Belief Series: Lutheran – Missouri Synod

In the complex world of religious beliefs many people would agree this conservative dogma and the Catholicism dogma run hand in hand; though this could be due to a direct branching from Catholics to Lutheranism, specifically Missouri Synod.

Much like the Catholics, Missouri Synod Lutherans embrace this extremely conservative nature according to Pastor Bradley Heinecke, leader of the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.

A nature close to Pastor Heinecke’s own upbringing, “I had the great joy of being raised in a Lutheran household, where my parents never missed church, when we were on vacation I had the joy of parents who knew the importance of, even then, being in church.

“I also was very fortunate that my parents brought me up with a great respect for the church, a great respect for the office of the holy ministry and I also had some dear pastors as a child that left a lasting impression. And then there were just a lot of little things along the way, a death of a brother, and those sorts of things that brought me to the joy of being in the word of God, and seeing a world that desperately needed the word of Christ.”

He went to a religious college, also based in the Missouri Synod belief, where he pursued a history degree, but ended up with a religious degree he says was not near as educational as when he attended seminary.

“I learned more in one quarter in seminary than I did with 60 plus credit hours in college,” Heinecke said. “It’s not like when you’re in seminary school and getting into the Hebrew and the Greek, digging into the original languages.”

As with all other canons Pastor Heinecke had four years of college and another four years of seminary before become a Pastor, with a year of what some would call ‘internship.’

“Our third year at the seminary is out in a church working under a pastor. We call it a vicarage and we get a year’s worth of getting our feet wet before going back to seminary realizing how little we know.”

He said that he knew ministry was what he wanted, to an extent, but was uncertain if that was where God wanted him to be with his life.

“I probably took me 15 years as a Pastor before I realized ‘hey this is where God wants me’ and where I finally felt very content, that this is the place where the Lord put me and it was time to shut up and enjoy what I am doing. I always felt like I was not qualified.

“You look at how many things a pastor is supposed to do and I always felt like I was never good enough at doing a lot of those different things. It was always a struggle but I think that is the way it is supposed to be, it keeps a pastor humble.”

However, it is within this specific doctrine Heinecke found himself and what it is to be Lutheran.

To be a member of Missouri Synod is to believe in the “onlys of reformation, scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone and we could add another only to that and that is Christ alone,” the pastor said.

He claims a big difference within this church than others is that, “We still believe that the Bible is God’s inerrant and inspired word of God. The main line church bodies today do not accept that any longer, there are a number of conservative church bodies who still strive to go to scripture alone. But that is our foundation, we believe that that is God’s word, God does not change and since God does not change the word he gave to us does not change as well.”

However, as with many other Christian based churches the St. Paul’s Missouri Synod church no longer uses the King James Version of the Bible but rather the English Standard Version or the NIV, New International Version, in an effort to allow for a better understanding of scripture within the congregation.

Pastor Heinecke said many of his congregation members still refer to the Kings James Version, but when it comes to what the church members use during worship it is one of the two more modern versions, ESV or NIV.

Though there is not a big debate upon which version of the bible to use, the reasons preference is toward the ESV or NIV in this church, according to Pastor Heinecke, is that these “versions of the Bible go directly from the Greek and the Hebrew and translate into English without paraphrasing the Bible are Bibles that are much closer to what the original was, as close as you can go.

“Some of the paraphrases are not good translations and there are some liberal translations of the Bible today that try to undo God’s word by taking out the masculine, by speaking of the child of God instead of the son of God.”

The lax nature and tides of political correctness within God’s word is not something Pastor Heinecke agrees with or feels has a place within their canon.

“Within the church, the so called Christian churches, have been notorious at trying to make people happy. It has always been that way, from the Old Testament on down, as Paul said in Timothy, ‘People preaching to itching ears.’”

The second block of this canon’s foundation is in its member’s faith.

Within this ‘faith alone’ Pastor Heinecke said, “It is only through the blood of Jesus Christ that there is salvation. Since the word of God is the only truth, therefore, when Jesus said, ‘I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me,’ that is the only hope for salvation is through the Christ of scripture, true God, true man. His suffering and death on the cross the physical resurrection of the body on the third day, so Christ alone, and we are saved by faith alone, by believing in that just as the Old Testement people are saved by trusting in the promises that were to come, we are saved as we look back upon the gifts that God has given us.”

The added only of Christ alone is directly tied to the faith alone component and rightfully so since Pastor Heinecke said that without Christ there is no faith and without faith there is no Christ.

