Can a Calvinist Survive in a Lutheran Church?

Hey guys, it's Keith. Earlier this week, I dropped a new video called The Denominational 12

Days of Christmas. In that video, I said Lutherans have two sacraments. Well, the next day

I got some messages from my Lutheran viewers, many of which were saying that some Lutherans recognize three sacraments, the third being the sacrament of absolution.

And it just goes to show that I don't know everything about denominations. And today we're going to be talking a little bit more about Lutheranism.

I have my friend, Andrew Loudon, who is actually a Calvinist, but he's a member of a

Lutheran church. And we're going to ask the question, can a Calvinist survive a Lutheran church? You'll find out today on Conversations with a

Calvinist, which begins right now. Welcome back to Conversations with a

Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. And I have a very special guest with me tonight.

His name is Andrew Luden, and he is a person that I have met through the online community.

And Andrew is a Calvinist who is currently a member of a

Lutheran church. And so when I asked the question, can a Calvinist survive in a Lutheran church, he's still alive.

So obviously he can survive, but we're going to talk about some of the hurdles that he faces as a

Calvinist worshiping and being a member of a Lutheran church. So Andrew, thank you for being with me tonight.

Well, absolutely, Keith. And first of all, my surname is pronounced Loudon, which if you were Scottish, you would know.

So you bet. So Loudon's of the Campbell clan of Scotland. Well, I appreciate that correction.

I should have asked you before the show. That was my mistake, but I'll keep that in mind. And what's funny now is

I have to correct myself as I read it, because I see your name come up a lot on our Twitter as we have our interactions and banters back and forth.

So now I'll have to say this is Andrew Loudon and correct myself. And you and I both have had a few conversations, and I want to sort of set the stage for my audience because they obviously don't know the conversations that you and I have had prior to today.

But way back in the summer, and I know this because you and I talked when I was actually on my summer vacation with my family, you and I were talking via Twitter.

I was planning to do a bow tie dialogue with a group of Lutherans, but I hadn't done it at that point.

Hans Feeney was the one who was helping me put the group together. And I mentioned to you or you mentioned to me about the fact that you were a

Calvinist in a Lutheran church. And I said, boy, I'd like to talk to you, but I want to wait until after I do the

Lutheran bow tie dialogue because I didn't want to go into that conversation sort of predisposed to anything.

I wanted to be able to converse with my Lutheran brethren, hear their thoughts, ask the questions

I had, and then come back to you and say, okay, now that I've spoken to all of those men and we did have a good group, now

I have some more questions and some things that I think you might be able to help clarify for me.

And before we do that though, I do want to sort of just more introduce my audience to you.

Can you tell everyone just again, your background, how you came to know the

Lord and ultimately the history that led you to be where you are right now?

So you have the floor. Absolutely, Keith. Well, first of all, I just want you to know I'm a huge fan and so are my father and brother who are both

Presbyterian pastors. And I'm a - So you have superior theology in your family.

That's great. Very much so. We grew up with superior theology around the dinner table, you know, and I'm a

PPK, a Presbyterian preacher's kid, which is a superior type of preacher's kid, I might add.

Wow, nice. Growing up in Western Pennsylvania where Presbyterians are dense, that's a joke.

And if you're not a Roman Catholic, which most people are in Western Pennsylvania where I'm from, you're probably a

Presbyterian. And when I was 15 years old, my father announced that we were moving a thousand miles west to Lincoln, Nebraska.

And that was 36 years ago and I stayed. When you're a preacher's kid, you get dropped off.

My father served a congregation here in Lincoln, Nebraska, the state capital of the Cornhusker State for 12 years.

And then 25 years ago, moved down to Florida and is in Lakeland, Florida.

Okay, so he's not, well, a little bit of a distance from me, but not too far, yeah. So growing up in a very religious household and I would say that, well, of course,

I was predestined to know the Lord, but to your question, I grew up going to camps every summer.

I remember some very spiritual experiences at Seneca Hills Bible Camp in Western Pennsylvania.

And so it's always been part of my life. I loved growing up as a preacher's kid. We were at church all the time and I still love being at church every

Sunday. Amen, and the church that you're at now, are you willing to tell us what church that is?

I know you're not representing them as a leader or anything, but you're in a pretty large Lutheran church now, correct?

