July 26, 2023 Show with Rev. Evan McClanahan on “The Problem with Lutheranism: A Lutheran Pastor’s Critiques of Modern Lutheranism” (Part 1)

Introduction to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and Prayer for Andrew

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father, James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer, George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, and sports legend, Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27, verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now here's your host, Chris Arnson.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 26th day of July, 2023.

Before I introduce my guest today in our topic, I just want to remind our listeners, if you have been on my Facebook page, you will have seen my post with an urgent request for prayer for one of my older brothers, Andrew.

He is 75, currently living in a nursing home in my local area of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He was taken from the nursing home Sunday night to a local hospital, Carlisle Hospital, with pneumonia and a urinary tract infection and a bedsore.

And he seemed to be progressing in his health the last couple of days when I was visiting him. Today, he was barely conscious, violently shivering when he regained consciousness, just shouting out that he was freezing.

So I had the nurses bring him more blankets. But please, I'm urging you all, please pray for my brother, Andrew, that the Lord would physically save him, and even more importantly, give clear evidence that he has saved his soul.

It is something that is not completely clear in my mind from the evidence my brother provides. So I would appreciate a more demonstrable and credible profession of repentance and faith come from my brother's lips and behavior before he leaves this planet.

And I just love all of you who have been already responding to me, assuring me that you are praying. Well, today, we have a guest on my program who is a friend of my longtime, very dear friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, who I've known and enjoyed a friendship with since 1995.

And my guest today is Reverend Evan McClanahan. He is host of the Sin Boldly Radio Show and Podcast through KPFT 90 .1 FM in Texas. And he is a moderator and occasional participant in one of the only continuously operating debate series in the country, the First Word Debate Series at First Lutheran.

And he's a writer for The Everyman and the Federalist and pastor of the First Lutheran Church of Houston, Texas. Today, we are going to be addressing the problem with Lutheranism, a Lutheran pastor's critiques of modern Lutheranism.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Orange Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Evan McClanahan.

Well, thanks very much for having me. It's an honor to be here, having watched a lot of Dr. White's debates through the years and seeing you introduce several of those debates. It's fun to be able to talk to you, and I'm honored that I could be here today.

I will say, I don't do the radio show with KPFT anymore that ended very recently. Long story there, but I still do a podcast called Theology on Air with an outreach to young adults here in Houston called Theology on Tap.

So if you're listening in Houston and you want to maybe drink a craft beer and have a interesting theological conversation, find out about Houston Theology on Tap, and we put out a podcast to cover even more topics.

But great to be here.

In fact, you have a fan of that program who responded to my Facebook post of our interview that he loves your show and has benefited from that greatly.

Oh, well, that must be the guy I gave the 10 bucks to. So I appreciate that.

First Lutheran Church, the NALC, and the Church's Denominational Fault Lines

Well, let's hear more about First Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas. I understand it is a congregation in the North American Lutheran Church, and if you could also describe that denomination and compare it and contrast it with some of the more well-known Lutheran denominations like the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Synod, and some of the more well-known bodies.

Yeah, yeah, and long story short, we were the first Lutheran Church in Houston, and we were always an interesting mixture until really the 50s, the 1950s, of a kind of a Lutheran and Reformed. In fact, we were part of the old Evangelical and Reformed denomination for many years.

So we always kind of had a Calvinist streak in us. Really? Long story short. Yeah, the ENR became part of the UCC denomination. We left that over an issue with the Vietnam War, and then we became independent.

We came back into the Lutheran fold, really in about 2000 when we joined the ELCA, which maybe many of your listeners will know that's the very liberal sort of Lutheran denomination in America. It's what I grew up in before it was quite so liberal, and I went to seminary under the guise, I guess, of the ELCA.

But our congregation left the ELCA in 2011. We joined the North American Lutheran Church. And basically it's, I would say, as conservative as the other conservative Lutheran church bodies, maybe not quite so conservative, with the exception that we, as a church body, do ordain women.

I don't necessarily want to debate that today or defend it necessarily, but that's just kind of where we landed. You know, there are these kind of Lutheran church bodies out there. We basically disagree over whether or not you should have bishops, obviously the progressive liberal issues of the day, whether you should be congregationalists, whether you ordain women.

So those are kind of the fault lines within American Lutheranism. So it's a solid denomination. It lets me do ministry, and I'm sure many of your listeners would heartily oppose the ordination of women, and I'm not here to advocate for it.

But that's kind of where the NALC lands in the landscape, if you will, of American Lutheranism.

So your denomination ordains women. Well, we're out of time, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm only kidding. Fair enough. I thought that may be the case.

No, I'm only kidding.

