So many words...

“Lutherans just have so many words.”

It was said yesterday in the course of a lunch time conversation after worship yesterday. The subject was outreach, and there were a lot of good ideas kicked around about how we might do a better, more faithful job of bearing the Good News into our communities and inviting folks to share Christ’s abundant life with us. Things like music, discipleship, community were all on the table…salutary topics that must and will be addressed in this place. But the one item that I find sticking with me in mulling over our conversation is less about the substance of what we do and more about the media by which those things are conveyed. “Lutherans just have so many words.” While not exactly offered as a complaint, neither was it expressed as a compliment.

“Lutherans just have so many words.” Of course, we do. We Lutherans emerged as a theological tradition primarily on the power of a media revolution. Not to ignore the role of the rise of German nationalism: but really…were it not for the printing press, Fr. Martin and his co-conspirators would have had a very difficult time getting their theological points made and their reforms enacted. Lutherans have so many words because we were born in the midst of printed words. And we have relied on those printed words and the rising literacy they engendered to make our way ever since.

So how do we communicate to a world for which the printed word is waning? How do we make a 16^th century handbook of the faith (still a faithful and relevant exposition of what it means to be Christian) accessible to a 21^st century public programmed to receive and respond in digital visual forms? These are the questions we need to take seriously…or we might as well appoint the last person out the door to turn out the lights. And please note: this is not about merely being fashionable or throwing out the substance of what we believe. Quite the contrary: It is about learning to live and speak and share the profound insights of the Reformation in a way which today’s hurting and harried world can understand. I’m convinced that folks still need and can benefit from what the Lutheran tradition has to say. So, not unlike the lessons learned by missionaries of old, this is about the church learning the language of the culture to which it is sent.

Yes…we Lutherans just have so many words…beautiful, faithful, powerful words rooted in the Word. Why keep them to ourselves? Let’s learn to speak again.