Unity

Newsletter article for May 2004

© 2004 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

“How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!” (Psalm 133:1)

It is no big secret that there is a decided lack of unity at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. This certainly cannot please God, who wishes unity among His people just as He has unity in Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The blessings of unity are obvious. Peace and harmony among God’s people is certainly “good and pleasant” as David writes in the Psalm. The curses of disunity are also obvious. Anger, distrust, accusations and similar things are very unsettling and difficult to deal with. Everyone can agree that unity is better than disunity, but then we must ask, “What is the basis for this unity?”

The Formula of Concord was written around 1580 during a time of disunity in the church. It sought to explain what ought to be the basis for unity in the church. The Formula goes on at length discussing several issues about which there had been disagreements, but a simple summary about what brings about true unity in the church is found in Article X where it says that there should be unity among Christians “as long as there is mutual agreement in doctrine and in all its articles as well as in the right use of the holy sacraments.” The true unity in the Christian church is found in agreement with the teachings of Holy Scripture, no less, and no more.

This should first make perfect sense to us because Holy Scripture is God’s Word, and if we cannot agree about the truth of God’s Word, then either one or both of the parties in the dispute have put themselves in opposition to God. There can never be peace when people set themselves against God, even when there is agreement to disagree about the truth of God’s Word.

It would seem a simple thing to base unity on agreement about the doctrinal teachings of God’s Word, and it would be, but for the interference of sin. Because all people are sinners we don’t want to believe what God tells us. We would rather seek to justify ourselves rather than admit that we are wrong and submit to our Lord’s instruction. This is why Jesus prayed to God the Father, “May [those who believe in me] be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent me and have loved them even as You have loved me.” (John 17:23) Jesus knew that believers are sinners and need God to bring them to “complete unity.” Christ’s purpose for this unity is so that unbelievers would know that Jesus has been sent by God to bring forgiveness and salvation to them so that they would trust in Him and be saved.

St. Paul encouraged the church in Ephesus when He wrote, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit– just as you were called to one hope when you were called– one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Eph. 4:3-6) Here again, the basis for our unity is in the true teachings of God’s Word. Scripture teaches that there is only one Lord, and there is only one saving faith in that Lord, and one Holy Baptism where that Lord makes us His own people because God is Lord of all. To deny the Lord’s means of grace is to deny Him, and to deny Him is to cause disunity and discord, and, given what Jesus said above, lead people away from their Savior toward their condemnation.

Fortunately Jesus has taken steps to prevent this. He has provided us with shepherds to keep us on the path that leads to eternal life. St. Paul again says, “It was [Christ] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph. 4:11-13) Here again, the unity comes through the “one faith” in Jesus Christ, and “the knowledge of the Son of God”. This “knowledge” refers to the correct teaching of Scriptural doctrine. This is one of the main reasons why the Lutheran Church insists on an educated clergy. Pastors need to remain faithful to God’s Word so that they can keep Christ’s sheep headed in the proper direction. The “rod and staff” of the shepherd is a comfort in Psalm 23 because the shepherd leads us “through the valley of the shadow of death” in safety as we follow Christ to salvation.

May God bless the Pastor of our congregation to show us the true path to salvation as God gives us in Holy Scripture, and may God bless the congregation to hear with the ears of little children (Matt. 18:3) so that they may dwell in unity in Christ’s Kingdom.

Lutheran Church Growth

by Carl F. W. Walther (The first president of what later became the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod) The following is from Walther’s 1883 address at the dedication of the new Concordia Seminary building in St. Louis. The full text occurs in Concordia Journal, July 1989 (Vol. 15:3), pp. 222-230.

Newsletter article for August 2003

When our synod, the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio , and Other States, thirty-six years ago met for the first time in the God-blessed city of Chicago , it was a small, despised little band of only twelve poor congregations. The church which in this country still called itself Evangelical - Lutheran lay in utter ruin. The teaching of our church was unknown territory for it. The small number of preachers who still knew something about it and wanted to stick to it were considered people with limited mental capacities, and the hope was that they would soon die out. The Lutheran Confessions were hardly known even by name anymore, and they were considered documents of earlier unenlightened times, now long obsolete. Instead of Luther’s doctrine in this church that called itself Lutheran, the teaching of Zwingli and obvious rationalism was in vogue, coupled with fanatic methods of conversion. Hardly a single preacher had an orderly call into office according to God’s Word; almost all of them were engaged only for one or a few years. Immortal souls were entrusted to unprepared, immature men on a trial basis, while Christian parochial schools were abolished and Lutheran youth were in typically heathen fashion entrusted to an irreligious state. In short, the so-called Lutheran Church of our country was dead at that time, the laughingstock of all the sects, who, like hungry nightingales, came for the funeral.

