In Living Color: Rhetoric for a Lutheran Homiletic in the Digital Age

Woodford, Lucas V. “In Living Color: Narrative Rhetoric for a Lutheran Homiletic in the Digital Age” LOGIA 25:3 (Holy Trinity 2015), Seven minutes. That’s it. That’s all a preacher gets nowadays. After that hands fidget, minds wander, and bodies are restless. Yes, 420 seconds is all that is left of the average attention span. That means […]

Sermon Structure: Gift Model

Senkbeil, Harold L. “Sermon Structure: gift model.” DOXOLOGY Spotlight on Ministry Conference. 2010. Presentation. Note: this sermon model was presented at SPOTLIGHT on Ministry conferences in September 2010 as a template to guide preachers in sermon preparation and organization Grab the hearers by the ears and place them quickly into the context of the Scriptural […]

The Blood of Jesus: Sermon on Matthew 26:27-28

Kleinig, John W. “The Blood of Jesus: sermon on Matthew 26:27-28.” Lutheran Theological Review 14 (2001-02): 84-88. Blood! We are both fascinated and horrified by blood. Blood is a wonderful, powerful substance that nourishes our bodies and keeps them alive. It carries oxygen and nutrients to the cells; then it removes the wastes and toxins […]

Trends in Church Music: Toward a Theological Appraisal

Senkbeil, Harold L. “Trends in Church Music: toward a theological Appraisal.” Concordia University Wisconsin. Mequon, Wisconsin. 1992. Presentation.Preaching and Pastoral Care One of the hottest topics in Christian circles today is the issue of the church’s worship. Increasingly people in our own congregations are asking why their Lutheran service can’t look and sound like the […]

Liturgy and the Life of the Church

Senkbeil, Harold L. “Liturgy and the Life of the Church.” 1991. You will notice that while the planners of this conference may not be prophets, it is very clear that they are no cowards. Not only did they plan this affair for a day that turned out to be the opening day of the world […]

Doxology New

Kosche, Kenneth T. “Doxology New” Commissioned by the Rev. Dr. Harald Tomesch for DOXOLOGY: The Lutheran Center for Spiritual Care and Counsel. 2013. In 1674 Bishop Thomas Ken published A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Scholars of Winchester College, and in it he made reference to three hymns that he had written for […]

The Biblical View of Worship

Kleinig, John W. “The Biblical View of Worship.” Concordia Theological Quarterly 58.4 (2002): 225-54. Imagine a colour television set which has never been used. There it sits in the living room of a house, sheltered from the sun and rain. Since it occupies such a prominent place in the living room, it has developed rather inflated notions […]

Access to God’s Grace

Kleinig, John W. “Access to God’s Grace.” Some years ago I saw a rather gripping Australian film called The Last Wave. It was set in Sydney and told the story of well-educated secular young man who had become aware of the supernatural realm by his association with a group of urban Aborigines in Redfern. In the […]

Where Muslim Dreams May Lead

Siemon-Netto, Uwe, “Where Muslim Dreams May Lead,” Quadrant. January – February 2016, 38-41. Shortly before ISIS struck Paris in November killing 130 people, I committed what must have been utter idolatry in the eyes of its iconoclastic Muslim exterminators. I drove to Bourges, a medieval city in the centre of France, and spent a few hours […]

Mission and Ministry mash Up

Senkbeil, Harold L. and Woodford, Lucas V., “Mission and Ministry Mash Up.” Lutheran Witness. May 2015. 8-9 od’s intent is clear. No matter the time, the culture, the language or the I nation, He desires all people to be saved (l Tim. 2:4) through the suffering, I I death and resurrection of His beloved Son. This […]

Engaging Our Culture Faithfully

Senkbeil, Harold L. “Engaging Our Culture Faithfully.” Concordia Journal. 40.1 (2014): 292-314. Seventeen years ago, I delivered a set of Reformation lectures on Luther and the Fanatics, tracing that theme from the tumultuous years of the Reformation to the era of Pietism and the influence of American Evangelicalism on twentieth-century Lutherans. In my first lecture […]

Witting or Unwitting Ritualists?

Kleinig, John W. “Witting or Unwitting Ritualists?” Lutheran Theological Journal. 22.1 (1988): 13-22. We are all ritualists. We may find that hard to believe, because Lutherans don’t usually rate ritual very highly. Like many of our contemporaries, we tend to associate ritual with hocus-pocus, superstition, and magic. At best, ritual is used by Roman Catholics and […]

The Worship of God and the Mission of God

Kleinig, John W. “The Worship of God and the Mission of God.” Luther Seminary. Adelaide, Australia. 1999. The worship of God and the mission of God belong closely together. For me, their connection is developed most clearly in the great Sunday vision of St John in Revelation 4 and 5. In this vision, God shows […]

The Mystery of Doxology

Kleinig, John W. “The Mystery of Doxology.” In Paul T. McCain and John R. Stephenson, Mysteria Dei. Essays in Honor of Kurt Marquart. Concordia Theological Seminary Press: Fort Wayne, 129-47. One of the most puzzling features of early Christian worship is the sudden appearance of doxologies in the liturgy of the church. Hymns of praise were sung […]