The name on this newsletter is doing some work, and it's worth naming what work that is at the start.
In the Lutheran tradition, the "ordinary means of grace" are the ways God has bound himself to come to his people: his Word — read, preached, taught — and his Sacraments. Baptism. The Lord's Supper. The ordinary, often unspectacular ways Christ delivers himself to sinners.
Ordinary doesn't mean small. It means given. It means promised. It means the place Christ has actually said he will be. Not the experience we manufacture, not the conference we attend, not the spiritual high we chase — but the water and the Word, the bread and the wine, the absolution spoken by a pastor with the authority of Christ behind it.
This is the soil this newsletter grows in.
The actual work of confessional Lutheran life — and confessional Lutheran teaching — is largely unspectacular. A Bible study leader prepares for the next week. A Sunday school teacher reads a passage one more time. A layman tries to answer a question from his evangelical brother-in-law and realizes he can't yet, which is the start of doing the work to be able to. A pastor visits a sick parishioner. None of it goes viral. All of it matters more than what goes viral.
This newsletter is for the people doing that work — the lay teacher in a folding chair somewhere in a Midwestern church basement, the curious evangelical asking harder questions about what they were taught, the layman who simply wants to know what his Bible actually says without the customary baggage of one camp or another.
Here's the rhythm I'm aiming for: one issue a week, give or take. Most will be substantive — doctrinal essays, study aids, the occasional book recommendation, working material from the adult Sunday school class I teach at my church. Some will be shorter — observations, follow-ups, things I'm watching. Paid subscribers will eventually receive teacher's guides, slide decks, and members-only material tied to whichever series is running.
The first regular series begins shortly: The Things Concerning Himself, a four-volume look at the Old Testament with Lutheran eyes. The series introduction goes out next week.
If you're reading this, you've come through the welcome flow already, so I won't repeat the introductions. Glad you're here.
In Christ,
Larry