involved with managing these mailings recognized the names and addresses of the people we sent these materials to. It was unavoidable. Yes, in fact, we did see visitors. Yes, in fact, we did see prospects. Yes, in fact, we were blessed with new members. The reason I smile and chuckle, is this: of all the mailings we sent, this single Pentecost mailing, with all of its words, with all of its complex sentences, with all of its theological concepts, with all of the human logic hurled against it which would suggest “no one will ever read this, no one will ever come to your church as a result of this mailing” yielded more visitors than anything else “we had done” – all of the other mailings, all of the radio and television programs, all of the community involvement we engaged in. I know because I recognized the names in the guestbook. I know because a few families even came to church that day with these pamphlets in their hands, as if they were their tickets to church, saying, “We got this in the mail and wanted to come today.” And second behind this mailing, was the original quarterfold pamphlet we had developed for Good Friday, which had so many words on it that we couldn't fit it on an 8.5x11 inch sheet of paper, but had to go to 8.5x14 inches. In fact, in that case, one family, who never even visited, sent us a thank you note that included a picture of their daughter holding that Good Friday pamphlet. The advise of the Church Growth Movement is bunk. “What works then?”, one might ask. Word and Sacrament works. Nothing else works, so the more the better. And we know this because that's what the Bible says.

Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Easter

Easter Sunday: The Festival of Christ's Resurrection


In my previous post, entitled Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Good Friday, I promised to feature the postcard we distributed for Easter Sunday, mailing it in time for arrival late in Holy Week, either on Good Friday or Holy Saturday. Like the postcard developed for Good Friday, this Easter postcard was initially developed as a tri-fold pamphlet (8.5x11 inch sheet of paper folded twice), it included the full Resurrection account and apologetic material along with much different imagery. However, as we reviewed these mailings each year, adjusting and improving them, the decision was made to completely redevelop the Easter mailing with new artwork and a simpler message for this large postcard format.

But I also promised to include our rationale for who we selected to receive these mailings. Our resources were limited, so we couldn't mail them to everyone in the county... but there were doctrinal concerns involved, as well, so our selection wasn't entirely random, either.

To Whom Should We Tell the Gospel?
The answer is, Everyone. Law and Gospel, rightly divided and rightly used, applies to everyone equally – both believers and non-believers – and the Holy Spirit works equally in all who hear His Word to create and strengthen their faith. This is why a Lutheran Pastor, who preaches Law and Gospel every Sunday morning, doesn't have to work up a special theme-based series of sermons that applies to a unique segment of the population in order to be “relevant.” Law and Gospel teaches the saving message of Justification. Law and Gospel is always relevant, and the Holy Spirit always works, as He wills, through this Message: it is His Means of working. It doesn't matter if a person is a believer or not, the pastor doesn't have to preach one kind of sermon that applies only to believers and a special one that is especially relevant only to unbelievers: in the latter case, the unbeliever needs to hear the Gospel so that the Holy Spirit can use it to create faith in his heart; in the former case, the believer needs to hear the Gospel so that the Holy Spirit can use it to strengthen his faith. They both need to hear the Message of Law and Gospel – and frequently, too. It is for this reason that Lutheran preaching follows this pattern, and for this reason that Lutheran preaching is always Evangelical. So it is with any communication of this Message, whether it comes to a person from a church pulpit, through a stained-glass window, or off of a sheet of paper. We have full confidence that the Holy Spirit works through this Means to produce and strengthen faith as He wills, and we are fully content whatever the results, as we see them, knowing that His Will is being accomplished through His Word.

So if we had unlimited funds, and since we were distributing a directly stated message of Scripture, we could have very easily been indiscriminate, and sent these mailings to everyone in the county. But our funds were limited, so we were forced to work through, as well as we could, the question of who we should send these mailings to.

Our chief concern was Evangelism – that is, telling the message of the Gospel to the lost. But who are the lost? People without faith. So how can we tell who has faith? We can't. Only God can see a person's faith. But we can see “evidence of faith,” and the Bible tells us the evidence to look for – a person's confession and his works. Observing such evidence is the basis for recognizing a person as a Brother. So how do we observe these evidences among people we've never met? The only thing we could think of was to find some way of determining whether they were members of a church. If they were, that is, if they had placed themselves under the spiritual oversight of a Shepherd, then we concluded that was sufficient “evidence of faith” to remove them from our Evangelism efforts. And this reasoning worked out well in another way: to fail to go to the effort of determining whether those to whom we endeavor to communicate the Gospel are already believers – that is, to remain willfully ignorant of this – is tantamount to interfering with another Shepherd's Divine Call, otherwise known as “Sheep Stealing.”

