Posted on 03/27/2008 8:48:07 PM PDT by The Shrew
Usually radio hosts have to offend sacred moral sensibilities to be thrown off the air. Opie and Anthony were fired after they encouraged a couple to have sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Don Imus lost his job after using racist and sexist epithets against the Rutgers University women's basketball team.
But when the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod canceled its popular, nationally syndicated radio program "Issues, Etc.," listeners were baffled. Billed as "talk radio for the thinking Christian," the show was known for its lively discussions analyzing cultural influences on the American church. It seemed like precisely the thing that the Missouri Synod, a 2.4-million-member denomination whose system of belief is firmly grounded in Scripture and an intellectually rigorous theology, would enthusiastically support.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Are you being facetious? You are, aren't you?
“So if the LCMS falls to the liberals, where does an LCMS member go? There’s no viable Protestant denominations left.... Where does this leave a conservative Protestant who seeks a liturgical, confessional, orthodox church?”
It may be that you have to try another tack and consider something like the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA): very conservative, traditional music, know the Bible inside and out. (As apposed to the Presbyterian (USA) which is liberal and doing the homosexual thing.)
Or try an Evangelical church if you want conservative, Bible-based teaching, and a fun celebration. (My wife doesn’t care for the celebration stuff, but I do!)
AFLC - maybe.
can't believe you're serious about Catholicism or Greek Orthodoxy. Do you know your doctrine at all? Catholicism is completely at odds with Lutheranism. (not the Lutheranism Kieschnick is advocating but the real teachings of Luther and the other reformers).
BTW none of that happens overnight. If you missed the part where Jesus and the gospel got kicked out, then the next signpost will be these aberrations being sneaked in. Frankly I'd rather leave when Jesus and the whole counsel of God are no longer welcome than wait until homosexuals ARE welcomed. If a person waits until those signposts, that tells me their religion is more about outward adherence to a set of behavioral standards (E.g. works based religion) than an inner surrender to the fact that it is CHRIST who works everything in us, including any ability to respond to the gospel.
I think that'd be out of the frying pan into the fire. I couldn't be part of a denomination that thinks I can add to grace by my works.
Then they came for the ELCA, but by that time I had married and gone to the Southern Baptists! True story!
PCA? I thought they were liberal too. Reformed Presby maybe. Or reformed baptist. There are also Lutheran Brethren churches here and there. Small though. And there’s the AFLC which is also still small.
I will warn people that you cannot assume anything by a denominational name anymore though. This social gospel works driven purpose driven nuttiness is in every denomination. Only a very few are speaking out against it.
Paul Proctor spoke of it as a sifting of the saints, and I think he is right. The Lord is calling his people out of the apostate churches. And sometimes they’re getting kicked out for being too biblical.
Self ping to your post
I’ve moved to AFLC from the ELCA. Good stuff. I’d never consider becoming a Catholic. Ever.
The local WELS church, although it calls itself "conservative," features pop music and purpose-driven sermons. Yawn.
The LCMS church around here has a "traditional" service. They also have two contemporary services -- the difference is that one contemporary service features sappy Christian pop music and the other contemporary service offers loud Christian rock music. To each his own. I guess I shouldn't complain but I am increasingly alienated from American pop culture and I am tired of how it takes over everything -- everything is supposed to be chaos and noise and "positive thinking" or whatever the fad is.
Ahem.
The PCA is an interesting denomination. Some churches are liturgical. Some have a bit of modern flair.
But: the PCA is firmly anti-abortion, no women in the pulpit, Scripture is the inerrant inspired word of God. In every PCA church I have attended (>20) and everyone of the countless PCA ministers I have ever met are firmly committed to faithfully preached Christ died for sinners.
There was an issue with the New Perspective On Paul in one Presbytery and the denomination didn't blink and declared that heresy outside of the bounds of Scriptural teaching. Several churches teaching the heresy left the denomination and the Presbytery was disciplined for not providing spiritual oversight.
The interesting thing about the PCA is that the "home office" has very little power. The local bodies are very suspicious of the home office for a good reason: when we left the PC(USA) we lost buildings and had very little to call our own. The home office don't own the churches, they must appeal to the local churches for money, etc. All power flows from the churches up, via the General Assembly, not from the top down.
Are there some liberal churches in the PCA? I'm sure there are. But that hardly makes us a liberal denomination any more than a conservative UMC/ELCA/ECUS church makes that denomination conservative.
< /rant>
It is a shame that a discernment ministry like Issues, Etc. gets cancelled. If one tunes into so-called Christian radio or T.V., one will mostly hear the false “prosperity” gospel or spectacular “prophetic” sermons about the Anti-Christ (they preach not so much about Christ). The “ministries” that preach a false gospel seem to never lack money.
bttt
You’re kidding, right? Which Catholic church are you talking about? Do you not know about the liberalism that has crept into the Catholic church. You’re going to find far more liberalism in the Catholic church than the LCMS.
We have only been LCMS about 14 years but the congregations to which we have belonged are a long way from going off the cliff. They are theologically solid and so are our pastors.
Being a very conservative LCMS (formerly ELCA), I will never attend a church where I do not hear the firm Word of God. Nor will I attend a church where the pastor thinks he's a Democrat for it indicates to me the pastor does not get the connection between his politics and his believes.
But Catholic being conservative? No. Not with any consistency.
Thanks for the ping. We all need to be alerted as to what is happening.
Anyone who seeks refuge in a denomination is off target. Christ is our refuge and He protects His church - not that of man. There may a Methodist church and Baptist church, et al., that each submit to the Word and make disciples of men - but each denomination and religion is merely a brick facade on a house of straw.
In Houston, big Southern Baptist churches had gag-a-maggot TV commercials before Easter. 2nd Baptist: “Even the Easter Bunny knows, 2nd is the place!”. The Met: “We want you to be comfortable.” I forget what “cirque d Shook” at Fellowship of Woodlands did, but it was putrid.
sigh
Put no confidence in the flesh - including that of your favorite pastor. Have faith in God. He alone is trustworthy.
25 or 30 years ago, all of the modernist church growth people decided that the traditional liturgy (which was essentially an English translation of Luther's mass) was no longer relevant, so most congregations threw out 450 years of tradition and adopted the new hymnal and its modern liturgy. Now, of course, the modernists refer to the blue hymnal as containing the "traditional" liturgy and argue that it is no longer relevant.
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