Good News For Life! So What’s Next? Practical Applications

Good News For Life!

So What’s Next? Practical Applications


Introduction“What makes us a threat to our [pro-life] teaching is that we are generally failing to follow up our theological convictions with real day-to-day ministry work.” (Dr. David Adams)

“All theology is practical theology.” (A beloved seminary professor whose name I have forgotten!)


A. A Plan to Teach

(From “Implementing a Pro-Life Theology in a Lutheran Congregation” LFL)

B. A Plan to Care C. A Plan to Witness


A. A Plan to Teach “A congregational pro-life ministry will look for ways to instruct Christians about the value of life at every opportunity.”



1. Youngest Children


2. Confirmation Class 3. Youth

4. Adults

5. Elderly

A. A Plan to Teach


“Pro-life ministries not only help people understand pro-life ideas, they help them do pro-life things.”


1. Caring for women – Pregnancy Centers

B. A Plan to Care

2. Caring for Elderly 3. Caring for Post Abortive


“The mission of the Church is the proclamation of the Gospel . . . not to force society to conform to God’s Word.”


C. A Plan to Witness



“Pro-life congregations need to plan to help Christians understand their role as citizens and their responsibility to work for laws that protect the weakest and most endangered of their neighbors.”

C. A Plan to Witness

Bringing Good News to Life to the Life Issues in Preaching

Life Issues

Connecting through Preaching

God

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins. (Isaiah 40:2)Matters of the

Heart


“Preachers, as a rule, imagine that they have fully discharged their office, provided what they have preached has been the Word of God. That is about a correct a view as when a ranger imagines he has discharged his office by sallying forth with his loaded gun and discharging it into the forest; or as when an artilleryman thinks he has done his duty by taking up his position with his cannon in the line of battle and by discharging his cannon. Just as poor rangers and soldiers as these later are, just so poor and useless preachers are those who have no plan in mind and take no aim when they are preaching. Granted their sermons contain beautiful thoughts; they do not, for that matter , take effect. They may occasionally make the thunders of the Law roll in their sermons, yet there is no lightning that strikes. Again, they may water the garden assigned to them with the fructifying waters of the Gospel, but they are pouring water on the beds and the paths of the garden indiscriminately, and their labor is lost. . . . May God help you in your future ministry not to become aimless prattlers.”

C.F.W. Walther. The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel. 99-100.

C.F.W. Walther


Dr. Oswald Hoffmann

“Dr. Hoffmann preached the Gospel right into my life.”


Know Your Sheep

1. Political issues do not belong in church2. “You tell ‘em pastor!”

3. Personal issues, we shouldn’t judge4. Pro- “choice” (abortion)

5. Post abortive or end-of-life decision.


Aim Law At:




1. Law is not yelling and screaming!2. Speaking the truth in love.3. Call wrong things wrong.4. “Crank it up a notch!”

Moral to Spiritual


“Why are you so careful, so tender of this one wrong and no other? . . . There is no place where you will allow it to be even called wrong! We must not call it wrong in the Free States because it is not there, and we must not call it wrong in the Slave States because it is there; we must not call it wrong in politics because that is bringing morality into politics, and we must not call it wrong in the pulpit because that is bringing politics into religion. . . There is not single place, according to you, where this wrong thing can properly be called wrong.” (Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy Basler, ed. vl. 4 p. 13.)

Abraham Lincoln

We need to call wrong things wrong so people will know what God in Christ has done about wrong things.



The Gospel is the greatest, most powerful and positive For Life message in the universe especially for those who have sinned against life.


Know Your Sheep



5. Post abortive or end-of-life decision.


1. Sanctity of Human Life Sunday

Life Thoughts in the Church Year

2. Sanctity of Human Life

Which to preach?


1. Preach as Christ’s undershepherd, servant, fellow sinner, fellow redeemed.2. Be open and honest. “I know that this topic is politically charged and controversial. But it’s also a spiritual issue and we as Christ’s Church need to address it.”

For Life Preaching Tips:


3. Be sensitive to the fact that the Law may already have done its work in post-abortive women and men.


4. Be a rebel! Do Gospel-Law-GospelExample: “I’m aware that there may be

those here who have participated in an abortion decision and perhaps are feeling uncomfortable. Let me speak a word just to you—welcome. Welcome here with the rest of us sinners. It is not the sin of abortion that separates us from God. It is sin that separates us from God. We all stand equally guilty before Him. So you are not alone. And stayed tuned. God has some Good News for all of us about forgiveness for all sins.”


5. Do what you do so well:

• Sin and Grace• Law and Gospel

• Theology of the Cross

6. Remember the foundation . . .

Created by God’s Hands

Redeemed by God’s Hands

Held by God’s Hands

We are God’s Handiwork!

Addendum:

Be sure to ask me about my tie!

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Good News For Life! So What’s Next? Practical Applications