Pious Lutheran

Invitation to the Feast , Eugene Burnand, 1899 Looking back on our attendance records since the 1980’s we observe a consistent decline in baptisms, confirmations, and attendance on Sunday mornings. The fact that we have fewer people in our pews today than we did 20 years ago is not only our problem but it’s the problem Christianity faces throughout our nation. Compared to some churches, like holiness churches such as the Apostolics locally or the Amish or Hutterites nationally whose numbers have generally increased in the past century, we’ve done worse. But compared to the liberal mainline protestant denominations we’ve done much better. Regardless, we are significantly smaller than we were 40 years ago. Pastor Heath Curtis, the coordinator for LCMS Stewardship who has studied statistics and demographics throughout the LCMS recently said in a presentation to Iowa District West that just as the past decade has been hard, the next decade will likely be much harder. According to demograph...

Holy Trinity,  Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, Early 16th Century A blessed feast of the Holy Trinity to you dear friends in Christ! On this joyful day we got to confess together in unity that glorious Athanasian creed! In this Creed we confessed together the catholic faith, the faith that you must believe if you’re to be saved, and if you don’t believe what is confessed in this creed then you will without doubt perish eternally. Those are strong words which should impress upon us the importance of meditating upon them at least once a year. I know it seems like a long creed, but it’s really not when considering what it's confessing. In those few words were summarized the catholic faith, namely, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, and that our Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God who is at the same time both God and man. In other words we worship one God, not three gods, and yet each  person of the Trinity is true God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit i...

Peter Preaching at Pentecost, Benjamin West, 1738-1820 It’s a tragicomedy when Christian parents hide their children’s inheritance in a bible, reminding their children on their deathbed to read their bible, only for the children to never find the inheritance since they never read their bible. The children search frantically for their inheritance, yet the treasure is hidden right there in plain sight, if only they’d take the time to open the scriptures and read. Thus is God, our true treasure, hidden in plain sight. The question leading up to Jesus’ answer in the Gospel reading asks: “ Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world? ” Jesus replies: “ If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to Him and make Our home with him. Whoever does not love Me does not keep My words.” God hides Himself in His Word, available for all to hear and read and believe. God hides in plain sight so as to make Himself manifest to ...