Lutheran Spokesman

It was just a small Baptist church, located in a poor rural area of the country and made up of parishioners who themselves possessed very little in terms of material wealth.  The salary they were able to pay their pastor was barely adequate, often consisting partly of produce grown by the parishioners—which they gave him in lieu of cash.

The pastor had been newly married when he accepted the call to serve them seven years earlier. Then came children. Now that the pastor and his wife were the parents of a growing family, their financial difficulty was becoming more serious, and it may have seemed providential to him that he had recently received a call to be the pastor of a large and prosperous Baptist church in the city. Read More »Hymn 464 “Blest Be the Tie That Binds”

A HYMN OF GLORY LET US SING 

(Fifth in a Series on The Lutheran Hymnal)

Why do we celebrate Ascension Day?

Although most Reformed churches today largely ignore the event as a calendar item, we Lutherans do not. Theologians actually have much to say about the doctrine of Christ’s bodily ascension. They use fancy Latin terms like terminus ad quem (“the end to which”), coelum beatorum (“the paradise of the redeemed”) and coelum Dei maiestaticum (“the majestic heaven of God”). The Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord addresses Christ’s ascension at length in Sections VII and VIII.Read More »Hymn 216 “On Christ’s Ascension I Now Build”