Study One: Bringing Good News to Inactive Christians
Study Two: Conversations About Congregational Conflict
Additional Topics & Resources

Wish you could find a way to reconcile your children to the church? Concerned about their lives as they seem to drift away from Christ as young adults? How about that unchurched friend, neighbor or colleague? Wish you had the right words to say? Or do you sometimes catch yourself feeling a tad triumphalistic? Just for a moment, you feel you have the kind of Godly perspective good old Fred or Betty will never know.

Or, when was the last time you were in the middle of a good old-fashioned church squabble? On the other hand, maybe you wonder if you’ll ever stop arguing about what some people feel are petty problems.

There's hope! Perspective may be just around the corner in the form of the two studies in this reproducible guide. And it’s perspective that’s stood the test of time in the writings of the earliest Lutherans, penned more than 400 years ago.

Dry old irrelevant doctrine? Not so, assures Dr. Timothy Wengert, who spends a great deal of time bringing the reformers' ideas to life for modern students and churchgoers alike.

"The Book of Concord was never intended simply for scholars, theologians and unsuspecting seminary students," Wengert says. The professor at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia reminds that the Book "contains a wealth of material that can instruct and guide congregations and synods as Lutherans find new ways to witness to Christ and his benefits in the next millennium."

Professor Wengert is playing a key role to assure that the Lutheran Confessions as contained in The Book of Concord, first published in Germany in 1580, maintain relevance for the church of today and tomorrow. Wengert, who teaches the Lutheran Confessions and Reformation history at the Seminary, is volume editor with Professor Robert Kolb of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, for a new translation that was released in August 2000.

Professor Wengert has assembled thoughts on inactive members and congregational conflict for this reproducible study guide. He’s prepared it to encourage rostered professionals, teachers and lay leaders to revisit the Book’s foundational background in order that they might apply it to the daily situations they encounter. The studies focus on some of the Book’s lesser known portions to encourage discussions on two continuing concerns for the modern church. In addition, suggestions for further study topics are found at the end of this guide. Having The Book of Concord as a resource is recommended for getting the most out of this guide. You can order it online from the Augsburg Fortress web site.

A glimpse at history

Synods and congregations have from their beginnings in colonial times always encouraged the use of these documents since the time they were first printed in the United States in the nineteenth century. Professor Wengert continues a tradition of LTSP professors’ involvement in translating The Book of Concord.

In 1882, Henry Eyster Jacobs, a seminary professor of longstanding, produced a translation and also included a second volume of historical texts for background to the documents. In 1959, Professor Theodore Tappert published an edition with the assistance of translators from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and Maywood Seminary in Chicago (now part of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago).

The new translation takes advantage of the most recent scholarship available on the Book and will include not only a separate volume of historical documents but also a historical commentary written by Professor Kolb and Professor James Nestingen of Luther Seminary in St. Paul. It incorporates biblical citations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible and also includes a richer selection of historical notes and introductions, since today’s readers are often not as familiar with the Reformation as were the earlier users of Professor Tappert’s edition. Among the translators are Eric Gritsch of Gettysburg Seminary and James Schaaf, now deceased, who taught at Trinity Seminary in Columbus, OH.

About Professor Timothy Wengert

Professor Wengert joined the Seminary faculty in 1989 and teaches courses in the Lutheran Confessions and Reformation history. One portion of the new edition, his translation of the Small Catechism, was published separately by Augsburg Fortress in 1994 and has come to be used by many congregations of the ELCA. He is familiar to many because of his extensive teaching at synodical events and in congregations. He is a member of the New Jersey Synod clergy roster. Professor Wengert completed a doctoral dissertation on Philip Melanchthon’s interpretation of the gospel of John at Duke University in 1984.

Read Study One: Bringing Good News to Inactive Christians
Read Study Two: Conversations About Congregational Conflict
Read about Additional Topics & Resources