The boat skips along the waves, fast enough for the trio sitting in front to get some good air off their wooden bench. We’re trying to catch up to the MV Namao, a research ship that for weeks at a time serves as the floating homebase for members of Manitoba’s science community who study Lake […]| UM TodayUM Today
This is the latest installment of “Life in the Church Year,” a series by Dr. Kristen Einertson and Tessa Muench of All the Household. This series will provide guidance for living out the seasons of the Church Year at home with your families. Find month-by-month lists of Lutheran feasts, festivals and commemorations here. As summer wanes and August greets us, the church finds herself deep in the season of Trinitytide. During this season, our church body commemorates the lives of many Chris...| The Lutheran Witness
The August issue walks through the Christian’s “Life in the Sacrament.” From the President: Lutherans and the Lord’s Supper: Holding to the Words of ChristLife in the Church Year: St. Mary Lavender Cookies and Garden Features: ‘With All the Company of Heaven‘: Angels, Saints and Our Departed Loved Ones at the Lord’s Table — Arthur A. Just‘Given and Shed for You’: What does the Sacrament do? — Jeffrey Hemmer‘Let a Person Examine Himself’: Preparing for the Lord’s Su...| The Lutheran Witness
by Matthew C. Harrison We are “Book of Concord Lutherans.” Every rostered church worker in the LCMS; every congregation, district and LCMS institution; every school and LCMS university has defined itself as a Book of Concord Lutheran endeavor. It’s on display most vividly when a pastor is ordained and installed in a congregation. He swears to believe and teach in complete accord with the divinely inspired Scriptures and the Book of Concord. The Book of Concord was ratified in 1580 on ...| The Lutheran Witness
By Arthur A. Just On the Mount of Transfiguration, heaven and earth came together in the glorified body of Jesus. Peter, James and John, three of Jesus’ disciples, came up the mountain with Him for this encounter with Moses and Elijah, two heavenly beings. In this communion between heavenly and earthly bodies around the dazzling white body of Jesus, we see a picture of what happens in the Divine Service around the bodily presence of Jesus in the liturgy of the Word and the Lord’s Supper. ...| The Lutheran Witness
This is the latest installment of “Life in the Church Year,” a series by Dr. Kristen Einertson and Tessa Muench of All the Household. This series will provide guidance for living out the seasons of the Church Year at home with your families. Find month-by-month lists of Lutheran feasts, festivals and commemorations here. When attempting to live out the Church Year at home, figuring out how to celebrate the long season of Trinity, which includes the summer months of June and July, can be p...| The Lutheran Witness
The June/July issue of The Lutheran Witness, “Christian Endurance,” focuses on the theme of the 2025 LCMS Youth Gathering, which is drawn from Hebrews 12:1–3. From the President: Suffering Produces EnduranceLife in the Church Year Series: Two Saints of Summer: J.S. Bach Kugelhopf Features: Endurance in Jesus: ‘Do not lose heart’ — Bryan WolfmuellerEndurance as a People: ‘Build one another up’ — Bryan Wolfmueller Endurance to the End: ‘Be faithful unto death’ — Bryan Wo...| The Lutheran Witness
By Bryan Wolfmueller Christians have need of endurance: that mix of courage and patience that presses on to the end. We are tempted to weariness. Our flesh is discouraged. Thanks be to God, the Scriptures are full of passages that spur us on to faithful endurance. The Bible sets the joy of the Gospel, the hope of eternal life, and the strength of the Holy Spirit before our weak and weary hearts. The Bible encourages us on the way. Through the prophet Isaiah, the Lord says: “Fear not, for I ...| The Lutheran Witness
by Matthew C. Harrison “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (Rom. 5:3–5). Do you ever feel like quitting? Quitting friends? Quitting family? Quitting a class? Quitting sports? Quitting school? Quitting church? Quitting life? Of course you have. We all have, and the reasons vary. Life is painful and complicated. It’s a good thing to get out of toxic s...| The Lutheran Witness
By Joel Elowsky 1,700 years ago, there was a newly united Roman Empire headed by a young emperor from Serbia named Constantine. The horrific persecution of Christians under Diocletian (A.D. 303–313) had just ended, and decrees pronouncing toleration of Christians had been issued by Galerius in 311 and by Constantine I and Licinius with the Edict of Milan in 313. In 312, Constantine had made his famous defeat of Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge: During the battle, “he saw with his own eyes ...| The Lutheran Witness
The May issue of The Lutheran Witness, “Councils and Conventions,” recognizes the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and discusses our own LCMS conventions. From the President: Very God of Very God: The Nicene Creed’s Faithful TestimonyLife in the Church Year Series: Eastertide: Lamb Cake and Ascension Picnicking Features: The Council of Nicaea: How the Early Church sought unity with the help of an emperor — Joel ElowskyThe Nicene Creed: Biblical foundations — Jonathan Mumm...| The Lutheran Witness
by Matthew C. Harrison We live in strange times of exploding scientific knowledge and deep ignorance of the Bible and Christianity. Our young people are taught the Bible is myth. They are told that the books included in it were selected for political and prejudicial reasons, while the “gospels” excluded from the canon of Scripture (the “Gospel of Thomas,” for example) were rejected for their broader, more open views of women, sexuality and so on. In reality, these other “gospels...| The Lutheran Witness
