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Gottesblog

A blog of the Evangelical Lutheran Liturgy

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Posts by Larry Beane
Throwback Thursday: Squandering the Treasure

One of the official publications of one of our LCMS Districts reports that a retired pastor has just been given an honorary doctorate from one of the Concordia universities owing to the fact that under his leadership, his congregation's music "transitioned from the emphasis on traditional music and added a more Gospel oriented genre."

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Larry Beane Comment
Contemporary Worship: "Do What Thou Wilt"

Worship is the essence of the catholic faith, and we cannot be saved unless we confess it. Our worship is directed solely to the Holy Trinity who is also the Holy Unity. Worship and confession cannot be separated. And indeed, “whoever does not believe” the catholic faith “faithfully and firmly cannot be saved.”

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Larry Beane Comments
A Roadmap to the “Full Inclusion of Women”

If we don’t “ordain” women because God’s Word forbids us, then we can safely conclude that Satan is driving us toward the practice as a subversion of our biblical confession. And why would he not? We’ve seen church body after church body fall into this practice - followed up swiftly by embracing homosexuality and other sexual deviancies.

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Larry Beane Comments
The Balance of Gottesdienst

The Gottesdienst, the Divine Service, the Mass as we practice it in our Evangelical Catholic post-Reformation liturgy in our Lutheran tradition, is a balance between both Word and Sacrament. Our LSB hymnal presents it as such: the Service of the Word (pages 186-193) and the Service of the Sacrament (pages 194-202).

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Larry Beane Comment
Throwback Thursday: Did Jesus Speak Greek?

The conventional wisdom is that Jesus mainly spoke Aramaic, and that the New Testament was only written in Greek in order for the Gospel’s spread among the Gentiles. In his 2015 book, Did Jesus Speak Greek?: The Emerging Evidence of Greek Dominance in First-Century Palestine, author Dr. G. Scott Gleaves explains how he began to question this “Aramaic Hypothesis” that Aramaic was the “dominant language” in first century Palestine.

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Larry Beane Comments
Nos Non Abolere Missam

When people really, really want something that violates Scripture or the Confessions, they become desperate to gainsay the passages that they don’t want to submit to. They find clever ways to work around them.

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Larry Beane Comment
Mission-Critical?

In the big picture, a Capital-M Mission is a reason for being, a purpose. It is the “why” of any organization or entity. For many decades, corporations have been expected to have a “mission statement.” But in the church, a Small-M mission is some kind of outreach. A church’s Small-M mission might be to run a school, a VBS, Lenten fish frys, a consignment shop, a coffeehouse, or maybe supporting a preaching station intended to become a daughter congregation.

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Larry Beane Comments