Religion Commons^™

Letter From The Chairman: Why We Are Not Our Own, Cody Macmillan

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

In his book, You Are Not Your Own, author and professor Alan Noble argues that the fundamental lie of modernity is the one which says we belong to ourselves.1 He is concerned with our society's increased emphasis on individualism, and he asserts that it requires serious and intentional effort to remember how we belong to Christ. This truth, Noble says, is not just a doctrine to which we must subscribe but a reality which touches every part of our lives.2 It runs contrary to the narratives of self-discovery and self-ownership that we are surrounded by today, and it is the …

The Holy Spirit As The Undiminished Giver In The Early Church, Kyle Weeks

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

At one time or another, virtually every churchgoing Christian is bound to hear the moniker of “Sanctifier” applied to the Holy Spirit. In this role, the Spirit is often described as dwelling within believers to make them holy, so that they might produce the “fruit of the spirit” as they lead good and godly lives.2 To that end, the Spirit is said to effect a complete “regeneration and renewal” of the individual, empowering them with the strength, grace, virtues, and other “spiritual gifts” requisite for Christian life.3 In denominations such as Lutheranism, faith itself is proclaimed to be impossible without …

Bitterness And Anger In Ephesians, Archetypes, & The Bi-Hemispheric Structure Of The Brain: Comparing Paul, Jordan Peterson, And Iain Mcgilchrist, Joshua Armstrong

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Many people eager to confront falsehood and pursue justice or truth do so nourishing a vindictive, bitter, or resentful attitude. Nourishing anger, particularly resentment, is akin to stoking up the archetypal “Luciferian spirit,” according to clinical psychologist and author Jordan Peterson. This spirit presumes: “what I do is all there is to do, what I know is all there is to know.” It is symptomatic of attending to the world in a way overly reliant on a “left-hemisphere” approach, which leads to entrapment in a “self-reflexive virtual world” disconnected from real “other” things, and only really knowing itself, according to …

Not My Church: Confessional Living In An All-Consuming World, Cody Macmillan

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

What I hope to offer in the following pages is a vision for the Church that is not our own in a world that is increasingly foreign to us. In a discussion of the Scriptures and the Sacraments, I would like to present three ways in which this Church is distinctly alien in nature. She presents alien standards, alien sentiment, and alien strength to which we are called to subscribe, submit, and surrender. In presenting the alien nature of this church, I offer points of contrast and comparison with the culture to which we are tempted to succumb. These comparisons …

The Beginnings Of Jewish Missions In The Lcms, Jaron Melin

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Mission is the theological account of the relationship between the church and the world. Where are the Jews in this relationship? If the church and the Jews had a relationship status on Facebook, then it might say, “It’s complicated.” This may be true of any kind of missions, but this shows itself to be especially true in Lutheran history and in particular LCMS-history. I look at the histories as recorded by Meyer, Lieske, Cohen, Parviz, and others on the early history of Jewish Missions in the LCMS, and I reflect on the context and theology behind them using missiologists like …

Virtual Reality In And For Creation, Jaron Melin

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Within the last few years, there has been growing excitement and concern in the rise of what is called the metaverse. How do various enthusiasts and observers characterize the metaverse? Bobrowsky on the Wall Street Journal reports the metaverse as “an extensive online world transcending individual tech platforms, where people exist in immersive, shared virtual spaces. Through avatars, people are able to try on items available in stores or attend concerts with friends, just as they would offline.”

Christian Narrative Service: God’S Story Of Everything In Worship, Jaron Melin

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Christian Narrative Service: God’s Story of Everything in Worship

Our Father Spoke, And It Was Good, Jason Kohm

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

A Wedding Hymn compsed by Jason Kohm.

Grapho 2024, Cody Macmillan

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Grapho 2024

The Psalms And The Good Life Of God’S People, Rachel Mccloskey

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

We belong to Christ who speaks his word to us. As a creedal church body, we recognize that God’s word is not only a word to be received, but a word to be confessed back to him. As the Spirit works through the word, he forms and shapes us as God’s confessing people. It has a transformative effect. We belong to Christ and his word does not leave us unchanged.

A Companion Guide For The Discipleship To Missional Community (D2mc) Program, Jedidiah T. Maschke

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

This Doctor of Ministry (DMin.) Major Applied Project (MAP) offers a companion guide for the discipleship training program called D2MC (Discipleship to Missional Community) taught by PLI, a leadership development organization that works primarily with the LCMS. The D2MC program is based on the training pioneered by Mike Breen through 3DM. The companion guide shows how the methods and practices taught by PLI are soundly based in Scripture and confessional Lutheran theology and offers some personal insights and devotional thoughts. The companion guide was distributed and field tested with volunteer participants through and with the approval of PLI. Participants in …

There Is A Place For You And Your Little Ones: Homiletics And Liturgy In View Of Pregnancy Loss, Joseph Michael Baumgarten

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

Baumgarten, Joseph M. There is a Place for You and Your Little Ones: Homiletics and Liturgy in View of Pregnancy Loss. Doctor of Ministry. Major Applied Project, Concordia Seminary, 2022. 81 pp.

