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What altar and pulpit fellowship means is that we are in agreement with another church body

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so that we will share our altars and share our pulpits.

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In other words, I can go to your church and take communion,

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you can come to my church and take communion, I can go to your church and I can preach in your pulpit,

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you can come to my church and preach in my pulpit.

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Right now in the Missouri Synod, with whom do we have altar and pulpit fellowship?

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Exactly. We have altar and pulpit fellowship with the LCMS.

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And that's as far as it goes right now.

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We used to have altar and pulpit fellowship with the ALC a long time ago

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before they got swallowed up by the ELCA.

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But now the odds of us having altar and pulpit fellowship with the ELCA are negligible

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simply because they're not faithfully confessing the faith and we don't want to be part of that.

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So that's not going to happen.

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So then maybe we go to the other side and we look at Wisconsin,

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the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the WELS.

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And could we have fellowship with them?

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Yeah, we probably could live with that, but they don't want anything to do with us

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because they think we're too liberal because we have funny views about being able to pray with other Christians

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and you shouldn't do that because that's showing too much fellowship

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and they have other concerns with us as well.

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So they don't want us.

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So right now we find ourselves in the situation of not having altar and pulpit fellowship with anybody

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but also recognizing the desire to have unity beyond our borders and community.

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So that's why we dialogue and we communicate and we try to work for genuine agreements,

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not just de facto kinds of things.

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Worldwide are there any Lutheran churches?

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Sure, worldwide there are plenty of what we call sister institutions.

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Some of them used to be tied in through LCMS missions and now are independent.

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Some of them we've had fellowship with before.

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But yeah, in almost every country there's churches we have fellowship with.

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Canada there's one, Brazil, you can tick them all off.

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Almost every country has a church, usually not real big, but some of them are bigger.

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Brazil's got a pretty good sized church.

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Africa, there are many churches there where we have fellowship with our growing gangbusters.

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So yeah, there are Lutherans we are in fellowship with other places.

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Not right now in America though.

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Which leads us into the discussion about the ecumenical movement or ecumenism.

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Ecumenism, ecumenical comes from the Greek word oikonomia which means household rule.

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And the idea of ecumenism is getting everybody underneath one roof, felt the unity.

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So ecumenical is all about unity, idea of one church.

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That's the goal of the ecumenical movement.

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The ecumenical movement really got born and kicked off huge about a century ago.

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And it was going really strong for a long time and it's kind of slowed down.

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But there are still real strong pushes here.

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And what happens in the ecumenical movement often is a desire for unity at all costs.

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And you'll get this, what I called before, lowest common denominator unity.

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Where, okay, so let's go with the ELCA.

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ELCA is really good at doing ecumenical stuff.

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And so they want to have fellowship with the Presbyterians.

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Well, you don't teach Bachelors in quite the way we do.

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Yeah, yeah, that's true, you don't.

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But you know what?

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We think you're being really sincere about what you do.

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And we're being sincere about what we do.

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So let's just agree to kind of disagree.

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And we still agree about Jesus and we still agree about loving people.

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Yeah, that's true.

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All right, so we're okay with that.

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And so you keep on finding the lowest common denominator.

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The problem is, the further you go,

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the less that gets involved in the lowest common denominator.

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History has borne this out.

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Most of you have heard the World Council of Churches and

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have kind of a dim view of it because of the kind of stuff they do.

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When the World Council of Churches started about 100 years ago,

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they were a rather strong evangelistic group with a very clear

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confession of Christ as the only way to salvation.

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That was part of their statement.

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Over time, they decided they wanted to be more and more inclusive and

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invite others in.

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And so they started backing off their statement more and more and

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more and letting more people in.

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To the point now where they've got Quakers in and just about everybody in and

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they're even debating letting Jews in to the World Council of Churches.

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Why not?

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Because we all believe in God.

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And so you see, you just keep on making the denominator smaller and

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smaller and smaller.

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Is that really agreement?

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And we would argue, no.

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You're playing games and you're being faithless.

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You're not really hanging on to the truth.

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You're letting doctrine go and you do that and you're gonna lose the gospel.

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And history has borne that out again and again and again too.

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Yeah, Todd.

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The World Council of Churches even recently changed their mission statement

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to exclude the word Jesus.

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Yes.

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So it's no longer there.

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That's right.

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That's right.

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The church, yeah, church gathered with people who have interest in God stuff.

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So they keep on making it easier and easier to include more people.

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The day will come when they'll probably be inviting in Hindus and Buddhists too.

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All right.

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My other question.

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Does the ecumenical movement include like the joint document on

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justification that the ELCA did with the Catholic Church?

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Is that part of ecumenical?

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Yeah, sure.

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The ecumenical movement is not a bad idea.

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This is a fine idea.

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And we want to be ecumenically minded.

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In other words, we want to be thinking about other Christians and paying attention to them

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and seeing how we can serve them and help them.

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And frankly, the LCMS has not a bad reputation out there in the world

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because people value us for our doctrinal commitment and our doctrinal rigor.

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They recognize we're doing that well and they like that, a lot of people.

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But it's tempting for us to kind of become very parochial,

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ingrown, you know, our own little circle, our own little house,

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and who cares about anybody else, kind of stick our head in the sand.

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You can't do that.

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We have an ecumenical responsibility.

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So we are concerned for that.

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But we're also cautious that we don't become ecumenical at any cost,

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lowest common denominator, or fiat ecumenism where you just say,

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we're in agreement, we announced it.

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No, you're really not.

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But we announce it.

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But so like the joint declaration on doctrinal justification that came out,

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you know, between the Lutherans and the Catholics, big hoopla over that.

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We've come to agreement.