Yes, my wife and I are members of Christ Lincoln, which is a LCMS church in Lincoln, Nebraska.

And it would be a combination of two of your characters, the

Lutheran and Big Eva, because like several mega

LCMS churches, they have adopted a seeker -friendly position.

And of our seven services on Sunday morning at two campuses, four are contemporary.

We have six pastors, average 2 ,200 to 2 ,400 a Sunday. And so it's a big operation.

And my wife and I have recently joined there. So as far as my denominational background, our family hails from the old

United Presbyterian Church of North America, which was a conservative Scottish denomination in the

Northern church that joined the mainline church in 1958. And after 1958, you could tell the more conservatives in the mainline usually came from the

Uniteds, the United Presbyterians. And so I grew up in the PCUSA.

My father and brother are both PCUSA pastors. My dad went to Gordon Conwell Seminary and at the same time as Tim Keller and has been a leader in the evangelical movement in the

PCUSA nationwide. About four years ago, my wife and I decided that we needed to make a change.

And there are three PCA churches in Lincoln, but I married into the

Lutheran world. My wife grew up a devout Missouri Synod Lutheran. And when we got married 27 years ago, she made a compromise and joined the

Presbyterian Church. So when we decided we needed to make a change, she said, all right, buddy, it's time to check out our church.

And we did and we love it. It's a wonderful congregation that's thriving and gospel centered.

And we're both very involved in Bible studies and on the greeter team and couldn't be happier there.

I have, you know, just that story raises several questions. And for my audience's sake,

I know what LCMS means, Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, but can you just in layman's terms, what do you mean and how does that differ from other

Lutheran churches? Because I know that the men that I interviewed were

Missouri Synod, except for Tapani, he's from Europe. So he wasn't part of the Missouri Synod, but can you explain how that works or do you even know?

Are you familiar? I mean, I assume, you know, but you may not. Go ahead. I do, yeah.

So just like there's lots of brands of Presbyterianism and reform denomination, there are lots of different Lutherans, but there are two large denominations in the

United States. One is the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, headquartered in St.

Louis. And the other is the ELCA. The equivalent in the Presbyterian world, and it's pretty close is the

ELCA would be like the PCUSA, the mainline left -leaning denomination and the

LCMS, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod is the conservative denomination, very similar to the

PCA. That makes perfect sense. And that's basically the way

I've heard it because even in my last video, I don't know if you saw the one I did for Thanksgiving when he said,

I'm not that kind of Lutheran. That's the one. So your church, even though it's

Big Eva and that's your designation, you're the Big Eva, which honestly, I never pictured a

Lutheran Big Eva. I always picture non -denominational mega church, you know, multi -church, multiplex church and mini mall.

I never imagined a Lutheran church as that. So that's cool now. Absolutely, there are about 40 mega

LCMS churches. There's an even bigger one up the road in Omaha, Nebraska. And you know, Keith, if you love

Jesus, you love fog machines and we've got them. We've got rock bands and on Easter, a confetti cannon that comes out at the end.

And it's awesome. And I just laugh every time I see your Big Eva because that's our church, except it is very much a

Lutheran congregation. That is so funny. You know, I had somebody, and this is totally off the subject, but I have to say it, because recently

I was teaching a class and somebody brought up fog machines. And I finally realized,

I had somebody explain it to me what fog machines are for. It's not to make fog, but it's to make the lights show up.

Yeah. That it causes, because laser lights can't be seen if there's nothing for them to bounce off of.

So the fog creates something for the lights to reflect. And I never realized that. And I was like, okay, so they're not really trying to make it foggy.

They're trying to make it colorful. And I think that's interesting from a stage perspective.

But anyway, that's totally off the subject. It's fascinating. You know, if you had told me 10 years ago that I, at 51, would love going to contemporary worship,

I would have said you were nuts, but it's my midlife crisis. I became a Lutheran and I love contemporary worship.

And you know, it's very interesting. Our church is very strategic in how they design the contemporary services.

And I've had it explained to me by our pastors that they are targeting a 32 -year -old married college -educated man.

They figure that if the worship style, which is rock and roll, appeals to a 32 -year -old married man, he'll bring his wife and family to church and it will appeal down to a 22 -year -old and up to a 42 -year -old.

