Welcome everyone to our last class um let’s go ahead and begin with a prayer Heavenly Father we thank you for um this uh uh these new members who are going to be welcoming in today uh that are going to be joining our church and we thank
You for uh uh these classes that we’ve had together that we’ve been able to learn more about your word we ask that you would bless us uh in this uh final class we pray this in Jesus name amen so you have made it through 10 weeks week
It’s a long time uh it’s normally a six week class but since we did it on Sunday I had to lengthen it because we had less time per class right so so I thank you for your uh commitment to these 10 weeks uh I I’ll go over a little bit at the
End about what to expect going in you in the service today uh hopefully by then we’ll have our other two families here so they can hear this as well um so today we’re going to look at the church do a little kind of talk about uh
Worship and um uh talk about our church here a little bit stewardship and um a little bit if we get to it we try to talk a little bit about the history of the lcms uh so first off uh we have uh the church is divided into the visible church and the invisible
Church the um visible church is uh the church that you uh see right visible it’s your local congregation the invisible church are all Christians throughout the world right um so uh the definition of the visible Church from the oburg confession of faith it is the Assembly of all believers among Whom The
Gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel um so what the marks of the church are the gospel is preached in its Purity sacraments are administered according to the gospel so that’s how you know it’s a church right um and that is the visible Church the local
Congregation is the visible Church um and then we have the invisible church are believers in all churches around the world of all times both living and dead this is also this only includes True Believers um in the Apostles Creed this is called the communion of saints what we celebrate in
All Saints Day all believers around the world living and and departed um this is a number only God knows one that we cannot of course see so it’s not it’s invisible um this is the the church that we join uh with in our worship uh when
We when we confess in the Apostles Creed and in the Ning Creed that we believe in the communion of saints um we are uh confessing this and when we uh when we are in a worship uh uh there’s actually an old liturgy that says and we don’t
Say it in our church but it says With Angels and Archangels and all the company of Heaven We lot and magnify your glorious name ever more praising you and saying that’s you know we are we are joining with all the saints who are uh with the Lord and and praising him as
We are in worship at the time uh so we are we are connected to something greater is what I’m trying to say um so the invisible church is also known as the kingdom of God uh the visible church is an outpost of the kingdom of God so you know think of it
That way you have you have a a country and then you have an embassy right so we would be representing that kingdom here uh in our local community um and uh so the the church is not I hope you can see is not a an optional Comm uh Community for Christians it is
Essential for Christians when when we are saved uh we are saved into a community into a fellowship of fellow brothers and sisters in Christ we are uh formed into a new family uh and um so this is something that we want to be a part of is is what uh Christ has brought
Us into and I want to show you some uh verses that speak to the importance of the church you may have heard that this is kind of an attitude today where people will say well I don’t need the church I know I’m a Christian I don’t
Need the church to tell me who I am um and they kind of they’re kind of bitter at the church because maybe they’ve been burned Something’s Happened in their life and they don’t they just don’t see any need for the church uh but they stay but they still say why I still believe
In Jesus well you can’t have one without the other really I mean yes it’s possible I’m not saying that uh I mean if you believe in Jesus that’s ultimately that’s that’s what’s important is that you believe that Jesus is your savior but it was never the way
The way Jesus has set this up uh they they are hand in hand um faith in him and being part of his community uh and you’ll see this in these passages so you have uh Romans 12 4 to 5 as each of us has one body with many members so in
Christ we who are many form one body so we are the body of Christ um he is the head we are his body the church is his body and so that shows the that we are important each each body member each part of the body has its own function um
And we see here Colossians 1:18 Christ is the head of the body the church all right so we see uh the metaphor of body and uh and head uh we also have some other passages that talk about the church Ephesians 2:20 you are built on the foundation of the Apostles
And Prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the Chief Cornerstone so this is the the the uh you see here the metaphor of a building and uh it’s all built on Christ uh 1 Peter 2:9 you are a chosen people a royal priesthood a holy nation a people belonging to God that you may
