Last week's blog Bridge Builders and Distinction Keepers & Why We Need Both (Part 1) described the roles of bridge builders and distinction keepers and how the Lutheran Confessions show the need for both. Let's continue the conversation. When distinction keepers go wrong . . . Distinction keepers go wrong when Lutheran doctrine becomes a club for winning arguments rather than a confession for comforting sinners. They go wrong when every local custom becomes a test of orthodoxy. They go wrong...

As the political season of our church body begins to heat up, many of us are waiting for the convention resolutions to come out later this summer. The closer we get, the more the conversations begin: Who are we? What does it mean to be Lutheran? How do we think, vote, speak, serve, and confess together as members of The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod? Those are not small questions. They are not “inside baseball” questions either, though sometimes we pastors can make them sound like a...

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) is a family of congregations and pastors bound together by confession and mission. The statistics in our official reports can feel like a numbers game, yet behind every digit are saints and shepherds trying to live by faith in Jesus. When we look at the data across the past two decades, some patterns emerge that call for honest reflection, creative planning, and faithful prayer. What the numbers are saying Slow but steady decline in congregations. In...