Gottesblog

She continues her good work of speaking up for the lowly with graceful, reasonable, and direct speech that comes from a loving Christian heart. Ever been called "unforgiving and judgmental" for standing for the truth? Here's how to respond.

A nice plug for our conference from the folks at Touchstone.

One of the prayers in the old Minister's Prayerbook has something about "guarding our thoughts from wandering." This is a very good thing to pray for. Yesterday was Confirmation Day in these parts; my eldest son was one of our four confirmands.

I have gone through roughly three phases in my preaching. 1. Years 1-5ish. Every Thursday at 11am I would write a sermon, come what may. I read through it several times before Sunday and had the manuscript well in hand. I focused on learning how to preach by reading good preaching and then producing good sermons on paper.

That different world being the Missouri Synod at the turn of the 20th century. Father Micah Gaunt found and kindly typed up the following article: Steffens, D.H. “Principles of Liturgics.” The Lutheran Witness. 18.17 (1900): 133.  You can find this whole issue of the Lutheran Witness, and many others, on Google Books.

My dear colleague, Fr. Mark Surburg, and I have been corresponding of late regarding certain aspects of sanctification, namely, what the dogmaticians term renovation. He has a thoughtful piece on it here. We are both somewhat mystified that there seems to be controversy on this point in today's Lutheranism.

The Boston interfaith service is here.

If you filled out the original CPH survey on the bulletins for the historical lectionary, you recently got an email asking how you handle the Trinity season. Whether you got that email or not, I've also put up the same questions for our readers in our latest poll at right.