Declare the Praises of him who called you out of Darkness into his wonderful life so we are we are a special community in this world in this world as God’s chosen people right a holy Royal priest of a holy nation people belonging to God um so uh in this community the church we
We encourage each other we build each other up um we point each other to Christ uh there is um there is encouragement there is accountability there’s all these things that we don’t have when we’re trying to go alone in the world you don’t have that same kind
Of encouragement if you just decided me and Jesus and I don’t care about the church um there’s also other things that are important about the church that we’ll get to in a moment when we look at worship but so far are there any questions all right so uh
Worship often we say we go to church to worship really we gather as the church to worship so the church yes we talk about the church as a building so that’s one way to refer to church but actually I’m trying to help you to think of the church is actually the Gathering of
God’s people nowhere in scripture when it talks about the church is it talking about a building nowhere it’s always talking about a Congregation of people um so uh When We Gather We Gather at as the church we are the church um John 4:24 God is spirit and those who
Worship Him must Worship in spirit and in truth that this is in reference to a question a lady asked Jesus about where do God’s people worship and she said uh you Jews say it’s in Jerusalem in the temple and and we say over here in Samaria cuz Samaria had a place too for
Worship and um and uh Jesus said there will be a time when God’s people will worship in spirit and in truth it’s not about a location it’s about the Gathering of God’s people wherever we meet we can meet here this is where we we want to meet it’s good to have a
Place to meet but if something happened to this location we would not be any less the church we would have a new place we would gather and it’s When We Gather that we are the church we worship in spirit and Truth uh Matthew 18:20 for where two or three are gathered in my
Name there am I among them so when we gather together in worship there is a special presence of Jesus that we have that we wouldn’t otherwise have and that I’m not saying that Jesus isn’t with you when you’re alone but there is a but
There is a way in which he is present in the Gathering of his people and worship that uh is special in a special way that he promises to be there when we gather together that that is not not the case when we are alone um and so when we gather together we
Talked about this about the means of Grace so when we gather together uh God is giving us his means of Grace right it’s in it’s in the Gathering in worship that we are receiving the Forgiveness of sins through the Absolution through uh the word proclaimed the gospel proclaimed through uh the uh Lord’s
Supper as we receive Christ’s body and blood um so since since we’re talking about worship would what do you think of how would you define worship somebody want to take a stab at what do you think of when you think of worship prising but I do have a question yeah I among
Them well that’s that’s what I’m saying it’s not it’s not that Jesus isn’t with you and and I I can’t really explain this I’m just taking Jesus at his word here he said where two or three are gathered I am among you um so that tells
Me that in in some way that he’s not present by ourselves but when we gather as his people he he’s Among Us and um um and again I think what we have to I think in in the terms of the worship service I think this goes back to the
Means of Grace that I’ll get to in a minute because yes Jesus is there with you always and when you’re reading the word he’s speaking to you and you’re a private and we’re we’re encouraged to be in private devotion you know to have time away with the Lord by ourselves um
And then when we come together and there’s a group of us we know the Lord is there present there to serve serve us and I’m kind of uh I just gave up my hand here as I said that because I’m asking you the question about uh worship
So so hopefully this will become more clear in in a minute but that’s a good question uh so how so so you said worship is uh praising praising God right well any other thoughts any other ways to yeah singing singing okay anything you glorify God be worship glorifying
God okay okay no anything so not just in the service but uh um and everything you’re doing it’s kind of a okay any other tell me your question how would you define worship yeah okay mhm okay so how would maybe I I’m trying to narrow it a bit how How would
How would you define what’s going on there for an hour from 10:15 to 11:15 every Sunday he is focus focusing on God hearing hearing his word focusing on God acknowledging who he is anything else giving him glory giving him glory there you go Jen knew where I was going with that she knows
All culturally they think of church think of all the things that we do but the word itself implies that because worship is uh an anthropocentric a manmade yeah yeah because worship is human centered what we’re doing but what goes on in there is not the world’s
