A mistake in directions leads to a Sunday morning visit.

Click to enlarge: Luther's Rose, a symbol designed for Martin Luther at the request of John Frederick of Saxony in 1530.

Tomorrow I plan to attend a traditional 8:30am service at a nearby Lutheran church with Dee Dee. A mistake in directions took my wife to their front door. The minister who greeted her, and got her directions straightened out, was very kind.

The church is LCMS (Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod), a conservative confessional Lutheran denomination. This particular church has an early traditional service and a later modern one.

If we have time, Dee Dee and I will get a donut at Tim Horton's after the service and before we pick up Jing and Mimi and head out to Res Life in Rockford (which is much larger and charismatic / nondenominational; we've been there for a few years; well, Jing goes into the service, I stay in the foyer on account of the volume, which is unpredictable and painful, but decibels aside, they are good God-fearing people).

All this depends on my getting up by 7am and getting Dee Dee dressed and combed and fed and into the car by 8:15. But the promise of a donut works wonders (for both of us).

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My great grandfather Bauer was Lutheran, a German immigrant (Grandma Cairns's father).

Grandma Cairns talked a couple times of an image she remembered from childhood: Her father sitting in his chair, his face hidden behind a large bible, and smoke curling up behind it from the pipe he was smoking.

I have a copy of his baptismal certificate somewhere, in German of course, very ornate.

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I consider myself a Baptist, but only because I was baptized a Baptist and have never been anything else, and that was so long ago, that church has long since removed me from the membership role.

For good or bad, Baptists are particular about such matters. In fact, most evangelical denominations are. That seems natural for a system built around local independent churches.

Centralized denominations allow you to carry your membership and privileges with you from town to town, since every church in the group confesses the same thing and (ideally) enforces the same guidelines. Since independent churches can't be sure this is true from one congregation to the next, they make you start over each time you move.

How far back you have to go to start over varies. Most Baptist churches will accept a previous adult baptism by immersion, but they usually won't accept sprinkling or infant baptism. And most will let you participate in communion if you are "saved, since immersed and walking with the Lord," eg, made a decision for Jesus, been baptized by immersion, and are following Jesus today, in that order; but again, some are stricter and will insist on membership or public testimony or attendance, etc.

(I love that phrase, BTW, "since immersed and walking with the Lord"; I heard it each month my whole early life. It's very poetic, part of what you might call a Baptist liturgy.)

[2013-08-06]

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