LCMS vs ELCA, What's the Difference?

what is the difference between the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America let's talk about it on Sunday I did the Sunday Drive home and I talked about the ELCA convention and in response to that James writes Wow what's with the ELCA bashing you sound pretty smug I sound smug I'm sorry and James thank you for this comment it's it's always helpful to be critiqued and to be reminded that we want to speak the truth in in love in everything that we do so I want to I want to back up a little bit and talk about the differences between the two churches and maybe explain why I thought my plan of reminding the ELCA that Martin Luther was a white guy was so hilarious at least in my mind so here he goes by the way because this has to do with the culture and especially the sexual revolution this video might not be the best for the youngest of our youtube theologians what was the reason this matters to me is twofold the number one I was baptized in the church that would soon become the ELCA and confirmed in the ELCA Church a family tradition they're like my grandmother's and grandfathers names are on the stained glass windows in Zion Lutheran Church in Kerrville Texas which used to be ELCA until they either left or were kicked out and joined the Elsie MC that's a different Church altogether the Lutheran Church and mission for Christ and so and to leave our family had to leave the ELCA it was a this tough that kind of stuff but then the second reason for my frustration is that as a as a Lutheran pastor it's it's causes so much confusion for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the ELCA which are very very different churches to have the same name kid okay can imagine it like this imagine if like instead of the Republicans and the Democrats there was the Democratic Party Missouri Synod and the evangelical Democratic Party in America imagine that they had that same kind of name and then what would happen would be the or the the the evangelical Democratic Party in America would get together in convention and do something like ordain the first transsexual pastor or sign some sort of agreement with the Roman Catholic Church and then the news report sidin says the largest democratic party in the United States has just done this or that and then people say to me hey you're part of the Democratic Party what do you think about these sorts of things and I wanna say no it's very its weak okay we have that one name we have the name in common Democratic Party but we do totally different things now that that's so that's my that's my frustration I'm a Lutheran pastor the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is called Lutheran so whenever they do something and it gets reported in the news people say hey is is that you do you go for that is that the same now the frustration I think is the same on the other side in fact you just as an experiment you should ask your friends in the ELCA what they think about the Missouri Synod oh I mean tonight I should tell you guys the story when I sat down with our old bishop from Texas it was in Albuquerque at the time and told them that I was thinking about going to Fort Wayne seminary a seminary of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and he he came to and he set me down at this Denny's and fed for two hours told me how how wrong and dangerous and and hateful the Missouri Synod was now he was trying to do you know do his he's kind of fatherly Bishop Lee Duty but this is that they eat but believe me if there's animosity in the Missouri Senate towards the ELCA it is also vice versa and I'll leave it to your experience to determine which is worse but the piss is the point we're totally different church bodies with totally different doctrines totally different approaches to the scripture totally different sets of expectations for what it means even to be a Christian and for what the Bible says and in yet we get lumped together with the same name Lutheran and that for me is a cause of great frustration and that's the frustration and that came out in the sunday drive home when I kind of off the top of my mind came up with the idea for getting the ELCA to drop the name Lutheran by emphasizing how Martin Luther is a white man that's in hi this is so funny to me is because the ELCA Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has completely I mean full-on embraced the cultural movements of feminism of ecumenism of inner of inner faith ISM of the sexual revolution of the gender revolution of the whole LBGT q-a I plus I learned because I was watching the convention videos LGBTQIA community lgbtqia+ communities it's I mean full-on grabbed ahold of these things we also recognize significant anniversaries including the 50th anniversary of the decision to ordain women the 40th anniversary of the ordination of the first woman of color and the tenth anniversary of this church's decision to remove barriers to ordination for people in same-gender marriages [Applause] this is not just a celebration for women or women of color or for the LGBTQIA community just as decisions to welcome and receive the gifts for ministry are not just about women or women of color or the lgbtqia+ community these are decisions of this whole church and this is a celebration for the whole church this church has been blessed by the ministry of those formally excluded the psalmist says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made and sometimes the fearfully gets in the way of the wonderfully