Definition of worship um I want to show you uh this this is a good definition here it’s kind of lengthy I will read it for you though Sorry probably was a little small um what is worship worship and fellowship is the primary place where the Holy Spirit comes to us to
Create and sustain our faith worship is not an obligation for us to be grudgingly fulfill but a joyful obedience to our gracious and forgiving Heavenly Father the order of worship is like a Divine drama in which we become participants in the death and resurrection of our our Lord Jesus
Christ we enter into God’s presence calling on his name in the invocation confessing our sins and receiving his forgiveness we sing the hymn of the Angels at his birth glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on Earth we listen to his word in SE scripture
And the sermon we reive his body and blood given and shed on the cross for us in worship we die and are raised to New Life so you can see there’s there’s a there’s a back and forth going on in worship but it’s initiated by God we are
There when we gather because we know Jesus promises to be present and he is there in his word that when we gather We Begin the service in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit that reminds us of how we’re able to be in
His presence through our baptism we are baptized into the name of our trium God and so we begin the service uh through our baptism that we are God’s people gathered to worship and we don’t have to question whether God’s going to show up that day we know he is because
He promises in his word he’s there and what’s he doing here he’s do what he’s doing is he’s serving Us in the worship service we actually call it if you open up the Himel uh to any one of the services we have at the front of the Himel it’s called The Divine
Service right this is God’s service God is serving us us he is serving Us in his word he comes to us in his word to forgive us of our sins he comes and he serves us he’s the host at the table who gives us his body and blood and and
There we receive the Forgiveness of sins so uh so how we understand Worship in the Lutheran Church really is a little different than how a lot of churches will will articulate it um when you when you worship Church you’re kind of surrendering to I am everything you have to give me yours
Surrender yourself to well yeah uh but what I’m saying is um you’re you’re you’re there to receive yeah he’s he’s promising to forgive you you’re you’re going in there as someone who knows they’re a sinner and needs forgiveness so yeah in a sense surrender I suppose
Would be a way to put it yeah you’re saying I I don’t deserve to be in your presence Lord but you have made me uh you have you have made me ready for your presence through my baptism and now I’m coming to you as your child who is a
Sinner and needs forgiveness and here in the worship service I’m going to receive that forgiveness and we receive it over and over we receive it in the confession and Absolution right we receive it uh you hear it proclaimed in the in the sermon um we uh receive it in the Lord’s
Supper again so we’re and so there’s this back and forth where we’re receiving from God his gift what we you know the means of Grace we talked about a couple weeks ago the word and the sacraments we receive those and then our response to what to his grace
What we are receiving in the service is to praise him to pray to him to thank him uh to to want to serve him and then and then really the serving part of it actually comes into play when we are exiting the the service where we have
Been and where we have received and then we are serving throughout the week throughout you know in our lives um but but primarily what’s going on in the worship service is we are receiving um we are in the presence of God to receive from him his gifts and
It’s because we have then been recipients of his grace that we then can serve and love our neighbors in the world and so really the worship service is kind of the high point of uh what happened in in in the in the body of Believers as we gather together uh as
Fellow Sinners saved by grace and know that when we come to the service we are going to be forgiven and and that that’s not to take away from the from the um uh response part of that the praise part of it we do praise God but the worship service isn’t exclusively praising God
It’s not exclusively glorifying God it is primarily receiving from him and then in response praising and glorifying him that’s what I like every suay yeah yeah and and really it’s it’s communion but it’s not it’s not I mean Comm actually the service kind of is preparing for communion and then we are
Receiving it but we’re also there’s we have the Liturgy I don’t know not not every not everyone came from a church where you had maybe a liturgy I would argue every church has some kind of liturgy because if you’re doing the same thing every Sunday that’s kind of a
Liturgy but but um but we have an actual uh Liturgy of like invocation confession Absolution Psalm or inro you know and then every Sunday we do that because by doing that we are directing our our thoughts to God’s word we’re listening to God’s word because everything in our
Liturgy comes from God’s word um and so that liturgy also enables us us to receive to and to prepare for the hearing of the word in in the sermon and preparing for the the Lord’s Supper because we have these two two high points in the worship service the two
