The Results Are In: Evangelical Style and Lutheran Substance Are Not Compatible
This article was published in the Christmas 2025 edition of Gottesdienst.
The worship wars of the past generation were waged over the question of style vs. substance, and no matter how fiercely we insisted that style and substance are always related—lex orandi, lex credendi—we found our insistence falling on deaf ears. And today we see the results writ large on the stages of megachurches across the land. Particularly is this true of megachurches on the roster of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. The high-profile churches given to this style include King of Kings in Omaha, Nebraska[1] and Christ Greenfield Church in Gilbert, Arizona, whose services can be accessed online. Visit one of those churches and you’ll find them on the one hand eager to give lip service to the Lutheran Confessions, the inerrancy of Scripture, and at least a passing nod to the Sacraments.
But these megachurches don’t worship like Lutherans historically have. They are fully engaged in “Evangelical style,” all the while insisting on their authenticity as Lutherans, and as such, they are the present day embodiments of the Lutheran substance/Evangelical style approach promoted by David Luecke a generation or two ago.[2] So once again we are prompted to ask, Is it possible? Can it be?
At the Greenfield website one can find video examples of both ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’ worship styles, though even what they call traditional is marked by a relaxed atmosphere. Their Evangelical style is fully on display. And as for substance, the list of their ‘values’ includes “Biblical truth”: “The Bible points us to Jesus. The Bible is our sole rule and norm as followers of Jesus.” And under “Lutheran heritage grounds us” there’s this: “We boldly stand by our Lutheran (LCMS) teachings which point us to Jesus through the Means of Grace (Word and Sacrament), and reveal the heart of God through Law and Gospel.” [3] One has to admit, that sounds pretty Lutheran.
Let’s look deeper.
Their home page’s invitation “You belong here” is followed by a bold statement, “We exist to see lives transformed by Jesus Christ through our family of ministries.” There we have a red flag, perhaps two red flags. First, the kind of transformation that is suggested is one in which people are somehow touched by “authentic encounters” with Jesus.[4] That flag is pretty red. Authentic encounters? That sounds eerily neo-orthodox. Karl Barth’s thought is heavily focused on the here-and-now encounter one has with God through Jesus, so much so that Scripture is said to become the word of God when it facilitates this encounter.[5] Christ Greenfield doesn’t go that far, but its emphasis on personal transformation and encounters with Jesus has the same flavor. I can’t help but wonder just how their lives are, as they say, transformed. They say that “Leadership development” is their passion, because “[t]he Holy Spirit helps us discover, develop, and deploy leaders in every sector of society.” There’s the other red flag. The only Biblical reference I can think of that would possibly begin to support this wild assertion would be a faulty translation of Ephesians 4:11-13 that removes the important comma after ‘saints’, changing the meaning entirely. The KJV had it right:
And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
But if the comma after ‘saints’ is removed, which became common beginning with the publication of the Revised Standard Version in 1952, then it is the saints who are doing the ministry rather than the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers. And beginning with this little change, “ministry” began to be seen less as a reference to the preaching office, and more as a reference to one or another kind of service or program or group within the church.[6] Somewhat consistent with this notion, Greenfield has now come up with a novel function of the Holy Spirit. He “helps us discover, develop, and deploy leaders in every sector of society,” which is a far cry from the Spirit’s activity confessed in the Apostle’s Creed: the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
Speaking of the forgiveness of sins, what’s notably missing from all the hype and excitement this place means to generate among its visitors is any reference to it at all, even in the section on Baptism. It could be said that forgiveness is implied, and in fairness it is mentioned elsewhere, but I find it telling that while Baptism is described as “a work of God’s grace . . . for our good” wherein one begins a “new life as a child of God,” forgiveness is not mentioned. Nor, for that matter, is the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Jesus is called “the Son of God who was crucified and raised from the dead for the salvation of all who trust in Him”[7] and it’s even said that He “physically died on a cross and physically rose from the dead in three days” and that “[t]hose who trust in Jesus as their Savior will rise to eternal life in heaven.”[8] But there’s no reference to His death as a sacrificial atonement for sin. Again, in fairness, the atonement with its effects is found in parts of the online service, and I have no doubt that the leadership at Christ Greenfield upholds the vicarious satisfaction and the fact that in Christ one receives forgiveness, but why, I wonder, isn’t this stated up front?
