This book, listed above, isa rather interesting book written if I recall in 1945.  Berthold von Shenk is often cited and considered one of the fathers of the liturgical movement in the LCMS.  He is without a doubt one of the more interesting characters, that’s for sure.   Rev. Paul Sauer did a nice job with a paper on von Schenk at the CTS Symposium a couple years ago.

Anyway, one of the benefits of my little corner of the world is that I have a wicked awesome coper/scanner thing, which allows me to scan big files into PDF format easily.  I have done so with this book.

So my question is, are any of you interested in having this book run through OCR so that it would be searchable?  Let me know.  Either way, I will be posting it shortly.

-LL

I am helping a friend sell a bunch of books.   HERE IS A PDF OF THE BOOKS AVAILABLE.  Some of the titles for the books include:

• 11. St. Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care
• Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar
• Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary Cards
• The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39
• The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500-1453
• The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church
• Byzantium & the Slavs
• C. S. Lewis’ Letters to Children
• Christ in Eastern Christian Thought
• The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy: The Church 1071-1453 A.D
• The Christian Theology Reader
• Chronological and Background Charts of the Old Testament
• The Church of the Ancient Councils: The Disciplinary Work of the First Four Ecumenical Councils
• A Concise Exegetical Grammar of New Testament Greek
• The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology
• Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs
• The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestian Monasticism Under the Christian Empire
• A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs
• The Didache: A Commentary
• A Documentary History of Religion in America (2 vols.)
• The Early Church
• Early Church and State
• The Early Liturgy
• The Ecclesiastical Text: Text Criticism, Biblical Authority & the Popular Mind
• Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia
• From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and Its Background
• God & Man in Music
• A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew
• Gregory of Nyssa: The Life of Moses
• Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought
• A History of Christian Thought: Volume 1: From the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon
• A History of Christian Thought: Volume 2: From Augustine to the Eve of the Reformation
• A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period
• Homiletic Moves and Structures
• The Institutes
• Isaiah II
• Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture
• Josephus: The Complete Works
• The Koran
• The Later Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Cyril of Jerusalem to St. Leo the Great
• Latin Can be Fun
• Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek
• Licht auf dem Weg Band II.
• The life of Christ
• Mark: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
• Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings
• Morphology of Biblical Greek, The
• Mystery Of The Church
• The New Testament: An Orthodox Perspective
• On Ascetical Life (Popular Patristics Ser.)
• On Christian Teaching
• On Searching the Scriptures — Your Own or Someone Else’s: A Reader’s Guide to Sacred Writings and Methods of Studying Them
• On the Divine Images: Three Apologies Against Those Who Attack the Holy Images
• On the Incarnation: De Incarnatione Verbi Dei
• On the Soul and the Resurrection: St Gregory of Nyssa
• On Wealth and Poverty
• A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew
• Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel
• Pseudo Dionysius: The Complete Works
• Rome, Constantinople, Moscow: Historical and Theological Studies
• The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English
• St John Chrysostom: Six Books on the Priesthood
• St. Basil the Great on the Holy Spirit
• St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Lectures on the Christian Sacraments: The Procatechesis and the Five Mystagogical Catecheses
• St. Innocent: Apostle to America
• ST.JUSTIN MARTYR:FIRST+SECOND APOLOGIES
• The Study of Liturgy
• Understanding the Nicene Creed,
• What Luther Says: A Practical In-Home Anthology for the Active Christian

If you are interested in any of these books, or any combination thereof, please contact me in the comments on the blog or follow the directions in the PDF file.  You can make me an offer on any book if you think the asking price isn’t right.  Thanks!

-LL

Todd A. Peperkorn, STM
Messiah Lutheran Church
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Easter 2 – Misericordias Domini (April 18, 2010)
John 10:11-16

TITLE: “A Shepherd in Sheep’s Clothing”

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for this morning is from St. John chapter 10, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11 ESV)

Jesus Christ is risen from the dead! The tender mercies of God (Introit) are manifest to us in His Son’s resurrection. Jesus the Good Shepherd is bound up in Jesus the Risen One. God raised Him from the dead, and now He Himself goes out and searches for the lost, the sheep of His pasture that have strayed away from him.

