Today, almost 70 million people are called “Lutherans” a term that Luther himself did not like because he felt it detracted from Jesus Christ. Right here in Middle Georgia the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) is flourishing as it continues to stand on the Rock of Our Salvation and the Word of God. The LCMS continues to look to Christ alone as the means of our salvation and believes that the Word of God has the power to bring us that salvation. We believe that Scripture is God’s inspired Word without error. The fact that we hold Scripture to be sacred is evident in all that we do as a church body. In our worship, God’s Word is interwoven within the service as it is brought to life. We speak back the Words of God as we seek His mercy and grace and as we give Him thanks for the gifts that we receive in worship. And so we see Scripture not only as a book of rules, but as a life-giving message of salvation which creates a saving faith.

We believe that this Word of God was made flesh in the person Jesus Christ who was the Word in action and was God. Lutherans therefore believe that God is a hands-on God. From the forming of Adam to the virgin birth of Jesus Christ we see God working through His creation for our salvation. Throughout Scripture we see God uses simple earthly things as the means of His grace. God humbled himself to become a man and to take on our flesh to save us – a cosmic collision of heaven and earth. God promised to send the seed of Eve to win our salvation, God added his promise to that rainbow first seen by Noah, God made a covenant through circumcision, and God brought salvation from death at the Passover when His promise was attached to the blood of a lamb on a door. God has always been and will always be a hands-on God bringing salvation to His creation through His creation. God’s Word created the heavens and the earth, and whenever His promises or curses were attached to something physical, it was connected to the creative power of the Word. Today God still uses water in Baptism, bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper, and words in the pages of Scripture to connect us to the promises of forgiveness in the death and resurrection of His Son. Yes even the promise of Christ paying the debts for our sins happened through gritty crossbeams and nails that pierced the hands of a hands–on God.

Our Lord speaks and we listen. His Word bestows what it says. Faith that is born from what is heard acknowledges the gifts received with eager thankfulness and praise. Music is drawn into this thankfulness and praise, enlarging and elevating the adoration of our gracious giver God.

Saying back to him what he has said to us, we repeat what is most true and sure. Most true and sure is his name, which he put upon us with the water of our Baptism. We are his. This we acknowledge at the beginning of the Divine Service. Where his name is, there is he. Before him we acknowledge that we are sinners, and we plead for forgiveness. His forgiveness is given us, and we, freed and forgiven, acclaim him as our great and gracious God as we apply to ourselves the words he has used to make himself known to us.

The rhythm of our worship is from him to us, and then from us back to him. He gives his gifts, and together we receive and extol them. We build one another up as we speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Our Lord gives us this body to eat and his blood to drink. Finally his blessing moves us out into our calling, where his gifts have their fruition. How best to do this we may learn from his Word and from the way his Word has prompted his worship through the centuries. We are heirs of an astonishingly rich tradition. Each generation receives from those who went before and, in making that tradition of the Divine Service its own, adds what best may serve in its own day--the living heritage and something new.