04 September 2009

A Must Read

Letter to the Editor by Pastor Heath Curtis.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aren't these the same seminaries that send out their students (still laymen) to PREACH in the pulpits of LC-MS congregations?

William Weedon said...

Yes, those would be the SAME seminaries. Pr. Curtis has a take on the matter of vicars preaching that is well worth considering. I wonder if he'll see this and share?

Chris said...

I'm not trying to be difficult, Fr. Weedon as you and I have had discussions on this topic (with a slightly different angle) before, but my queestion is this: why is it that certain pastors in the LCMS get all tied up about who can preach and who can't when there is an equally destructive, if not more so, customs going on of abandoning the Liturgy and changes in praxis with the sacraments (Laymen administering them, grape juice instead of wine, individual cups, no confession/absolution or examination, etc.) and establishing fellowship with others who are heterodox (LCMC, ELCA, ELS, etc.). What is it about preaching that causes pastors to say, "You shall not pass" but when it comes to the praxis of the Church and the Liturgy, with the exception of you and several others, it gets a pass.

I am asking honestly. I am not trying to downgrade the necessity of preaching after the Gospel.

William Weedon said...

Chris,

It's a totally fair question, but note in this instance that Pr. Curtis was objecting to those who have not been publicly placed into the office of the ministry either preaching OR administering the sacraments.

I know for a fact there are more than a few pastors who decry the substitution of contemporary worship for our church's liturgy. Similarly with the abomination of grape-juice. The reason that the AC XIV is such a hot button item, though, is that it was ACTED ON BY SYNOD in convention. The other abuses are abuses, but they are not Synodically sanctioned (though Contemporary worship is coming close to it!). But the Synod set aside in Convention (Wichita, 1989 - already 20 years ago) the requirements of AC XIV. That's been a sore spot of massive proportions in our Synodical life ever since and the protests (such as this one) continue to ring out.

William Weedon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chris said...

Fair enough, Fr. Weedon. But how would Pr. Curtis address seminarians preaching on Sundays? WHen I visited my friends in seminary in the late 1990s, they were each assigned congregations (before their vicarage) where they preached on occasion.

Not to be a conspiracy theorist or anything, but do you and perhaps Pr. Curtis, see this as a backdoor attempt to allow for women's ordination? Can deaconesses preach at liturgies? Also, is preaching strictly limited to the Liturgy? After teh Liturgy, is preaching/teaching, whatever you want to call it, permissible?

In EO churches, deacons and non-ordained laymen can preach/give a talk, but only AFTER the Liturgy and it must be blessed by the bishop and/or priest.

Rev. Eric J Brown said...

The reason why there isn't such a furor over Seminarians preaching is that they are de facto a lower order of Clergy. They are training for the pastoral office, and their preaching is done, supervised, in their capacity as students training.

Now, why don't we ordain them to a lower order. . . eh. . . who knows. Maybe we don't like the hierarchy talk. However, it is proper for a Sem student to officially sign things as "Reverend Seminarians ___________"

That's my two cents on the issue - although I know many folks would faint dead at it. They read at a Bishop's discretion, they even preach at a Bishop's discretion - they are deacons functioning with the imprimatur of the Church at large. Simple as that.