By Brian T. German Read Isaiah 2 and 13:6–13 and Luke 23:26–56. The Old Testament is saturated with special days. The creation of humanity certainly makes the list (Gen. 1:26–27), as does God’s day of rest (Gen. 2:2–3). The day the Israelites were brought out of Egypt was to be remembered throughout the generations (Ex. 13:3), along with the day that the temple was consecrated (1 Kings 8) — and rebuilt (Ezra 3). And who could forget the day the sun stood still (Joshua 10:14)? But ...| The Lutheran Witness
By Geoffrey R. Boyle Read Exodus 12:1–28 and John 13:1–15. When we talk about figures in the Old Testament, we’re not just talking about things that are like other things. Nor are we imposing later things onto earlier things, as if forcing the Old Testament to say something it doesn’t want to say. Instead, when we turn to the Old Testament — the people, places, institutions and events — we’re looking at real things that actually happened, real people who actually did what is rec...| The Lutheran Witness
By Kevin Golden Read Zechariah 9 and John 12:12–19. In their accounts of Palm Sunday, both Matthew (21:5) and John (12:14) report that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9: “Behold, your king is coming to you.” Mark (11:10) and Luke (19:38) also reflect the Lord’s promise through Zechariah in their narratives, reporting the joyful words of the people: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” It is rather straightforward, after all. Read Z...| The Lutheran Witness
The April issue of The Lutheran Witness provides “An Old Testament Walk Through Holy Week” — discussing how the events of Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday are prefigured in the Old Testament. From the President: Most Righteous God, Most Kind FatherLife in the Church Year Series: Holy Triduum & Hot Cross Buns Features: Introduction: How to use this issueBehold, Your King Will Come To You: A reflection for Palm Sunday — Kevin GoldenThe Anointed Prophet, Priest and King: A reflection fo...| The Lutheran Witness
This letter was published in the April 2025 issue of The Lutheran Witness. by Matthew C. Harrison It’s LCMS district convention season and time is at a great premium. Seven down, and 28 to go! This month, I share with you a striking devotion from the great Lutheran scholar Johann Gerhard (1582–1637). He wrote an enormous series of books on Christian doctrine that brim with the Bible and faithful scholarship. The English translations have recently been published by Concordia Publishing H...| The Lutheran Witness
Robin Phillips and Joshua Pauling, Are We All Cyborgs Now? Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine. Basilian Media, 2024. 453 pages. Order here. By Stacey Eising This new book, co-authored by an LCMS student of theology, offers a solution to our digital technology predicament: life together in the church. Perhaps you also saw this rather disturbing ad on TV recently: A man is sitting in a diner designing a new website on his laptop. As he types, the bodies of those sitting around him are vio...| The Lutheran Witness
By Jon Furgeson If you have listened in the last several years to Oprah Winfrey or heard interviews with Ariana Grande or dipped into the world of spiritual social media influencers, then you will have heard about “manifestation.” It is the power we have within, they say, to send out positive energies into the cosmos to manifest the positive persons and events we want in our lives. Rhonda Byrne’s bestseller, The Secret, popularized the idea and is one of many popular trends in American ...| The Lutheran Witness
This is the third installment of “Life in the Church Year,” a series by Dr. Kristen Einertson and Tessa Muench of All the Household. This series will provide guidance for living out the seasons of the Church Year at home with your families. Find month-by-month lists of Lutheran feasts, festivals and commemorations here. This year, March brings the end of Epiphanytide, officially closing out the Christmas cycle. Immediately afterward, the church shifts its eyes to Easter, as it embarks on ...| The Lutheran Witness
For many Christians around the globe — as noted in the Snippets this month — life is a daily struggle as they face persecution and even death for the sake of the Gospel. The culture that surrounds them is actively hostile toward them for their faith. In the U.S., our feature writer Aaron Renn contends, Christians now face a “negative world” — while we do not have to fear death or even outright persecution for our faith, for the first time in our nation’s history Christians do face...| The Lutheran Witness
The March issue of The Lutheran Witness discusses how we can live faithfully in a culture increasingly hostile toward the Christian faith. From the Editor: The Sanctified Life in a Hostile World Features: The Negative World: Facing a new social reality as Christians — Aaron M. RennOur Youth Are Ready to Serve: A ‘Set Apart to Serve’ feature — James BaneckLutheran Life in ‘the Negative World’: Holding to the Gospel in a Shifting Culture — Scott AdleChristians in Enemy Territ...| The Lutheran Witness
By Scott Adle Aaron Renn’s Life in the Negative World has spurred many Christians and Christian leaders to think again about a question that is old, yet perennial. Perhaps it could be summarized as: “What is the way forward in this culture for the church, and for us as Christians?” The italicized bit is what has gotten Renn traction. His framework posits that something has changed in our culture over the last few decades, and that the ways we do things should perhaps change too. An Age ...| The Lutheran Witness
