From The Pastor

I chose the quote from Rosenius this month because it is important for all of us, in the midst of the turmoil in the American Church, to keep a proper perspective on all that is going on. This summer a new Lutheran denomination to be known as the North American Lutheran Church will form. This is a direct outgrowth of the problems in the ELCA, and will add to the already numerous Lutheran groupings in this country.

At our AFLC national conference this year we reaffirmed our Association's commitment to the Scriptures as the inspired, inerrant and infallible Word of God and to the Lutheran Confessions as correct interpretations of that Word. We are firm in what we confess and what we teach. That is a great blessing both to me and, I believe strongly, to St. Paul's.

Because of our own sinfulness, however, we might be tempted to adopt, toward other Lutheran, a sense of superiority, of greater worthiness because of our commitment to the teachings handed down by the apostles. I know I sometimes feel that temptation.

But we must not let our natural tendency to self righteousness overcome God's desire that we both stand wholly on the Truth we have received and pray for the return of those who have wandered off into other places. Too often we try to set ourselves off, in our own minds, as the better ones, the ones of lesser sins, the ones God loves best. That is an outgrowth of the sin that clings to us, the sin we have received from our first parents as our ugly legacy. It does not please God.

We must always stand strong and vigorously against error and it's child heresy. but we must do so out of sincere desire that "all would come to a knowledge of the Truth." We must stand against error because it's wrong, not because the people who are in error are bad.

Pr. Culler