Pondering Pastor

We are gifted to have as part of the congregation I serve, people who look at the lessons and attempt to make the flowers aid in communicating the Gospel.  Last Sunday was Pentecost.  The liturgical color of the day is red, and so one would expect red carnations as part of the floral arrangements in worship.  Our floral designers go one better.

Pondering Pastor

I was asked by a friend to provide the link to the Clergy Letter Project.

The text of the letter:

Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible – the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark – convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.

We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.

I’m a signator.

Pondering Pastor

Mormon Article of Faith #5

We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.

Augsburg Confession Chief Article of Faith #5 - Concerning Ministry in the Church

So that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the gospel and administering the sacraments was instituted. For through the Word and the sacraments as though instruments the Holy Spirit is given, who effects faith where and when it pleases God in those who hear the gospel, that is to say, in those who hear that God, not on account of our own merits but on account of Christ justifies those who believe that they are received into grace on account of Christ. Galatians 3: “So that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” [The churches among us’ condemn the Anabaptists and others who think that the Holy Spirit comes to human beings without the external Word through their own preparations and works.

Augsburg Confession Chief Article of Faith #14 - Concerning Concerning Church Order

Concerning church order [the churches among us] teach that no one should teach publicly in the church or administer sacraments unless properly called.

Commentary

There is actually pretty common agreement here.  ELCA Lutherans ordain men and women.  I believe that Mormons do not allow women to “administer the ordinances”.  Nevertheless, Mormons and Lutherans agree that good church order is important.

Pondering Pastor