Lutherans

I posted this to a message board on October 11 and 12, 2008:

Are there any Lutherans on here? I recently started attending a Lutheran church and I enjoy it. The people are really friendly to me. I like the pastor and he offers an open communion. It is a small church with only about 30 or 40 people and I would guess that most of them are over 50. There is a woman from Germany. There is a man who is an orchid expert and he fought in World War II.  This church belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a merger of three Lutheran churches in the late 1980s.

I was actually raised Mormon, but haven't been involved with it. The casual atmosphere of the Lutheran church has been a comfortable fit for me. I was briefly talking with the pastor about the interaction of science and faith and he said he reads about those topics as well which I find refreshing.

The pastor is a part-time music teacher and he plays the guitar during some of the hymns; I like it.  They pass out a pamphlet (?) which includes the verses, hymns and prayers. We just get together in the basement after the service for coffee (which I don't drink) and a snack. I was talking to my cousin's wife and she said her step-grandmother's Lutheran church has a lot more members and they basically have a feast every week.

The pastor told that one of the members came from a different church (I believe the Missouri Synod) and they were very strict and the pastor gave him a firm speech about asking too many questions. This pastor says he tries to be open to peoples questions and tries not to force a specific approach.

I found one of the responses on the message board interesting:

ELCA churches are likely to be a good fit for folks who want a common-sense sort of church, light on the moralizing but sticking to the Gospels, rather than ignoring them as do most evangelical denominations.

They do vary quite a bit, from ones which focus on a more traditional liturgy to ones that embrace guitars and the like.

Congregations are generally pretty friendly, and functions are also friendly. Here in Minnesota, you can't go wrong with church basement potlucks. Food's hearty and plentiful, and strangers are always welcome.

Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod Lutheran churches are, or can be, pretty legalistic, compared to the ELCA ones. They stick a lot closer to the irascible, hemorrhoid-suffering Luther, rather than the Santa Claus-style Luther of the ELCA.

Given my choice of which church to visit on Potluck day, I'll go with an ELCA Lutheran church every time, followed by a nice Methodist church. Up here, a guy could easily have a meal every week at one of these. In fact, in my poverty-stricken youth, I made a regular thing of visiting churches, serially, for the church basement suppers. Very nice.