The Gottesdienst Crowd

Dr. Paul Grime looks back on the making of Lutheran Service Book, twenty years after the project began. As the executive director overseeing the hymnal's development, Grime walks through what it took to produce a single book for a synod still split between The Lutheran Hymnal and Lutheran Worship — the committee structure, the doctrinal review process, the mid-project change in commission membership under new synod leadership, and the painstaking work of testing layout and design so the final product would be usable by any congregation without a second thought.

Beyond the process, Grime reflects on what it means to do this kind of work well: learning to disagree without losing collegiality, taking time rather than rushing decisions, and remembering that a hymnal is a public confession of what the church believes and sings. He closes with an eye toward the newly reestablished Commission on Worship and the challenges facing whoever takes up the next hymnal project, given the sheer volume of hymnody and scholarship now available compared to thirty years ago.

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Two pastors thinking out loud about the upcoming Gospel reading. This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, Luke 18:9-14.

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Two pastors thinking out loud about the upcoming Gospel reading. This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity, Luke 19:41–48.

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Rev. Chris Durham, chaplain at Wittenberg Chapel serving LCMS students at the University of North Dakota, joins the show to discuss Augustine on the theme of pilgrimage — the Christian life as movement from a beginning through this present age toward final rest in God.

The conversation starts in Scripture before turning to Augustine: Hebrews 4 and 11 on the promised Sabbath rest and the patriarchs who died as strangers and exiles seeking a better country, and 1 Peter's language of Christians as "elect exiles" on the way. These texts set a pattern — a real beginning, a center in Christ, and an end in the eternal city — against which Durham contrasts Neoplatonism, Augustine's own intellectual background before his conversion. For Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, the soul's return to "the One" is not a real destination but a perpetual, unending cycle with no true rest — a view Durham compares to modern nihilism and multiverse thinking, where there's motion but no goal.

Durham then traces Augustine's own writings across time: the early Soliloquies, where the newly baptized Augustine already breaks from Neoplatonism and Manichaeism by affirming creation from nothing as good; and the Confessions, written years later from his position as bishop, where Augustine reads his own past through Scripture and famously confesses, "our heart is restless until it rests in you." Durham walks through Augustine's account of his conversion in the garden in Milan — the child's voice repeating "pick up and read," the reading of Romans 13, and the peace that followed — as the turning point where restlessness gives way to rest in Christ.

The two also touch on Augustine's argument in City of God Book 12 against the eternity of the world, and draw out a running application: every worldly promise of peace or comfort — ancient or modern — ultimately fails to deliver what only Christ can give, a clean conscience through the forgiveness of sins and the sure hope of the rest to come.

Topics covered:

• Biblical foundations of pilgrimage: Hebrews 4 and 11, 1 Peter 1
• Neoplatonism and the "One" — creation as emanation without beginning or end
• Augustine's Soliloquies: early post-baptismal rejection of Neoplatonism and Manichaeism
• Augustine's Confessions: restlessness, the pear-theft episode, and the conversion in the garden
• City of God Book 12 on the world's createdness vs. its supposed eternity
• The false peace offered by worldly philosophies, ancient and modern
• Rest in Christ as the true end of the Christian pilgrimage

Two pastors thinking out loud about the upcoming Gospel reading. This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 7:15–23.

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Pastor Ben Hayter of Imanuel Lutheran Church in Waterloo, IL, joins the show to work through the CTCR's 2025 document, Unity in Doctrine, Uniformity and Variety in Practice. The document came from a 2019 synodical resolution asking the CTCR to define what Article III.7 of the LCMS Constitution actually means by "unity in doctrine and uniformity and variety in practice." The CTCR responds with six historical case studies — the Jerusalem Council, the Quartodeciman controversy, Luther's Invocavit Sermons, the adiaphoristic controversy behind Formula of Concord Article X, and two episodes from LCMS history: the Synod's founding and the debate over lay electors and women's suffrage.

Hayter raises three unresolved questions the document leaves on the table. First: the difference between how to use adiaphora and whether something actually is adiaphora in the first place — a hermeneutical question of whether church practice requires an explicit command or whether necessary inference is sufficient warrant. Second: definitional looseness around key terms like "responsible," "required," "insist," and "retain" — words that carry very different weight depending on who's doing the requiring, God by His Word or the Synod by human right. Third: even once something is settled as adiaphora, the document doesn't resolve which practices are wise and which are foolish to adopt — that work is left to pastors and congregations, argued from Scripture rather than mere preference.