Pregnancy loss and the grief that follows is more common than most people think. However, there is a gap in resources, discussion, and care for those who have experienced such losses. This is true in wider culture as well as in the church. While there are a few resources available, they are limited. This project addresses the church’s ability to provide proper recognition of pregnancy loss, the validation …

Positive Factors Related To The Decision To Study For The Office Of The Ministry By Men Of The Lutheran Synod Of Nicaragua (Iglesia Luterana Sínodo De Nicaragua/Lutheran Church—Canada), Edmund Auger

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

Auger, Edmund D. “Positive Factors Related to the Decision to Study for the Office of the Ministry by Men of The Lutheran Synod of Nicaragua (Iglesia Luterana Sínodo de Nicaragua / Lutheran Church—Canada).” Doctor of Ministry. Major Applied Project, Concordia Seminary, 2023. 128 pages.

The Lutheran Church throughout the world needs a continuing supply of men to serve as faithful pastors in the public ministry of the Gospel. The identification and spiritual formation of candidates for Word and Sacrament ministry is critical for the young national church body, Iglesia Luterana Sínodo de Nicaragua (Lutheran Synod of Nicaragua).

This project is …

Hospitality: Areas That Are Effective In Creating A Desire For A Visitor To Connect To Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Brent M. Hartwig

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

This major applied project explores hospitality offered by the local congregation. Biblical hospitality is implicitly and explicitly commanded in scripture. Balancing the Missio Dei and two kinds of righteousness will keep us on the straight and narrow theologically when pursuing hospitality.

When churches offer hospitality, we are feeding, clothing, visiting, providing, and welcoming our neighbor. Our Redeemer wants to continue serving the community as a family-oriented, mission focused, hospitable congregation. We are doing the feeding, clothing, and providing through many efforts in the community. We are active with the local homeless shelter and crisis center. For the MAP, we wanted …

Embodied Superintendence: The Person Of The Preacher In Lutheran Homiletics Especially In Relation To Cultural Identity, Dennis Matyas

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Over the past several decades, the greater homiletical academy has progressed from questions of authority to dialogics to identity, both of the preacher and of the hearers. Within this timeframe, modern Lutheran homiletics has stayed relatively silent on considerations of the person of the preacher, opting instead for certain foundational homiletical truths including the efficacy of the Word of God, the proclamation of justification, and the authority of the Ministerium. After recovering the consideration of the person of the preacher as a foundational Lutheran homiletic, this work explores the formational significance of the preacher’s cultural identity by offering a theoretical …

What God Has Joined Together: The One Threefold Purpose Of Marriage, David Frayne Shudy

Master of Sacred Theology Thesis

Modern married couples and marriage-minded individuals are often left awash in a sea of confusion aimlessly groping about for a purpose for their marriage, with disastrous societal results. Whereas long-standing Christian tradition has taught a unified threefold marital purpose of three equal elements—procreation, mutual help, and remedy for sin—Enlightenment thinkers and their ideological descendants have introduced a hierarchical marriage teleology with a self-chosen purpose (usually companionship) at the top in order to correct for an alleged countervailing overemphasis on procreation in premodern marital teleology.

This thesis will challenge the claim of a relative deficiency in the companionate aspect of premodern …

Letter From The Chairman: Over One Hundred Years Of Student Publications At Concordia Seminary, Ben Vanderhyde

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

For hundreds of years, in various countries, through various languages, Christian pastors have exhorted their people to lift up their hearts in the liturgy of Holy Communion. Whether or not every church has always used these precise words, the exhortation is universal among Christians. We are called to put our faith and trust in the one who is above us; to set our hope firmly on the one whose second advent is on the verge of dawning; to aim all of our desires and affections toward the one who made us. In short, we lift up our hearts to the …

A Lutheran Perspective On Righteousness In China, Futao (Gary) Liu

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

The recent history of China cannot get away from the impact of western thoughts and industrialization, including Democracy, Marxism, Republicanism, etc. For two millienium or so, the Chinese philosopher, Confucius (551–479 BCE), had dominated Chinese society through his philosophy (commonly called Confucianism) in every respect, from the hierarchical structures of governments and states to familial relations. Confucianism met its real challenge only in the recent history of China. At the collasping edge of the last feudal society (the Qing Dynasty which fell in 1911), patriotic Confucians had tried to bring what is useful of the West into traditional values and …