They're very strategic in thinking about it. I'm old as a 51 -year -old in those services.

And I gotta tell you, Keith, they're packed. They're packed and there's kids everywhere. So what they're doing is working. And they preach the gospel every

Sunday. And we say the apostles' creed, the Lord's prayer, and there's communion every other

Sunday. Now, down the hall in the traditional service, there's communion every Sunday. That's interesting.

So, okay, so, and again, I can pick your brain all night just on logistics, because our church does communion every week, but I know a lot of churches don't.

So what you're saying is the contemporary service doesn't, but the traditional service does. Is that what

I heard? That's correct, yep. And I think it's all with an eye towards seeker -friendly and very much the language that's used is aimed at people who might be new to Christianity.

Sure, sure. Now, is the traditional service, you said there's about 2 ,500 people. What's the divide there?

It's about 60, 40. And it's not strictly young people at contemporary and older folks at traditional.

We've got a lot of younger families who prefer the traditional, most of whom grew up in rural communities in Nebraska and moved to Lincoln to go to the

University of Nebraska. Go Big Red. And we have lots of folks in their 70s and 80s that are digging the rock and roll.

So it's intergenerational, but by and large, younger people at the contemporary services. So, and again,

I know this isn't what we really, we were talking about tonight, but I'm so interested. I hope my audience will appreciate these questions because I, like I said, this is fun for me to hear about other churches.

People think I'm, I think sometimes people think I'm being mean to denominations. I love learning about other churches and I love the jokes.

It's always with tongue in cheek. It's always with a wink and even with my Methodists, you know, even though somebody said, somebody told me the other day, the

Methodist church probably has a picture of me with a dartboard. And I just said that would make me so happy.

Well, the United's might not the global. So I, you know, well, you should have a global Methodist on sometime.

I plan on it. I don't want to give too much away, but at some point we're going to do a bizarro world episode where the

Presbyterians, PCUSA and the, and by the way, you said your dad and your brother are PCUSA, but they're conservatives, right?

They sure are. Yeah. And so the numbers of conservatives in the PCUSA are dwindling. You know, when

I was growing up, it was a third, a third, a third, a third evangelicals, a third moderates and a third progressives.

And there was, that was a lot of fun. I'm a lawyer by day and I enjoy debating. I'm active in politics and I enjoy debating in the public square and growing up in a denomination with diversity of views was fun.

But one of the main reasons I had to leave the PCUSA were the political positions that were taken.

I'm a very conservative Republican. I'm active in the Federalist Society, which is a conservative lawyers organization.

And every political position that the PCUSA took was 180 degrees opposite of mine.

So it just didn't work for me to stay. And the LCMS, I mean, we're pro -life, pro -death penalty, doesn't get much better than that.

Yeah, that's right. Keep alive the ones who deserve to be alive and don't the others.

There you go. Yeah, yeah. People say when people, I'm pro, you still there?

Okay, I got a little flash. That's okay. I've had a little bit of internet issue today.

So I'm hoping, I hope if I click out, forgive me, I'll have to go back in. Okay, no problem.

But yeah, so people hear me say I'm pro -death penalty and I say that's pro -life. Pro -death penalty is pro -life because we believe that life is so sacred that if someone harms life or takes life, then they deserve to forfeit their life,

Genesis 9, 6 as a result. So it's a pro -life position to be pro -death penalty, which sounds counterintuitive, but it's actually not.

No, I agree 100%, that's right. So you said you're an attorney. What type of law do you practice?

I'm an estate planning lawyer. I do all wills, trusts and estates. So I visit with people during their lifetime about how to transfer wealth at death.

And it's a real opportunity for me to talk to people about charitable giving and I'm very active in the charitable giving space with congregations.

Nice, well, praise the Lord for that. Well, you as a, growing up as a

Presbyterian and now being married into the Lutheran church, I like the story the way you told it.

You have a unique visual for the doctrinal distinctions of Calvinism versus Lutheranism.

And I know what they are on paper, but sometimes what's on paper, it doesn't translate as much to the real life practice.

So what has been your experience as the doctrinal disagreements? What are the things that you see are the main divisions between Calvinism and Lutheranism and things that you've had to address?

