by Rev. Terence Groth Early every fall a milestone event takes place all across America: Mothers send their children off to the first day of school. For some pupils this is a partial day in preschool or kindergarten. For others, it is a full day as a first-grader. For still others, it is the first
The “Jazz Song” Christians sing–The Gospel–preaches a more powerful sermon than any silver-tongued orator ever could.
by James Heine While a raging Cedar River may have forced Harlan and Marge Ketelsen to abandon the home they have lived in for 50 years, it has not dampened Ketelsen’s determination to continue producing the little walnut crosses he has been distributing for 25 years. “Harlan’s crosses have traveled around the world,” says Rev.
by Paula Schlueter Ross Brenda Johnson (at right in above photo), the head cook at Camp Restore, New Orleans, invites just about every volunteer group at the camp to stop by her house, which had five-and-a-half feet of floodwater post-Katrina and now “is gorgeous,” she says. Thanks to Lutheran volunteers, Johnson got back into her
When you take away the hype, the poor scholarship, and the overblown misinterpretations, all that remains of many biblical “discoveries” is “more junk on Jesus.”
by Diane Strzelecki Nate Predoehl, a lifelong Lutheran, first heard about Mission Central from his mother, who had seen Gary Thies speak at an LWML event. He later met Thies at his church, Good Shepherd Lutheran, in Gretna, Neb., after Thies’ presentation there. “After he learned that I was a corporate pilot, Gary asked right
During her mission trip to Kenya, author Susan Senechal experiences first-hand the joy in the hearts of local worshipers and learns the true meaning of the word “safari”.
In “Does Everything Mean Everything?” Rev. Jack Karch shares a dramatic real-life story of God’s goodness to him and his family. I thank God for the great outcome. The ending, however, puzzles me. I am choosing to put the “best construction” on that last paragraph—that Rev. Karch did not intentionally suggest that his boy was
I was excited to receive the June/July Lutheran Witness. I flipped open the cover only to see four elderly women in bathing suits prancing in ocean water. There is a time and a place for that sort of advertising and a magazine of this caliber is not it. Thankfully, when I turned the next page
As you can see from this contents page, we’re bursting at the seams this month—with stories about Katrina, the flooding this summer in the Midwest, and Mission Central, to name just a few.
Some days, it seems, our 24/7 news cycle brings us little but glum news. Fuel is at an all-time high. The stock market is in the doldrums (or worse). When will the housing market recover? For Christians, each day also seems to bring a new challenge to our faith. Among those challenges: differing assertions about the structure of marriage.
by Rev. Terence Groth Our Lutheran Confessions urge us to remember exemplary saints for two reasons: (1) “so that we may strengthen our faith when we see how they experienced grace and how they were helped by faith”; and (2) that we may “take the saints’ good works as an example” (AC XXI:1). Jesus testified