Yeah, when we left the ELCA, it was one of those things, you know, we were an ELCA church, but we were struggling with where the ELCA was going. By then, they had openly endorsed the ordination of homosexual pastors and openly endorsed, really, abortion and other issues like that, which is part of what we'll talk about today.

But so we kind of, it was one of those things where, you know, in steering the congregation away from that, yeah, I still had a number of folks who said, you know, we don't want to quite go this far. So yeah, it is what it is.

Well, if anybody is visiting Houston, Texas, or you live in or near Houston, Texas, or have family, friends, and loved ones who live in or near Houston, Texas, and you want more information about First Lutheran Church of Houston, go to flhouston .org, F-L for First Lutheran, houston .org, and you can find out everything you need to know at that website.

We have a tradition here on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio. Whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

And I know that you've already given a little bit of your story, but if you could provide us with more details.

Yeah, grew up, my really early years Methodist, my parents met by being introduced by their parents who both went to a booming Methodist church in Shreveport, Louisiana, Broadmoor Methodist Church. It was kind of that post-war 1950s boom, right, where you had these neighborhood churches that were exploding.

Anyway, so my grandparents knew one another, were friends, my parents met as a result, and so we were Methodist for a while until by providence, my mother, who was a music teacher, you know, musician, our backyard neighbor, Mary Ellen Schultz, good German name there, right, she was the organist at the Lutheran Church in town, said, hey, we need a music director.

So we ended up in the Lutheran Church, left the Methodist Church, ended up in the Lutheran Church, and of course, you know, I loved it. It was a good church to grow up in, in Shreveport, Louisiana. But you know, it is one of those things where you go to church every week and you sort of, if you're somewhat obedient, you should have, you know, you should listen to your parents.

I'll say, you know, as a youngster, I did go to a friend's Baptist church and they had a vacation Bible school, and essentially an altar call. And while I didn't get baptized, I did go forward for that altar call.

And I have thought about that as kind of an early step of understanding the Lordship of Christ. Of course, it develops over time. Felt the call to ministry, ended up going to, you know, after a couple of years of working, went off to seminary.

And I would say my understanding of ministry at that time was very practical, kind of helping people with life. I don't know, being a nice person, being a good community member. It was reading Bonhoeffer's Life Together that really kind of opened my eyes to what ministry actually was, which is ministering to souls in the spiritual reality and understanding the costs.

Of course, his book is The Cost of Discipleship, different book, but written at the same time in the same context, that there is a real cost to following Christ and what, you know, understanding that you have to do this thing because it's the right thing to do no matter the cost.

So gone were the, you know, stupid and, you know, embarrassing kind of, you know, thoughts that I'm gonna be a great pastor, people are gonna come to my church, it's gonna be a big church, I'm gonna tell everyone else what they're doing wrong.

You know, you can't read Life Together without leaving thinking, all right, you know, if you're gonna do this, you need to do it for the right reasons. So I think I drew closer to, you know, Christ through understanding deeper what the ministry was.

And, you know, it's simply over the course of your life, you know, you read the scripture, you have fellowship with other believers, and I would say it's just sort of grown from there. So not any one moment, I would say, but, you know, as Luther said, you know, you daily die and rise in your baptism.

So I like to joke with my Baptist friends, you know, I can out-baptize you, you know, because we daily die and rise in our baptism. So it's something that near my God, you know, I draw to thee, right, you know, through the study of scripture, through fellowship with other believers.

And apologetics has been a part of that as well. But we'll talk about that, I think, as we go on, actually.

Yes, and when did you realize, and how did you realize that God had placed a call upon your life to become a pastor?

Hmm, funny story, when I was about 14 years old, you know, I'd always been to church, my mother was the music director. So I just, it was familiar to me, and I felt called. I started to feel like, okay, maybe God wants me involved in church work in some way.

I was in a drama class in high school, and part of our work for the day was to talk to the person sitting next to us, sort of a little interview, and then go up to the front of the class and say what we learned about that person.

So I did that, and then she did that. And when she interviewed me, I said, I was thinking about going into the ministry. And that was the first time I'd ever told anybody. You know, I hadn't talked to my parents about it, hadn't talked to my pastor about it, you know, and I said, oh, maybe I'll go into the ministry.

And I was kind of embarrassed to say it, and it was a lot, you know, sometimes it's like when you put it out there, it's like you can't take it back. So it was almost like, all right, I'm gonna put it out there.

It'll kind of force me to maybe move forward in that direction. Well, she gets in front of the drama class, and she says, well, this is Evan, and he's from here, and he's thought about going into the military.

And I thought, no, that isn't what I said. I said ministry, not military. And so it was like, I kind of felt a little embarrassed. You know what I mean? It was like, okay, well, I went out there, I said, I thought about it, it didn't go well.