So how do we figure out who goes to church and who doesn't? The data told us that fifty percent of the residents of each county straddled by our community were in the “unchurched” category (county population minus reported church membership). Who were they, what were their addresses? We had no way of finding out. What we did know, however, was that it was reasonable to assume that new members of our community – people who had recently moved to our community from outside of it – were likely not yet “churched,” that is, even if they were believers, we felt that, with data that was up-to-date, we could safely assume they had not yet found a church home in their new community, and thus, they had not yet placed themselves under the spiritual care of a Shepherd, minimizing the likelihood that we would interfere with another Shepherd's Call by sending these materials to them. So, new members of our community became the recipients of these mailings, while we worked on additional ways of carrying the Gospel to the community.

[As an aside, let me observe how damaging the pressures of “being effective” are, and especially so once financial constraints are placed on the propagation of the Gospel. Financial benefactors usually invest their money with the expectation of measurable and specific return. The result is that in our Christian effort to carry the Gospel to the lost, we mistakenly take on the role of the One who seeks and finds them. That is to say, we know the Gospel works but we have limited funds, so to maximize the effectiveness of those funds we are tricked into thinking that we have to find the unbelievers before we can distribute the Gospel to them. This is wrong thinking, and in our world of fallen reality, we all fall victim to this thinking to some degree – the “I can do it” mode of thinking, that is. The truth is, Jesus already came to seek and find the lost, and He did it by giving us the Gospel in Word and Sacrament. All we are directed by God to do is herald the Message. We don't need to find the unbeliever first, the Gospel Message will find him.]

The next post in this series will feature the tri-fold brochure we sent in time for arrival before Pentecost Sunday – the third most important Holiday of the Church Year. It will also include a description of the results we expected to see from them. The simple answer is, “nothing” – but more on that next time.

Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Good Friday

In His Passion...

Christ Died for Sinners, Christ Died for You!
In my previous post, entitled Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Lent, I promised to feature the postcard we distributed during Holy Week, prior to Good Friday. Initially, having been first developed for a quarter fold pamphlet (8.5x14in sheet of paper folded twice), it included the full Passion account and additional imagery, along with the image and explanation pictured at left. Over time, however, and for several reasons, it was reduced to this large postcard format. Again, as with the Lenten postcard featured in our previous post, the congregation is not at all on display. There is no hint of self-promotion, no invitation to the reader to “visit us because of us” contained in it. Instead, it's all about Jesus. All that is said about the congregation is on the reverse side: the address and phone number of the congregation, a list of service times and travel directions to the church. That's it.

But I also promised to include some explanation for the criteria we used to determine the level of content we composed for these mailings. As with the Lenten postcard, there are lots of words here, some big words, too. There is a reason for that.

The community in which this congregation is located straddles the border of two, principally rural, western Wisconsin counties: the south end of town is in one county, the north end is in another. The western border of these counties is also the State border, immediately to the west of which is a Minnesota county that was listed during the 1980's and 1990's as one of the top ten richest counties in the nation. Beginning in the late 1990's, property and personal income tax advantages began to draw many high-income families from eastern Minnesota into western Wisconsin, and to encourage this exodus once it had begun, considerable investment in the development of utility infrastructure and optimistic community planning likewise began to dominate the docket of every village, town, and city council in the area. To support community investment, property taxes began to rise proportionately throughout this time period. Significant increases in housing costs also occurred. Interestingly, by 2005, the average wage in this congregation's community was on the order of $10/hr (a full 12% lower than the state average), while the income required to support the average home in this community had grown to approximately $35/hr – this statistic was supplemented by data suggesting that most residents (61%) were employed outside of the local area (mostly in Minnesota). Notably, among new residents, 40% of married adult females were categorized as homemakers. Hence, as a result of continued tax advantages and community investment, these counties saw an average growth of 30% over the decade beginning in the late 1990's, and this growth was mostly due to the influx of well-educated, successful professionals, a significant proportion of whom were heads of single wage-earner households.

On top of this, the community itself is host to a University that is well-regarded in the fields of education, agriculture and others. It is no surprise, then, to learn that the rate of college degree attainment in this area is over twice the State average (over 50% of the population), and the rate of advanced degree attainment is nearly triple the State average.