The head pastor is Rev. Tim Ahlman, who is also the host of the two podcasts affiliated with “Unite Leadership Collective,” a website that arose in LCMS circles about five years ago, whose stated mission is “to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods.”[9] That stated mission is another way of saying that Lutheran substance can properly be mixed with a style that is not so Lutheran, a ‘style’ that in this case is generally considered Evangelical.[10] In the “I’m new here” section of the Christ Greenfield website, Rev. Ahlman says that at Christ Greenfield they’re “passionate about Jesus and seeing Jesus transform lives” and helping you “discover your purpose and be the light of Christ wherever you are” so that you can “lead a full and meaningful life.”[11] It’s noteworthy that in these introductory materials there’s also nothing about the mercy of God toward penitent sinners.
Neither is there, in the Contemporary service, anything approaching a traditional liturgy, though one is given the opportunity to make a silent confession in the sermon, which references the building of the tower of Babel and its opposition to God (Genesis 11:1-9), and the preacher says, “Let’s take a moment to confess right now to ourselves, to God, what kind of towers have we been building lately? What’s a tower that you’ve been constructing in your heart? Let’s raise that up to the Lord right now.” At this point he closes his eyes and pauses for the better part of a minute, while a guitar is gently plucking some quiet mood music, before he goes on to declare “some good news” about another tower, namely Jesus who is “that strong Tower that we can depend on” who “came into this world and He went on a real cross for your real sin and He shed His real blood and died a real death and then He rose again into a real new life to show the world that he has taken that sin onto Himself, conquered it, that sin and that death, so that it does not belong to you anymore. What belongs to you now is God’s righteousness and the promise of eternal life that will come in the new heaven and the new earth.” So while the Gospel is there, its application is mingled with a tinge of emotionalism, as to afford the hearers in that silent moment the opportunity to get in touch with themselves internally. And thereupon the preacher even references the promise “given to you in Baptism and in the Lord’s Supper,” and proceeds to announce an absolution: “As a fellow baptized believer it is my privilege to proclaim to you now in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit that your sins are indeed forgiven. Amen.” Following this he turns and goes back to take his seat as the drummer in the praise band, which proceeds to sing a song with the repeated refrain, “Our sins they are many; His mercy is more.” One of the stanzas also says, “We stood ‘neath a debt we could never afford.” Again, the Gospel is clearly present, but the context speaks volumes. The preacher is one Jack Kalleberg, who is wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, and with his pregnant pause he is clearly trying to relate to people on an emotional level. And his absolution is as markedly anticlerical as his attire, which is markedly casual. He proclaims the absolution not as a called and ordained servant of the word, speaking in the stead and by the command of his Lord Jesus Christ, but rather “as a fellow baptized believer.” In fact, as it happens, the preacher, Mr. Kalleberg, is not ordained and is not a pastor at all! It’s hard to tell, though, since he’s clearly the leader of this service, and no one else is vested, as is typical in contemporary services.
This is all in sync with the approach of the Protestant Evangelicals that likewise, despite their claimed reliance on Scripture, are anticlerical, emphasizing instead conversion experiences and missionary work. The Evangelicals tend as a rule to deemphasize the Sacraments and the traditions of established churches, and since it is common for Evangelicals to think of themselves as “non-denominational,” there is often a corresponding break with the church-sponsored institutions of higher learning.[12] While Greenfield does acknowledge the Sacraments, there doesn’t seem to be much stress on them. And recently a kerfuffle has arisen between Pastor Ahlman’s “Unite Leadership Collective” podcast and the leadership of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod over his promotion of a kind of pastoral formation apart from the Synod’s seminaries.[13] It’s common among Evangelicals to speak of the sacrificial death of Christ and His resurrection, and sometimes their sermons can provide some Gospel clarity. But their emphasis is also markedly anticlerical, promoting instead a evangelistic and missionary fervor as the responsibility of all.
