Form Running

May is an exciting month for us at Mt. Calvary. This Sunday we will have one of our fourth year fieldworkers preach. He has been with us since the very beginning, and just found out on Tuesday where he will be going to serve. It will be exciting to hear him preach and talk about his future. The following Sunday we have a baptism, and confirmation the third Sunday. Then the fourth Sunday we will lay out a vision for the future of Mt. Calvary. These are exciting times in the weeks ahead!

A vision for our church is only fitting if we keep in mind the core of our faith, that is, that we are sinners who need Jesus.  The more we can learn about our theology the better. Theology sounds like a big word meant for pastors, and there is some truth to that.  My Call brings me to Mt. Calvary to help us understand theology.  I very much want our members to understand what we are doing and why. I have to remind myself to talk about the basics, those foundational pieces of theology that continually point us back to Christ.

This spring I have been coaching track at Word of Life. The head coach, Travis, is an amazing guy who is very gifted in coaching. Every practice we do exercises in form running to keep the kids running the most effective way. Travis says even professionals do form running exercises. That really made me think. After all those years of practice, wouldn’t you think they could eventually quit the form running and move onto more important things? His point is that if you don’t work on the basics over and over again, you fall into bad patterns and bad habits develop.

When Martin Luther helped to reform the church, he was starring down bad habits that had developed. Yes, even the church with the Word of God developed bad habits. Why? Simple—original sin. Our sinful flesh draws us back to self-serving ways. Luther was looking at a corrupt church focused on ego, power, and greed. That same church had confused him. They had him believing that the way to Jesus was based upon his actions. This put Luther in a prison, of sorts, that continually locked him up every time he sinned and realized he failed his God. Luther went on to really look at Scripture and found what we treasure today—grace—a foundational piece of our relationship with God. It was through the death and resurrection of Jesus that we received grace, which was the restoration we needed to have a relationship with God.

So what does this have to do with a fieldworker, infant baptism, and confirmation? Everything! The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod has built “form running” into our rich traditions. Those “form running” activities bring us back to the core of Scripture. An infant is baptized because we know grace is a gift of God for everyone. I am not sure what Audrey will observe the day she is baptized, but I know this, like at home when she gets a bottle or a diaper changed, she is brought back to her human condition. She is a sinner living in a broken world. But on that day when she is baptized, she receives the gift of love that God, her Father in Heaven, lavishes on her, and in His family she is embraced and forgiven. We move from infant baptism to confirmation. This tradition teaches kids the core parts of theology using a book that Luther wrote (Luther’s Catechism) alongside of the Bible. We want them to understand what Scripture truly says so they can recognize sin in this world, even when it comes out of the church. They come back to the foundations of grace, Scripture, and faith. They are confirming the work that happened in them at their baptism many years ago. They confirm that God’s grace is a free gift, and they publically respond to God’s grace by living a life of faith. Like forming running exercises, this process of confirming our beliefs should never stop, even after confirmation. Our fieldworker is just beginning his ministry to the church in which he will help God’s people to continually confirm their faith every week.

As a pastor, I am called to keep us in form, and understanding these practices and how they connect to our theology. I want you to be able to tell someone why we have the sacrament of infant baptism. This was at the core of why Luther was fighting against the church. Grace is a gift, and we give it as often and as early as we can! I have to admit, I’ve heard these parts of theology over and over, but it took a long time for them to sink in, and it went to a whole new level when I was confronted with someone who challenged them.

We can’t have a vision for our church without the foundational theological principles that bring us back to the core of Scripture—Jesus came to rescue us and there is nothing we can do to earn it. We also want to take these rich traditions and theology and share them with the world. This is where our vision comes in. We haven’t always been so good at this and so it takes work, but this work is good. When people see the wonderful gift of grace that Christ offers and how it is in our songs, liturgy and preaching, they want to find out more. It is a gift like no other! I pray May is an amazing month for you, and that as you come to worship, you see and hear again how our theology of grace is proclaimed in the sacrament and practices of our church.