The King of Kings Debacle

Sometimes Gottesdienst gets criticized for complaining too much and too quickly, and not leaving enough leeway for district officials to handle trouble spots that pop up in the Missouri Synod. And we’re certainly willing to take constructive criticism, since we know how fallible we are, and that we sometimes can get things wrong, or make mistakes, and that we certainly have the capacity to be unfair. It’s always a good thing to be circumspect.

But then, just when we were reminding ourselves of these things, out of the blue someone alerts us to something that’s just too hard to ignore. How do you ignore sacrilege when it shows up under your own tent? And how can you be patient with an infraction that has been building in intensity for years, for decades?

How can we be silent about King of Kings in Omaha?

We’ve known about the reputation of this Nebraska congregation as being a sort of Praise Band Central in the Missouri Synod. They’ve been beating the contemporary worship drum hard for well over half a century, so it gets easy to shrug and say, Well, yeah, that’s King of Kings doing their thing.

But recently we’ve become aware that they are really pushing the edges these days. As in the use of individual packs of bread and wine being held by those in their seats to be opened while the Words of Institution are sung by everyone, led by a warbling female vocalist on stage whose version of those Words is hardly even worth calling a paraphrase.

Go ahead, see for yourself. Because here it is, on full display, for all the world to see. Below is the entire service. To see our point of discussion in context, look at 18:00 to 23:00.

You can see the “Lead Pastor”—who looks more like a vendor at a ballgame than someone actually officiating at the altar— prepare the people for the alleged Sacrament with this emotional introduction instructing them what to do. They are instructed to “prepare by having your elements ready for you today . . . as we step into this sacred and holy moment.”

And then comes the praying of the Lord’s Prayer—as far as I can tell, the only part of the service that’s said verbatim—and then the “moment” itself is introduced with an invitation to take the elements in your hand, and to eat and drink as the “words of institution” are sung. And then comes that moment, led as a praise song by a young lady vocalist with band accompanying. Finally, the lady vocalist closes with prayer.

What are we to think about this? And is the adiaphora crowd in our midst really going to say that, well, there’s not really any false doctrine here, is there? Who can defend this sacrilege? We’d love to hear from you. We’d be amused to see you try.

What would you say, we wonder. That they’re still doing Christian worship; it’s just not the kind you like?

Consider the words of Ezekiel:

Furthermore He said to me, "Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater abominations." So He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, there was a hole in the wall. Then He said to me, "Son of man, dig into the wall"; and when I dug into the wall, there was a door. And He said to me, "Go in, and see the wicked abominations which they are doing there."  (Ezekiel 8:3-9)

We are hard-pressed to fail to see the clear application. Since the beginning of Covid, the rise of streaming services on the internet has caused us to gaze, as it were, into the hole in the temple and dig until we see the great abominations.

Is that an extreme comparison? What Ezekiel first saw were the vile abominations of the idols of Israel and the seventy elders standing with censers and a great cloud of incense went up. They brazenly thought the Lord did not see what was happening.

But we have here an LCMS church where individuals hold their own “elements” and the pastor calmly tells them to get them out and joining in the singing of the Words of Institution. They make a great noise, but the words are questionable , perhaps a little like our Lord’s words, but departing from them to be more emotional and man-centered. Adiaphora, you say? The pastor has a chalice and a loaf of bread, but he emotionally consumes the pop-top supplies. One wonders if it is even wine. Like the elders of Israel, he has no regard for the glory of the God of Israel, but turns his back on Him while mumbling words about holiness. Compare this to the cloud of incense from Isaiah 6 in the Sanctus. Where is there any contemplation upon the sacrifice of the Lamb of God?

Even this “sacred moment” (such as it is) only lasts less than six minutes, so that the pastor may then proceed to drone on for a half an hour about how special their congregation is.

It’s actually hard to see this as God’s sanctuary at all. Instead of an altar there’s a stage, and a performance! And what are the sacred vestments of the day? Baseball jerseys with the congregation’s name on it. 

What Ezekiel saw was the great abomination of “women weeping for Tammuz” (Ezek. 8:14), in hopes that this idol would magically reappear to make the rains come the next fall season. And what do we see here? Likewise, women, crooning a poor paraphrase of the Words of Institution. One, in particular, emotionally sings while the pastor has his own emotional moment. Is this what the Blessed Sacrament has become? Nothing but a mountaintop moment to experience something sacred? Instead of relying on the certainty of the Office of the Ministry, established by the Lord of Glory, they look to their own emotional fulfillment.

What Ezekiel saw next were twenty-five elders with their backs to the temple worshiping the sun toward the east (Ezek. 8:16). And what are we seeing in this video? The dark interiors of this worship space focused on the performers and the works of the congregation, while the works of our Lord are neglected. Neglected, because His Ministry, His Sacrament, and His temple are built, rather, upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

After all, Aaron was careful to insist that the golden calf he made was their “gods who brought them up out of the land of Egypt.” Oh no, no, they might say, that was idolatry because it says “gods,” plural. But then Aaron, who had made only one golden calf, built an altar and made a proclamation: “Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD.” See there? The LORD. Four caps; the tetragrammaton. That’s Yahweh. See? They were worshiping Yahweh, but just with a different type of worship setting. You might even call it contemporary! True worship in a more ‘preferred’ setting. The calf was even made out of their earrings! Why wasn’t Aaron commended for this ingenious kind of creative worship?

And as for that Moses fellow, they “didn’t know what became of him.” And when he did come down from the mountain and threw a fit about what they did, would you say that he was too strict? Or too legalistic? Too Gotttesdiensty?

Ah, but that’s Old Testament, they could say. We’re New Testament Christians. But that’s a shallow screed. Why do you think the early church condemned Marcion? We’re amused to see that some (von Harnack, for one) actually thought he was a second-century prototype of Luther. Well, no, Marcion was more like a second-century prototype of today’s self-professed “New Testament Christians.”

Ezekiel's vision of a new temple has priests that regard the holy as holy, wearing holy vestments in the Lord's presence, and even the sacrifices are to rest in holy places. Surely, this was a vision of the New Testament Church that is the temple. She is to be the place where true holiness, set apart from the things of the world, is to be set before God's holy people. As the vision of the city and the temple concludes, "The Lord is there." Adiaphora is one thing, but disregard for the Lord who appears on His holy altar to be distributed by His holy priests to His holy people is another.

What passes for Lutheran Worship these days—in a Missouri Synod congregation, no less—is nothing of the kind. We hope this is being seriously addressed by those charged with maintaining synodical unity in our midst. The King of Kings website, incidentally, even has a different take on the word ‘synod’. Here’s their definition:

Synod comes from the Greek word “walking together,” and that’s exactly what we do. We walk in God’s transformative love together as a community of Reliant, Courageous, Authentic, and Generosity-driven people. (https://www.kingofkings.org/im-new-here/)

May we humbly suggest that it might be time the people who are charged with addressing, monitoring, admonishing, and dealing with unacceptable practices in our midst do so soon. Maybe they already are. Maybe like us they’ve recently become aware of this latest infraction and see it for what it is. We hope so; we pray so.