|
|
|
|
|
Lutheranism in the United States
A look at changes in US Lutheranism over the last 40 years.
Forty years ago, in 1986, WELS was the fourth largest Lutheran church body in the United States, behind the Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, and the American Lutheran Church.
|
Just two years later, in 1988, WELS had become the third largest Lutheran church body in the United States, followed by the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, WELS’ sister synod, in fourth.
|
|
What happened? And how did that help shape Lutheranism in the United States today?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
We (Jon Bare and Guy Marquardt) boarded the plane from our Asia-Oceania Team base in Chiang Mai, Thailand. After two transfers, an overnight stay, and 36 hours of travel, we arrived. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you where we went. I can’t tell you whom we met with . . .
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The word exploded from the man next to me. He tried to whisper the Savior’s name to himself. It didn’t work. “Jesus!” We had just stepped into a huge—no, immense—Benedictine church. It was attached to a monastery founded in A.D. 1089 in Melk, . . .
|
|
|
|
|
|
So how can you be first if you put others first? We look to Jesus for the answer to that riddle. Putting others first was at the heart of Jesus’ redeeming mission, wasn’t it? He explained that he came into the world as a human being not “to be served, but to serve, and to give . . .
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