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Well, the problem was Rome didn't accept it and a lot of Lutherans didn't accept it.

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And a few people wanted it to be so, but

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there really wasn't the agreement that people were hoping for.

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Now is there progress?

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Yeah, we're making some movement.

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And Rome today is in the church, it was in Luther's day, and that's true.

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So there is progress being made, so that's why we keep on talking.

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Who knows, another 100 years, maybe we might give you more progress and

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we'll have legitimate unity that we can celebrate.

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We hope for that, we pray for that.

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It's our responsibility.

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So you don't need to say ecumenical is always bad.

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It's not.

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But you have to be careful how you're doing your ecumenical things and

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you have to be careful.

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The desire for ecumenical unity doesn't over shadow and eclipse or

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even veto the need for doctrinal integrity and doctrinal purity and doctrinal truth.

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That matters too.

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Kolb makes the comment that the ecumenical movement,

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the problem is that you're not really focusing on right teaching.

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And that's often the case.

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You quit thinking about right teaching and

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you just get more interested in feeling like we're all one.

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That's a temptation, it's a problem.

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Yeah.

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So what does it take to necessarily have an ecumenical agreement,

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looking specifically at maybe one concept or something?

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Because the essence of us having, we're not going to have full agreement,

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because then we'd be the same denomination.

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That's a good point.

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See, we might be able to have a discussion and we dialogue and

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we have a long talk about justification or about

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Mariology or the place of the saints.

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We talk and talk and talk and the Catholics say,

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you know I think you're probably right when you say what you say.

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We agree with that.

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And we can come to agreement.

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We could.

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And we might be able to agree on more and more things.

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And the hope is that eventually we can agree on enough things that

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some of the other things don't matter that much.

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And see that's part of the question too is, how much do you have to have?

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How much unity do you need?

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One of the dangers we have to be careful of, and this is an old word, but

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you hear it thrown around, especially it's kind of revived again in our circles,

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is unionism.

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And unionism was a big problem back when the synod started.

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Unionism is when you just join up with other denominations without even caring.

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You're not really paying attention to the doctrinal issues.

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And so the Lutherans join up with the Methodists, joint worship services.

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It's an example of unionism, syncretism.

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So you kind of take some of their stuff, they take some of yours, and

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you get together.

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So like if I am a Lutheran church and I decide to have a joint worship service

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with the Methodist church down the road, because we all believe in Jesus,

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that would probably be an example of unionism.

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We're acting like we're all one.

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We're acting like we're in agreement when we're really not.

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And unionism is always a bad thing.

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That's bad.

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Ecumenism is not necessarily a bad thing.

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That desire for that agreement, that talking, the working for it, that's good.

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Unionism is different.

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Unionism just runs right to the conclusion, skips all the problems, and

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declares that we're all together.

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So what about, what point, like the Wellster says that they don't believe

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we have fellowship and prayer with others, and we have an opposite view of that.

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So the whole thing of what, say September 11th, we got together.

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The two churches got together and prayed.

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But it's not a worship service.

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That's where it gets all crazy.

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It's very sticky.

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What's a worship service?

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What isn't?

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What's a civil gathering?

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What's a worship service?

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And things get really quite hairy.

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You get all kinds of discussions, and the whole Yankee,

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Yankee stadium comes in and all that stuff.

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And then it gets pretty sticky.

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Because the definitions aren't real clear, and the situations move around quickly,

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and it's hard to understand what's going on always.

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So it gets pretty tough.

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And that's a challenge, no doubt about that.

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So with the Altar and Paul Fellowship, what we're saying is Altar and

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Paul Fellowship's a good idea.

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We want that with everybody.

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We want to work for that.

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But not at the cost of ignoring doctrinal differences or

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acting like we're all in agreement when we're really not.

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There needs to be integrity here as we deal with these things.

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All right.

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So I have a question.

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Yes, go ahead.

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The thing that happened in Yankee Stadium.

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Okay, as a good LCMS Lutheran then, I should not attend an event like that at all?

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I don't know if that's necessarily the case.

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I mean, I go down to Busch Stadium and I stand up and

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I sing the Star Spangled Banner and

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I maybe even sing God Bless America during the seventh inning stretch.

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Now, am I participating in ecumenical activities?

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Is that unionism?

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I don't think so.

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And see, that's why I'm saying the lines between civil participation and

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church get really blurry really quick.

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We have a whole class on that too though.

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It's not an easy thing to sort through.

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You're on a Greek airliner that's plummeting towards the earth along with

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a rabbi and a Buddhist guy and you're all praying together.

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Well, this could be violating some tenets of the church.

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I don't know.

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I might be praying, well, her praying, but I probably don't.

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I'm not gonna take the time to pray with the Buddhists when I'm on my way down.

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I don't care about that.

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That's his business.

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I might be sharing the gospel with them.

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That'd probably be better.

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But as far as all this praying to our God for God's intervention, no.

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I don't care about his God.

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His God's worthless.

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I have no interest in his God.

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None.

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That's why unionism falls flat because you get caught up in the whole

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idolatry thing and are you really being faithful to the triune God?

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And that's our call.

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The other thing to remember here is, as I stressed before,

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the lines of inclusion that include us and

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doctrine includes us will by definition always exclude others.

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If we're in agreement, those who aren't aren't included.

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That's just the way it is.

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And we're not trying to be nasty about it.

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That's just the way it is.

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We have agreement on this doctrine.

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That's great. We celebrate it.

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We're wonderful.

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We love having this agreement on our doctrine.

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Well, down the street, they don't.

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Oh well.

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What are we gonna do about that?

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We can't draw it wider to include them because then we're not being faithful to

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what we are.

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So that's what we have to be careful with.