Having studied our community, we not only thought it safe to err on the side of more words than fewer, we thought it advisable to regard people we had not met with a dignity befitting educated people – by actually assuming that this is what they were (if it doesn't right now, this may make more sense after our next post). So there is no suggestion here that every congregation ought to copy, verbatim, what our congregation had done – this is not “evangelism in a box” by any means! However, my hope is that, as I describe the kind of research we did, and as I describe how and why we made the decisions we did, it will become clear (a) that our effort was calculated to do one thing only, to substantively and directly communicate the message of Law and Gospel as broadly as we could given our limited resources, and (b) to describe the process of developing such materials well enough that Lutheran congregations desiring to do the same for themselves will have in the examples I give, some concepts to apply on their own.

The next post in this series will feature the postcard we sent late in Holy Week, for arrival either on Good Friday or Holy Saturday: the Easter postcard (it doesn't have as many words – not nearly). It will also include a description of our rationale for who we selected to receive these mailings. Our resources were limited, so we couldn't mail them to everyone in the county... but there were doctrinal concerns involved, as well, so our selection wasn't random, either. More on that next time.

Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Lent

In my previous post, entitled Confessing Scripture's Message: The Outreach Method of the confessional Lutheran, I promised a series of posts sharing a mass media outreach cycle developed by a WELS congregation, which does nothing more than communicate Law and Gospel to those who come into contact with the materials. It was the congregation that my wife and I were members of during the beginning and middle of last decade. As the congregation's leadership was contemplating some sort of organized evangelism effort in our community, it was suggested that the (now defunct) Board for Parish Services might have some useful information. Our pastor at the time acknowledged he had “some stuff” that had been sent to him over the years, disappeared into his office for about twenty minutes, and returned with a pile of pamphlets and booklets, etc., some of it newer, most of it yellowing, while very little of it looked used at all. He plopped it on the table and said,

“There. You can read through this, if you want. Basically, what it boils down to is this: if you want to draw more people to your congregation you need to have a reason for them to come. When people gather in groups, it is because they are celebrating something. A gathering of people is a social event, and a celebration is the most common purpose for people to gather. It's what people do. So, what this stuff will tell you is, if we want to get people to come here, we need to come up with a reason to celebrate, and then invite people to the celebration.”

He left us with the material, fairly confident (it turns out) how our evaluation would conclude. We looked carefully through some of it, especially the “evangelism in a box” type stuff – you know, the materials developed in an office at headquarters that get's mailed out to every congregation with the expectation that they actually deliver it to homes in their own community. It was all “lowest common denominator” type stuff, having a quality far lower than anything we thought that we had envisioned. We perused the rest of the material. We knew that Pastor was no Church Growth advocate. That we had even heard the phrase “Church Growth Movement,” knew what it meant, and knew it was something we wanted to avoid, is a testament to that fact. In the end, we found ourselves depositing the materials back in Pastor's office. We had no use for it, just has our pastor never really had.

Do Christians have Anything to Celebrate?
Still, there was an element of truth in how Pastor summarized the advice contained in that thick stack of paper. When people gather, it is usually for a celebration of some sort. “Okay. So why do we gather every Sunday?”, we wondered. “What's different about our weekly gathering around the Word and Sacraments, if it is not reason enough for people to celebrate? Are we 'celebrating' anything at all on Sunday?” The answer, after we thought about it, was “Yes, of course we are celebrating! We are celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ – God Himself manifest in the flesh, Who lived perfectly under God's Law, Who carried the sins of the World to the Cross, Whose atoning death on the Cross paid the penalty for those sins, and Who, on the basis of His completed work, promises forgiveness, life and salvation to all who receive it through faith.” We believers have this faith, and with it, the Promises of Christ attending it. This is the reason we celebrate every Sunday morning, and no one should join us for any other, less important, reason! How stupid we felt, then, at having been misdirected by advice which indicated to us that we needed to invent some other reason to celebrate on Sunday, in order that visitors would feel like coming our church. If visitors are going to join us Lutherans in celebration on Sunday morning, then they should want to do so for the same reasons as we Lutherans. There is positively no good reason on the planet for us to change our reasons for gathering, as any change serves only to significantly reduce the importance of our celebration. In such a case, we might as well be the ones to stay home.