The third component to this cornerstone belief is grace alone.

“All of this is purely a gift from God,” Heinecke said of grace alone, “there is nothing that we do to merit or worthy ourselves before God. We can’t make a decision to follow Jesus because we are blind, dead and enemy of God. We are totally separated from God in every aspect. We are so totally corrupt that the only way of salvation is through Jesus Christ alone and it is by his power. He does every aspect of our salvation.”

It is within Jesus Christ the followers of Lutheranism Missouri Synod have found salvation from what is believed to be the darkness that is inherently human beings, Pastor Heinecke said, through baptism.

It is believed that every aspect of our lives is a design of God’s power and not of our own, within this doctrine.

In this particular dogma, baptism plays a strong role, Pastor said, describing its meaning, according to the strict terms of the Bible. “As scripture very clearly points out that which saves us. It is God’s means that he uses to regenerate and bring us to faith.

“To causing new birth within us, it is God’s action, it is not something we do, but God uses as a means of Grace. The way God brings his grace to us, the word and the sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, these are ways that God is at work in us today. Therefore, if we want God’s grace to be working on us, his power in our lives, it is right here in our worship. This is where God comes to us. Our worship is not man centered but Christ centered.”

A main difference within the kind of worship this church performs in reference to other churches, according to the Pastor, is that God does not need anything from us, but rather God wants to serve the people, and for this congregation it is within their church God serves them.

According to the Pastor once baptized, even as a baby, the person is saved and God then begins working within their life, just as it is for the adults within the congregation.

In regards to confirmation with the dedication of baptism in mind, “For us it is more of a public confession of the faith they have had since their baptism. It is a public confession of their faith that shows they are now ready to receive the Lord’s Supper.”

For many Missouri Synod followers baptism is practiced because of the scriptures saying, “Go and make disciples of all nations,” something Pastor Heinecke said they do by baptism.

“We see both the baptizing and the teaching as an integral part, my responsibility does not end with the baptizing of the child, but instead it is my responsibility to continue to teach the child after the baptism. So within our church we also put a great emphasis on education.”

It is in this emphasis that the Lutheran branch of belief has found a great need to have its own schools.

“One of the reasons our church got started in America,” Pastor Heinecke said, “was not only because Lutherans were being forced to worship with other Christians in German, the reformed teaching, maybe even more so was because they were not being allowed to teach their kids the Lutheran faith in the schools.” Pastor Heinecke said it was very much like modern times with a separation of church and state, which makes the need for a Lutheran School.

Focusing back to the conservative nature within this branch of Lutheranism in comparison to Roman Catholic beliefs, Pastor Heinecke had this to say: “The Roman Catholic church believes in the Bible but tradition and the teachings of the Popes and the church councils are (to them) just as true as what the Bible teaches. Luther said no scripture alone, Christ alone. The Roman Catholic Church teaches faith and good works for salvation. We say no, faith alone according to Holy Scripture. The grace alone, they have a different understanding for the word grace than what we do. We are actually much more conservative, our church body Missouri Synod, than the Roman Catholic Church body. We see ourselves as the church of the reformation, to reform the church.”

The latter he says comes from the roots of Lutheranism and the changes its founder Luther, who was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, wanted to change about the original Catholic dogma.

Heinecke said Luther did not intend to create a separate following from the Roman Catholic Church, it is just how it came about when his protest toward a few fundamental practices fell upon deaf ears and he was then “kicked out of the church.

“Martin Luther basically said, ‘hey if there is nothing wrong with what Rome is teaching then why do we want to get rid of it,’ so we kept the things that is not contrary to Holy Scripture. What we changed was when it comes to Holy Scripture. Primarily it all revolved around one thing, justification. A big debate on what does it mean to be justified. For us, as Lutherans, we believe that justification means that God has declared us to be not guilty like a judge sitting on a seat saying we are not guilty. For us it is an act of God, God says you are not guilty through the blood of Jesus Christ.”

Something that Pastor Heinecke says is different from the Roman Catholic definition of justification, and in turn a big difference between both canons.

According to the Pastor it is within this one disagreement in the definition of justification that branches out into the many different areas in which Lutheranism Missouri Synod and the Roman Catholic teachings differ.

“I think it is good that people actually believe what their church body teaches. We live in a society today where people take like to take bits and pieces from every faith, picking and choosing the pieces they want, and so often people in churches no longer stand for anything. We do believe in this one Holy Christian Church made up of all believers.”