Well, there's mainly two and it became real obvious and I knew this going in, but when we went through the new member class at the congregation, it was basically

Luther's shorter catechism. And the two things that jumped out were, of course, views on predestination and views on the

Lord's supper. And the pastor who led our new member course was very thoughtful and we had great conversations about it, agreed to disagree.

You know, another thing that is similar to our congregation and Big Eva is you might be surprised to learn that membership is not stressed.

There are lots of people and that's intentional on their part as a seeker friendly congregation.

There are lots of people who attend Christ Lincoln. And by the way, if you notice Lutheran is not even in the name, they took that name out that was very controversial with older members.

About half of the older members are still very upset that it's no longer Christ Lutheran. It's an older congregation, but they rebranded to be cool about 10 years ago and were

Christ Lincoln, a Lutheran ministry. But, you know, lots and lots of people go to our church who aren't members, but I wanted to, you know, absolutely be a member.

And so it was obvious right away that we were gonna agree to disagree on the definition of sovereign grace and my views on the reform, the

Presbyterian side of the reform views on the Lord's supper, which are different than yours. Yeah, and I was gonna bring that up later.

I think your position on the Lord's table, being a Presbyterian would probably be closer, maybe even close enough that there wouldn't be that big of a distinction where you wouldn't be where I was, you know, with the

Lutheran brothers basically said I wouldn't be welcome at the table. And I get it, I wouldn't, I'm not gonna come if I'm not, you know, if that's the way they understand it.

So we, I'm not upset about that, but I, that was one of the questions and we're gonna get to that in a minute, how you navigate that.

But I do wanna ask you about the predestination thing. Because I tend to find myself maybe more

Lutheran than Calvinistic on this issue. So if you would, for the audience, explain what you believe the difference is between the

Calvinist view of predestination and the Lutheran view. Sure, so, and I'm in a men's

Bible study, we meet tomorrow morning, it's all professional men, about half of us are attorneys through this congregation.

And we love to debate and we were in Romans a couple months ago and really got into this. And it came out that there were several guys who had grown up Lutheran who really felt like they were more on my side, which would be the irresistible grace, the

Holy Spirit irresistibly bringing you to salvation that you were predestined to be saved prior to your birth.

And that it's, you know, it's written in the

Lamb's book prior to you being alive and or born. And then the

Lutheran view, which is at least they think is, you know, free will.

Although the more we got into it, the more we realized that we thought it was pretty much the same thing.

And that's the conclusion that a lot of us, not the pastor who was leading the study,

I think we were making them nervous because everybody was saying, you know, it's almost the same thing.

You know, on the one hand, sovereignty on the other grace, but sovereign grace brought together.

I think it's pretty darn close. Okay. Yeah, as I was going through, as they were explaining it, the brothers on the bow tie show,

I've heard, and I understand the difference when people say single predestination versus double predestination.

And single predestination is God chooses for people to be saved, but doesn't choose for people to be lost.

And double predestination is that there's an active choosing of both who is saved and who is lost.

And that seemed to be what their distinction was. And I said, well, it depends on whether we're talking equal ultimacy,

God doing the same action of choosing one and choosing the other, choosing to grace those who are saved and reprobate those who are lost.

You know, that's an equal work. And I don't think that's true. That's where I would say as a Calvinist, I would say it's not equal.

God's grace is extended to the elect. God's grace is not extended to the non -elect. His saving grace, he has common grace, but his saving grace is not extended to non -elect.

So I would agree it's not the same, but I would still say there's a choice. God is making a choice to extend and to withhold.

And so that's where I guess they, I don't know if somebody would say that's double predestination or not.

I know how I see it. And I think what I just said is probably commensurate with where you are.

Absolutely, yeah, for sure. So also I have to tell you predestination sneaks into my pastor's sermons all the time and they know it when

I'm coming up to him after, it's like, I heard it. Like, no, you didn't. I did, I heard it, so yeah.

I got you. Well, and they know you're an attorney as well.

So you're, you know, the, oh, the lawyer's coming to get me. He's got, he got me caught in my words. Yeah, well, let's talk then about the table because one of the questions

I had here is, is your current pastor aware of your Calvinistic convictions and does that cause any issues regarding the communion table?

But being as you are Presbyterian and you hold to, I'm assuming a spiritual presence view, is that?