Celebrating with Christians Everywhere, through the Church Year
This realization was reinforced as we looked in the hymnal for indication of the celebration we engage in, some clue – maybe in the liturgy??, maybe the pericope??, maybe the.... Church Calendar?? Yes, that was it. The Church Calendar. Littered throughout the Calendar, if one cares to look, are terms like “Festival” and “Feast.” The Church has long known that Christians have very good reason to celebrate, and over the millenia has supplied copious Festivals and Seasons, in addition to every Sunday morning, throughout the Church Year, as opportunities to gather and celebrate – opportunities centering on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This further impressed upon us how fully misleading it was to have had it suggested to us that we needed to invent some “relevant” reason to gather, which would attract visitors on Sunday morning. Instead, we decided to follow the example the the historical Church, to celebrate as it always had, and broadcast our reasons for celebrating to the community.

So this became our theme. We used the Seasons and Festivals of the Church Year as a pretense for initiating unsolicited communication with members of our community through mail – to tell them about the Season or Festival (it was educational) and why it was important (it was evangelical). Each mailing included not only words, but, since we had a competent artist at our disposal, custom artwork that was designed to tell the same message as the words. Thus the words, and accompanying images, reinforced one another. Some mailings had more words, some had fewer, some were better written than others. Over the years, as we evaluated the mailings and their content, the format of the mail changed (from small postcards to tri-fold and quarter-fold brochures to large postcards), the content was improved, some mailings were added, and others dropped. I'm sure that many could still find room in them for improvement. By the time my involvement ended, we were using the format of the large-postcards, mailing cards for Ash Wednesday (Lent), Good Friday (Passion of Christ), Easter (Resurrection), Reformation (Justification), and Advent/Christmas, and had plans to add Epiphany, to redevelop Pentecost (which had been developed and used as a tri-fold brochure, but had not been redeveloped in the large postcard format), and to separate Advent and Christmas into different cards. Over the next several posts, I will be sharing with you Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost (the tri-fold), Reformation, and Advent/Christmas, and along the way, share details about how we determined who would receive these mailings, what criteria we used to determine the level of content, how they were written and approved for distribution in the community, what we expected would be accomplished by sending them, etc. Today, I begin with the first mailing that we developed, a card that would be delivered in the days just prior to Ash Wednesday:

What is Lent?

In mid-western United States, nearly everyone has heard of Lent. That is, they've at least heard the word. They also know approximately when Lent occurs – usually about March. They also know what happens during Lent – fish goes on sale everywhere. True, many people know more about Lent that just this, but for most who have at least heard the word, this is about the extent of their understanding. Knowing this, we decided to write a mailing that would at least appeal to curiosity as Lent was beginning – when fish all of a sudden goes on sale, and people leave from work in the middle of the day on a Wednesday, and return an hour later with a black smudge on their foreheads. In addition to piquing their curiosity, such a mailing also tells the message of Law and Gospel. We expected nothing other than the Holy Spirit's work though this Means, to prick consciences and to create or strengthen faith. Maybe we would see some of the people we sent these cards to, maybe we wouldn't, but we knew for a fact that apart from our direct use of the Means of Grace, the Holy Spirit would not work in anyone who received contact from us via this, or any, medium.

The next post in this series will feature the postcard we sent during Holy Week, prior to Good Friday. It will also include some explanation for what criteria we used to determine the level of content we composed for these mailings – there are lots of words here, some big words, too. This was not done without thought and research, however. More on that next time.

Confessing Scripture's Message: The Outreach Method of the confessional Lutheran

The final edition of Rev. Spencer's “Getting Right to the Point” series was posted on Sunday. Begun in August, these posts are a series of newspaper ads which are run by his congregation over the course of the year – one every two weeks for a total of 27 ads. For those who missed the series, or popped in sometime in the middle of the series and didn't understand what was going on, here is a listing of those posts:

There Is Such a Thing As Objective Truth!	Jesus Is The Only Way To Heaven!
Every Human Life Is Sacred!	Church Isn't Group Therapy or Mere Entertainment!
Surprise – Lent Is Not All About Us!	Paying For Our Sins Was Expensive!
It’s The Lord’s Supper, Not Ours!	The Resurrection of Jesus is a Fact – of Faith!
Christ Is In Control!	Prayer Is Worship, and That's a Fact!
“Born Again” = Believer in Jesus – PERIOD!	The One and Only True God Is the Holy Trinity!
Marriage Is Defined By God!	Baptism Means To Apply Water – Any Way You Choose!
Homosexuality Is Against God's Will – Like It or Not!	Are We Really “One Nation Under God?”
Don’t Take A Vacation From The Lord!	Yes, Our Church Is The Only “Right” Church!
Too Much Education Can Be A Dangerous Thing!	God Put Us Here To Work – For Him and His Truth!
Please Don’t Pray To Angels!	Believe It or Not – The Church Does Not Just Want Your Money!
Martin Luther’s Reformation Was Not A Revolution!	There Is No Such Thing As The Millennium!
Thank God for Who and What He Is!	Christmas Is NOT a Pagan Holiday!
This New Year May Be Your Last!