High points are the word preached than the uh Lord’s Supper where we receive Christ’s body and blood uh it’s why we call ourselves you know word and Sacrament is how it’s described um and so so worship I I just think it’s very important that um that you see the uniqueness I
Think of how we understand the worship service in the Lutheran Church that it is God coming to us serving us not not as most churches tend to only focus on the what we’re doing part of the worship service and and I even I even I’ve been
To services that are not Lutheran and I even I even hear that articulated about you know that that what we’re doing here is acceptable to you Lord and and are we praising you well and it man it’s not up to us it’s it’s worship because God is
There and he’s re and we’re receiving from him and so we never have to walk out of the service going I hope God showed up today we guarantee he was there because he promises um so um again so so liturgy is also important because it um it is because of
The repetition of it it it helps you to articulate and to and to learn to to to think uh as as God’s people you know we have the same and it varies we have different variations of it but typically we’ll say the same confession of sin every week because our confession of sin
Is total right it leaves you no wiggle room and if we and sometimes I’ve heard Services where they try to update it or try to change it around and and then it becomes like well I know I haven’t been as good as I could be this week and it’s
Like that’s not confessing your sins confessing your sins is saying that you are you know you’ve sinned in thought word and deed again leaving leaving no will room so so how we worship informs how we approach God and it is really uh so our worship is dactic it teaches us
How we are to reproach God what God is doing uh for us so so that’s another reason why worship is so important and the Liturgy is so important that way um I want to talk to you just a little bit about if you have your catechism turn to page
260 I told you that would happen right um I don’t reference it at all and then the one day I want I referenced it you didn’t bring it so maybe take down write down this page number for yourself and you can check it out when you can page
Um what did I say that’s not right I said 260 but that’s not right um hold on now I got to look for it anyone who has a catechism if you if you want to look for the church calendar that’s what I’m looking for um oh oh here it is 378 page
378 I’m going to correct that right now okay I probably have a page number from an old catechism oh yeah yeah so page 378 uh you see this circle that circle is the church calendar we follow the church year uh next Sunday is actually the last Sunday
In the church here we we begin a new year uh in December the new year begins with the season of Advent and so if you look at the calendar here you’ll see that the very top the new year begins with Advent Advent takes us into Christmas Christmas
Is 12 days people think Christmas is one day it’s 12 days or if they think it’s 12 days they think it starts December what 12 days before Christmas and then ends on Christmas Day Christmas day is not the 12th day of Christmas Christmas day is the first day of Christmas and it
Goes 12 days to January 5th and then on the sixth is Epiphany and that’s when the wise men show up the WIS men didn’t show up on Christmas day they show up on Epiphany um so then you have Epiphany and then they have the Epiphany season now unfortunately this calendar does not
Show you the colors you can see the different shades of gray but those are actually colors so Advent is Blue Christmas is white Epiphany is green and then you get to lint lint is purple lint begins with Ash Wednesday the day of Ash Wednesday is actually black but then you
Get to the season of lint which is purple and then takes you into Easter which is white uh then we get to Pentecost which is white but then the season of Pentecost no excuse me Pentecost is red and then the season of Pentecost you can see takes up half the
Year so the first half of the church year is the is the is uh focuses on the Life of Christ and the second half of the church year focuses on the life of the church um so that’s the that’s the calendar now the different colors uh represent have represent different meanings right
Blue is a color for anticipation uh and also royalty um and then you have um Christmas is white Purity Joy uh Epiphany this green growth is usually What’s Understood with green um and then you have um black is repentance um purple is also repentance but also Royal royalty where where we’re
It’s a season of it’s a penitential season where we’re thinking about Jesus coming into this world to die for our sins and then Holy Week you have Monty Thursday Good Friday Monty Thursday’s white celebratory Jesus uh ining the Lord’s supper and then black is penitential uh on Good
Friday and then um uh of course Easter white celebratory then you have the season of Easter which is white resur Direction and then you get into green again for Pentecost and that’s the growth again growth of the church so those are the different seasons different colors uh some colors you see
