Practical Theology Commons^™

“A Gospel-Based Budgeting Of Theology’S Resources”, Dale Meyer

Concordia Journal

“Lead with the gospel” does, and that is our focus as we offer you our faculty’s time, learning, and energies for your ministry.

Implications Of Brain Research For The Church:What It Means For Theology And Ministry By Allen Nauss, Bruce Hartung

Concordia Journal

It is certainly true that “seminaries and the church’s clergy in the field can certainly become more effective in their ministry as they combine emotion with cognition, work to balance the activity of both hemispheres, become aware of their biases and the virtues of Christ’s model, develop their empathy, translate their theology into meaning, and apply it in their worship and their lives”

Easter 2 • Acts 5:29–42 • April 27, 2014, David Wollenburg

Concordia Journal

That is good and proper, but on the second Sunday of Easter that really is not the emphasis. Rather this is a call, on this and every day, to be witnesses to Christ’s resurrection, his enthronement at the right hand of God, and the gift of repentance and forgiveness of sins which he gives.

Palm Sunday • Isaiah 50:4–9a • April 13, 2014, Glenn Nielsen

Concordia Journal

After describing what Jesus will go through, the sermon retells how Peter answers correctly Jesus’s question about whom the disciples say he is only to be quickly told to get behind Jesus when he tries to stop Jesus from going to Jerusalem.

Lent 3 • Exodus 17:1–7 • March 23, 2014, Benjamin Haupt

Concordia Journal

Like the people of Israel, Satan will seek to draw them too into complaining, murmuring, and unbelief. Urge your hearers not to be like the people of Israel or like any of those who have gone before us

Lent 2 • Genesis 12:1–9 • March 16, 2014, Arthur Graudin

Concordia Journal

As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ who have received the blessings of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life, we have the call to “be a blessing.”

Lent 1 • Genesis 3:1–21 • March 9, 2014, Henry Rowold

Concordia Journal

By divine design, Genesis 3 is an inseparable part of a unit (Gn 1–3), and neither Genesis 1–2 nor Genesis 3 should be discussed without the other.

Epiphany 6 • Deuteronomy 30:15–20 • February 16, 2014, Robert Weise

Concordia Journal

Choice within the context of Deuteronomy 30 is not a matter of picking and choosing. Choice is a covenant term wherein God is the subject.

Marriage The Divine And Blessed Walk Of Life, Robert Weise

Concordia Journal

Marriage is God’s divine and blessed walk of life for man and woman being true to each other, to be fruitful, to beget children, and to nurture and bring them up to the glory of God.

Dean J. H. C. Fritz And The (Lifelong) Formation Of Pastors, Bruce Hartung

Concordia Journal

We owe J. H. C. Fritz a great debt, not only for his influence on pastors in the LCMS and elsewhere, but also for his courage to write about his work and share his vision of ministry, preaching, and pastoral theology.

Christian Counseling The Past Generation And The State Of The Field, Richard Marrs

Concordia Journal

Gary Moon, vice president of Richmont Graduate University, says that Christian counseling, pastoral counseling, biblical counseling, and spiritual direction are all “sibling soul care disciplines.”

Things We Do Not Fully Preach About Preparing To Die, Glenn Nielsen

Concordia Journal

So what is the final and ultimate victory over death? The last day finds God not abandoning His creation but remaking it. He redeems His creation in its physicality, where space and matter matter.

A Timely Word From Luther On Recruiting Young Men For Pastoral Ministry, David Peter

Concordia Journal

Luther’s admonition is one that is appropriate for parents and parishes today: “…your children are not so wholly yours that you need give nothing of them to God. He too will have what is rightfully his—and they are more his than yours!”

Pedagogy For A Politicized Church, Dale Meyer

Concordia Journal

Students will come, study, and leave Concordia Seminary either to join in the politicization of the church and thereby acquiesce to American culture or they will leave the seminary with body, soul, and spirit formed into the meaning and mission of the gospel of Jesus Christ with the wholesome result that evangelical persuasion will predominate in their ministries and in respect for all in the body of Christ.

