Internal Circulation
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EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN MALAYSIA
th 10th2018 Edition 27August Edition2012 | August
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24-27) Recent events made me rethink what it means to build on the solid rock of the words of Jesus. Our Saviour left us with words that are the foundation but the house is built by material that we bring to the project. So it makes me ask: What sort of building material should we be bringing to the house? It became urgent in my mind because of an encounter with a colleague of mine who asked me, “Bishop, why do we pay Church Fund to the Diocesan Treasury? Is it biblical?” I was astounded by his lack of understanding of simple management principles. The congregations that make ELCM set aside this fund so that a centralised management body could be set up to serve the congregations and to represent the ELCM as a body of Christians. Of course, we are a body
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who stand by the Augsburg Confession and the Book of Concord of 1530. We believe we protect our Christian faith by these principles and these are explanations of our faith. Often we call ourselves Lutherans in honour of the champion and promoter of this reform movement, Martin Luther. This is easy to understand. However, what caught me by surprise was the second question: “Is it biblical?” It jolted my attention to the possibility that many among us Lutherans have drifted so much that we have lost sight of where we came from and who we are that one should be upset that so many essential things we do may not be biblical but so many of what we do is “tradition.” So I want to address this one issue so that we are better informed to answer questions from the younger generations.
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