So I back shelved it, I ended up playing guitar, and I went to college on a music scholarship studying classical guitar. But by the time I was a senior in college, just as I was getting my degree, I thought, all right, it's really time to think about seminary because this is going nowhere.

What's the point? I mean, there's 1 ,000 people who wanna be some kind of music performer. That is not what the world needs. The world does not need another average classical guitarist. It held no interest to me.

Whereas in ministry, and really in Christianity, there's just this never-ending list of possibilities, things that you can study. Everything matters in Christianity. Music matters, history matters. I'm not much of a scientist, but you could study science, and that matters when it comes to Christianity.

So rather than going to this narrow field where I was gonna be learning, I don't know, Spanish classical guitar music for four hours a day for the rest of my life, gigging, and trying to put some kind of studio together to put food on the table, I thought, I can go into ministry and literally learn for the rest of my life.

And that sounded a lot more interesting and a lot more needed. As I'm sure you're aware, there's a pastor shortage. Well, pretty much everywhere, from what I can tell, in pretty much every church body.

And so God has rewarded me with, I'm on my second call, and the people at First Lutheran are wonderful people, very kind and on board with the ministry that we want to do. So yeah, so, but if my friend in the drama class had heard me, I might have saved myself some trouble.

You know?

Apologetics, Debates, and the Christian Worldview in Public Life

Well, you've got to tell our listeners how you developed a friendship with my friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, and about the debates that you have been conducting at First Lutheran Houston, and about specifically the upcoming debates, I think in February of 2024, if I'm not mistaken, that people can mark on their calendars that involve Dr. White and perhaps some others.

Tell us about this.

Yeah, well, you know, I've always had an interest in, you know, I'd say politics, but kind of worldview questions, cultural issues. And I vividly remember, and I hope I'm not getting you in trouble here, but I'll just say it, you know, when Barack Obama got reelected, that, you know, that night in 2012, I thought, you know, I'm doing something wrong.

Because I was so disappointed, I realized my hopes were misplaced, first of all, but also came to realize that, you know, if I wanted people to agree with sort of where I wanted this country to go, or where I wanted my state to go, or where I wanted my culture to go, probably more importantly than anything else, then they needed to agree with me about Christianity.

Right? I mean, what is it that forms culture? Well, you know, it's your worldview. It's your understanding of law. It's the good news of Jesus Christ. So I thought, how do, what does the church do to get sort of people to understand the Christian worldview and so on?

And so that's kind of where I even learned what the word apologetics was. And so I said, I'm gonna stop listening to all these political things. I'm gonna start listening to some religious debates. And so before long, YouTube was telling me, hey, listen to this guy named James White.

You know, he's debated, this guy named Christopher Arnson had him out a bunch of times on the Northeast to debate, you know, Mitch Pacwa and all these other guys. So I literally probably, it might've been a debate you hosted was the first James White debate I listened to on YouTube.

And of course I went down the William Lane Craig route and the evidential route for a while. And anyway, I thought to myself, okay, well this is something our church should be doing. In fact, I think a lot of churches should be doing this.

A lot of churches need to be hosting debates. We need to be pushing the antithesis, if you will. We need to be putting the Christian worldview out there. We need to be raising up more apologists, more defenders of the Christian faith.

They can't all be as good as James White, but you know, more churches need to be doing this. So I think our first debate was in 2013, 2014. And ever since then, you know, I've learned a few lessons and try to put good events together.

Some of them better than others. But I reached out to Dr. White because I hosted a debate that really went pretty terribly. I mean, it kind of went off the rails. You know, you had guys kind of yelling at each other and he reviewed it because it's actually on, you know, election and so forth between kind of an Arminian and a kind of Calvinist perspective.

It was Leighton Flowers and Sonny Hernandez debate. It's still out there somewhere on YouTube. You can watch it for your own enjoyment. Anyway, he reviewed it and he thought, man, this moderator really needs to step his game up.

And of course he was right. I was the moderator. And I kind of reached out to him from there. And I said, I really appreciate what you said.

Did they pick you because they thought you were like a neutral person between an Arminian and a Calvinist?

Well, yeah. I mean, you know, let me just put it this way. Having a debate forum, you know, can mean that people will want to use your forum for what they want to get across. I'll put it that way. And what I learned is that I need to be a little bit, you know, I need to host the debates that kind of I want to host.

And so then it's a question of, well, what are the important issues that I can provide a forum to? And it's not always easy to do the exact issue I want because I can't always get the other people to say yes.

But, you know, with Dr. Weitz, over time, you know, we would just correspond a little bit. And, you know, when his travel changed, you know, because as you know, he does the fifth wheel and the road trip thing.