For sure. Okay, so how do they have an issue between those two?

Do they say you're still not where you should be because they're holding to a physical presence or how has that worked out for you?

It's worked out just fine. And there's two reasons for that. First of all, you're right. The Presbyterian, the

Calvinist view is so close to Lutheran consubstantiation and spiritual presence,

Calvin's view. They're so close that I don't think it gives the pastors any heartburn. The other reason is the bigger reason is that within the

Missouri Synod world, there are two different types of communion service. At a very traditional

LCMS church, probably most of the guys you interviewed in the Bowtie series, it is closed communion.

At many churches, especially the mega big Eva LCMS churches, it's close communion, meaning that what they do is every other week on the screen, there are six principles.

And the pastor says, if you agree with these, you're welcome to take communion with us. So it's not open, but it's close.

And so maybe my view is close enough. And one of those six says that this is the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

And like my dad and I were talking about this beforehand and he said,

I should mention that it depends, as Bill Clinton would say, on what the definition of is, is.

But he knew you'd love that. But so, and I think it's close enough.

Is your dad, no, your dad's a pastor. Yeah, my dad's a pastor, a big fan of yours. So he said,

Keith would love that. So as long as it's not sacrilegious, okay. So, but I think it's pun intended close enough because we have close communion.

And I think it's, I know it's close enough. And so it's not the strict Lutheran view, but it hasn't been a problem.

Well, I would really like to ask for a favor. And I know this is kind of weird because we're thousands of people who are gonna hear this, hopefully.

But could you send me a picture of those six or type them out for me or whatever? Cause I'd like to see what, yeah,

I was gonna say, I'd love to see that screen. We do something similar at our church, but we don't have it on the screen.

We have it in our bulletin where it says what we ask for people to understand if they're gonna take communion with us.

Mainly though, ours is that they're not under discipline at another church.

They're not currently living in habitual, continual, unrepentant sin or under the discipline of another body.

That way, if they're coming to fellowship with us, they're not doing so in running away from another church to come to us.

And that's sort of the, I'd have to read it out exactly. But that's the concern is we have a table that's open and we say it's fenced, but it's fenced verbally.

We don't fence it physically. Go ahead. I will snap a picture of, we have communion this coming

Sunday. So I'll snap a picture of it and send it to you. Great, yeah, that would be helpful. I'm, like I said, just curious to see how they word everything.

And like you said, if somebody said, is this the body of Christ? I would say my understanding of is, is represents.

That's exactly the typical Zwinglian view. And I'm an unashamed

Zwinglian, even though a lot of people say I should be ashamed of that. That's one of the areas where I think, oh,

Ulrich got it, actually got it correct. But I am not as allergic to the

Calvinist perspective because if we want to say Christ is spiritually present,

I think there's a place where I could say that's true. I think there's a way in which

I could say that's true. My dad mentioned that, you know, there was a meeting between Zwingli and Luther where they tried to resolve this issue on the

Lord's Supper and Calvin was invited, but wasn't able to make it. And my dad believes that if Calvin had been at that meeting, he could have bridged the gap and brought them together.

I think that's very possible. And that's the Marburg Colloquy. I've heard this and I don't know that it's,

I don't know it's historic. There's a lot of things that are attributed to Luther that aren't true. Luther has so many quotes and things that are attributed to him that are just, people make it up and say, oh,

Martin Luther said that. But they're supposedly at that particular thing, he beat the table with his hand and said, hoc est corpus meum, hoc est.

And that was what ended the discussion because he was just saying, this is my body, this is my body in Latin, because he was so convinced in the physical presence of Christ in the table.

So yeah, it would have been nice to have Luther there, unfortunately, or have Calvin there. Unfortunately, I think was

Calvin what, probably in his teens at that point, he was younger. Well, maybe that's not true that he was invited.

Well, again, your dad may, it may have been later because Calvin, I know Calvin is younger than Luther, but he's not that much younger.

He's younger in the point, it could have been later in life. And again, he could be right. I'm just thinking, if I remember correctly, and again,

I could be wrong. I think when Luther nailed the theses, Calvin was 13 or so.

So that would have been so, but he wrote the Institutes in his 20s. Right, so I think it was later because it was towards the end of Zwingli's career.