In one place our Lord described us as “harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matt. 9:36) Do you feel that way? Are you harassed on every side? Are you rudderless, lost, and without direction? Does it almost seem to you like no one is in charge, and that things continue to happen however they will, sometimes good, sometimes bad? God knows your own trials of body and soul, and He longs to gather you into Himself.
One thing is for certain, God has great plans for you, dearly beloved. St. Peter put it this way in our Epistle:

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” (1 Peter 2:24 ESV)

God longs to hold you and keep you in the palm of His hand. God longs to keep you safe, to feed you. He doesn’t want you to continue to cling to sin like an old shoe that fits great but is bad for your feet. These sins, you don’t need them! They are not you anymore. Yet every day it seems as those you and I continue down the same lost paths, we commit the same sins, we wander away like sheep that don’t know any better. Why do we do this? We do this because we don’t know any better.

Yet our Heavenly Father longs to draw you to the still waters of His Word, and to give you good pasture, to feed you with the food of eternal life. God wants to give you all things in His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. In our Gospel for today, Jesus talked about the relationship between Himself and His people, the sheep.

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually interact with sheep much in my daily life. We city folks don’t have much of a sense of what it is like to try and round up a hundred sheep, keep them together and safe, feed and water them, guard them against wolves and other predators, and the like. We don’t know by experience how sheep really are.

Sheep sometimes get a bad rap as being a dumb animal. Now that isn’t really fair. It would probably better to say that sheep are herd animals, or that they are trusting animals. They will follow together, and are rarely in groups of less than four or five. What this means in real terms is that if a sheep goes astray, it’s likely led astray. And if it does go astray by itself, it’s almost totally helpless.

So of all the animals to use as an analogy for us, why would God use this one? And how does this help to teach us about the Resurrected Jesus and His life for us as the Good Shepherd?

It means this. You and I by nature are followers. We may follow other people, we may follow our hearts or our desires, but we are followers. Even when we rebel, we rebel in imitation of the truth. Because you and I have followed down the wrong paths for so long, God must shepherd us back. God must draw us to Him, keep us in Him, guard us, feed, us and lead us to the still waters. He says it this way in Ezekiel,

“Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.” (Ezekiel 34:11–12 ESV)

Now this is all good, but simply saying that the Lord is my Shepherd can be an empty phrase. Jesus the Good Shepherd can quickly become no more than a pat saying, a plaque on a wall or hallmark theology. It has no flesh and blood because we don’t know what it means.

So this is where we talk about the Church. Christ is risen from the dead, ascended into heaven, but He is not absent. He is hidden, and He hides Himself here, in His Church. The church is Christ’s tool, His voice, His hands. There is a strong relationship between the Good Shepherd and the under-shepherds of His Church. When Christ returned to heaven, He appointed apostles to be His messengers, His ambassadors. Those apostles were to preach in His name, forgive sins on His behalf, baptize and deliver His body and blood to the sheep, God’s people.

When Paul spoke to the pastors of the Church at Ephesus, he said it like this, “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” (Acts 20:28 NAS95)

God has put a pastor into your life to serve you. In this case it is me, but God of course could and has used many others for this same purpose. The person of the pastor is not important. The office of the pastor for us is the link between God’s Word and God’s people. In the Lutheran Confessions we say it this way:

Thank God, ‹today› a seven-year-old child knows what the Church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd [John 10:11–16].1

God has raised Jesus Christ from the dead. He is your Good Shepherd, who guides you to the paths of eternal life because of His tender mercy. He preaches to you, waters you, feeds you, protects you from evil within and without. You dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Listen to His Voice, for in His Word you have eternal life. Follow the voice of the Shepherd, the voice you heard at your Baptism, the voice you hear as you receive His Body and Blood in the Holy Sacrament, the voice you will hear at the Last Day when He will raise you and all believers to eternal life. Listen to that voice, for in it you have eternal life. Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

And now the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith to life everlasting. Amen.