we are also guided by our core values of curiosity courage compassion and collaboration as we engage the many challenges of our time including racism economic disparity mass incarceration immigration refugee resettlement and justice for our lgbtqia+ communities but the but more and so anyway it's why it's funny but though but perhaps more interesting is why or how how is it that that the ELCA is so shaped by modern progressive culture and that's going to really get into the differences between the two churches all right let's see what we can do here we're talking about the difference between the the ELCA and the Missouri Synod and we want to talk about the history of it now the Lutheran Church from the very beginning has asserted or taught the authority of the holy scripture to develop doctrine and in teaching but something happened about and human reason was always understood to be beneath the scripture in fact this is called the ministerial use of human I don't know if we can use that language anymore this is Huw person reason is below the Scriptures the scripture is the authority but about a hundred and fifty years ago something came in to disrupt that that's that's higher criticism it happened unfortunately in Germany amongst the Lutheran's and the idea of higher criticism is that the Bible is a human document the scriptures are contain errors that they are fallible in fact one of the favorite Luther quotes of the higher critics they said that the scripture is the manger that contains Jesus and so and so it allowed you to say look the Bible has all sorts of what all sorts of splinters and and breaks and knots in the wood you know it's not perfect in every way but it it contains Jesus who is perfect now that's a very a misuse of the of the Luther quote but this this higher criticism what it did is it allowed it allowed hew person reason and even you person experience and maybe even now experience is more important than than reason but it allowed the hew person thinking to stand above the scripture that's the way it's shaped up and and the ELCA along with all the other mainline denominations has really embraced this higher critical view of the scriptures and it allows you to come at the scriptures and say that it contains errors that it contains historical mistakes that it contains prejudices and that it's a it's a political text in fact there's an essentially Marxist reading of the Scriptures which sees the different sources of the scripture as as various different political factions fighting with one another so you have and this is an old idea but you have the jde P I think this is kind of going out of fashion but you have all these different sources and the point of these different sources that they had different political ideas and they were all fighting against each other so the scripture is this kind of collection of these different people fighting with one another and so there became an essential question what is the relationship between the scripture and God's Word now the Missouri Synod came along and says look the scripture is God's Word and the higher critic so the ELCA and all those way which say the scripture contains God's Word God's Word is there you see God's Word is there but it's not but everything in there is is not is not God's Word and and where this becomes a big deal is when the things that are down here start to come into conflict with the culture so what happens when you have scripture versus culture what do you do in this situation when the majority of opinion is is contradicting the scripture when the majority of the kind of cultural Matthew stands in conflict I remember one time talking about this especially in regard to the question of women's pastors because when feminism came along and said hey it's not fair that women can't be pastors that was what the culture says their scripture says the Bible that I don't permit a woman to preach or teach in the church so no one pastors one passage what are you gonna do I got a story about that I remember one time this is before I was at sym I was still in college and I was talking with a bunch of folks in the ELCA about women's ordination about women pastors and I said hey what about the Bible passages where it says that women ought not to be pastors and they said well Paul was a bigot st. Paul was just he I don't know he had these kind of masculine tendencies or something like this and I thought now that is very helpful because what they're not saying is that the Bible doesn't say that women are not to be pet in fact are not questioning what the Bible is teaching but they're actually questioning if the hybl is right or wrong in that teaching so that higher criticism is able to come and say hey when the bible says that it's wrong and we this is and we know better than the scriptures okay back to this mess now here's the real issue when scripture comes into conflict with the culture are you going to let the scripture stand above the culture and the human experience or are you going to go the other way around and we see in higher criticism this is what happens that culture becomes and human reason becomes the authority over the scriptures and this happens both in questions of law and in doctrine of questions of law and questions of doctrine now the the majority of the time we end up talking about questions of law for example we talk about the sixth commandment and God's gift of marriage and is marriage a man and a woman and his chastity expected of the Christian into until marriage well we talk