The Rev. Antonio Cabello is pastor of San Esteben Martir (St. Stephen the Martyr), ELCA, 225 S. Kennedy Drive (IL Route 25), a congregation of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod located in the northwest suburb of Carpentersville, Illinois. The people of God at San Esteben gather for the Holy Eucharist on Sundays at 10:00 a.m. in […]
Welcome to Let’s Talk
We invite submission of papers and talks from members of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod of the ELCA, talks given to members of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod, or articles from other pastors and theologians, not limited to ELCA. Send submissions in Word docx. to fcsenn70@gmail.com.
The Celebration of Hispanic/Latino Liturgical and Cultural Festivals as Opportunities for Evangelism
The date was Wednesday, December 12, 2001. I will never forget the day. I was an intern at Trinity Lutheran Church in Canton, Ohio, helping to develop the Hispanic ministry that eventually became a mission congregation of the ELCA. Around 11:30 a.m. a couple walked into our office narthex with a dozen roses. I knew […]
The Time Has Come
Commending The Task Force Ebenezer Lutheran Church (at Foster and Paulina in Chicago) has been a Reconciling in Christ (RIC) congregation since 1993. This was a congregational decision to welcome gay and lesbian persons into the full life of the church. By 1997 the congregation felt a need to explore the blessing of same-gender relationships. […]
The Proposed Social Statement on Human Sexuality Needs a Worldview
I fear that joining together the Policy Recommendations regarding the ordination of persons living in same-sex relationships with the proposed social statement, “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” is eclipsing detailed discussion of the proposed social statement. Homosexuality has become the tail that wags the sexual dog. Yet the number of social issues related to human […]
A Response to “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” (HSGT) and “Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies” (RRMP)
I am simply a parish pastor. I do not claim to be an expert in the history of the Reformation. I have not specialized in Ethics and Social Development. I am a survivor of the free-love ’60s and the repressed ’80s. I bear within my own being a conflict concerning the primary emphases of both […]
Questions for Critics of the Statement and Recommendations
No one should envy the task of producing official prose for the ELCA. As the holy fathers of Nicaea would no doubt testify, the drive to create or preserve consensus is no friend to language or theology. The proposed social statement on sexuality and the policy recommendations are the object of legitimate criticism and discontent, […]
Delight, Design and Destiny: Toward a Doxological Ethics of Sexuality
The cosmetic separation of ethics from doxology is a frequent problem when Christians take human response and action as the starting point in determining how they are to live. The proposed ELCA Social Statement, “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” is not unusual in this approach, but such a move determines the misguided course of the […]
The Bible and Our Ethics
What role should/does the Bible play when Christians make ethical decisions? Christians look to the Bible to see how our forebears in the faith made decisions, under God’s guidance, in ethical matters. They realize at the same time that those decisions have often been revised or expanded as the centuries have rolled past. Also, our […]
An Appeal to the ELCA in 2009
I have been asked as a member and pastor of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) to address the sexuality proposals that will come before the ELCA Churchwide Assembly (CWA) this summer. I make no claim to speak officially for the LCMS, although I am certain that I speak for many other LCMS pastors […]
Seabury-Western: A Different Way of Being a Seminary and Doing Theological Education
The world has changed dramatically and with dizzying speed in the past few decades. We’ve gone from being round to being flat again. We’ve seen the collapsing of hierarchies, the faltering of institutions and the myth of their permanence, and the exponential power of networks transforming not only our communication but also our mindsets. And […]
A Young Progressive Christian Reclaims Orthodoxy
Though the ink has barely dried, my excitement over the ELCA’s newly-minted Full Communion agreement with the United Methodist Church took a serious hit in recent days. I grudgingly admit that I cheered this agreement when it was passed and happily returned home, eager to share the Eucharist with my Methodist friends. As someone who […]
The Community of St. Francis: How It’s Doing and Being (A Sort-of Ethnography)
Prologue A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from my good friend and former pastor, Frank Senn. He began by asking if I remember Let’s Talk. Frank must have been grinning at that point, realizing that I have very fond memories of my association with this forum for living theology in the Metropolitan Chicago […]
“Church Renewal” — the Catholic Movement in the Church of Sweden.
In this paper I will try to describe what has been called the “high church” or “catholic” movement in the Church of Sweden. To be able to say something about the catholic movement in the C of S you have to survey the church history of Sweden, which is rather different from the church history […]
Concerning the Manufacture of Buggy-Whips
A few days after the news that Augsburg Fortress was canceling its pension program, I was at text study with colleagues more senior in ministry than I. There was no complaining or self-pity in the room, but there was palpable somberness. No honest, sane person has gone into Lutheran ministry with the expectation that it […]
A Different Way to Talk About Sex
It should not surprise anyone that the social statement, “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust”, adopted by the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in 2009, did not settle the most presenting issue in human sexuality in our time: homosexuality. The statement itself acknowledged that the issue is not settled because it concluded that “There is no consensus in […]
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