The Lutheran Witness Podcast

What does the confessional Lutheran church look like in Lithuania? We were honored to meet and share stories of global Lutheran church leaders at the International Church Relations Conference (ICRC), held during the LCMS Synod Convention. In this conversation, Bishop Mindaugas Sabutis (Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania) joins Sarah Gulseth (co-host of The Coffee Hour) and Rachel Bom...

What does the confessional Lutheran church look like in Kenya? We were honored to meet and share stories of global Lutheran church leaders at the International Church Relations Conference (ICRC), held during the LCMS Synod Convention. In this conversation, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Omolo (Archbishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya) joins Sarah Gulseth (co-host of The Coffee Hour) and Rachel Bomber...

What does the confessional Lutheran church look like in Ghana? We were honored to meet and share stories of global Lutheran church leaders at the International Church Relations Conference (ICRC), held during the LCMS Synod Convention. In this conversation, the Rev. John Donkoh (President, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ghana) joins Sarah Gulseth (co-host of The Coffee Hour) and Rachel Bomberger (m...

What does the confessional Lutheran church look like in Germany? We were honored to meet and share stories of global Lutheran church leaders at the International Church Relations Conference (ICRC), held during the LCMS Synod Convention. In this conversation, Hans-Jörg Voigt (Bishop, Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church - SELK, Germany) joins Sarah Gulseth (co-host of The Coffee Hour) and Rachel...

What does Lutheranism look like in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod? We were honored to meet and share stories of global Lutheran church leaders at the International Church Relations Conference (ICRC), held during the LCMS Synod Convention. In this conversation, the Rev. Mark Schroeder (President, Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) joins Sarah Gulseth (co-host of The Coffee Hour) and th...

What does the confessional Lutheran church look like in Finland? We were honored to meet and share stories of global Lutheran church leaders at the International Church Relations Conference (ICRC), held during the LCMS Synod Convention. In this conversation, Bishop Juhana Pohjola (Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland) joins Sarah Gulseth (co-host of The Coffee Hour) and the Rev....

In the 16th century, there were some disputes among Lutherans over the phrase of the Apostles’ Creed, “He descended into hell.” The FC explains its meaning: Christ “destroyed hell for all believers, and delivered them from the power of death and of the devil, from eternal condemnation and the jaws of hell” (FC Ep IX 4). The FC also holds up Martin Luther’s 1533 sermon on this topic (WA 37:62–67) a...

What does the confessional Lutheran church look like in Brazil? We were honored to meet and share stories of global Lutheran church leaders at the International Church Relations Conference (ICRC), held during the LCMS Synod Convention. In this conversation, the Rev. Geraldo Schüler (President, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil - IELB) joins Sarah Gulseth (co-host of The Coffee Hour), Rachel Bo...

What does the confessional Lutheran church look like in Bolivia? We were honored to meet and share stories of global Lutheran church leaders at the International Church Relations Conference (ICRC), held during the LCMS Synod Convention. In this conversation, the Rev. Limberth Fernandez Coronado (President, Christian Evangelical Lutheran Church of Bolivia) joins Sarah Gulseth (co-host of The Coffee...

What does the confessional Lutheran church look like in Argentina? We were honored to meet and share stories of global Lutheran church leaders at the International Church Relations Conference (ICRC), held during the LCMS Synod Convention. In this conversation, the Rev. Arturo Truenow (President, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Argentina) joins Sarah Gulseth (co-host of The Coffee Hour), Rachel Bomb...

What does the confessional Lutheran church look like in Australia? We were honored to meet and share stories of global Lutheran church leaders at the International Church Relations Conference (ICRC), held during the LCMS Synod Convention. In this conversation, the Rev. Matt Anker (President, Lutheran Mission – Australia) joins Sarah Gulseth (co-host of The Coffee Hour) and Rachel Bomberger (managi...

What does the Lutheran church look like in Canada? We were honored to meet and share stories of global Lutheran church leaders at the International Church Relations Conference (ICRC), held during the LCMS Synod Convention. In this conversation, the Rev. Timothy Teuscher (President/Bishop, Lutheran Church—Canada) joins Andy Bates (co-host of The Coffee Hour) and the Rev. Roy Askins (executive edito...