More than others obviously green you see more than anything else uh because it takes up so much of the year um so the the year starts in Advent uh so it doesn’t quite match the calendar year and then it goes to the to the next uh
End of November of the next year and then Advent is all Advent is 1 of December sometimes the very last days of November yes stops at 360 and then it starts up again at it doesn’t have the church calendar in it oh my goodness between 360 and Pages
409 it has the small catechism with explanation oh wow so we’ve been looking like the couldn’t find it you started his and oh no he you know what this catechism has been sitting here I don’t know huh that’s unfortunate CU those are not cheap we need to take that back to cph
This one yeah hopefully hopefully it works you can see that so and then if you want if you want further detail into the church calendar if you look on the next page it goes on for several pages and it gives you all the different celebrations for individuals like you
Know in December St Thomas Apostle on the 21st of December you know I mean it goes through all sorts of detailed ones that we don’t usually even celebrate uh but that is the church calendar is the church calendar is not uniquely Lutheran uh a lot of churches follow the church
Calendar and um we are on a three-year cycle a three-year cycle which uh we have a cycle B cycle we have your a your B and your C we are currently about to wrap up your a so in two weeks we start Advent will be in year B so you know
Every Sunday you have your three readings usually it’s an Old Testament reading sometimes it’s a new testament usually it’s Old Testament and then an epistle and then a Gospel reading and uh every every Sunday you have a different three readings and so series a focuses on Matthew the Gospel is focused on
Matthew series B which we’re coming up to focuses on Mark series C focuses on Luke because these are the synoptic gospels John is interspersed throughout the 3 years um so what’s nice about the the uh readings uh that we have the assigned readings for each Sunday is it
As it’s taking you through the seasons uh you’re getting a lot of different parts of scripture So within three years you’re seeing a lot of scripture now some some celebrations some Sundays have the same readings every year Christmas same readings every year um but then you have some that are that
Do change around and and that doesn’t mean you’ll never see the other gospels in those years sometimes you will see Luke in uh the series where you were focus on Mark uh but but in general that’s what it does it focuses on one of the three gospels any questions about the church
Calendar the sign readings yeah I would like to encourage everyone to come Christmas service which is always very speci then when Ash wed that’s in the middle of the weal time but Ash wed is very moving Frid and E those are very touching Services God comes to and and you will Home Easter EAS but when you go through those two Services Mond THS Good Friday yeah that’s a good point we have these other services that are not on Sunday in the church calendar like you said and and and to add to that services that are not in the church calendar what
We do are Wednesdays in Advent and W Wednesdays in Lent in in in Advent and lint we have Wednesday Services also and all these Services as you say are designed to help us kind of relive the drama right that’s kind of what you’re as we as we go through the
Year we’re we’re we’re experiencing all these different uh things in the Life of Christ and so uh during Christmas C you know celebration you know you know and Advent is as we’re anticipating Christ’s return is celebratory and then although Advent used to be more uh uh penitential
But we kind of looked at as more kind of anticipating and celebrating Christmas and then uh lent is uh penitential time we’re focused on our sins that were the reason Jesus came and then that walks us into holy we when we have that time of of of really considering why Jesus died
And thinking about the fact that he did die on the cross and then yeah the resurrection becomes that much more celebratory because we walked through the the drama of it lady never G she was so that she was there these areal good yeah thank you for uh for
Reminding me of that yeah Matt I was say anyone wants Church calarc yeah it it’s not like it’s a secret every Sunday what are the readings going to be uh you can yeah you can go find out you can go to the website and you have the entire year of
Readings or come see me and I can make get you a copy of it it’s yeah uh it’s kind of nice if you do know if you want to think ahead and read ahead on the readings lcms lcms do yeah L lcms Lutheran Church Missouri c lcms.org
Um so this is to wrap up with worship worship is uh worship has two parts God gives us Gifts of forgiveness life and salvation and we respond to him in prayer and praise um so now I want to talk a little bit about stewardship um just and in general
Just being being a part of the church and what that means to be part of the church right uh to be an active member in the church um we have the three T’s of time talent and treasure that’s usually how uh stewardship is articulated uh time uh we give our time
