PCXIAN has left a new comment on your post "Invocabit - The First Sunday in Lent":
Greg,
In your sermon today under paragraph “Defeating Pietism,” subparagraph “Hate What Pietism Loves” you list that one should hate home study among a list of others. Studying the Word of God at home is so anti-Lutheran and anti-Confessional. How can anyone possibly study, much less comprehend, what God says without a pastor present?
Isn’t it unfortunate that so many Lutherans, Catholics, and others haven’t opened their Bible since Uncle Henry and Aunt Mary gave them one with their name and the date of their confirmation on the cover? Why should they? They go to church every week faithfully, perhaps even attend Sunday Bible class (they hand out Bibles there), and sometimes even read “Meditations." The Sunday Lessons are also printed out for them in the bulletin each week because it’s so difficult to lug that big book with them to church.
Daily studying God’s Word, like the Bereans, who “received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” is something we should do each day as well, shouldn’t we?
So I take your comment about home Bible study as it was given…with tongue-in-cheek.
P. C. Christian
***
GJ - I can be faulted for not providing enough information in one post, but many other posts supplement what I have said about Pietism.
The sermon itself says that the two main characteristics of Pietism are:
1. Replacing doctrinal purity with ecumenism - in the name of love.
2. Supplanting the Means of Grace with the lay-led, ecumenical cell group.
I constantly urge people to study the Word and the Confessions. Some have said they discovered or re-discovered the Confessions by reading this blog. For that I am truly happy and quite satisfied.
The cell group concept has destroyed more churches than the Chicago Fire. If someone wants to find an unfaithful Lutheran staff, just search the website for the material about "small group Bible studies."
At St. Paul, German Village, when Mike Nitz and atheist Schumann were there, they began a lay-led Bible study group with husband and wife leaders. Next the husband disappeared. After that, when someone questioned a women teaching men, the self-ordained woman pastor said, "I am in charge of this group!" That was about 20 years ago.