What does a Professional Parliamentarian do, and why is this role important at the LCMS Convention? Al Gage (current Parliamentarian for the National Association of Parliamentarians, CPP-T, PRP, PAP; past president of the American Institute of Parliamentarians) joins Andy Bates (co-host of The Coffee Hour) and the Rev. Roy Askins (executive editor of the Lutheran Witness, LCMS Communications) to s...

Article VIII of the Formula of Concord (FC), “The Person of Christ,” is closely related to Article VII, “The Holy Supper of Christ.” After Luther’s death in 1546, Calvinist errors about Communion and Christ found their way into some Lutheran churches and schools. The FC criticizes Calvinists for attempting to explain the mysteries of the Supper and the Savior in terms acceptable to human reason ra...

Article VII of the Formula of Concord confesses the biblical doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, distinguishing it from the teachings of the Zwinglians (“openly crass Sacramentarians”) and the Calvinists (“crafty Sacramentarians”). The former rejected the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Sacrament, while the latter taught a “spiritual” presence of Christ in the Supper, received by faith...

How can the Synod better support the entities and agencies of Synod in their work at home and abroad? In this special 2026 Convention episode of The Lutheran Witness podcast, the Rev. Dr. Mike Gibson, district president of the LCMS Pacific Southwest District; Andrew Grams, vice chairman of the LCMS Board of Directors; and the Rev. Dr. John Sias, LCMS Secretary join the Rev. Roy S. Askins to discus...

God’s Word plainly teaches, “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Romans 7:12). And so, we do not discard the Law, which is a holy gift from God. However, Lutherans have sometimes debated that Law’s applications. In the 16th century, Lutheran theologians debated the question, “How many uses of God’s Law are there?” While there is but one Law of God, He uses it in v...

Luther famously said that students of the Bible need “to retain the distinction between Law and Gospel” (AE 26: 406). This became the official position of Lutherans with Article V of the Formula of Concord: “We believe, teach, and confess that the distinction between the Law and the Gospel is to be kept in the Church with great diligence” (FC Ep V 2). If we want to be distinctively Lutheran today,...

Article IV of the Formula of Concord elaborates on teachings introduced in the previous article: “Good works always follow justifying faith and are surely found with it — if it is true and living faith. Faith is never alone, but always has love and hope with it” (FC Ep III 11). The authors of the Formula chose to include a separate article on good works in order to resolve a dispute that had occur...

Article III of the Formula of Concord addresses doctrinal errors spread by two 16th-century teachers, Andreas Osiander (1498–1552) and Francesco Stancaro (1501–1574). Osiander taught that the righteousness of Christ’s divine nature dwelling in Christians is their righteousness before God, while Stancaro insisted that the righteousness of Christ’s human nature is the Christian’s righteousness. The...

“Free will” is not a phrase found in the Bible. The concept seems to have been brought into Christian theology by the church father Tertullian (160–240), who likely borrowed it from Stoic philosophy. Augustine (354–430) wrote a treatise called "On Free Choice of the Will" early in his career but altered some of his views later, which led to much debate and confusion on the issue throughout the Mid...

Readers of The Lutheran Witness are likely familiar with the Formula of Concord (FC) — not only from its inclusion in the Lutheran Book of Concord, but also from the monthly reading plan published in these pages last year. This year’s “Searching Scripture” will walk through the 12 topics explored by the Formula — original sin, free will, election, Law and Gospel, and so on — in order to examine th...

As our year of focusing on the Old Testament comes to a close, it is fitting that we conclude with texts from the Messiah’s first “biographer,” the prophet Isaiah, whose career spanned 740–680 B.C. Thanks to the Lutheran composer Handel, whose “Messiah” is especially popular around Christmas and Easter, many of Isaiah’s prophecies are quite familiar (in fact, about one-third of the movements in “M...

November brings us to the end of another church year, which focuses our attention on the last things, on death and resurrection, on heaven and hell. We confess in the creeds, “I believe in … the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”; “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” It is remarkable that these creedal truths were already as good as accompli...

In 2013, a popular national TV host provoked a sharp reaction from Christian viewers when he asserted that much of the Bible is allegorical, meaning that the narratives of Adam and Eve, Noah, and Jonah are non-literal and symbolic. This is not how Christians have historically understood allegory. Even in the Middle Ages, when ingenious allegorical interpretation sometimes resulted in nonsense, Chr...