Oftentimes, I have found that campus ministry is full of gimmicks and feels like a bait-and-switch. Either congregations ignore their campus (campuses are becoming less and less aligned with LCMS teachings) or they sacrifice the Confessions and good practice for the sake of bringing in “the youth.” What good is a campus ministry if it leads to open communion? What benefit is a campus ministry to the students if it is fluffy, full of activity but void of study?
It takes some doing, but campus ministries can be thriving and congregations can be confessional. Perhaps in my case, I serve in an unusual context. At Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture, the students are focused and hard-working (or they are fooling me). The students go home most weekends to go work on the farm with dad. The campus serves as an apprenticeship, as on-the-job training, and experience and internships are abundant locally, rather than far off places with no connection to campus.
How then does a congregation do campus ministry if the students are gone on the weekends? It is necessary to host week day events. And that could be part of our success. We are not expecting regular church attendance; we focus on the Word of God and prayer throughout the week. And it is my hope that I can serve as a counselor of sorts for the students rather than the secular counsel they will receive on the campus.
“Every campus ministry is different” and “every congregation is unique.” Boy, how I get tired of that excuse that allows churches to do whatever they want. I don’t have the answers yet, but we need to discuss these matters and I hope this article is a good place to start. If the confessional congregations do not engage their universities, we are missing out on a ripe harvest field. If other congregations become like their universities, then the church becomes the world, and it is not a good witness of our faith.
Can campus ministries be confessional? I hope so, and I think so. Let us strive for that.
I’ve recently written two articles. First, the LCMS and those in our global fellowship are the only right teaching church. And, some non-Lutherans will surely go to heaven, but we’ll all be Lutheran in heaven. Now, there are folks calling themselves Christians who will not go to heaven.
False Teachers and those who firmly believe their demonstrably false teaching are prob’ly not going to heaven.
Concerning diseased trees who will be known by their bad fruits, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matthew 7:21-23)
Jesus says about false teachers, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matthew 18:5-6) We are all to trust what we hear like little children, trust the words of our father and mother. But woe to those leading any astray. The depths of the sea are for Satan and His minions, miscreants, and myrmidons. “Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea.” (Revelation 18:21a) The Dragon, the great serpent, who is the Devil belongs there in the sea.
Francis Pieper warns strongly about continually, knowingly, teaching falsely because others have done the same. “Over against such notions we need to perceive clearly and to maintain firmly that the “felicitous inconsistency,” through which by the grace of God an erring Christian is kept from losing his personal faith, in no way extenuates the error, much less legitimizes it. Those who defend their false teaching by citing the case of pious erring fathers are reminded by Luther of a possible eventuality: they follow the pious fathers indeed, but will not be with them at the end. Teaching in the House of God, the church, is a most serious matter. The teachers of the church must never forget: 1. Scripture nowhere gives any man the license to deviate in any point from God’s Word.”
Point one is very clear. When God’s Word refutes the existence of female “pastors,” the denial of infant faith, the denial of the real physical presence of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation in the Lord’s Supper, the denial of two genders given to us by God from creation, the denial of Jesus’ full forgiveness by the words of your pastor, and the like, there is no room in Christianity for a false teacher unless they repent and turn from their sin. Yet false teachers persist in their refuted error.
“… 2. Every departure from the Word of Christ, as found in the Word of His Apostles, is expressly designated an offense. Romans 16:17: ‘Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them.’” When we hear false teachers, we must call out the error. Furthermore, we must also withdraw ourselves and our families from the false teaching.
“… 3. Everyone who rejects the testimony of scripture concerning one doctrine, actually, though he is not fully aware of it, invalidates the Christian principle of [inerrancy].” It is impossible to deny a “small area” of doctrine. All of the scriptures are breathed out by God. There is no shady spot for a teacher, a student of God’s Word, to hide themselves in a known rejection of God’s Word.
Avoidance keeps us and our families away from the infection of false teaching. Treatment seeks to cure the infection with repentance and renewal in the faith, away from false teaching. Surgery severs us from the false teaching/teachers by removing them from us and our families.
Stay tuned, there is still more: does a “Christian Church” exist?