about questions of gender and gender identity even now we have big questions about like immigration and stuff and these seem to be kind of law questions but then there's also the doctrine part and this has to do with the ecumenism of the ELCA so for example what are you going to do with churches that deny the Lord's body and blood like the Episcopalians or something like this well the ELCA is busy joining into other churches and participating in the life of the other churches and and losing especially the doctrine the the exclusivity of Christ the the fact that there is only one way to heaven and so forth all of these things are being fought against by higher criticism so this leads to the two I think major what the major differences between the ELCA and the Missouri Sun is where my cars what higher criticism leads to this idea here that there's a distinction between God's Word and the Bible and the result is a gospel reductionism the only thing that matters is Jesus not the Bible and so that's one of the marks of the ELCA the second is that the Holy Spirit speaks through culture and that culture is an authority in the church let me tell you a story I remember this time this is a kind of weird event I was at lunch it was me and my dad and a friend of ours father Burt father Burt was an Episcopalian priest he had been removed from office for preaching that marriage was a man and a woman and he was the organist at the Lutheran Church there and he was wearing his collar and I was wearing my collar and we were having lunch together and a fella comes over and and introduces himself and he says are you one of my guys and we said mmm probably not who are you and he was the Episcopalian Bishop of the region and and I said I'm Lutheran pastor this bird used to be an Episcopalian the pastor he's not anymore what happened he said well he was removed from office Burt explained to him and and this bishop this is Episcopalian Bishop said oh boy I'm one of the guys you guys wouldn't like I and I believe he said the Holy Spirit speaks through culture wow I just like that and it so happened that I had been recently in South Africa I think I was in South Africa and you know the culture in South Africa [Music] lord have mercy the culture in South Africa is at least amongst the Africans is very traditional marriage is a man and a woman now there's other things that are confused in that culture but that's not one of those things and and so I told this guy I said hey I just got back from from Africa and the culture there says that marriage is a man and a woman what while the culture here says that marriage can be anyone who wants to be married and I asked him why is it that the Holy Spirit speaks through white liberal progressive culture and not through the culture in Africa the guy didn't say anything and I I told him I said I think I think your theology is a little bit racist now now here's the point I mean if you think that the theology if the Holy Spirit speaks through culture then your church is always going to be chasing after the culture it's always gonna be chasing after the particular fad and that's that's really what we've what we've seen in the ELCA it's it's it's this that but that's the symptom so that when there's things that are offensive about Christianity - the culture like the exclusiveness topic of the gospel or the the hype rising of chastity or the gift of marriage and family when when we have those things in the scripture that are that that are contradicted by the culture then one is gonna give one or the other and what's given in the ELCA is an adherence to the scripture it is a chasing after it's chasing after cultural acceptance and this sort of progressive high ground when it comes to the difference between the ELCA and the lcms there's a lot of sort of accidental differences there's differences about women pastors about open versus closed communion about fellowship with other churches about our view towards cultural things our stances on questions of the sixth commandment and sexuality but it could it all boils down to the question of Scripture is Scripture God's sole authority for doctrine and life that our reason submits to or can we take a critical approach to the scripture and find in the scriptures for example errors confusions embracing of of ancient prejudices and so forth we say in the Missouri Senate that scripture is the sole authority and the ELCA differs now if you're if you're part of the ELCA and you think that this is unfair characterization of your doctrine and practice well I would really love to hear from you and so I mean please post up comments below and if you want to reach out and talk about this more the best way to get ahold of me is through the website Wolfe Muller dot C oh thanks again for the question I hope this was not too small yeah I hope this was not too smug it really breaks my heart to see the way that the ELCA is gone and I hope and pray that the Lord would turn their hearts around and draw their hearts back to the scripture to the authority of the scripture and to the comfort and peace that the Lord Jesus has for all of his people in the scriptures thanks again God's peace be with you you

Channel: Bryan Wolfmueller

Views: 36,722

Rating: 4.673213 out of 5

Keywords: LCMS, ELCA, American Lutherans, martin luther, lutheran church missouri synod, difference between, differences between lutherans, lutheran doctrine, womans ordination, lutheran theology

Id: ib6Mv3rym38

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 27 2019