And basically I said, hey man, let me know if you're ever coming through Houston, you know, from Phoenix to Atlanta or whatever it may be. And so we just kind of worked it out. And he debated Molinism a couple of years back.

He debated marriage this year. So marriage is closer to where, you know, the Molinism topic wasn't, you know, I don't know. It's okay. It's kind of interesting.

Most people don't even understand that debate at all. I don't mean that specific debate. I mean the topic of Molinism.

Yeah, yeah, God's middle knowledge and all that. But it was kind of a hot topic at the time. And people were just, we were following up an unbelievable broadcast he did with Justin Brierley, with William Lane Craig on Molinism.

So we, you know, we put that together. Then the marriage thing was something I wanted to do because it's such an important topic. Obviously sexuality is just a burning topic in the Protestant world right now.

So wanted to talk about that. And then, you know, it's just kind of happened that because of some Twitter exchanges he's had and some other things have come up, we're looking at four debates in February, two back-to-back debates.

So two night encounters. One on his way to other places, you know, the Arkansas, it looks like, and then on his way back from Arkansas. So don't want to commit anybody to anything. I don't have, you know, the importance of contracts.

I don't have contracts signed yet. I'm still hammering out the details of the format and the title and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So, but hopefully we're going to do two on Roman Catholicism, Purgatory, and then, well, Sola Scriptura first, and then Purgatory.

And of course within Purgatory, there's a ton of gospel issues. So I think that should be fascinating. And then I'm looking to do one on kind of resurgence and Unitarianism, at least in the kind of our world.

Right.

People, you know, there's kind of that Unitarian Trinitarian debate.

Right.

If we can pull it off, the title, the working, I think I can say this, the working title right now is one I'm pretty excited about, which is, is Jesus Yahweh? And it's helpful, I think, you know, understanding that if you understand, or if you, you know, would believe that, you know, Yahweh is the being of God.

You know, so when we talk about Trinity, it's all about these distinctions between being in persons. And so if the being of God is Yahweh, then what are the scriptural evidences or scriptural proofs that indicate that, or prove, you might say, argue that Jesus is Yahweh.

And so I think that could be quite interesting. And then

You have an Aryan lined up for that?

Do I have a what lined up?

An Aryan apologist to debate whether

Yeah, I don't want to say, but if, just because again, I don't have a contract, I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but if you listen to the dividing line, you can pretty well guess.

Well, actually, he's been, James has been very cryptic about the exact nature of the upcoming debates.

Well, yeah, they're just not 100 final, and we don't want to be accused of using pressure tactics or anything like that. So I try to keep it close to the vest, but, and then same situation, but we're looking at a debate on John 6, really, and we're still hammering out a question related to that, but it's a long way from now.

So maybe by the, you and I, I think have another couple of shows scheduled by then. I may have contracts in hand. I might be holding them up to the microphone. My formerly nicotine-stained fingers, no, I'm just kidding.

There's no, I'll brush them by reference, but I might be holding them up and say, all right, gang, here we go to hear the debate. So yeah, so if there are James White fans anywhere in the Texas area, it could be a, basically a buffet.

It's like a James White buffet, a debate buffet. And, or if you're on the other side of those issues, they could be interesting. The plan would be to live stream them. They'll end up on YouTube, of course.

And yeah, looking forward to that. I'm gonna do my best Christopher Arnzen impersonation when I'm hosting.

Well, we've got to go to our first commercial break. If anybody has a question for Pastor Evan on our theme today, which is the problem with Lutheranism, a Lutheran pastor's critiques of modern Lutheranism, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you are also a Lutheran, and you also have problems with some of the things you are seeing, hearing, and experiencing within Lutheranism, and you don't really wanna draw your attention at this point to your identity.

We understand that, but if it's a general question, please give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence. We'll be right back with Pastor Evan McClanahan right after these messages from our sponsors.

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I've seen firsthand the mastery that they have over custom designing jewelry, and you are sure to be satisfied because you are involved in every single step of the creation process. No matter where you live in the world, through computer software, you'll be able to see with your own eyes every stage of the creation process so that you can have your own input.

You could tell them, hey, I love this, but I hate this. Hey, can you change this? Hey, can you make this a different color? Hey, can you make this a different size? In fact, I've got a new idea. Can you put this in there?

And et cetera, et cetera. And then on top of that, you will get a physical three-dimensional wax prototype of the piece of jewelry that you have helped to create shipped to you so that you could see that and hold it in your hand to make any final changes.

And then they will move on to the final creation of your piece of jewelry. So please, if you have any intention to purchase jewelry for yourself or someone else, and you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and you would love to see us get 100 of the profits from that sale, go to royaldiadem .com.