The Gottesdienst Crowd

Two pastors thinking out loud about the upcoming Gospel reading. This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity, Luke 19:41–48.

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Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

Regular Guest: Fr. Dave Petersen

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Rev. Chris Durham, chaplain at Wittenberg Chapel serving LCMS students at the University of North Dakota, joins the show to discuss Augustine on the theme of pilgrimage — the Christian life as movement from a beginning through this present age toward final rest in God.

The conversation starts in Scripture before turning to Augustine: Hebrews 4 and 11 on the promised Sabbath rest and the patriarchs who died as strangers and exiles seeking a better country, and 1 Peter's language of Christians as "elect exiles" on the way. These texts set a pattern — a real beginning, a center in Christ, and an end in the eternal city — against which Durham contrasts Neoplatonism, Augustine's own intellectual background before his conversion. For Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, the soul's return to "the One" is not a real destination but a perpetual, unending cycle with no true rest — a view Durham compares to modern nihilism and multiverse thinking, where there's motion but no goal.

Durham then traces Augustine's own writings across time: the early Soliloquies, where the newly baptized Augustine already breaks from Neoplatonism and Manichaeism by affirming creation from nothing as good; and the Confessions, written years later from his position as bishop, where Augustine reads his own past through Scripture and famously confesses, "our heart is restless until it rests in you." Durham walks through Augustine's account of his conversion in the garden in Milan — the child's voice repeating "pick up and read," the reading of Romans 13, and the peace that followed — as the turning point where restlessness gives way to rest in Christ.

The two also touch on Augustine's argument in City of God Book 12 against the eternity of the world, and draw out a running application: every worldly promise of peace or comfort — ancient or modern — ultimately fails to deliver what only Christ can give, a clean conscience through the forgiveness of sins and the sure hope of the rest to come.

Topics covered:

Two pastors thinking out loud about the upcoming Gospel reading. This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 7:15–23.

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Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

Regular Guest: Fr. Dave Petersen

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Become a Patron!

You can subscribe to the Journal here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/subscribe/

You can read the Gottesblog here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/

You can support Gottesdienst here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/make-a-donation/

As always, we, at The Gottesdienst Crowd, would be honored if you would Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support. 

Pastor Ben Hayter of Imanuel Lutheran Church in Waterloo, IL, joins the show to work through the CTCR's 2025 document, Unity in Doctrine, Uniformity and Variety in Practice. The document came from a 2019 synodical resolution asking the CTCR to define what Article III.7 of the LCMS Constitution actually means by "unity in doctrine and uniformity and variety in practice." The CTCR responds with six historical case studies — the Jerusalem Council, the Quartodeciman controversy, Luther's Invocavit Sermons, the adiaphoristic controversy behind Formula of Concord Article X, and two episodes from LCMS history: the Synod's founding and the debate over lay electors and women's suffrage.

Hayter raises three unresolved questions the document leaves on the table. First: the difference between how to use adiaphora and whether something actually is adiaphora in the first place — a hermeneutical question of whether church practice requires an explicit command or whether necessary inference is sufficient warrant. Second: definitional looseness around key terms like "responsible," "required," "insist," and "retain" — words that carry very different weight depending on who's doing the requiring, God by His Word or the Synod by human right. Third: even once something is settled as adiaphora, the document doesn't resolve which practices are wise and which are foolish to adopt — that work is left to pastors and congregations, argued from Scripture rather than mere preference.

The conversation lands on a practical charge: use this document as a starting point for real conversation among brother pastors — in circuit Winkels, district boards, and eventually Synod conventions — grounded in reasons drawn from Scripture and the Confessions, not personal whim.

Topics covered:

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Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

Guest: Fr. Ben Hayter

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Become a Patron!

You can subscribe to the Journal here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/subscribe/

You can read the Gottesblog here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/

You can support Gottesdienst here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/make-a-donation/

As always, we, at The Gottesdienst Crowd, would be honored if you would Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support. 

Two pastors thinking out loud about the upcoming Gospel reading. This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 7:15–23.

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Host: Fr. David Buchs

Regular Guest: Fr. Dave Petersen

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Become a Patron!

You can subscribe to the Journal here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/subscribe/

You can read the Gottesblog here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/

You can support Gottesdienst here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/make-a-donation/

As always, we, at The Gottesdienst Crowd, would be honored if you would Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support. 