At least the “traditional” service has vested pastors, but it’s also notably casual, and hardly traditional. The opening remarks set the tone. The service follows Divine Service 1 in Lutheran Service Book, but with several omissions. There is no Kyrie or Gloria, the Creed is also omitted because of a Baptism that is to follow the service. After the sermon there is no Preface nor Proper Preface, and no Sanctus. The Words of Institution are spoken but not precisely. The pastor speaks them while looking at the people, almost as though speaking his own words rather than repeating the sacred words of Scripture. Then follows the Pax (“The peace of the Lord be with you always”), followed by “and also with you” rather than “Amen.” And then, “Brothers and sisters, come and taste and see that the Lord is here, He is good, for you, and another note, ushers will be releasing you by rows . . .” Then comes the distribution, after which there is no Nunc Dimittis, but instead the people are invited to rise and hold hands to receive the communion blessing. So the entire ‘traditional’ service in fact departs from the traditional liturgy at virtually every point, and it seems the only traditional part of it is the fact that there is an ordained, vested pastor in it.
But the sermon Pastor Ahlman preaches is also anything but traditional. He stands in front of the altar and speaks at length of his “serving challenge” sermon series, with “serve teams” and “people living in their gifting.” The emphasis then is on how to serve, and about “so many signs that revival . . . is here [at Christ Greenfield].” He then goes on to speak of many ways in which that revival is happening, and of the desire to “populate heaven and depopulate hell.” It comes off as a purely motivational speech, and could hardly be called a sermon about Jesus, except to say that it’s all about Him. But simply saying it’s about Him doesn’t make it so.
Following the sermon, the Sacrament is described as a “meal” where “Jesus is going to meet you.” Here again we find in such settings the customary odor of neoorthodoxy with its stress on having encounters with God.
As one might expect, this church does not practice closed communion, nor require membership in the Synod. Rather, one is welcome who can simply answer these questions:
· Are you a believer, baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit?
· Do you believe Christ’s body and blood are really present in, with, and under these forms of bread and wine as God’s word says?
· Are you sorry for your sins?
· Do you intend, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to amend your sinful life?
So, to return to the original question, just what sort of transformation is in view here? What is a transformed life? Someone who is motivated to ‘leadership’? to go out and win souls for Jesus? to bring people into a new relationship with Him by joining this community? But in this community, while there is an occasional nod to the forgiveness of sins, the message seems to move on to the excitement of being part of a growing community of ‘transformed’ lives.
Can this legitimately be called Lutheran substance? The kind of emphasis confessional Lutheranism has traditionally sought to foster is a robust faith and confidence in the mercy of God granted by the atoning sacrifice of Christ and delivered by His Gospel and Sacraments. To be genuinely Lutheran, this emphasis must not be a passing thought, or an assumed awareness giving us leave to go on to other things like how to serve. It must be the heart of the message, the very thing that makes that message good news—the Gospel. The communicant who receives the Body and Blood of Christ at the altar need not look there for some expectation of an encounter experience, but is instead invited to have confidence that he has just received by mouth the reconciliation of God he needs. And this confidence can hold sway not because of some sense of encountering Jesus, or how one feels, but even in spite of how one may feel. It’s a confidence rooted in what one knows, and what he knows is from the word of God. It ‘s a confidence based on one thing, namely that in the Sacrament Christ’s true body is given for the forgiveness of sins, as the words declare. This confidence is the genuine work of the Holy Spirit, who drives faith into the heart by the word of the Gospel.
