Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Adult Baptism

I was visiting my mom this weekend and attended her WELS church service. As part of the service was an adult baptism. It occurred to me that I have seen maybe a couple of these in my lifetime, while I have seen at least a dozen babies baptized (not counting my own). While it is important to baptize infants, I do think that Lutheran's in general have left the generational growth path dominate a little too much in "missions." I haven't been involved of any major outreaches within any of the Lutheran churches I have been a member, and don't recall any efforts off the top of my head. I certainly don't want the watered down, ineffective "gospel" (little g) of the "Church Growth Movement." (why give up the Living Word?) I am not sure how Lutherans (at least the ones I have interacted with) got to the point where we are now. Are there good examples of missionary work within a Lutheran church's neighborhood? Or have we ceded that ground somewhat to those whose message is diluted by pop culture and wavering from orthodox Doctrine? I don't think the latter is necessarily true, but I do think we do precious little when we might be needing to do much more.