By Troy Neujahr Is bivocational ministry on your horizon? Does it seem scary? Can it be good? Imagine a pastor and his church leaders sitting down together to hammer out next year’s budget. As the evening wears on, the income and expense columns show a resolute resistance to meeting one another. The light joking slowly becomes somber; smiling good humor hardens into serious faces. On the one hand, everyone at the table knew this day would come — and had known it for years — but to see t...| The Lutheran Witness
This is the second installment of “Life in the Church Year,” a series by Dr. Kristen Einertson and Tessa Muench of All the Household. This series will provide guidance for living out the seasons of the Church Year at home with your families. Find month-by-month lists of Lutheran feasts, festivals and commemorations here. The month of February can feel dull and drab after much of the merriment of Christmas and Epiphany has passed. Winding down from a season of festivity and anticipating a ...| The Lutheran Witness
by Matthew C. Harrison “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). The kingdom of heaven is God’s good Gospel gift. Luther commented, “If our dear Father were not to give the kingdom to us, we would never buy it from Him or earn it. The word is give, give, give. Therefore, we should thank Him with a cheerful heart and not boast about our worthiness” (Luther, St. L. IX.1812; my translation). John the Baptizer saw this king...| The Lutheran Witness
This is the first installment of “Life in the Church Year,” a series by Dr. Kristen Einertson and Tessa Muench of All the Household. This series will provide guidance for living out the seasons of the Church Year at home with your families. Find month-by-month lists of Lutheran feasts, festivals and commemorations here. In a cultural milieu that so easily distracts us from the Christian faith, many Christians ask: How do we order our lives outside of Sunday mornings in a distinctly Christ...| The Lutheran Witness
By Cameron MacKenzie Five hundred years ago, in the mid-1520s, a series of riots and revolts now known as the “Peasants’ War” broke out in Germany. These revolts were waged by groups both small and large against the established orders of church and state. They were regional, uncoordinated and inspired by local grievances like high prices, rents and taxes. By the time they were over, half of the German lands had been torn apart and as many as 100,000 people lay dead. To Luther’s grief,...| The Lutheran Witness
Inaugurations of a U.S. president often reverberate with religious overtones. The ceremonies blend the sacred and the secular, infusing the launch of a new political era with the weight of a religious experience. One presidential historian claimed that the rituals and ceremonies of inauguration day bore all the “solemnity of a sacrament.” Into this civic religion, into this attempt of government — and those who see it as a savior — to take for itself religious meaning and fervor, good...| The Lutheran Witness
The January issue of The Lutheran Witness is all about the two kingdoms — the church and the state — and how God rules in and through both. From the President: The Home: A Kingdom of Law and GospelFrom the Editor: God’s Two Kingdoms Features: Two Kingdoms, One Lord: Jesus is already reigning, both in heaven and on earth — Jason Lane‘When the Lord Has Not Spoken’: Luther’s response to the Peasants’ War teaches about political life today — Cameron MacKenzie‘City on a Hill...| The Lutheran Witness
by Matthew C. Harrison Luther says that the Fourth Commandment is the most important commandment in the second table of the Law (Commandments 4–10). It’s the source of all temporal blessings; good order in the home; and love, peace and even joy in society (LC I 126). “Honor your father and your mother, that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth,” as the old translation of the catechism said. This temporal promise is a good reason, says Luther, for us ...| The Lutheran Witness
By Daniel Grimmer In just a short time, multitudes of families will be journeying home for Christmas to visit parents, siblings and grandparents. For many, this will be a time of unbounded joy. But for others, that joy will be mingled with anger, fear or shame. Not everyone is able to visit a childhood home that is filled with mirth. Many face the painful reality of returning to homes and families that have been fractured by sin — sometimes their own sin, but many times the sins of their fa...| The Lutheran Witness
by Matthew C. Harrison The word “conscience” appears hundreds of times in our Lutheran Confessions. The central issue for the Reformation was the assurance of the forgiveness of sins for those dealing with guilt. The word “conscience” appears 27 times in the New Testament. It hardly appears in the Old Testament at all. In Scripture, internal belief and external actions are understood as either in concert with the Word of God or not. Genesis 42 notes that Jacob’s sons were ashamed ...| The Lutheran Witness
By Joel Biermann Many of us have fond memories of small-town life: summer festivals, unlocked doors, school pageants, common friends, heartfelt patriotism and a uniform morality. In years gone by, even those living in urban areas typically enjoyed the ordinary delights of life shared in tight-knit neighborhoods. Today, however, experiences like these are increasingly relegated to memories and nostalgia. In the 21st century, for a host of reasons, such communities are becoming quite uncommon. ...| The Lutheran Witness