I, for one, found this series to be a refreshing example of truly Confessional outreach and evangelism. It stands in stark contrast to contemporary Church Growth recommendations which impress upon congregations the use of gimmicks of various sorts, the sole purpose of which is to draw a crowd – like advertisements for special events, entertaining worship, and/or social services of various sorts, all of which amount to little more than self-promotion – and from which the message of Scripture is conspicuously absent or shunted off into the background. Not so in this series, where communicating the teaching of Scripture is central and unobstructed, and distributing that teaching as widely as possible is the sole motivation behind it. Rev. Spencer even admitted to us in private,

“Can’t even say how many hundreds of thousands of mailings I’ve done over the years! Plus billboards, plus bus ads, plus fair booths, plus you-name-it. Even put a 'boiler-room' in the fellowship hall for a month – nine additional phone lines, twenty members calling every night for a month – hit thousands of homes; got mostly answering machines.

“From all of it – never one single solitary soul walked through the door of our church because of any of this stuff, not one...

“But... got some great members who came out of the blue during those times. 'No, sorry, didn’t see your ad... mailing... billboard... get your phone call... don’t know what you’re talking about. The wife and I were just looking for a place to go to church and thought we’d try this one.' Others planted, I watered, God gave the increase.

“Just do the work – God will bless it when and where and how and IF He sees fit.”

Given this attitude – an attitude expecting, quite correctly, that no measurable growth in the Church will result from man's efforts, that such growth is exclusively the work of the Holy Spirit – I consider Rev. Spencer's distinctly Confessional approach to doing “outreach and evangelism” in his “Getting Right to the Point” series to be among the finest examples of Christian Stewardship I've seen. If one has been granted limited tangible resources by his Master, and, desiring to be a good steward, is looking to invest those limited resources in His Master's interests to produce for Him the “greatest return,” what investment vehicle should the good steward use? How about that vehicle which the Master Himself has promised the steward, “Will not return to Me void.” (Is. 55:11)? What a complete waste of resources it is, then, when a steward expends the limited resources God has given him in his own interests instead, by using evangelistic methods devoid of Scripture's message and therefore having no such guarantee by God at all, methods which are primarily designed to produce a tangible return which pleases the steward; and how fraudulent it is when the steward claims that his interests are really His Master's interests, when the truth is really the opposite.

The Means of Grace are always Central to Lutheran Practice – even in Outreach and Evangelism
For those relatively new to the controversy over the intrusion of ideas and methods from the Church Growth Movement into Lutheran congregations – yes, even WELS congregations – rest assured, neither the controversy nor the public discussion is anything new. For example, the blog Bailing Water was active for several years through the latter half of last decade, dedicated to discussions over issues concerning trends in doctrine and practice in confessional Lutheranism, especially in the WELS. Although not really very active anymore, the blog owner still maintains it as a “Confessional and historical resource”, and it remains so for those desiring background on issues that have since been taken up by Intrepid Lutherans. I mention Bailing Water because the distinctly Confessional nature of Rev. Spencer's “Getting Right to the Point” series, reminds me of commentary following a 2008 Bailing Water post entitled, Growing Our Churches, in which a commenter shared the fruit of his congregation's multi-year study into the issue of congregational evangelism. Excerpts from his commentary are worth considering today:

Preamble...
The Holy Spirit works by Means of the Gospel in Word and Sacrament to produce and strengthen faith. This is what we believe, teach, and confess. It is what we live by. So when Christians consider evangelism, what we are concerned with is that the message of Law and Gospel is received by those with whom we communicate, that the Holy Spirit may work in them through His message, and draw them into relationship with Him. As a congregation, our further concern is that we use our resources in the most efficient way possible, to meaningfully carry this message to as many people as possible. Indeed, this is the commission Christ left us, it is the reason we gather together to be equipped and emboldened, that together we may carry out this task for the sake of Christ... Following the example of the Apostle Paul, who studied the people and culture of Athens before addressing them at Mars Hill, the start of this project was the culmination of nearly two years of research and assessment regarding the nature of our congregation and community, and also regarding past and present changes and future trends in our community and congregation. It was also the culmination of study and application of Christian teaching to the question of leading a congregation in the task of evangelism. Such study was intended to help us determine what, for our congregation, (a) constitutes genuine opportunities for evangelism in our community, and to (b) develop a strategy for exploiting those opportunities at the corporate level, that (c) would also remain valid going forward. The result was a three-phased approach attempting to balance mass appeal methods with individual contact that functions well in a corporate setting...

