This past Sunday I went to church at another parish. Not one to go to strange places of worship, I went since this was a celebration of the grandmother of the woman in my life. Keeping in line with the 8th Commandment, I shall not say where this parish is located, or whom the pastor is that serves there.
What I will say is that the parish is in the country and the pastor there was an Alternate Route graduate of seminary. He was a Lutheran school teacher for several years before going to the seminary.
The service, how to put it nicely, was tolerable? Actually, it was quite grating on my nerves. This pastor had to announce everything, as if I could not read and follow the order of service myself. Of course, I also had to be told that the Gospel reading was going to be the sermon text, which then was re-read at the beginning of the sermon. Wow! Thanks for the heads up there! I would have been lost not knowing what you were going to preach on! The pastor seemed uncomfortable up there. The way he acted, I figured he must have graduated from seminary only two, maybe three years ago.
The sermon was an absolute disaster. I can't say that if was all Law, or if it was all Gospel. I do know it was not a sermon. It was more along the lines of having a grade school teacher lecturing to the students below their grade level. This guy felt it was necessary to explain to us what a parable was! Really? I guess the 90-year-old woman sitting in front of me had never known what a parable was until you came along! The "sermon" was just insulting. It was nothing more than a poorly taught Sunday School lesson. As much as I despise them, I've heard children's sermons that had more substance and Law and Gospel than this train wreck.
Yes, it was that bad.
I was sitting there, reading Luther's Small Catechism in my hymnal. (Thank you to the Commission on Worship for including that!) Trying to keep my mouth shut and trying to keep my sanity. Just thinking to myself about how this sermon reminded me of being in Homiletics I in my seminary days. I also remember that a majority of my classmates got better with their preaching over the years of study at the seminary. I just sat there and thought to myself, "He MUST have graduated from St. Louis! A Ft. Wayne grad would NEVER be this bad at preaching!"
After the service was done, we retired to the church basement where we had some time to kill (it's a dual parish, the one we were at was the early service). A few of us visitors (a.k.a. family) spoke of what had just occurred upstairs. I wasn't the only visitor that day who felt the same way. There was agreement that we would have been better off going to our own parishes for Mass then coming for the potluck at noon.
Noon rolled around and it was time to eat. As the afternoon wore on, the pastor made the rounds welcoming the family and the visitors who came. He stopped by our table. In the course of conversation with him, we found out that he had been a Lutheran school teacher for 14 years; was an Alternate Route student at seminary; graduated from seminary in 2002; that this was where he served as vicar and then became the pastor; and he was a graduate of Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, and his favorite professor was Dr. Fickenscher, who has a doctorate in Homiletics!
What do you say after that? "Maybe you should ask the seminary for a refund for the Homiletics courses?", or "Did you actually take any classes with Dr. Fickenscher?", or "Was Dr. Fickenscher in a coma the day you preached in class?" I was shocked. One of my other thoughts was to immediately take up a donation to buy this pastor a subscription to Concordia Pulpit Resources. Granted, those aren't the best sermons, but at least they have more substance than what he just preached.
I just couldn't believe it.
What are they teaching there?
They are not teaching how to preach and not how to conduct a proper Mass.
Ah, the days of Prof. Reuning teaching students as to the how of conducting the Mass are long gone. All replaced by esoteric thoughts and teachings on worship.
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