Some of the concepts in this sermon were received with thanksgiving from the book Preaching from the Whole Bible, by Bo Giertz.  If you use the one year lectionary, GO BUY THIS BOOK.  I use it all  the time.


1 Concordia : The Lutheran Confessions. 2005 (Edited by Paul Timothy McCain) (283). St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House.

[Reprinted from my other blog]

I Trust When Dark My Road: A Lutheran View of Depression first went into print last June. All of the copies from the first printing were taken before it even entered the building at LCMS World Relief and Human Care. The book has touched many lives with the Gospel, and I believe has served as a great opportunity for pastoral care to many people.

So after a six month hiatus, we are back in print! Thanks be to God.

The book is free, just as it was before. They are, however, charging a small amount for shipping. I’m very glad to hear this, as it will allow them to keep their costs lower and to make more of them available in the long run.

So what can you do to help spread the word about this free resource? Here are a few ideas:

• Tell people either by email or in person. You can send them to my web site and I will have the easy link setup in a prominent place.
• Write a review of the book on your blog, web site, or even in your church newsletter.
• Review it or at least rate it on one of the several online review places. Here are a few of them: Goodreads, LibraryThing, Google Books, or anyplace is that you may review it.
• Ask your church secretary to put a notice in your church bulletin about the availability of the book. Here’s a sample bulletin insert:
  

  Are you trapped in the fog of depression? Do you know someone you love who suffers from depression or anxiety? I Trust When Dark My Road: A Lutheran View of Depression is now available at no charge from LCMS World Relief and Human Care. Call (888) 843-5267 to order your free copy, or go to the web site darkmyroad.org for more information.

• Show this to your pastor, and encourage him to order up to five free copies for pastoral care and use at the congregation.

Thanks for all your help and support, friends! God is merciful, and He continues to bring healing and hope to His hurting children.

Pastor Todd Peperkorn
I Trust When Dark My Road: A Lutheran View of Depression

My Light and My Salvation by Kurt E. Reinhardt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This little volume by Pastor Kurt E. Reinhardt is a real treasure. Like nearly every volume of poetry I’ve ever read, the quality varies from page to page, but in this one, the quality is consistently quite good.

The book itself is beautiful, which a gorgeous color cover of our Lord, it makes the 68 page book worth it almost in it’s own right. The print is easy to read and well laid out.

The poetry is generally hymnic in format, with metered lines that could easily be adapted for singing. I found myself with several of the poems wishing that I could sing it in church on a given Sunday, because it was wed to the text so well. A perfect example of this would be “With Longing Heart the Father Waits,” which is based on the parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15:11-32. The meter for this poem is 8 7 8 8, and really sings of the grace that our heavenly Father longs to give to His wayward children. The final stanza is an example:

With longing heart our Father waits
For His lost children at His gates;
A ring, a cloak, and shoes lie near
While Love's own feast awaits them here.

The real strength of the volume, however, I think lies more in the poems which speak of the spiritual trials that the Christian faces. There are too many to quote to really give a full sense of it, but here is one example from “O Jesus, Master, Hear Me”:

O Jesus, Master, bear me,
For I am tired and weary,
All strength from me has fled;
At last I know true weakness,
And crave from You in meakness,
Your mighty arms to be my bed.

Another real treasure in here is some additional verses to well known hymns that the author has either translated or written himself. He includes several stanzas of newly translated verses of Beautiful Savior, and two communion related stanzas for Just as I am, .

This book is available from Redeemer Press , and is $15 plus shipping.

-Rev. Todd Peperkorn

View all my reviews >>

Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and Business of Life by David Allen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book, along with Getting Things Done The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, is one of the most influential books for me in terms of reducing stress, increasing productivity, and generally having a much more peaceful worldview.

As a pastor, I am constantly torn between the desire to be productive and to engage in pastoral care with my congregation. Allen has helped me to put all of these things into perspective, and has allowed me to balance the various parts of my life (home and family, work, play) in such a way so that I am able to gain both control and perspective on how I spend my time and energy.