Concerning Mass Appeal
...Then we considered the question of what to communicate. The objective we settled on was to communicate a clear, complete, yet concise Law and Gospel message. Our hope with this objective was to put the Means of Grace – the Gospel message – in the hands of everyone who received communication from us, that the Holy Spirit might work through this means to create or strengthen their faith. This was especially critical to us. Given that we were expending resources that God had provided us with, we considered that communication attempts devoid of the Gospel’s message, or providing an unclear or incomplete message, would have been a wasteful use of these resources. Given the likelihood that most, if not all, recipients would at most only read the message, or only part of it, we considered, and concluded that merely sending invitations to join us in worship (where the recipient would have to respond ...before s/he benefited from the Holy Spirit’s work through the Gospel), had a much lower likelihood of accomplishing our goal, which was to meaningfully communicate the Gospel to as many people as possible. That is, while we could eliminate or significantly reduce our communication of the Gospel via this medium, and instead replace it with content about our congregation, like our helpful ministries, our adult and youth programs, our meaningful worship experience, and, of course, our special people, we could probably draw more visitors. But far fewer people would actually receive the Gospel in a meaningful way. No, this is precisely the type of Church Growth strategy that we consciously chose to reject. Such a strategy requires us to make the Gospel a secondary message, while making Us the primary message, drawing people to Us on false pretenses, based on what they stand to gain by association with Us, rather than with God. It significantly reduces our representation of, and actual communication of, the Gospel. It is not Biblical evangelism. Direct and consistent use of Law and Gospel is, however, and it is this approach we embraced and have maintained. Knowing that the Holy Spirit would work through the Gospel to produce or strengthen the faith of those who receive the Gospel, it was our hope that He would also draw them into a relationship with us. Whether or not this would happen, however, it was still our Joy and privilege to share the Gospel with them...

Concerning Face-to-Face Evangelism
...But why is face-to-face communication necessary to begin with? After all, if our concern is that the message of the Gospel is received, there are many ways for a message to be received that do not require people to directly interface with other people. It must be admitted that this question did occur to us. The answer, however, was clear. While the Great Commission was given to the Church, the task of evangelism was also directly given to individuals. Even in the context of the organization we call “the congregation,” the clear emphasis in Scripture is people personally carrying out this task and communicating the Good News. In addition, while the most effective method of propagating a message is mass appeal (a valid and important tool used even by the Apostles), the most effective method of communicating a message is person to person. Thus, mass communication and individual communication are both methods that need to be used, but which require a balance favoring person to person communication. Even our use of mass appeal should be calculated to favor personal communication – it should be clear that people are responsible for the communication, not just an organization, and the communication should invite further, personal inquiry...

Finally, the conclusion
...With the issue of resource expenditure, the question arises, "What is our measure of success?", "How do we know that we are doing any good?" This is a difficult question to answer, as we must admit that in this life we will never know what benefit, specifically, most of our evangelistic effort has been. Those who hear the Word of God as a result of our effort may be at any stage in the Holy Spirit's process of creating and strengthening faith – in some cases we may be just scattering seed, in others we may be watering sprouts, and in a few cases we may actually be doing the harvesting. We know that all Scripture is inspired of God, and is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. We also know that God's Word will accomplish the purpose for which He sent it, that it will not return to Him void. Therefore, to the extent that we use the Scriptures to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, we can have every confidence that we are doing "some good", employing the Means of Grace and giving opportunity to the Holy Spirit to work. One thing the Board of Evangelism has been adamant about is that correlating success in evangelism to an increase in collected revenue is strictly out of the question. We are engaged in the all important work of delivering the Gospel message to those in our community solely for the sake of Jesus Christ, and we look for no return on this effort – particularly financial return. We also cannot use an increase in congregation membership as a measure of our success. Our objective is not an increase in number, our objective is to joyfully communicate the Gospel as widely and as effectively as possible. It is the Holy Spirit’s job to produce faith through the Gospel and to draw new Christians into fellowship with other believers. He will produce an increase when and where He sees fit. Whether this means increase in our congregation or not, our commission to preach the Gospel remains clear, and it is our joy and our privilege to carry it out to the best of our ability.

