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
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
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
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. If you’ve ever read any children’s fairy tales, you’ll know that with every great victory comes a feast and celebration. It should be the same with the Lord’s gre...| 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
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. All things in the church year point toward the death and resurrection of Jesus, the origin and fulfillment of the church’s life. And in April this year we reach the hig...| 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
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
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
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
