Kleinig treats the practical nature of Christian joy, beginning with Philippians 4 as invitation rather than command—communal, grounded in the Lord’s nearness, and joined to prayer and thanksgiving. He locates joy as a gift and fruit of the Holy Spirit received by faith, not self-generated feeling, and shows how it is meant to overflow through […]

A banquet honoring Dr. Harold Senkbeil’s forty-five years in the ministry, gathering tributes from DOXOLOGY colleagues, collegium fellows, and his own family. Speakers recall his years teaching at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, his work as a pastor to pastors, and the founding of DOXOLOGY, woven together with affectionate ribbing and thanksgiving. Senkbeil answers […]

The closing hymn of the 2016 Insight evening service, “Take Courage, Brothers, in the Lord,” sung by soloist and congregation. ← Back to the full series

An evening service from DOXOLOGY’s 2016 Insight on Joy conference, built around the joy of the risen Christ. The sermon presses the difference between a joy that depends on circumstances and the joy that flows from the resurrection — a joy that promises no easy life yet cannot be taken away — and moves through […]

Spoken greetings offered to Dr. Harold Senkbeil on his forty-fifth anniversary in the ministry, from colleagues and friends gathered across his years of service, including the military chaplaincy and the church abroad. Each recalls his faithfulness and counsel, and above all his confession and preaching of Christ, commending him and his family to God’s continued […]

Dr. James Nestingen, emeritus professor of church history at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, presents justification as the doctrinal grammar governing pastoral speech at a Doxology collegium in January 2016. He proposes four rules drawn from the doctrine: Christ is always the subject of the verb, the hearer is always the direct object, the gospel is […]

Session 2 of a collegium conversation with Lutheran theologian James Nestingen covers why Luther insisted the gospel is promise (promissio) rather than command, and how that promise is always incarnate in a narrative and a specific human voice. Nestingen distinguishes faith from therapy, arguing that therapy aims at recovering the self while faith is self-loss […]

Dr. James Nestingen addresses the pastoral mechanics of private absolution, with extended attention to how addictive and repetitive sin disrupts the movement from repentance to faith. He distinguishes guilt from shame and the absolution’s role in each, applies the penultimate/ultimate distinction to the relationship between pastoral care and therapy, and examines Luther’s relational account of […]

Dr. James Nestingen turns from the theology of absolution to the practice of hearing private confession, opening with an old Irish priest who taught him to pray the moment a confession ends and hand what he has heard over to Christ so that he can forget it. He treats the seal of the confessional and […]

Kleinig speaks on the embodied word and affective proclamation, beginning with how often Jesus touches people and how touch clarifies and carries what words alone cannot. He recovers the older sense of the heart as the seat of both thinking and feeling, and traces how the Enlightenment split feeling from reason, leaving modern people both […]

Kleinig teaches affective meditation as the source of affective proclamation, using his own habit of rereading and savoring his wife’s love letters to illustrate dwelling on a single word or phrase for its emotional impact rather than mere information. He shows Psalm 119 and Psalm 1 meditating on God’s word with delight, and reads the […]

Arnold argues that visitation is not merely a function of the pastoral office but defines what a pastor is, grounding the point in the New Testament word for overseer, which carries the sense of visiting. He presses that every visit is a house blessing where the pastor brings Christ, his word, and often the Supper […]

Kleinig addresses ministry to cohabiting couples, insisting pastors are shepherds of souls, not moral policemen. Reading Proverbs 30 and Genesis 2, he presents marriage as God’s instituted order and a movement of leaving father and mother, cleaving in public lifelong commitment, and becoming one flesh—Trobisch’s three-legged stool. He surveys the social causes of cohabitation—prolonged adolescence, […]

This session opens with Kleinig on Luther’s claim that the devil is the enemy of God’s order, describing the four orders—natural, political, domestic, and the holy order of the church—as walls that protect God’s gifts, and urging pastors to teach the commandments, live faithfully in their stations, and put hope in God rather than political […]

Lucas Woodford teaches sexual virtue as part of the whole biblical story, beginning in Genesis where the triune God speaks light and order, creates humanity male and female, and joins them in marriage, which he reads through Cranach’s Creation and Fall painting to show marriage, sex, gender, procreation, vocation, and modesty all established at the […]

Standing in on short notice for Adrienne, Pamela Nielsen offers practical Lutheran counsel on communicating about marriage, sexuality, and religious liberty, comparing the church’s unpreparedness to a lobster slowly boiled. Speaking from her work in LCMS communications, she stresses knowing your audience as Paul did at the Areopagus, meeting people where they are, and using […]

John Kleinig recovers chastity as a beautiful virtue rather than the vice modern culture treats it as, first distinguishing chastity from mere virginity and building a moral case: because sex engages the whole person, sex that is not personalized depersonalizes those who engage in it, splitting soul from body and leaving frustration rather than fulfillment. […]

Matthew Harrison opens the conference by setting the church’s confession against the sexual ethic now enshrined in law after the Obergefell decision. He walks through Rome’s coliseum games, Herculaneum’s erotic art, and infanticide to argue that today’s abortion toll and trade in fetal parts outstrip even ancient debauchery, then surveys the coming pressures on chaplains, […]

Sherif Girgis argues the marriage debate is not about equality, tradition, or homosexuality but about two rival visions of what marriage is. He shows that the revisionist view, marriage as an intense emotional bond for personal fulfillment, cannot explain permanence, exclusivity, monogamy, or why marriage is limited to two people, and he cites advocates who […]

In his second session Girgis turns from argument to method, explaining why reasoned defense matters even inside the church: reason is God’s gift that unpacks and applies revelation, as when Christ answers the lawyer with the parable of the Good Samaritan and Paul reasons at the Areopagus. He makes tone the first priority, urging cheerful […]

Alvin Schmidt draws lessons on sexual fidelity from the early Christians who refused to imitate Rome’s decadence, documenting through Roman writers, art, and emperors how far marriage had degraded and how the early church stood apart. He traces Paul’s condemnation of porneia, especially the focus on homosexual behavior in Romans 1 as a denial of […]

Timothy Goeglein frames the present as a moral and spiritual revolution and an era of conscience in which marriage, family, and religious liberty are the decisive public questions. Drawing on his Washington experience, he argues politics is downstream from culture, and he marshals data on Planned Parenthood funding, soaring out-of-wedlock birth rates, cohabitation, and fatherlessness, […]

Eugene Peterson argues in this 2015 collegium conversation that genuine pastoral work requires knowing parishioners by name, and that the megachurch model produces entertainers and fundraisers instead of pastors. He draws on his formation at Christ Our King Presbyterian Church, including a sabbatical year during which the congregation grew without him, to illustrate the difference […]

Eugene Peterson argues that listening is the foundational pastoral act, recounting two formative encounters: a new-age parishioner who had never been heard, and “Uncle Sven,” a mentor who simply sat with Peterson in a prayer room and let him talk. Peterson also describes stepping back from a psychiatric training program after a hospitalized woman asked […]

Eugene Peterson describes his weekly sermon preparation discipline: lectionary-based meditation Monday through Wednesday, a full manuscript written Thursday and then set aside, Sunday morning spent walking the pews and praying through the congregation by name. He argues that preaching is sacramental, not educational, dealing in the stuff of ordinary life under the Word to install […]