Signals Not to Send

It seems that our culture is divided up between left and right in just about every aspect including Sunday mornings. What a tragedy! The things that unite us are so much more precious and important than the things that divide us. This is true in our country and exponentially truer in the church. Of all places, the church should be the place where the truth of the gospel matters and everything else fades into the background. And yet is this the feeling our members sense while sitting in the pews? How about the visitors in the narthex? Would a person who holds a minority political opinion walk away because of unintended signals we send? Whether we realize it or not, we send unintended signals (good and bad) in preaching, worship, conversations in the narthex, and in Bible class discussions. In this session we will discuss signals not to send but also ways to reinforce the matters that unite us. We will try to hone the skill of challenging our audiences with the grand topics that relate to our current culture without putting a barrier between them and the gospel.

Bio | Michael Berg

Rev. Dr. Berg is associate professor of theology at Wisconsin Lutheran College where he teaches courses on worship, apologetics, Martin Luther, Christ in the Old Testament, and Christ and Culture. He is the author of Vocation: The Setting for Human Flourishing (1517), The Baptismal Life (NPH), On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service (1517), and a forthcoming book from NPH called Peter: Theologian of the Cross.