When our synod at that time came forward with the watchword then unheard of: Gottes Wort und Luthers Lehr vergehet nun und nimmermehr [“God’s Word and Luther’s doctrine pure will now and evermore endure”], it was not only the anti- Christian papacy, not only the united - evangelical community of mixed religions, not only the fanatic sects, but above all the local so-called Lutheran church that would lead to Rome, and with great certainty they predicted an early, inglorious extinction for us, an outlandish growth and un-American intrusion.

And it is true, our prospects were really very dreary. To want to transplant the Old Lutheran church, which submitted to every letter of the Word of God, to this land of untamed love for liberty seemed in real fact to be a completely hopeless, worse than foolish undertaking. But far from letting itself be made to falter, our synod did not ask: What must we do to become large and numerous? But it only asked: What must we do to be found faithful before the Lord of the church? Our synod knew that success was not in its hands. Success is therefore left to God.

And what happened? The very evil plans of our enemies did not materialize for them. When the congregations saw that the preachers of our synod did not preach a new doctrine but proclaimed nothing but what they, the congregations, had learned from Luther’s Small Catechism; when the congregations saw that the preachers of our synod brought them the greatest message that a preacher can provide, namely the certainty of the grace of God and their salvation; when the congregations saw that the preachers of our synod were not trying to lord it over them in popish fashion but on the contrary first tried to get them to understand their wonderful Christian freedom and their holy congregational rights; when the congregations saw that the preachers of our synod did not seek their own temporal advantages but were interested only in immortal souls; when the congregations saw that the preachers of our synod prefer to suffer hunger and anxiety, prefer to suffer shame, persecution, and exile rather than to depart from “God’s Word and Luther’s doctrine” even in one letter; behold, then one congregation after another joined our synodical union. The mustard seed took root, shot up joyfully, and gradually assumed the stature of a mighty tree, under the shady boughs of which the birds of the air live. The Old Lutheranism, scoffed at because of its original diminutive stature, yes, even laughed to scorn, gradually, among the hot battles in America , became a power so that finally everyone who wanted to be really Lutheran had to get used to the idea of agreeing with the doctrine of our synod. The old treasured books of our church, in the forefront its confessional writings and the works of Luther, were dusted off, carried from house to house, and enthusiastically read and studied by our people. Like a prairie fire that true Lutheran faith and Lutheran life and conduct not only again spread irresistible across the land, but God also granted us unity of faith and a joyfulness of faith together with an intimate brotherly love, so that the days of Luther seemed to have come back among us. Wherever a little Lutheran church grew up like a fruit tree, even on a lonely prairie, there immediately also a little Lutheran schoolhouse grew up like a young shoot. The old pure songs, full of the power of faith and excitement of love, as they were sung by our fathers, resounded again with their charming old tunes. In short, the true Lutheran Church, for which dirges had already been sung all over the world, revived here of all places, came up out of the grave, and in more than a thousand places in our great union of states planted the victory banner of the pure Gospel. For years already the Macedonian call “Come over to help us” sounds in our ears from all directions. An ever increasing stream of Lutheran immigrants, also those of our German language, is flooding over our land and settling here, so that almost week after week new congregations are founded which to a large extent apply to us for teachers in church and school. And not only within our new fatherland, but even from the land of our forefathers, yes, even from the remotest countries of the earth that well-known call for help comes over to us and profoundly moves our hearts.

Everywhere doors are opened to us for entrance with the joyful news of the free grace of God in Christ for all sinners. Even though hundreds of workers have already been sent out into the great harvest from our institutions, the requests for such workers have on that account not become fewer in time but rather steadily more numerous, so that finally, with saddened hearts we have no longer been about to satisfy most of these requests. And so it finally also came about in this institutional building, that the present number of students, though insufficient, could no longer find room. A larger (Seminary) building became a matter of unavoidable necessity.

The Origin of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod

Newsletter article for October 2002

© 2002 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

In Germany in the mid-Nineteenth century there arose what could be called a “confessional movement” in the Lutheran Church. These people believed that the Historical Lutheran confessions of faith (collectively known as the Book of Concord) are a true explanation of God’s Word (The Holy Bible). It is sad (but accurate) to say that this movement arose, because the only way it could have arisen is that some time in the three centuries since the days of Martin Luther the faithfulness to God’s Word had receded, even in the very land that Luther began the reformation of the Church.

