LCMS and ACNA joint statement

[Mel Harris]

       The LCMS and the ACNA have released a joint statement.  The statement can be downloaded from this link or read here.

       Happy reading.

                                   Mel Harris

[Jeremy Loesch]

Wow!  Thank you for posting that Mel.  I knew that these discussions have been taking place and that these discussions have been positive things.  (A series of videos was released on youtube or on the Witness, Mercy, Life Together blog.  Probably both but I do not recall.) 

I think that the statement is very honest.  It lays out areas of agreement and areas where agreement does not (yet) exist.  Both churches take seriously matters of doctrine and it certainly appears from my seat that these discussions are endeavoring to see where we can collaborate and work together.  The possible work with CPH and the seminaries certainly sounds like a good thing.

Very good news!

Jeremy

[J. Thomas Shelley]

Thank you, Mel.

Next week I will be attending the Provincial Assembly of the ACNA, and, at the inivitation of Archbishop Duncen, sitting as an observer to the Provincial Council which precedes that Assembly.

It was a privilege to observe a portion of those dialogs last May at the REC Seminary in Blue Bell.

[Weedon]

Lex Credendi, meet Lex Orandi.  Most hopeful engagement!

[J. Thomas Shelley]

Lex Credendi, meet Lex Orandi.  Most hopeful engagement!

Aye. 

The ACNA is mildly covetuous of our confessionalism.   And some of us are mildly covetuous of their apostolic ordering of ministry.

This next thought crosses into the Real Presence discussion; but one of the objections I have heard concerning grafting together the heirs of the German and the English Reformation is "they're Calvinists".   Their lex orandi affirms Christ's Eucharistic presence far better than most Lutheran parishes, especially those tainted by receptionism.