Dear Lutheran Church Missouri Synod

I wanted to title this blog “Dear Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, any church really, but mostly the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod because that is the type of church I have been placed in.”  Kind of a long-winded title, so I knocked it down a bit.  I don’t think I need to worry about receiving a rebuttle from them because any good LCMS-er knows there is a dash between the LC and the MS. 

Before I start this letter to my church body I want to squash an indescribably stupid argument.  “If you don’t like it, then leave.”  Pretty much the same argument people use when I talk about the United States.  Same argument (almost) the religious folks used on Jesus, except their argument was “If you don’t like it, then we will convince Rome to hang you by your hands.”  The argument didn’t work on Him and it won’t work on me. 

I really feel that your name should be changed to The Lutheran Church – More Stuff.  That way you can keep the LCMS shortening.  Why the name change?  Because it fits the personality of this church so well.  “Wait, we like our Church, we are the one’s who have it right…Faith alone, Scripture alone and Grace alone.”  Really?  Is that what you believe?

Jesus talks about a time when His Father will judge all men.  The Father asks both the righteous and the unrighteous similar questions.  He wants to know how they reacted, or tells them how they reacted, to Him when he was hungry and needed food, when He was naked and needed clothing or when he was in Jail and needed a visit.  Here are some questions He does not say:

I wish you had read more books.

I wish you were stricter with your close communion policy.

You didn’t have enough church meetings or rules in your church constitution.

I was hoping you would build bigger buildings.

I wish you would have separated  yourselves from other church bodies more.

It would have been nice if you could have spent more of your time telling everyone how their theology was wrong and yours was right.

You could have been more picky about the hymns and the type of songs sung in your “worship” services.

Speaking of worship services I wish they would have been more unlike worship and as far from service as possible.

I really wanted more Latin taught in my grade schools, and I wish you would have done it faster so that the people would be more likely to have their kids go to school elsewhere.  (This is a shout out to a small Lutheran Church in rural Wisconsin, and the nonsense that their egotistical impersonal “shepherd”/mouth of the enemy that is leading them.)

I wish you would have bickered more about how the church was run and who did what in church.

I wish you had voted more about My will in your church, I am a huge fan of the most popular opinion.

I wish you had spent more on candles, windows and ornamental robes.

I wish you had been more clever with Pro-life posters and advertisements.

I wish you had alienated “sinners” more.

I wish you had been smarter.

I wish you made people feel more like they had to go to you to have My Word explained to them.

I wish you had kept a bigger monopoly on my kingdom, thank you for grossly overestimating your part in the Office of the Keys.

I wish you had been more judgemental.

I wish you would have been even more upset when you found out Dave Ellefson of MegaDeath was going to school to be a pastor.

I wish you would were more unwilling to change with My Will.

I wish you would have spoken more about “giving” in the hour people were listening to you for My sake.

I wish you had been a bigger supporter of a Nation, of troops, of a government of policies and generally stuff that had nothing to do with My Kingdom.

Some of these things happen through most churches, but many of them are significantly Lutheran Church or Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  We have a friend that would be classified as a “sinner” in church.  She actually did one of the pet sins that conservative American Christians look at as being one of the worst.  She went to church shortly after this.  She felt like everyone was staring at her and judging her and never felt more hated in her life.  Great story, right?  What if the church was actually known for love?  This is a judgment on the leaders of our church.  Shit rolls down hill and so does love.  You have fostered an environment that is so far from Christ, but yet you cover this up with a cheaply made, rubber mask of Jesus.

The environment that our church has created is not a House of Worship but it is an idol.  We have made the church the intercessor on behalf of the people.  Sounds like the Church that Luther broke away from.  A church is there to support THE CHURCH, the people.  A church is not there to rule the spiritual lives of the people.  You are not The Shepherd but just a sheep.  You are not The Light of the World but just a light in the world.  Stop hindering the work of His Kingdom here on earth.

There are some good leaders in the church though.  Notice I said some, not a lot.  If you think you are one of the good ones, then I am probably not speaking about you.  I recently read a letter to a church in California, that had been bickering between themselves about whether a pastor should be re-instated due to a problem in his life.  The letter was written by the president of the Southwest District.  This is a paraphrase, but it said something like this, “While you are fighting amongst each other, there are people dieing outside your church that do not know the Love of Christ.”  That is a great leader in Christ’s church.