Serving uh doing things that just need to be done in the church everything most everything not everything but most everything that’s done here is done by volunteers by members who are just serving of their time uh and without people serving their time there’s a lot that wouldn’t get done around here um
The one the big things coming up and I’ll talk about it again after the service is uh uh we’re we’re getting into Christmas and we’ve got um night in Bethlehem that’s a big thing that’s going to take a lot of effort from a lot of people we’re asking
Everyone to pitch in on that uh decorating our our church uh getting it ready for Christmas we’re going to ask a lot of people to help out as many people who can to help out on that um but that’s just this time we all throughout the year we’ve got um we’ll have a
Weekend uh clean up the church usually in the spring do the mulching and and you just a lot of the gardening and and uh cleaning up around the church and inside the church as well uh there’s there’s different um um places to serve in the church Church uh in helping out
With any number of things like with our alter Guild ushers those are really good ways to serve uh alra Guild and Usher um and then for Sunday school teachers Sunday school B Sunday school teachers yes need Sunday school teachers um and and uh there’s and as we anticipate growth there’ll just be more
Opportunities more needs U we’ll need to have people helping out with our our youth as that continues to grow and and um so we have a lot of different ways that we can serve and um there’s also and it’s not just time is not just about serving it’s also just being present
Coming to bible studies finding opportunities to be in God’s word and bible study um and and fellowship when we’ve got things going on where we just you know come together and have fun have a have a potluck that we encourage uh you to be there um the fellowship is
Important as uh anything else just uh growing together um Communications for to you know you want to know what’s going on so that you can be part of things uh be sure to give your email address to um our secretary Lisa she’s actually here today and uh we
Have our online we have our our eblast that sent out on email and then we online you can go to our our uh Facebook site that’s up to kept up to date regularly different events go going on to uh like And subscribe to the Facebook site um you don’t have to have a
Facebook account either to look at it you don’t okay very good yeah if you don’t have Facebook you can still go on there and check it out yeah thanks um talent talent is what what what what are your gifts I had you fill out that time
And talent uh survey and that’s so that we can kind of hone in on what are things skills you have things ways that you could serve would like to serve um and uh that came up about as a result of our um our um strategic planning thing I remember
We did some strategic planning a couple years back and so that was one thing we wanted to try to pinpoint you know what are who who can do what who wants to do it it helps us to identify people who can serve in different capacities
Um so in the last piece treasure that of course is giving of our our uh what God has blessed us with in our income and there there are ways that you can give some people like to prefer to give online you can go to the website and you
Can set it up where it’ll just if you want it to come out of your uh account every you know monthly weekly or however you want to set it up a lot of people don’t carry cash with them and a lot of people don’t carry their checkbooks with
Them anymore and uh but if you want to do that you’re still welcome to do that we you know we we do Pass the Plate every Sunday uh but a lot of people have moved away from uh putting offerings in the plate and just is setting it up
Online that way so uh but we do I just want to you know we have that option available can I make a comment about that real quick yeah I think I’m just going to take a stand on this I think if you have small children I think it’s
Good for you to physically put it in the place like we were we were doing the online giving and it occurred to me one time like Luke never sees us give or like doesn’t understand that we’re giv because it was coming out of our account and the
Basically because I want him to see it go in and so I I don’t know that’s just me but I feel like if you have small children I feel like there’s value in them knowing that you’re King yeah that’s true I mean that’s how I learned
Because I knew my parents gave I just knew I never even question it I was like yeah I’m going to I’m going to give 10% that’s what I was taught um so uh those are the three T’s of stewardship any questions question about that okay um so uh this is our vision
Statement here you hear this every Sunday for me we are growing and engaged Community rooted in the Saving Grace of Jesus Christ welcoming the disconnected and the lost this also came about from our strategic planning uh so this is what this is what we strive to be this
Is you know vision statement is aspirational it’s what we what we want to do we want to be an Engaged community that means that we are connected together we are growing together encouraging one another we are and and the the and we we’re growing together in God’s word we’re rooted in the Saving