I would recommend this book for anyone who is stressed, overworked, feels like their life is out of control, or who wants to gain a bigger view of how all the parts of their life fit together.

P

View all my reviews >>

[From the October 2009 Messiah's Messenger]

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I love books. Step into my office and you might as well be stepping into a library. But there is no doubt that some books are more important than others. The chief of these is God’s Word, the Bible. And we are blessed to have a new study bible available for us through Concordia Publishing House. The Lutheran Study Bible is hot off the presses and promises to be an incredible resource for Christian’s who desire to learn more about God and HIs mercy toward us in Christ Jesus.

But do we need another bible? Isn’t the one that I’ve used since I was confirmed good enough? At one level, of course it is good enough. It isn’t a competition, and God’s Word is powerful and effective, regardless of the context or print edition or whatever other format it may be found in. For many of us, we grew up with the King James Version of the bible. I still have my KJV bible I received at my confirmation. In the LCMS, the Concordia Self-Study Bible (NIV translation) has been a popular addition for twenty-five years. Many of you probably have a copy of this study bible, and it includes lots of wonderful resources. Here at Messiah we have largely used the New King James Version (NKJV) for the past ten years or so. This is also a good and faithful translation that has much to commend it.

But this bible is different in several important ways. Here are a few of them that come to mind:

1. The translation it uses is the English Standard Version (ESV). This is the translation that our church body has unofficially adopted as the norm. It is used in Lutheran Service Book, our hymnal. It is the translation we use in worship on Sunday mornings. It is the translation we now use at Christ Lutheran Academy. Martin Luther wrote this about consistency of texts in the Catechism, and it certainly holds true for God’s Word as well:

In the first place, let the preacher above all be careful to avoid many versions or various texts and forms of the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Sacraments, and such. He should choose one form to which he holds and teaches all the time, year after year. For young and simple people must be taught by uniform, settled texts and forms. Otherwise they become confused easily when the teacher today teaches them one way, and in a year some other way, as if he wished to make improvements. For then all effort and labor ‹that has been spent in teaching› is lost.

My hope and plan is that the ESV will be the last translation that I regularly use in my ministry. I expect it to be the norm in the LCMS for a generation or more.

2. The introductions and study notes are thoroughly Lutheran. Concordia Publishing House spent years preparing the introductions, notes, and review process for TLSB. The editors come from nearly every conservative Lutheran church body in the world, including the Wisconsin Synod, the Lutheran Church – Canada, Europe, Africa, and more. The majority of the editors are LCMS, and it went through a thorough doctrinal review process before coming to us. These study notes and introductions incorporate the Small Catechism, writings of Luther and other theologians, and a wealth of information historical and theology for the student of the Scriptures.

3. It includes many of the resources we often use in prayer and worship and catechesis. These include especially the Small Catechism, but also many prayers, an emphasis on Law & Gospel, and generally holding up the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins above all else.

4. It is available in lots of different formats. From the $35 standard hardback edition, larger print editions, various kinds of leather and bonded leather editions, there are more than enough options to go around.

5. It has artwork! These include scenes drawn by Julius Schnoff von Carlsfeld, and were originally available in the 1860 Luther bible published in Leipzig.

6. It includes the lectionaries (reading cycles) in use in our churches. This is very helpful for preparation to go to church. You can always lookup and find what the readings for the upcoming Sunday are and work through them in preparation.

7. Over a hundred charts and over thirty maps. It is tremendously helpful to to be able to put flesh and blood on the stories of the bible. Maps helpful to realize that these are actual events that took place here on earth. They give context to the world of the bible. In the same way, there are many aspects of God’s Word that are hard for us to grasp and understand without some teaching. While a study bible is not a replacement for the Ministry of the Word in the Christian congregation, it can serve as a helpful basis for the student of God’s Word.

