Wish Dreams and Lutheranism: Part V

This post will conclude the Wish Dream series. Feel free to comment all you wish on the series.

Option #3: Splitsville

Quit your church and announce you are starting the True Lutheran Orthodox Church of Pine Valley--either independent or seeking affiliation with ELDoNA or whomever.

The advantage to this is you get the clean break blank slate, and no worries about Synod hijinks and meddling as a mission congregation.

The cons, though, are pretty rough.

First, it is schismatic. The world does not need your new church body. Though Scripture teaches us to flee temptation, to avoid fools and sinners, to shun those who teach contrary to the truth, Scripture likewise tells us that we are to avoid schism, to attain unity in the faith and so forth.

Second, it is completely divisive. You will cause untold grief in your former congregation. You will injure people and families. You will cause confusion.

Third, it is expensive. It may take years and years to build the congregation up enough for full-time ministry. That could be slowed or hampered by having a full-to-part-time job to make ends meet--you only have so much energy in a day, and building a mission congregation is a full-time job, in theory.

Fourth, it is really un-Lutheran, if you think about it. The Lutherans teach that the ministry is not self-appointed. It is a call issued by the Church (whatever that meant and whatever it means now). You can call it a Lutheran church--a pure Lutheran church--but how pure can it be if by setting it up yourself you violate AC XIV? Sure, as soon as you get a few folks they can "call you," but for some reason, I don't think this is what the Reformers had in mind.

I began this series gently criticizing the notion of desiring a mission congregation in order to do things right. I criticized it because dreams and what-ifs are fantasies. If ifs and ands were pots and pans there'd be no work for tinkers.It does us no good physically and spiritually to dream about ideal conditions. We should stop dreaming, or start working, in other words. I preach this to myself daily.

And so the options. I can imagine no others within the context of our Missouri reading of the Lutheran Confessions.

Can you?

A Battle Royale

I am already tired of the controversy. I think of men like Luther who wrote on the "abuses of the papacy" his entire life and I wonder how he kept up that feeling of righteous indignation that he seemed to have--that seems almost necessary to keep up a prolonged battle for reform. I think of journalists that have investigated wrong-doing for years in order to bring it to the light and compare them to my own two-post "Anti China" blog I started and abandoned.

It takes a certain strength of character to wage pitched warfare against an city you may never live to see destroyed. It requires an enormous amount of self confidence and pride--or tremendous faith in God--to see the Goliath before you and not give up the fight.

I suppose one could make arguments pro and con against such self-appointed investigators, reformers and "change agents." But in my mind, this discussion veers closely to the battle that all of us must wage against our sinful nature and our old enemy who tempts us. The battle against sin, that Goliath that threatens our souls, is a battle we dare not give up. The citadels of sin in our lives must be besieged, even if we die in the struggle. Not all men (for good or ill) are able to "fight the system" in this world, but all of us are called to fight the system in our own hearts.

We do have help in this. We have received the Holy Spirit, who even fights on our behalf. We have the Sacraments which sustain our lives and souls. But battle on we must.