The conversation lands on a practical charge: use this document as a starting point for real conversation among brother pastors — in circuit Winkels, district boards, and eventually Synod conventions — grounded in reasons drawn from Scripture and the Confessions, not personal whim.

Topics covered:

• Background on CTCR study documents and Resolution 5-11 (2019 convention)
• The six case studies: Jerusalem Council, Quartodeciman controversy, Luther's Invocavit Sermons, the adiaphoristic controversy, the Synod's founding, lay electors/women's suffrage
• The hermeneutical question: explicit command vs. necessary inference in determining adiaphora
• Defining loaded terms: "responsible," "required," "retain," "insist"
• Whether a practice being adiaphora settles whether it's wise to use
• Next steps: Winkel discussions, district conventions, and synodical bylaws as means of working this out

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Two pastors thinking out loud about the upcoming Gospel reading. This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 7:15–23.

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Is beauty just personal preference, or is it real? Rev. Kyle Verage, pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Pleasant Prairie, WI, joins the podcast to trace how Scripture answers a question philosophy never could.

Verage starts with the common phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and shows where it breaks down — some things are simply more beautiful than others, whether or not we can always articulate why. He walks through the history of aesthetics from Socrates' pragmatism through Aristotle's search for objective standards to Kant's retreat into pure subjectivity, showing how each falls short apart from revelation.

The heart of the conversation is word study: Verage searched the Old and New Testaments for every occurrence of "beauty," "beautiful," and "handsome," and found the data points overwhelmingly to the Hebrew term yafeh (used of people) and pa'ar/tif'arah (used of constructed things — garments, crowns, the temple). From there he traces the Greek pairing kalos kai agathos — the beautiful and the good — through figures like David and Abigail, into Zechariah's messianic prophecy, and finally to Christ himself as the true bridegroom who makes His bride beautiful.

The conversation closes on the Divine Service: where objective beauty — art, music, architecture, rhetoric — is wedded to God's Word, and where Christ clothes His people in beauty not by their achievement, but by His declaration over them.

Topics covered:

• The history of aesthetics: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant
• Word studies: yafeh, pa'ar/tif'arah, kalos, horaios, tov
• Kalos kai agathos — the beautiful and the good — in David, Abigail, and Zechariah 9
• Christ as the exemplar of true beauty
• How the Word of God declares believers beautiful
• Beauty in the Divine Service as the marriage of external art and God's Word

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Two pastors thinking out loud about the upcoming Gospel reading. This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, Mark 8:1–9.

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Rev. John Koopman, Associate Pastor at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Mankato, MN, joins the show to walk through C.F.W. Walther's essay "The Duties of an Evangelical Lutheran Synod," delivered at the first Iowa District convention. The essay was written against the backdrop of the split between Missouri and Iowa Synod Lutheranism — Iowa Synod pastors trained under Wilhelm Löhe who held that the confessions should be read "historically" rather than confessed without reservation, a trajectory that ended in the ELCA. Walther, by contrast, insisted that confessional subscription must be unconditional and total, since every part of Scripture — not just the articles touching salvation — serves the salvation of souls.

Koopman and Paul Schultz work through Walther's six theses on what a synod is for:

1. Faithfulness to the confessions in word and deed — testing pastors thoroughly, holding congregations accountable, and refusing fellowship with the unfaithful.
2. Supporting pastors and teachers — counseling them, defending them against unjust treatment, and never abandoning a pastor for faithfully preaching hard truths, regardless of tact or rhetorical polish.
3. Material on synod property and finances — Walther's warning against synods being distracted by money and institutional self-preservation.
4. Promoting growth in the knowledge of truth — doctrine, not politics or mutual back-patting, must dominate synodical conventions.
5. Striving for peace and unity in the truth — mutual submission and charity among brothers, without nitpicking over peripheral matters.
6. Seeking God's glory, not the synod's own — Walther's striking line that the synod should prefer to go out of business rather than let the church suffer harm through its continued existence.

Throughout, Koopman and Schultz draw direct lines to present controversies in the LCMS: pastoral formation and seminary training, the role of circuit visitors, tone policing of faithful but blunt preaching, and the Synod's entanglement with money and institutional concerns.

Topics covered:

• Historical background: Löhe, the Iowa Synod, and the ELCA's descent from it
• Confessional subscription — quia vs. quatenus
• Walther's six theses on synodical duty
• The synod's obligation to defend faithful pastors under pressure
• Pastoral formation and testing candidates for the ministry
• Synod finances and institutional self-glorification
• Mutual submission and charity among brother pastors

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