The problem was that the Reformed (Calvinist) churches had made large inroads into the Church in Germany, and in some instances they won the hearts and minds of the German people. In other instances the Reformed church won the heart and mind of the rulers, and that was all that was necessary. In the German province of Prussia, King Friedrich Wilhelm III decreed a union between the Lutheran and Reformed churches of Prussia, despite the fact that Prussia was overwhelmingly Lutheran. The resulting church was more Reformed, and less Lutheran, and faithful Lutherans had to struggle to keep their Churches free from the false teachings of Calvin.

In the 1830’s a pastor named Martin Stephan began to attract a following in Saxony. Pastor Stephan was a faithful Lutheran whose sermons were very faithful to Holy Scripture. He was very outspoken against the humanistic ideals of the age which undermined the authority of God’s Word, and he was a very effective leader. In 1838 he organized a group of several hundred faithful Lutherans (including several pastors) who believed that the only way they could openly worship God faithfully was to emigrate to America. They sold all they had and left their homes to set sail for America in five ships, the Amalia, the Copernicus, the Johann Georg, the Republik, and the Olbers. Tragically, the Amalia was lost at sea along with her 57 passengers, but 600 people arrived in Missouri in early 1839 on the remaining four ships.

Not long after they arrived it was discovered that Pastor Stephan had committed adultery with two young women and he was banished from their communities, taken across the Mississippi in a rowboat, and told never to set foot in Missouri again. The community was in quite a bit of turmoil wondering if they had sinned by following Stephan to America, and they wondered if they could be considered a Church now that their “Bishop” had proved unworthy and unfaithful. A young pastor named Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther diligently searched the Bible, the Book of Concord, and the writings of Martin Luther and determined that the misbehavior of their bishop did not invalidate their position in the church, because the church is not determined by people and their actions, but by Christ Himself, and His Word. Where Christ is, and where His Word is preached in truth and purity, there is the church. Rev. C.F.W. Walther soon became their spiritual leader and he became the first president of what would later become the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

The Lutherans in Missouri wanted to ensure the purity of their doctrine so they decided to conduct their worship and teaching in German. There were two reasons for this. First they saw that nearly all of the Lutherans who had settled in America previously had compromised their doctrine and were no longer teaching the pure Word of God, and were no longer faithful to the Book of Concord. The Previous American Lutherans had become “Americanized” rather than remaining “Lutheran” and the Missouri group attributed this to the use of the English language. The English reformation begun by King Henry VIII had followed a more Calvinist theology so the prevailing English expressions of the Christian faith (i.e. hymns and liturgical forms) reflected a theology which did not live up to the strict standards of the orthodox Lutheran teachings. On the other hand, by 1840 the Lutheran Church in Germany had already spent 300 years of teaching the Gospel and defining the terms (in German) and defending the faith against false teaching. Although this did not prevent enforced unionism in Prussia, nor did it prevent humanism from affecting others in Germany, they felt confident that holding to the German language would help keep their group from compromising the faith.

This desire for the purity of doctrine through the use of the German language was believed to be of the utmost importance. The desire was so strong that for nearly the first one hundred years of our Church’s existence German was the official language of worship and theological instruction from the Seminaries on down to the elementary schools. It took World War I (and American distrust of German speaking folk) to get the LCMS to begin to change to English on a large scale, and by the time of World War II the LCMS had mostly become an English speaking church. This reluctance to embrace English wasn’t just stereotypical German hard-headedness, but this was a recognition of the importance of the pure and proper teaching of God’s Word, and faithfulness to God.

In some ways we have come full circle. Fortunately Martin Stephan’s indiscretions were not a pattern of things to come. There have been other Lutheran pastors who have fallen into the sin of adultery, but these are usually dealt with properly, and it is not a pattern in our Church. The Church still must constantly be on guard against false teaching. This is not new. It has been true for each of the 150 years that the LCMS has been in existence, and even longer than that. The church has always had to be on guard against false teaching even since Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden. There is never a time nor a reason to be complacent about false teaching. The devil still prowls around like a roaring lion seeking for someone to devour. If he can get people to put their faith in themselves or in anything other than Christ then he will do so. The Gospel is of the utmost importance because it shows us Jesus Christ, and when we see Jesus for who He is, then we will believe and be saved. Christ is our life and our salvation, and there is none other. Let us hold fast to the truth, and pray that the church does the same.