But at Greenfield it is said that the Holy Spirit’s task is to “help us discover, develop, and deploy leaders in every sector of society,” which is, frankly, not true. Perhaps this new function for the Holy Spirit is what the Unite Leadership Collective means by “innovative methods,” consistent with their desire to “Equip the Priesthood of All Believers through World-Class Leadership Development at the Local Level.”[14] No wonder they follow a translation of Ephesians 4:11-13 that removes the comma. For them, the Spirit equips everyone to do some kind of ministry, and consequently the Office of the Ministry suffers, as does the preaching of Christ’s pure Gospel. They say that it’s all about Jesus, but ironically, their anticlerical innovations have produced a shift away from the Spirit’s true work in the Preaching Office of proclaiming the Gospel. This in turn tends to remove both the Holy Spirit and Christ. The fact is that where Christ is preached, heard, believed, there is the Holy Spirit active, and nowhere else.
The real “Lutheran substance” concerning the Holy Spirit is this:
If you are asked: What do you mean by the words: I believe in the Holy Ghost? you can answer: I believe that the Holy Ghost makes me holy, as His name implies. But whereby does He accomplish this, or what are His method and means to this end? Answer: By the Christian Church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. For, in the first place, He has a peculiar congregation in the world, which is the mother that begets and bears every Christian through the Word of God, which He reveals and preaches, [and through which] He illumines and enkindles hearts, that they understand, accept it, cling to it, and persevere in it.
For where He does not cause it to be preached and made alive in the heart, so that it is understood, it is lost, as was the case under the Papacy, where faith was entirely put under the bench, and no one recognized Christ as his Lord or the Holy Ghost as his Sanctifier, that is, no one believed that Christ is our Lord in the sense that He has acquired this treasure for us, without our works and merit, and made us acceptable to the Father. What, then, was lacking? This, that the Holy Ghost was not there to reveal it and cause it to be preached; but men and evil spirits were there, who taught us to obtain grace and be saved by our works. Therefore it is not a Christian Church either; for where Christ is not preached, there is no Holy Ghost who creates, calls, and gathers the Christian Church, without which no one can come to Christ the Lord. (Luther’s Large Catechism, Part II (Creed, Article Three, 40-45). (Source: https://bookofconcord.org/large-catechism/apostles-creed/#lc-ii-0040 )
There is nothing there, or, for that matter, in Scripture, to support the notion that the Holy Spirit’s task is to help us discover, develop, and deploy leaders in every sector of society.
The Spirit’s activity is indeed transformational, but not in the way they portray. Working through the Gospel and the Sacraments, the Spirit makes one a new creation by the application of the forgiveness of sins and the faith and knowledge that this forgiveness has been obtained. What is transformed is essentially the conscience. Whereas prior to the application of the Gospel the conscience is either pricked or silenced, upon reception of the forgiveness of sins, guilt is removed and the conscience is cleansed, made good.[15] In this is the comfort of the Gospel. And as it happens, the entire focus of the common liturgical service is centered precisely on this comfort. For in it we cry for mercy singing the Kyrie, we rejoice in the angels’ song in the Gloria in Excelsis, we hear the words of Scripture, especially the Gospel, and we confess the Creed. Then comes the sermon that is supposed to be an outgrowth of those things. Following that we prepare for the Sacrament by rejoicing in the Sanctus that the Lord of Hosts is coming into our presence as we sing Hosannas, then the Sacrament is consecrated and we sing in the Agnus Dei to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, we receive the Sacrament, and we sing a joyful Nunc Dimittis with Simeon. At places like Christ Greenfield, in both the Contemporary and Traditional settings, those comforting parts of the liturgy are conspicuously absent. One has to wonder why.
