In reply to John Joseph Flanagan.

I agree, John. We're not hearing any hard truths from God's Word about today's cultural and moral decline from the LCMS pulpit (at least the two churches I've attended in the last few years--I've been Lutheran all my life.) My family is growing frustrated by the lukewarm preaching. Can't even tell we're in an LCMS Lutheran church most Sundays. (Don't even get me started on the Christmas Eve service with no OT reading, no Epistle, no Gospel, no sermon--I was embarrassed that I had brought two unchurched people with me to see a forty-minute "play" in which Mary was a petulant teenager and time travel, a professor with a hillbilly accent, and oranges featured prominently--they had billed it as a church service in the previous Sunday's bulletin. It was anything but.) During the last year, I've been listening to (non-LCMS) pastors on YouTube during the week to get the meat of the Gospel instead of the Pablum I'm getting in church. We need a strong voice crying out in the desert right now--one not afraid to proclaim God's truth in a cultural wasteland. We need fearless pastors in the tradition of Martin Luther. "Here I stand, I can do no other."