Before Nature: A Christian Spiritual Paul Santmire, Beth Hoeltke

Concordia Journal

Throughout the book Santmire ties his and the reader’s spiritual journey together with what he calls the “the Trinity Prayer.”

Blood And Life: Sermons On The Old Testament By Michael Kasting, Francis Rossow

Concordia Journal

Kasting’s sermons do more than delight—they are “the power of God for our salvation.” I sometimes quip to my homiletics students, “Anyone can write an occasional good sermon; the trick is to write a good sermon time after time.”

Epiphany 3 • 1 Corinthians 7:29–31 (32–35) • January 25, 2015, David Schmitt

Concordia Journal

Instead, what Paul wants to foster among us today is a conversation about life in Christ and how our joys and our sorrows, our buying and our selling, yes even our marriages and our singleness lead us closer to him.

Christmas 1 • Galatians 4:4–7 • December 28, 2014, Glenn Nielsen

Concordia Journal

This is what the family of God looks like when adopted by our Abba Father because of the Christmas gift named Jesus, and the Holy Spirit forming his fruit in us brothers and sisters.

Advent 4 • Romans 16:25–27 • December 21, 2014, Benjamin Haupt

Concordia Journal

On the final Sunday of Advent, just a few days before the glorious celebration of Christmas, these three verses at the end of the Epistle to the Romans are full of homiletical possibility.

Advent 2 • 2 Peter 3:8–14 • December 7, 2014, Jeff Thormodson

Concordia Journal

The goal of the sermon is not for the hearer to make time for witnessing and outreach as if it is another thing the baptized must do; rather, witnessing and outreach should happen naturally by how Christians live all the time.

Advent 1 • 1 Corinthians 1:3–9 • November 30, 2014, David Johnson

Concordia Journal

The church becomes that vessel of incarnate grace where we are saturated in baptismal living waters that have claimed, redeemed, and forgiven us.

Proper 27 • Amos 5:18–24 • November 9, 2014, Richard Marrs

Concordia Journal

Through Amos, Yahweh roars judgment to the neighboring kingdoms around Judah and Israel.

Engaging Our Culture Faithfully, Harold Senkbeil

Concordia Journal

If the problem we face is not the secularization of society but the secularization of the church brought about by importing expressive individualism into the church, then we simply cannot face contemporary challenges individually.

Christ Coming To Us Luther’S Rhetoric Of Location, Trevor Sutton

Concordia Journal

Christ comes to a people and a place through the proclamation of God’s word.

Rev. A. Trevor Sutton is currently working on his PhD at Concordia Seminary.

Helpers Of Joy, Dale Meyer

Concordia Journal

I’m inviting you to come with us, come experience a gospel-dominated culture, come contribute to a culture based on Jesus, the “yes” to all God’s promises, come onboard the USS Concordia.

Dust And Breath: Faith, Health, And Why The Church Should Care About Both By Kend Hotz And Matthew Mathews, Nicholas Fuller

Concordia Journal

Through individual case studies from inner city Memphis, the book illustrates instances of illness that can be connected pastorally with sin and redemption through faith in Christ.

How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation Of A Jewish Preacher From Galiee By Bart Ehrman, John Genter

Concordia Journal

The key is to avoid letting the analogies steamroll the critical differences. This is what goes wrong in the opening chapters of How Jesus Became God. More attention is due to the actual religious life of the relevant practitioners in everyday life.

Reformation Day • Revelation 14:6–7 • October 26, 2014, Bruce Hartung

Concordia Journal

Our God, our “ever present help in distress” is present with us in Christ who holds us tightly and sustains us with his Spirit in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, the waters of our baptism, the ingestion of his word and the company of the saints who surround us in the community of his followers.

Proper 22 • Isaiah 5:1–7 • October 5, 2014, Dale Meyer

Concordia Journal

God loved his Israel, his “pleasant planting.” He planted them to do good works, specifically to bring justice and righteousness to all people, but they gave him “wild grapes.”

Proper 19 • Genesis 50:15–21 • September 14, 2014, Paul Philp

Concordia Journal

Filled with fear before the power of Joseph to kill them, and in the absence of Jacob to protect them, they come face-to-face with the temporal consequences of their sins.