Yeah, yeah, which ended on the battlefield. Interestingly enough, Zwingli is again, man after my own heart.

Died in his boots. Did I lose? Yeah, died in his boots, that's right, yeah. So when you joined the church and you told the pastor that you were coming from a

Presbyterian background, Presbyterian dad and brother, born and bred as a Presbyterian, did they, you know, did they give you the side eye?

Did they have any worries? Like you said, it's a big church, but they still have to be, they still hold some convictions.

So what was that meeting like? Oh, it went well. And I'm friends with all six of our pastors and they're great guys.

I knew going in that I'm not gonna be an elder. I'm not gonna be a leader in the church because they have strong convictions.

And my views on predestination and the Lord's Supper alone probably don't qualify me for being an elder.

And that's okay. I'm able to be active in other ways.

I was born to be a greeter, baby. I love greeting and ushering and welcoming new people in and helping connect our pastors in the community.

And so I'm gonna serve in other ways, but I know that I won't be an elder. And frankly,

I don't think they would ask, even if they did, I'd probably decline. I wouldn't feel right about it and I wouldn't wanna get them in trouble.

Sure, sure. And you know, it's so interesting that you say that because a few years ago, we had a

Presbyterian church that was a few miles from our church and it closed.

And it was only four or five older families that were kind of holding it together and it closed.

And so we inherited three of their families, beautiful, lovely folks. And one of the men was an elder there and I had talked to him about being an elder with us.

And he sort of said the same thing you said. He said, I have a different conviction on baptism.

He said, I can worship here, I can serve here, but I don't feel like I can serve as an elder. And I was thankful that he came to that conclusion.

And again, he's 45 years my senior, he's a 80 year old man.

He was smarter than me. Cause in my mind, I was like, well, he would probably be fine, but he had that wisdom and thank

God for that. Cool. So with that in mind, have you since, so it's only been four years.

So since you've been there, have any of your positions shifted?

It doesn't sound like it's not at all. I'm a Calvinist baby all the way.

I might even be a five point Calvinist, Keith. I'm pretty hardcore, so.

Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I have a shirt that says five point Calvinist. I'm not wearing it now, yeah.

But you feel like you can stay there long -term though?

I'm not even, yeah. We love it. And the other part is my wife is extremely happy being home in her childhood denomination.

And we have very close relationships with a couple's Bible study group and my men's

Bible study and the essentials are solid. And that's the thing about what we're talking about, in my opinion, is views on predestination and views on the

Lord's Supper to me are not essentials. What's essential is Jesus Christ, the

Apostles' Creed, Trinitarian Christianity. And so I enjoy talking about these theological differences, but it's a solid place and no,

I'm never leaving. I love it. Amen, amen. When we, you mentioned one thing, just as you're talking,

I'm thinking and I'm listening and I'm trying to think about the thousand questions that are going through my mind.

And I have relatively recently was looking at Luther's catechism in regard to the

Lord's Supper. It was something that a person in our church asked me a question about it. And so I was looking at it and in that catechism, and you may not know this right off and I don't wanna put you on the spot, but in regard to the participation in the

Lord's Supper for the forgiveness of sins, it reads almost specifically,

I think those words, the issue that it was a church member of mine that was asking me is they were saying, how is this different than Roman Catholicism?

And my answer was that Roman Catholicism teaches a transubstantiation, which is

Christ being represented on the altar as the sacrifice again. But how is that different for the

Lutheran view if they believe that this is an active work of forgiving sin or am

I misunderstanding what was written there? You are not. And when communion is served at the end, the pastor says that the church is involved in forgiving the sins and he makes the sign of the cross.

I mean, it's Catholic light in a lot of ways. I knew when we first started dating and we're first married that communion was a very spiritual thing for my wife, much more so than for me.

And that makes sense coming from these backgrounds. But for people who are born and bred

Lutherans, that is definitely, it's a corporate act of forgiveness of sins.

It's very deeply spiritual and important to them. And it's different than how

I grew up. I can just tell. I enjoy it. I appreciate it. I think it's close enough as we talked about before.

If I thought it was not close enough, I would abstain. They offer a blessing, but I think it's close enough.

And the Presbyterian view, and I respect what you said, the Zwingli view would not be close enough,

I do not believe. And I'll send you that list, but I think that's what you're asking.

