The Lutheran Podcast
I'm Rev. Eric Wolf, a pastor, writer, and musician.
I've previously posted almost exclusively sermons, but I'm writing a book called Myth of a Dying Church, and am now also posting episodes about the topics in and related to the book.
I believe strongly that the task of preaching is to engage Scripture as a mirror held up to our lives so that we can confront what we see with integrity. This image we engage helps us to understand what it means to be Children of God; gain perspective of what it means that our primary citizenship and allegiance belongs to God’s Kingdom; and discover how the love of God transforms what we see when we look at ourselves, the people in our lives, and the world that God so loves.
The Lutheran Podcast
God Loves the Gays, and So Should We (Lent 1 2026)
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Our congregation is taking some bold steps during Letn this year, we're on the path to become a Reconciling in Christ congregation, meaning that we're becoming a congregation who intentionally and actively seeks out and welcomes LGBTQIA+ folks and persons of color.
The ACT of loving folks who have been traditionally eschewed by the Church isn't something new to St. James. We've welcomed LGBTQIA+ persons for a long time now. What's new is that we haven't enshrined it in writing as a core part of our identity as a congregation.
At its heart, while this is very much about learning to be more welcoming of people who society marginalizes, it's also more closely related to our identity as a congregation – one that's much like so many congregations right now. We've been here for over seventy-five years, but we look around our neighborhood and don't see our physical neighbors in worship like we used to.
Part of what it means to reconcile ourselves to Christ and his welcome is learning to reconcile ourselves to our neighbors and meet them again for the first time.
This is holy, hopeful work. Here's to a Lenten discipline that we hope will change us all for the better.