Is beauty just personal preference, or is it real? Rev. Kyle Verage, pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Pleasant Prairie, WI, joins the podcast to trace how Scripture answers a question philosophy never could.

Verage starts with the common phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and shows where it breaks down — some things are simply more beautiful than others, whether or not we can always articulate why. He walks through the history of aesthetics from Socrates' pragmatism through Aristotle's search for objective standards to Kant's retreat into pure subjectivity, showing how each falls short apart from revelation.

The heart of the conversation is word study: Verage searched the Old and New Testaments for every occurrence of "beauty," "beautiful," and "handsome," and found the data points overwhelmingly to the Hebrew term yafeh (used of people) and pa'ar/tif'arah (used of constructed things — garments, crowns, the temple). From there he traces the Greek pairing kalos kai agathos — the beautiful and the good — through figures like David and Abigail, into Zechariah's messianic prophecy, and finally to Christ himself as the true bridegroom who makes His bride beautiful.

The conversation closes on the Divine Service: where objective beauty — art, music, architecture, rhetoric — is wedded to God's Word, and where Christ clothes His people in beauty not by their achievement, but by His declaration over them.

Topics covered:

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Host: Fr. Paul Schulz

Guest: Fr. Kyle Verage

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You can subscribe to the Journal here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/subscribe/

You can read the Gottesblog here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/

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As always, we, at The Gottesdienst Crowd, would be honored if you would Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support. 

Two pastors thinking out loud about the upcoming Gospel reading. This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, Mark 8:1–9.

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Host: Fr. David Buchs

Regular Guest: Fr. Dave Petersen

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Become a Patron!

You can subscribe to the Journal here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/subscribe/

You can read the Gottesblog here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/

You can support Gottesdienst here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/make-a-donation/

As always, we, at The Gottesdienst Crowd, would be honored if you would Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support. 

Rev. John Koopman, Associate Pastor at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Mankato, MN, joins the show to walk through C.F.W. Walther's essay "The Duties of an Evangelical Lutheran Synod," delivered at the first Iowa District convention. The essay was written against the backdrop of the split between Missouri and Iowa Synod Lutheranism — Iowa Synod pastors trained under Wilhelm Löhe who held that the confessions should be read "historically" rather than confessed without reservation, a trajectory that ended in the ELCA. Walther, by contrast, insisted that confessional subscription must be unconditional and total, since every part of Scripture — not just the articles touching salvation — serves the salvation of souls.

Koopman and Paul Schultz work through Walther's six theses on what a synod is for:

Throughout, Koopman and Schultz draw direct lines to present controversies in the LCMS: pastoral formation and seminary training, the role of circuit visitors, tone policing of faithful but blunt preaching, and the Synod's entanglement with money and institutional concerns.

Topics covered:

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Host: Fr. Paul Schulz

Guest: Fr. John Koopman

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Become a Patron!

You can subscribe to the Journal here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/subscribe/

You can read the Gottesblog here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/

You can support Gottesdienst here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/make-a-donation/

As always, we, at The Gottesdienst Crowd, would be honored if you would Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support. 

Two pastors thinking out loud about the upcoming Gospel reading. This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 5:17–26.

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Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

Regular Guest: Fr. Dave Petersen

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Become a Patron!

You can subscribe to the Journal here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/subscribe/

You can read the Gottesblog here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/

You can support Gottesdienst here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/make-a-donation/

As always, we, at The Gottesdienst Crowd, would be honored if you would Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support. 

Rev. Jason Braaten sits down with attorney and longtime LCMS delegate Mark Stern to walk through the first edition of Today's Business ahead of the upcoming Synod Convention. Stern explains how overtures become resolutions, how floor committees work, and what delegates and laypeople can do right now to weigh in. He highlights key resolutions on worship (including the proposed Commission on Worship), public reading of Scripture, the Specific Ministry Pastor program, partner church concerns (SELC and AALC), assisted suicide, and more. A practical, informed guide for anyone wanting to understand what's at stake in Phoenix.

Links:

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Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

Guest: Mr. Mark Stern

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Become a Patron!

You can subscribe to the Journal here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/subscribe/

You can read the Gottesblog here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/

You can support Gottesdienst here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/make-a-donation/

As always, we, at The Gottesdienst Crowd, would be honored if you would Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support.