Close your ears to false teachers, dear Christians.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Sole Pastor Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX And Mission Planting Pastoral team Epiphany Lutheran Church, Bastrop, TX
Some of you who have followed this blog have read my earlier series “A Walk Through the Liturgy.” I enjoyed writing that series very much as it helped me articulate what I deemed (and still deem) to be some of the more important aspects of why we do what we do in the worship services within the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. But there are other things we can do to help us remember what we have heard in the service and get a better feel for the lectionary and church year in general.
As a confirmation student, I had to do sermon notes. Many of you probably had to do something similar. As a pastor, I have tweaked the formula. The entire service should demand our attention, because sometimes a sermon can be a dud. Thanks be to God that we hear His Word read, and that we are not reliant upon a sermon alone to receive the gifts of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have the entire service through which we receive Christ’s gifts!
So what do I do? I encourage my confirmation students and members to read my “Walk Through the Liturgy,” but then I require worship sheets to be filled out by confirmation students. It is meant to help them get more out off the service, and it should help Moms and Dads lead discussions about what happened in the worship service.
My questions begin with church year and colors. Then I ask about their favorite hymn from the service. Then I ask for a summary of the readings of the day. I don’t want it to be a paragraph. I am only asking for a single sentence for each of the main readings for the day. Then I ask if they find anything that connects the readings together. Again, its not supposed to be a long answer. I want the students to be reading their catechisms in full to help the next question. I also try to make some connection explicitly in my sermon. The same goes for the questions concerning the connections between the readings. Only after these questions do I ask the standard “Law/Gospel” questions for the sermon.
These worship notes are designed to help people of all ages to better retain what they have heard and learned from worship. As attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, consider making your own sheets. While I am not gifted in design, my wonderful wife helped make a sheet that is confined to one sheet of paper. Again, these aren’t supposed to be long treatises, but they can be tailored to your own desires. Over the course of time, you might make other connections you didn’t make the year before, or you might see the same hymn sung on the same Sunday year after year. But why not take up a more active listening role in the pews, so you get as much out of the service as your pastor and organist put into as they planned the hymns around the readings of the day along with the Sacraments of our Lord.
Rev. Jacob Hercamp Christ Lutheran Church Noblesville, Indiana
On the heels of my writing that the LCMS and those in our global fellowship are the only right teaching church, folks will hastily and uncharitably say things like, “I bet you think only Lutherans are going to heaven!” or “Pastor’s gonna be surprised that there aren’t only Lutherans in Heaven.”
The felicitous inconsistency is a happy accident, a result differing from what false teaching is likely to deliver: unbelief and hell. The felicitous inconsistency is the teaching in Christianity that where the Word of God is heard, true faith may spring-up in contradiction of false teaching. This is no guarantee. It’s our hope and prayer that the Lord grants faith to those who hear and preserves them in that faith. This hope and prayer flies against the false teaching in heterodox churches. It isn’t a thing we ought to expect or into which we ought to place our trust.
Loving our family, friends, and neighbors requires us to encourage them away from false teachers and heterodox churches. Simply being in a “Christian” church is good, but it’s certainly not good enough. In love, we ought to want our loved ones to hear only right teaching. We should want the Word of God AND right teaching entering their ears and hearts together rather than simply hoping God will preserve them.
Even in orthodox churches like our LCMS churches, Jesus warning about wheat and tares still holds true (Matthew 13:24-30). There will still be unbelievers gathered with the faithful until the last day. Only then the Lord will finally sort us into the fire and into salvation. Fear not! If this worries you, that’s great news. The unbelieving tares don’t care about their salvation one bit. That’s not you.
All that being said, there will certainly be non-LCMS Lutherans in heaven. But, in heaven we will all finally be Lutheran. In heaven we will all finally trust in grace alone apart from works. We will never doubt the salvation won on the cross, delivered in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and sealed with us in the bodily resurrection. And, there will not be one unbeliever among us.
Hang tight, there’s more to be said about this felicitous inconsistency concerning the false teachers too. In Christ all will finally be one, just not quite yet.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Sole Pastor Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX And Mission Planting Pastoral team Epiphany Lutheran Church, Bastrop, TX
