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from the executive chair ...

Lenae Rasmussen

Our first issue told the story of Elk Horn Lutheran Church, and the launching of the first lifeboat for confessing Lutherans in Elk Horn, Iowa. Yet it seemed necessary to go even further back into the story and explain why it is that we need a “lifeboat” for confessing Lutherans.

In this issue we reach out to people who might know nothing, or very little about the current confessional crisis in America. In fact, many people ask, “What is a confessional crisis?” and, “How do we know we are in one?”

These questions are best answered by a question many lay people ask, “Why does everything in our church seem upside down today?” One does not need a seminary education to figure out that things are not the way they used to be. Of course, music and some little things that we consider adiaphora (non-essential) seem to change every time a new pastor is called. But now things are really different in some very serious ways. Teaching about ordination and the role of the pastor, the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, and what we mean when we say “church” and “mission” are changing. We’re being told that we are choosing to change for the sake of “unity” but there does not seem to be any choice in the matter! Things we know to be “most certainly true” are being fogged by pleas to use human reason to interpret scripture, and we are told to ignore biblical authority when the vote of a church-wide assembly over-rules scripture and confessions, as if it could!

When a church-wide assembly thinks it can over-rule scripture and the confessions, when the leadership deviates from the teaching of 500 years becoming what is technically called “heterodox,” when we forget who we are and by whom we have been called, “the church” and its members are in a confessional crisis.

The Augsburg Lutheran District is laying the foundation for a fellowship of churches based entirely upon the authority of scripture and the Lutheran confessional writings that witness to the truth of the gospel revealed in the Word of God. We’re beginning at the beginning-“Why form this lifeboat?” so that we can reach those who are just finding out about the crisis that Christianity in America is in. The information in this issue, and the confessing letter of January 2000 from Dr. James Nestingen and Dr. Gerhard Forde (in our Library at www.augsburgdistrict.com), give us a good starting point to begin the discussion. I invite all concerned Lutherans to organize an ALD chapter and meet monthly to study, discuss, and pray together. It is time to begin being the church Christ has called us to be, again.

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