Grace of Jesus Christ so we are in God’s word together uh involved in each other’s lives uh serving together uh uh together wanting to um uh to to grow in our faith and then um as we do that we are welcoming them the disconnected and
The lost so as we grow in our faith and and uh as we uh desire to love our neighbor uh we are then um called to uh share the gospel to uh you know and I saw a meme actually a couple weeks ago and I didn’t I I never like researched
To see if the meme is actually saying anything true but I liked what it said and it was saying that it gave like numbers of like how people come to church and like 80% I think of the people who would go to church they went to church because someone invited
Them and so so that’s the primary way of people coming to church is they were given an invitation from a coworker neighbor or friend someone who just so so the simplest way to welcome the disconnected and the loss is simply to say hey you don’t you don’t have a
Church I me there’s so many people moving into Bentonville every now and then you’re probably going to have a new neighbor show up across the street or next door and you can go introduce yourself and say have you found a church yet do you go to church well if you do
Check out my church so um so we want to welcome the disconnected L and then when people do show up and they find us and they come to worship we want to make sure that we are helping them to feel welcomed uh that we’re glad they’re here um engaged rooted and welcoming are
The three takeaways from the vision statement I’m just noticing we have 10 minutes left which is good I I still have more to go through uh but I still don’t know if I’ll get it all in so now that I talked about worship the church the the local church
I want to talk a bit about the larger Church body that we at Faith belong to we are part of the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate that’s a weird name since we live in Arkansas you know why are we Missouri Senate um let me show you first before I get to the answer
That let me just tell you about there’s different um Lutheran and there’s more than this I I only give you the big ones but there’s been so many split offs from the ELCA that I can’t even name all the Lutheran Churches but the the big ones are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America and then you have the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Senate which is Wells so we have Ela and Wells and then you have us Lutheran Church Missouri Senate there are some other ones um and I was going to ask Dan can you help me out you know some can you list some of
Them LC MC NC uh the United fre rooms uh Elona there’s a bunch yeah there there are so many but I would still even with all that these are still the primary three for now the ELCA is getting all chopped up So eventually I’ll probably have to change this but they’re still the
They’re still the largest the largest Lutheran denomination in the country for now they are dying unfortun I mean well I was going to say unfortunately but I think there’s reasons for they’re dying um I mean I don’t want to celebrate a church dying I don’t want to say that
But they are a church that has strayed from the word of God and uh so they teach a lot of things contrary to scripture and that’s not every Church in the ELCA that’s the denomination as a whole there are individual ELCA churches that are good biblical churches good
Lutheran Churches it’s just a it’s a big umbrella big tent denomination and so the the the the official teachings of the ELCA can go contrary to the word of God because they see remember the very first class I asked you about the Bible being the word of God or containing the
Word of God the ELCA pretty much says it contains the word of God which enables you to kind of pick and choose what is God’s word the Wisconsin Senate is a church more like our church that sticks to the the word of God that that that
That the Bible is the word of God um the Wisconsin CED actually broke Fellowship from us uh and I don’t know exactly all the reasonings for that uh but they are very similar to us they are smaller than us um I don’t know the numbers so much
Anymore at one time it used to be about five million for ELCA but I think that has definitely shrunk Wisconsin CED was in the like I think like 500,000 I don’t know if that’s still the case anymore uh Missour SED we’re about 2 million and sadly we have been stagnant
And even shrinking over the years as well there is a I mean one there’s a trend all over the country that churches are shrinking so that’s not anything oh elk is at 3 million probably because of all the splits they’ve had so they’re not that much bigger than us anymore that’s interesting
So uh Lutheran Church Missouri Senate what is a senate the word sined means walking together we are walking together with other churches who are part of our sinate so so that that takes the mystery out of one of the words in our name Lutheran Church Missouri Senate we are
Walking together we are walking together in a certain confession our confessions are the book of Concord and we uh subscribe to that as our Doctrine because the book of Concord agrees with scripture not in so far as the book of Concord agrees with scripture because again that’s what the ELCA how they