Sursum Corda As A Call For Repentance And Faith, Sebastian Grünbaum

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

This article examines Chemnitz's understanding and interpretation of the Sursum Corda in his work the Lord’s Supper. Chemnitz’s theological adversaries had been claiming that the Sursum Corda was evidence that the early church did not believe that the true body and blood were on the altar. They argued that the believer had to go up to the Lord (who sits on the right side of the Father) in faith and eat mere bread in this faith.3 Chemnitz aimed to correct this understanding by showing that the Fathers did not understand the Sursum Corda in this way but rather as an …

Almsgiving In Early Christian Catechesis, Ben Vanderhyde

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

To say simply that almsgiving was a part of early Christian catechesis would not say much that is new to the Lutheran church today. Our own catechism includes this idea in its explanation of the 5th commandment: “We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.” It is not so much significant that the Apostolic Fathers taught almsgiving but how they did so. Almsgiving played such a central role in the life of the early church that it came to be …

Pierre Manent: The Empire Of Modernity And The Church’S Response, Hayden Lukas

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Manent’s body of work often problematizes the modern conservative impulse to draw on the history of thought with modernity’s conception of history, and this essay will attempt to explain this dynamic. To do this, I will explain the basics of Manent’s account of modernity as a way of evaluating history, drawing on the work of other political philosophers to supplement Manent’s account. Then I will examine how the work of Manent and Emile Perreau-Saussine, with the Catholic response to the Enlightenment, can contribute to the Church’s strategy to engage with the puzzle of modernity. .

The Holy Heart, Cody Macmillan

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

No abstract provided.

Liturgy & Life: How The Divine Service Connects With The Rest Of The Week, Benjamin Janssen

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

On vicarage, I was blessed to spend many hours with a faithful member named Ginger, who, alongside her husband Walter, runs and operates the congregation’s robust food and clothing distribution center. This center is completely run by volunteer efforts out of the undercroft of the church and successfully feeds and clothes 150 families a month. This work both serves the neighbor in need and brings the congregation into contact with many of those living in the immediate community. In short, it is a blessing to the congregation and the surrounding community. Therefore, at the end of each service day, I …

Bounding Down The Mountain Peaks, Andrew Bloch, Lindsay Bloch

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Poetry composed by Andrew & Lindsay Bloch.

Ariel, Hayden Lukas

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Poetry composed by Hayden Lukas.

Learning The Liturgy With Mr. Miyagi: The Case For Liturgical Catechesis, Benjamin Leeper

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Using the narrative of The Karate Kid as a guide, I will demonstrate that Christian formation is a matter of recontextualizing liturgical practices in the daily life of the believer, so that she knows when, where, and how to use the precogni¬tive spiritual habits formed by Word and Sacrament in Christian worship. This understanding challenges prevalent liturgical theology, which tends to assume an automatic connection—or worse, no connection at all— between worship and daily life, by highlighting the necessity of locating for believers the telos of the church’s rites and ceremonies in discipleship. Finally, I will provide concrete examples of …

Members Of One Holy Body, Benjamin Leeper

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Poetry composed by Benjamin Leeper.

Grapho 2023, Ben Vanderhyde

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Lift Up Your Hearts

Catechism Service, Jaron Melin

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

This service is organized in a simple manner for any congregation to use. Pastors and congregations are encouraged to use and adapt it for their worship. It was made brief to be printed as a worship-bulletin onto both sides of a single sheet of paper. Any part can be expanded to include more of the Small Catechism for further instruction and formation (e.g. questions and answers). Furthermore, Phillip Magness has put the Small Catechism to music which could be incorporated into this service so that people can learn the catechism by heart to music even in the midst of worship.

The Dwell Bible Listening App As An Effective Tool To Habituate Daily Bible Engagement In The Local Congregation, Daniel Russell Prugh

Doctor of Ministry Major Applied Project

Prugh, Daniel R. “The Dwell Bible Listening App as an Effective Tool to Habituate Daily Bible Engagement in the Local Congregation.” Doctor of Ministry. Major Applied Project, Concordia Seminary, 2023. "115" pp.

Congregational members desire to engage the Bible daily. However, oftentimes there are barriers to this goal. One of the most important barriers is that people do not regularly read. This is problematic if the church desires for people to read the Bible daily. In addition, people encounter a tsunami of information every day, that makes it hard to prioritize regular engagement with the Bible. However, the church can …