I’m glad I found you on Twitter and now your page.

It really does make one thankful for the strong Word of law and gospel.

I pray that everyone would have a chance to hear good, sound, law/gospel preaching on a regular basis.

Good post, having come out of that stuff not all that long ago and been searching for a good Gospel church, we found one a solid LCMS church (we take our first communion after several weeks of catechism this Sunday), for a long time I still recall what that felt like. Especially after I discovered there was such a thing as “200 proof” Gospel, the real hell is when you don’t know that and you think you are actually hearing the “gospel”. That’s when it terrorizes your soul.

I told my wife the other day, and meant it, “If for some reason we find ourselves in another situation in which this church falls apart completely and loses the Gospel we will drive half a day or more if only once a month to the nearest solid Lutheran church.” I said, “You have to recall that back in the day before good roads and cars, when people went to church in this country often over ‘cow trails’ hours from out in the wilderness to church…we’ve become a little spoiled in the idea of ‘nearness’ to a church.” That being said it may not be doable for all folks to drive like that if necessary.

Better to hear the Gospel once a month 200, 300 miles away than the opposite down the street. I say that because here in the south, in KY, one can literally throw a stone and never miss hitting a church building of some kind or another. None of which preach the Gospel, at least in my pretty extensive church search history.

It is very sad, as you say, what we know people are hearing every Sunday. I’ve family members in my own family that have been driven out of the church for this kind of moralistic preaching. They’ve become so jilted by it that they won’t even give another church a chance. Here’s the part that is the toughest I’ve discovered coming from a strong SB and Methodist family background (this comes from family experience to not just theory): most non-Lutheran protestant churches, especially in the Baptist realm, have so well taught against any liturgical forms, so everything is “anti-catholic”, “if it even smells liturgical it is therefore catholic” – that is/was so deeply ingrained in us that they never give it a hearing in a Lutheran church. Even my own first reaction in a LCMS church was intuitively, “hey what’s this all about, awful RC like”. And I was a functional atheist/agnostic for most of my years in spite of my SB background, so I was “more neutral” about it than most like my wife who were steeped in this “anti-rome/liturgy” life all their life. AND I was pretty prepared for it having read Luther and Lutheran doctrine for some years – the anti-Rome/liturgy “feeling” or “sense” is that deeply ingrained due to the teachings.

Having been taught through it, though, we love it…it is so Gospel rich!

Anyway, just some thoughts. Sorry you had to hear a sermon like that I know what it feels like having heard that a LOT in my former denomination.

Yours,

Larry