My church has some fantastic leadership.  The pastor of my home church recognizes that he is a Christian leader first and a Lutheran Pastor second.  He realizes that a church that is here to maintain is a church that is on it’s deathbed, but that a church that is crying out to the community is a church that has Christ as the Head. 

It’s time to realize that being doctrinally or liturgically sound is garbage in Christ’s eyes, compared to Love and clothing, feeding and visiting His people (not “sinners”) when they need it.

And They Will Know We Are Christians By Our?

I’ve been whistling a lot lately.  I don’t know why.  I whistle while I work.  I whistle when I walk.  I whistle to my dog, Akon.  Yesterday I drove to the store and instead of listening to the radio, I whistled.  For some reason, yesterday the tune to “They will know we are Christians by our love” was in my head.

I came to a disturbing reality yesterday.  We are a people that no longer worship idols.  Isaiah speaks on God’s behalf and almost mocks the thought process of those that make idols.  He talks about how ludicrous it is that people worship things that he created.  Well, we in the American Church don’t have that so much anymore, but we still continue to worship His creation.  This new idol just isn’t made of metal or wood.  It is made of flesh and blood.

I often hear from our brothers and sisters in Christ that they hate the sin but not the sinner.  If this is true, why are we so quick to judge and hand over the sinner to The Enemy?  Your hate for any of the topics that the Conservative Right has battled against in each of the last decades has bled over the lines into a feeling of hatred and apathy for those you disagree with.

Jesus tells us to Love God and Love our neighbor.  When asked who our neighbor is, He tells a story to the Religious elite about a person that they view as lower than low, unclean, unworthy of entering their temple…a sinner.  So we are to Love those that we think stand for everything that we disagree with, so much so (according to the story) that it may affect our religious standing.

Let me give you an example of how The Church today is not living up to its call.  Yesterday I had a conversation with my boss.  She has a same-sex partner.  She goes to Church a couple times a year.  She has yet to go to Church with her family without getting petrified looks by those around her.  When I had applied, she was given a copy of my resume.  Most of the Schooling and volunteering and even work I have done in the last couple years has been Christ-Centered.  I asked her what she thought when she first saw all of that stuff.  She told me that she was afraid I was going to be like “the rest” of the Christians she had met.  When I was interviewed I stayed faithful to the Lord and spoke of love and acceptance when asked about diversity.  Now had I answered in a way that would “toe the line” of what Televangelists have been telling us since the TV was invented, I would probably not have been hired.  Not because I was a Christian, but because I would have been a disruption to everyone in the office.

Political beliefs, Church half-truths and self righteousness would have stood in the way of multiple chances to Love my neighbor.  Being a follower of The Way means loving and accepting and doing what it takes to be the Face of Christ to the World.  Because Christ has called my wife and me to live this life we have been his tool to many people over the last year and a half.

I wish I could tell you the number of lives touched by Him through us but after much contemplation, I feel like it would sound like boasting.  I will boast in the Lord but my writing style and limited vocabulary may not convey who I am correctly boasting about.

So how does this relate to our new idols of flesh and bone?  We are those Idols.  Christ calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  That’s it!  That’s our job.  When you look back over the last 30 years (I am only 32 so I can only look back so far, this probably goes back much further) it looks like loving our neighbor is an after-thought.  Almost like we will love our neighbor once they start believing what we believe.  The way we talk, the way we involve ourselves politically, the way we talk and the books we write all seem to say that we are on this earth to conquer Sin, Death and the Devil.  That’s not our job.  That’s Jesus’ job and oh by the way, He already did it!  Our job isn’t to abolish any sin, it’s to love our neighbor, feed the poor, care for the oppressed teach what Christ taught us and baptize.

Take a moment out of your day and think about your “favorite” sin.  You know the one.  The one that makes you vote the way you do, the one that pulls on your heart strings, and the one that you fight against.  Now look it up in the Bible.  Take a look at all the words surrounding it.  Chances are it is surrounded by a lot of sins that you personally struggle with.  Why are we fighting the one sin we see in others when we probably should be fighting the rest of the sins on that list in our own lives.

If the song that I have been whistling lately is true, then they will know that we are Christians by our love, by our Love.  Until we change the culture in our hearts and in our Church, maybe we should change the lyrics to “And they will know we are Christians by our judgment, anger, apathy, voting ballot, self righteousness and the ‘Jesus Fish’ on the back of our cars.”  It’s not as catchy and doesn’t work well with the tune, but in the Church and World today, it’s more realistic.