We (Kent and Rhoda) will be presenting the opening plenary address at Concordia Seminary’s Multiethnic Symposium, May 6-7, 2025. Our concern to have concrete, firsthand data coalesced with the desire of a pastoral team in Springdale, Arkansas, to have outside “consultants” visit and make recommendations for strengthening congregational faith formation across generations. It was a […]
Last week Kent concluded his post with a quote from Max Johnson noting the importance of the role of the Holy Spirit in questions “about faith, justification, ecclesiology, eschatology, and the meaning of the eucharist.” With that assertion in mind, we turn to the final chapter of Images of Baptism, Baptism as Incorporation into the […]
In our last post Rhoda concluded by highlighting the two primary biblical images of baptism: the tomb and the womb. Permeating those two primary images is the gift of the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is a thread through all of the images of baptism […]
To read Images of Baptism is a bit like being back in the classroom (as I was three decades ago) with Maxwell E. Johnson, whose teaching style was direct, straight forward, to the point, and thus quite engaging. His introduction to chapter 2, “Baptism as New Birth and Adoption,” begins by stating liturgical scholarship’s “accepted” […]
It is the quintessential image of baptismal images as Paul says in Romans 6: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, […]
The ecumenical report Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry (WCC, 1982)—a valuable indication of where the various member denominations stood on those practices both theologically and ritually—said that the images of baptism “are many but the reality is one” (II, A-E). It is that plurality of images that we intend to explore in this new series over […]
In this video interview, Dr. Lakies suggests that a “winsome witness” includes a willingness to enter into conversation with others in order to see people “in the complexity of their full humanity.” The video is six minutes in length. To view, one must be logged into Google. Pastor Lakies has been on the podcast circuit […]
The Rev. Dr. Chad Lakies is the Vice President of Ministry Engagement for US Ministries at Lutheran Hour Ministries and author of How the Light Shines Through: Resilient Witness in Dark Times. The first of today’s video is from the beginning of our lengthy conversation on Zoom and touches on the connections between this book […]
Christmas greetings to our subscribers from the Annual Meeting of the North American Academy of Liturgy (NAAL), which we both started attending in the late 1990s as graduate students. This year’s gathering is at our Alma Mater, Valparaiso University, where worship at the Chapel of the Resurrection fostered in both of us a love of […]
“This wonder fills me with astonishment!” So St. John Chrysostom (347-407) says in a Christmas day sermon. In this excerpt Chrysostom points to the way of discipleship that one enters through the catechumenate, a way that begins with God and the incarnation and birth of the Word, the Ancient of Days. He comes that he […]