I mean, it's pretty darn close to the transubstantiation. Yeah, and that's where this particular church member who was asking me about the book, he was saying, do they really believe that this is an act that causes their forgiveness?

And I said, well, they believe in justification by faith alone, though. They believe in that.

They see, and this is, again, my explanation was, they're seeing this as a means of grace.

They're seeing this as a means of God's continuing sanctification, continuing forgiveness in their life, but it's not the ultimate forgiveness which comes through justification by faith.

And I don't know if that can even be separated, but am I sounding weird as I say that?

Not at all, no, it's interesting. And there's a heavy emphasis, of course, on scripture alone and faith alone and not a works theology.

I mean, that's a constant theme in worship. So it's as Lutheran as you get, but yeah, it's an interesting dichotomy with the very

Protestant views in that regard. But then when it comes to the Lord's Supper, it feels a little Catholic.

Well, that's a good thought. And because one of the questions I'm leading to, and we're gonna probably begin to close as we start thinking through this question, and that's the question of, if you were going to counsel someone, let's say there was a person who was moving to a small town or lived in a small town, and there was only one solid church, and that solid church happened to be a

Lutheran church, Missouri Synod, conservative Lutheran church. And that person was

Calvinistic in their thinking, what advice would you give to them?

What would you tell them to be ready for and kind of like help them navigate that? And again,

I may be imagining something that never happened outside of you, but you're that person.

And so I'm saying, okay, let's think of that person and what would you tell them to be ready for? Focus on the essentials, don't sweat the small stuff.

Not that what we're talking about is unimportant because it's very important, but focus on what's important, and that's

Christ and biblical preaching and keeping that at the center.

So it's okay if you're not an elder, serve in other ways.

Yeah, yeah. And you, like you said, that's not your desire is to do that.

So you feel like you can serve in the way that you're serving and be completely content. Yeah, and I'm getting involved in the music ministry and all kinds of other ways that I can serve.

So you bet. So again, Andrew, I'm very grateful that you've come on the show today.

You've shared your life with us. You've shared this very interesting situation, which is somewhat unique, but probably not altogether uncommon that people would find themselves in need of going to a church that isn't exactly like the church that they might have all of the strong convictions on.

And I've been asked the question a hundred times, well, if you went to a city that only had two churches or one church and it wasn't exactly like you, would you still worship there?

And I said, well, as long as the essentials are there, I would, as long as they're still preaching the gospel, as long as they love the Lord, as long as the things that are necessary for those things.

I mean, if I had to cross every T and dot every I of every single thing, it would be very hard to find that perfect thing, but I'm thankful that there are churches out there that I may disagree with on secondary issues, but are still preaching the gospel.

So the question, can a Lutheran survive in a, or can a Calvinist survive in a Lutheran church? Absolutely.

Absolutely. Especially if it's one like the one you found. I think the one you have found is just right for you.

And I say, I secretly say debts instead of trespasses, but don't tell my pastor. Well, that's funny.

And I bet you there's a thousand different fun things like that, that are just, you know, little nuances.

Well, we're getting close to Christmas. And as we sign off, I have to ask you, because I'm doing a debate this weekend.

Okay. Andrew Loudon, is Die Hard a Christmas movie? No. See, I thought we were friends.

I have to go now. I'm actually debating Eric Yeager this

Saturday or this Friday on that. And I'm taking the positive side. I, if you'll see it, if you look on Twitter tonight, on top of my

Christmas tree is a stuffed John McClane, because I believe that it is a

Christmas movie. But hey, man, I want to say Merry Christmas to you, to your dad, to your brother, to your wife, your whole family.

And thank you for being a part of Conversations with the Calvinists. Thank you for everything that you're doing. Denominations are important, and you're the guy who's talking about them.

So thank you for that. Oh, praise the Lord. And thank you, brother. And again, thank you all for being a part of Conversations with the

Calvinists. And I want to remind you that we have a podcast that comes out every week. You can find us at calvinispodcast .com.

Also our funny videos, church soup, all the different things that we do can be found there as well. You can send questions into calvinispodcast at gmail .com,

and you can follow me on Twitter at YourCalvinist. So thank you for listening to Conversations with the