The anticlerical spirit that is evident at Christ Greenfield is actually quite glaring. The fact that the Contemporary service—likely the favorite among the members there—has no pastor leading or preaching, or even absolving, and the controversy over the promotion of pastoral formation apart from the Synod’s seminaries both spring from an anticlerical orientation the fruits of which are a dumbing-down of the Gospel, which makes replacing it with a cheap imitation easier to do. It begins to become clear that the real transformation that is at work here is a transformation of the essence of the Gospel message, with the result that people are being led into a kind of Christianity that is largely phony.
So once again we find that Evangelical Style and Lutheran Substance are not compatible, and are never found together. There are those who might want to call their approach Evangelical in style but Lutheran in substance, but in every case what we find is Evangelical in style and substance, with perhaps a little sprinkling of just enough Lutheran wording to make it somehow legitimate. It’s an Evangelical house with a smattering of Lutheran window-dressing.
Further, as we look in particular at the ‘Contemporary’ style on display, I’m not sure it’s really Evangelical at all. It depends, I guess, on what Evangelical means or implies these days. But whatever it is, to put the matter bluntly, it’s rather unbecoming a Christian church. There’s a strong subliminal message that is sent by worship leaders that customarily clothe themselves in blue jeans and T-shirts while they preach peripatetically moving back and forth across a stage set up with a backdrop of drum set and guitar stands. It bespeaks the ordinary, the mundane, the ubiquitous look of everyday America, hardly a transformational setting.
There is a yawning, qualitative difference between attending a church in which humbled, penitential sinners—poor, miserable ones at that, Sunday after Sunday—hear Christ proclaimed for the forgiveness of sins and a church, or worship space, or whatever it’s called, in which people are engaged with passionate talks about transformation. In the one, consciences are calmed by the precious knowledge that it was nothing at all that they did or ever could do that could gain for them a gracious God, but alone what Christ did has made them acceptable to God because by it their sins were forgiven. In the other, the expectation of a needed transformation can wear heavy on the conscience. Perhaps the emotion driven praise music has a way of convincing people that they really have changed, but when the music stops and it’s time to go home, the sense of transformation dies just as quickly as the music did.
The impassioned welcome plea at the website of Christ Greenfield is, “Jesus died and rose again to bring you into a right relationship with Him, and now you—yes, you—belong here.” Count me unconvinced, as, I believe, would anyone be who knows what it really means to be L
[1] For my analysis of King of Kings in Omaha, see “The King of Kings Debacle,” at Gottesblog, October 7, 2023 (https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/2023/9/29/the-king-of-kings-debacle?rq=King%20of%20kings) and “Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi at King of Kings,” in Gottesdienst 2023:4 (Christmas 2023).
[2] David S. Luecke, Evangelical Style and Lutheran Substance: Facing America's Mission Challenge (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1988).
[3] https://christgreenfield.church/
[4] https://christgreenfield.churchcenter.com/calendar/event/184184238
[5] A helpful summary of Barth’s view of revelation can be found in Domenic Marbaniang, “Karl Barth (1886-1968): Theology of Revelation” (2011) at Wordpress online: https://marbaniang.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/karl-barth-1886-1968-theology-of-revelation/
[6] For a comprehensive and insightful analysis of this change, see John N. Collins, Are All Christians Ministers? (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1992).
[7] Actually Jesus was crucified and raised for the whole world, but never mind.
[8] https://christgreenfield.church/mission-and-core-values#who-is-jesus
[9] https://www.uniteleadership.org/
[10] Unite Leadership Collective strikes me as the latest generational manifestation of the Jesus First movement that was popular in some LCMS circles a generation ago.
[11] https://christgreenfield.church/new-here
[12] See Britannica, s.v. “Evangelical church” for more. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Evangelical-church-Protestantism
[13] He subsequently issued a “Formal Apology” in which he didn’t really apologize for anything but simply agreed not to discuss the matter further on his podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNraE8D1XsQ
[14] https://www.uniteleadership.org/
[15] Hebrews 10:22, 13:8, 1 Peter 3:16.