Ministry of the Church (174)
  1. We don't make Church "happen." Only Christ can do so. It's his happening.
  2. Authentic proclamation, then, is the love of Christ for our souls, which we have seen and experienced through the under-shepherd’s pastoral care put into the words of Christ Himself.
  3. The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
  4. Despite our best efforts to avoid him, King Jesus remains very much unavoidable.
  5. For Christians, Advent is the time when the Church patiently prepares for the coming of the Great King, Jesus the Christ.
  6. The epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.
  7. Whatever else may be said about the Last Day it consists of these two inseparable things: Christ’s coming and His kingdom people being gathered to Him.
  8. Jesus speaks His Word, and a new world order emerges, with the possibility of uniting disparate parties in the true faith.
  9. The Word and the Spirit go together. The Spirit, the breath of God, illumines and makes alive through the Word of God; both written and external, that is, preached and sacramented.
  10. Paul is talking about military-level allegiance here, the strongest kind of allegiance sworn to a king.
  11. By making a big deal of every baptism, of every confirmation, of every rite of matrimony, the Church takes a stand against the intrusion of consumerism, secularism, identity politics, subversive subcultures, gender dysphoria, and the like.
  12. This ministry of the Gospel, this standing in the stead and by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, is demanding business and is entirely unsuitable for the weak-willed or those who compromise with the zeitgeist of the day.
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