These are just a few of the great things about The Lutheran Study Bible. I’m sure that as I use it for study and prayer over the weeks and months and years to come, that many more will become known. I look forward to learning more of God’s Word with you, as we study what He has given us in His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Lutheran Study Bible by Augsburg Fortress

My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I bought this book because it has the potential to be used by my parishioners (I am an LCMS pastor). There are some physical elements to it that I like. It is easy to read, quality paper. I like the outside margin comments and notes. I like the use of graphics as well.

However, the problem is that the negatives far outweigh the positives. First of all, it uses the NRSV translation. This translation is gender inclusive, and really works hard to avoid anything that might be deemed as a traditional view of God. It is teetering on the edge of being a paraphrase.

The second problem is that the premise of the editors comes from a historical-critical method of interpretation. In other words, the editors of the study bible do not believe that the bible is God’s Word. It records and announces God’s revelation about Jesus (p. 19), God speaks through the Bible, but they will shy away from using language like inerrant or authoritative. The editors like to talk about how the bible “is a product of communities of faith who gathering the writings of authors inspired by God and regarded them as having authority as sacred Scriptures” (p. 20). While at one level that sounds nice and good and pious, underneath it is the reality that the source of the bible is not God Himself, but the “communities of faith”, and that it is the experience of the bible that creates faith. So for example, many of the books of Paul are designated as being written by associates of Paul, not Paul himself (p. 1850).

What you find in the comments and notes are a pretty standard theologically liberal agenda. Passages on homosexuality are interpreted away, the authority of the Gospel is undermined, and even the fact that Jesus is the only way to heaven is denied (p. 1658). While there may be a nice veneer of Lutheranism on it, unfortunately it doesn’t go much beyond the name of the book.

I can’t in good conscience recommend this study bible. There are many study bibles out there that are better, and the false teaching that peppers this may do much damage to the faithful.

Pastor Todd Peperkorn
Messiah Lutheran Church
Kenosha, Wisconsin

View all my reviews >>

(This was originally posted at I Trust When Dark My Road. I won’t normally cross-post, but this is an obvious exception. -TAP)

The wait is finally over!

Nearly three years after I began the process of writing this book, it is now available for free download. The free print version will be available sometime in mid-late July. It is at the printer as we speak.

I would urge you to go to the website listed below and order as many copies as they will let you or as many as you need. then download the book and start to get a sense of it. I am very excited and anxious to hear your thoughts on this, and I pray it will serve as a blessing to the Church.

I would especially like to thank Maggie Karner, Al Dobnia, Sarah M. Shafer, Philip Hendricksen, and the entire staff at LCMS World Relief and Human Care for their kindness and work in helping this project come to fruition. They are a wonderful group of people!

So check it out and let me know what you think.

In Christ
Pastor Todd Peperkorn
Author
I Trust When Dark My Road: A Lutheran View of Depression

To request your complimentary copy, call 800-248-1930, ext. 1380.

The following is the blurb that is on page 10 of the Spring 2009 edition of Caring, from LCMS World Relief:

Free Resource Explores Clergy and Depression LCMS World Relief and Human Care’s newest resource reflects Rev. Todd Peperkorn’s personal journey through depression, I Trust When Dark My Road: A Lutheran View of Depression. LCMS WR-HC Executive Director Rev. Matthew Harrison recommends the book to all associated with professional church work: “This book offers a path to hope, and a future through Christ.” Dr. Beverly K. Yahnke, a licensed clinical psychologist, writes in the book’s forward: “When one’s mind and soul journey across the ghastly landscape of clinical depression, the adventure may challenge faith, hope, and life itself. … Peperkorn invites us into the world of a depressed Christian who remains reliant upon God’s grace.” The book is expected to be available in mid-June. To request your complimentary copy, call 800-248-1930, ext. 1380.

This was originally posted on my other blog, I Trust When Dark My Road. I have kept this blog quasi-anonymous for almost three years, but with the publication of this book, my double secret identity is now moot. I would please urge you to go to the above blog and subscribe to it. There is a great community of fellow sufferers, and I believe it will be worth your while.

Enjoy, and order as many books as you think you’ll use! THEY’RE FREE!

-LL