Would articulate it we would say because it agrees with scripture we we uh um teach the confessions of of the the book of conquer um so we are walking together in our Doctrine uh teaching scripture according to how we understand it from the the book of Concord which is a big book with
A lot of writings one of the two of the well one of the books is the small catechism but we have the large catechism small called articles Augsburg confession apology to the Augsburg confession um the Augsburg confession was the first document that established aam church um and then there’s the formula of Concord
The apology to the formula of Concord um what what am I missing it THS up I said large and small catechism um small called small called articles did I say that I thought I did maybe I didn’t may maybe I didn’t small called articles power andriy power and Primacy of the Pope
Yeah yeah so there’s a lot of books um developed over many many years that the Lutheran Church got SP so Missouri Senate history 18 founded in 1847 the roots of the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate traced back to 1847 when Saxon and other German immigrants established a new church body in America seeking the
Freedom to practice and follow confessional Lutheranism there was something in in Germany at the time in Prussia it was called the Prussian Union and they were getting all these little areas of Germany were going under this Prussian Union which the Prussian Union was a way for the king to uh unite the
Empire with uh one religion so he’s getting the Lutheran and the Protestant together to make up one uh Church well you can imagine that would be upsetting if you your whole life confess that Jesus B body and blood are present in the sacrament and you are forced to join
Churches that don’t say that you’re going to be a little upset and you know you it was didn’t have choice and so this was the Prussian Union well these these Saxon immigrants they didn’t want to be part of that they didn’t want to be told that they had to be part of this
Church that didn’t agree with their confessions so they they moved uh and they were moving all over not just America they were going to Brazil and Australia uh but these this particular group went to um went to uh St Louis they they started out went through went through New Orleans into St Louis
Um and um that that’s what so they actually they actually um they actually uh uh set up their base in Perry County Missouri south of St Louis and uh this was one group of Saxons there were other Saxons and other Germans German Germans were coming all over the country they they were
Primarily going into the mid West uh Germans are the largest immigrant group in the country and they were huge back then and they were just coming in and they were displaced from their churches and so uh when the Saxons came they were able to join with other Germans in Michigan uh
Indiana um was that eventually Texas yeah because there were a lot of them actually going to Texas and and they and they all kind of join together and so that’s why you have here initial members included 12 pastors representing 14 congregations from Illinois Indiana Missouri Michigan New York and Ohio
Signed the church B’s constitution on April 28th 1847 at First St Paul Lutheran Church in Chicago Illinois so that’s when it started again they there were all these other Germans who already were here in their own Lutheran churches and they wanted to be become part of this Senate um
Original name originally named the German Evangelical Lutheran Senate of Missouri Ohio and other states the name was shortened to the Lutheran Church Missouri sened in 1947 on the occasion of its 100th anniversary so that’s why it’s the Missouri c um and yes they spoke German it was a
It was strictly a German uh denomination and uh they uh in fact at one point I think there was was a Lutheran uh group that spoke English and they didn’t want part of them because they were English speakers they didn’t want to do that eventually they had the
English District join them which is still a District to this day they were called the English District because they spoke English it’s a non-geographical district um and there’s another non-geographical District called thec which is the Slovak uh originally was a Slovak District so they they were their own
District you know these slovaks joining Germans uh but the other districts we have are all geographical districts yeah oh certainly any there’s a benefit to be in a denomination period you know there’s a lot of churches that are non-denominational if you are non- denominational you are kind of your own
Thing you don’t have support from anybody else um but more importantly you don’t have any accountability in a denomination you are agreeing to teach as these other churches are and there’s accountability and so there’s an absolute advantage to being part of the Missouri Senate that we’re accountable to our doctrines that
We hold true if a church wants to stop teaching Lutheran Doctrine they’re free to do that but they have to leave the Senate and they can keep their property be their own thing but if you’re going to be part of the Missouri Senate you have to teach as we teach confess what
We confess uh and then there so there’s that accountability there’s also because we’re a group just doing this walking