Indeed, the Holy Spirit works by Means of the Gospel in Word and Sacrament to produce and strengthen faith. This is what we believe, teach, and confess. It is what we live by. So our concern is that the message of Law and Gospel is received by those with whom we communicate, that the Holy Spirit would work through this Means. Therefore, since our job is communication, it is reasonable to put forth some effort to assess how well we communicate. Do those with whom we wish to communicate actually receive our message? That is the success we desire, and to measure it, we can only rely on feedback from those with whom we attempt to communicate. Whether via telephone, land mail, email, website visit, personal conversation, or a visit to our congregation, whether they provide positive or negative comments, or merely inquire further, all of these measures constitute feedback indicating that someone we have attempted to communicate with has received our message – the Gospel’s message. Communication is difficult, as is reaching our intended audience with a specific message. That is why it is important that all our communication be seasoned with the Good News...

There is more information shared by this commenter, and others, in the thread following that post on Bailing Water – some of it is good, some of it less than good. Regardless, it is important to point out that Rev. Spencer is not the only one to independently discover that our job is simply to communicate Scripture's message and to let the Holy Spirit take care of the rest – a hard fact to land upon in pop-Christian environments aggressively pushing man's methods of drawing crowds as necessary to “man's task of gaining souls for heaven.” The fact is, others have landed upon the simple truth demonstrated by Rev. Spencer, as well. In fact, over the next couple of weeks, we will be sharing with our readers ANOTHER example of an evangelism series, produced by a WELS congregation, which flies in the face of advice emanating from the Church Growth Movement, doing almost nothing but placing a substantive message of Law and Gospel directly in the hands of those they attempt to reach. No gimmicks. No crowd-pleasing programs. Nothing but the Offense of the Cross and the full expectation that the Holy Spirit will use that Offense to create and strengthen faith, and draw believers into fellowship with one another.

Stay tuned for more examples of confessional Lutheran evangelism – advice that you will probably not receive from any other source...

This New Year May Be Your Last!

Dear Readers,
 
This is the final piece in the "Getting Right to the Point" series. Thank you for your patience - and your comments! Once again, if a Pastor or congregation would like to use the series in some form of outreach program, please feel free to do so. All I ask is that you don't edit the content without my permission. Thanks!
 
Take care and God bless!
 
Pastor Spencer

Getting Right to the Point!

This New Year May Be Your Last!

No one, except God, knows what tomorrow will bring, we all know that. If that is true of the next day, how much more so the next week, the next month, and the next year! Perhaps it is for that reason that at the end of the year we spend most of our time looking back. In fact, the favorite song for this time of year, "Auld Lang Syne," actually means "old long since," or more accurately, "long, long, ago." We focus on the past because we can only guess about the future. 

The one basic question each and every human being needs to answer as we peer into the unknown is this: If God would ask you why He should let you into His heaven, what would you say? If the next year is your last – and it may be for any of us – nothing else matters nearly as much!

The answer given in the Bible is very clear and very simple. St. Paul writes, "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9) That's it. That's the answer, plain and simple.

So, what will your top "New Year's Resolution" be? If you have this faith, ask God to help you keep it. If you don't, starting looking to find it, because it is what you will need if next year is your last. And that's the point! 

Christmas Is NOT a Pagan Holiday!

Getting Right to the Point!

Christmas Is NOT a Pagan Holiday!

Contrary to popular opinions we hear a lot today, Christmas did not come from the Roman festival of “Saturnalia.” It is true that during the brief rule of the Roman Emperor Aurelian, he attempted to institute a lavish festival around what he called “The Birth of the Unconquered Sun,” on December 25th, A.D. 274. But the fact is that he created this new celebration only to try and breathe new life into Roman idol-worship, which was dying.

Indeed, Aurelian’s pronouncement came after Christians had already been associating December 25th with the birth of Christ for decades in various parts of the Empire. The truth is, this so-called “Sol Invictus” festival was just a feeble attempt to create a pagan alternative to a celebration that was already important to believers in Jesus Christ, God’s true and only Son.

Therefore, Christians were not imitating the pagans, but the pagans were imitating them! So, believers in Jesus as God, Savior, and Lord can celebrate Christmas with great joy! Don't let people try to spoil your birthday party for Jesus! Gloria in excelsis Deo! And that's the point!

Thank God for Who and What He Is!

Getting Right to the Point!

Thank God for Who and What He Is!

Have you ever noticed that historically speaking many proclamations of thanks often take place after a great tragedy or disaster? In both Jamestown and Plymouth a special day of prayer was held AFTER most of the inhabitants had already died! Why? Because it is at these times that we humans realize how puny we are and how great and powerful God is; how evil and sinful we are, and how wise and merciful God is. So, we very often thank God that things were not a lot worse.

But, now imagine for a minute having another god like Baal or Odin or Shiva, or some other false and non-existence idol like those of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. These are gods who can’t do miracles. These are gods who lie, cheat, steal, murder and rape, who are vain and weak. They are gods who are shifting as sand, without honor, unworthy of respect. They are gods who are deaf, blind, asleep, gone, and dead. In other words, they don't even exist!

Ours is the only true God who is always constant, faithful, good, powerful, kind, loving, giving, and wise. He applies His Son’s death to our sins. He gives us faith and then accepts us because of that faith. He welcomes us with open arms into His eternal family. He rules all things to create, strengthen, and preserve our faith. He works tirelessly to bring us safely to heaven forever. This is the one and only God Who was and is and always will be. We thank Him for being Who and what He is! That’s the best Thanksgiving! And that's the point!

There Is No Such Thing As The Millennium!

Getting Right To The Point!

There Is No Such Thing As The Millennium!

The term “millennialism” can include many false beliefs: That Christ will return visibly to earth a thousand years before the end of the world and rule over this world in a political sense; That before The End Christians will enjoy special prosperity; That before Judgment Day a number of Christians will be “raptured,” and escape the tribulation; That before the Last Day a universal conversion of the Jews will take place; and many other wrong ideas.  

But Scripture teaches: That the kingdom of Christ on earth will remain in tribulation until the very end, Acts 14:22; John 16:33; 18:36; Luke 9:23; 14:27; 17:20-37; Second Timothy 4:18; Hebrews 12:28; Luke 18:8; That the second visible coming of the Lord will be His final coming to judge the quick and the dead, Matthew 24:29, 30; 25:31; Second Timothy 4:1; Second Thessalonians 2:8; Hebrews 9:26-28; That there will be but one resurrection of the dead, John 5:28; 6:39, 40; That the Last Day is unknown, even to Jesus Himself, Matthew 24:42; 25:13; Mark 13:32, 37; Acts 1:7; That there will be no conversion en masse, of the Jewish nation, Romans 11:7; Second Corinthians 3:14; Romans 11:25; First Thessalonians 2:16.

Therefore the teaching of Millennialism not only contradicts the Bible, but also gives a false idea of the kingdom of Christ, turns the minds of believers upon mere earthly hopes, and leads people to look upon the Bible as a mysterious and obscure book, which it most certainly is not! It is very clear about the end of the world. And that's the point!

Martin Luther’s Reformation Was Not A Revolution!

Getting Right to the Point!

Martin Luther’s Reformation Was Not A Revolution!

“re-form: 1. to make better by removing faults and defects; to correct.”

It was never Luther’s intent to create a new Christian church or divide Christianity into the myriad sects we see today. All he wanted was the leaders of the church to recognize the abuses and false teachings that had crept into the church and take steps to remove them.

Some of the most serious false doctrines Luther attacked included: elevating human opinion, such as the decrees of Popes and Church Councils, as equal with Holy Scripture; salvation by works, including penance, indulgences, purgatory, etc., instead of by grace alone through faith; and the Lord’s Supper as a good work of man, rather than a gracious gift of God. These were and still are aberrations from God’s Word, and put precious souls in great spiritual danger.

Father Martin was not starting a revolution against the church, nor was he rebelling against God. He was upholding God’s Word and the saving work of Jesus Christ. That’s what he stood for, and we here still stand solidly and completely with him, and with God! And that's the point!

Believe It or Not – The Church Does Not Just Want Your Money!

Getting Right to the Point!

Believe It or Not – The Church Does Not Just Want Your Money!

The church – that is, God – wants your LIFE! First off, please understand that everything we are and everything we have is given to us by God. Thus, a believer will serve God out of gratitude for all these gifts. It's not how much we have, but what we do with what we have that’s important. Peter says, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” (First Peter 4:10)

Truly, God’s gift of life carries great responsibilities with it. Our lives are sacred trusts. We are stewards of those lives and God wants us to use them to accomplish His purposes in this world. Paul writes, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God!” (First Corinthians 10:31)

Our entire life is a partnership with God. We cannot “give” Him anything, but we can fulfill His purpose by using our gifts wisely, and living the Gospel. True, God's church here on earth needs earthly offerings to do its work. That's to be expected. And any and all offerings, whatever their type or size, are always welcome. But God wants YOU first, only after that, what’s in your wallet! And that's the point!