Word: pastorals
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...first to desert the Lutheran fold was the Rev. Wilhelm Schwenold, 46, bachelor pastor of a parish of 600 souls in Bernsbach, southwest of Nürnberg, who slipped out of town one night last fall and sent a letter of resignation to his bishop on Reformation Day. Next to go was the assistant pastor at Würzburg's Deutschhaus church, the Rev. Karl-Heinz Tillmann, 39, married and the father of three. But the final and most embarrassing blow came last month with the resignation of the Rev. Gerhard Betzner, the popular pastor of the church...
Neuendettelsau is small (pop. 6,000), but it boasts the widely respected Augustana Theological University, a Lutheran hospital, and a Lutheran institute. Pastor Betzner, renowned for his homespun sermons, had raised church attendance and tripled the number of communions in his six years there...
Betzner's letter told his parishioners that he no longer felt at home in the church. He was particularly displeased that a woman "apprentice pastor" was allowed to celebrate the Eucharist in his own parish, but he objected as well to new "lay preachers" who also were being allowed to infringe on the office of the ordained minister. "The church of God exists essentially through the spiritual office," Betzner said. "Without it, there is no grace." As for ordaining women, he contended that such a step is not based on Lutheran doctrine...
...usual Sunday night service in an unprepossessing church in Riverside, Calif. But dozens of worshipers in the Faith Tabernacle Church were struck to the floor, trembling in mystical ecstasy, after a visitation from what they believed was the Holy Spirit. Shouted their pastor, the Rev. Pat Yarbrough: "The Spirit of God is moving like the breeze!" One congregant, interviewed later at his job, said simply: "I got zapped." The most moving testimony was the choked-up avowal of the church organist, a pretty young woman named Judy, who said about Jesus: "It's a pity that such...
Deli Prayers. In an engaging segment called "Crow River Christmas," the camera records the life of a Lutheran congregation, mostly Swedish American, in a small Minnesota farming community. There is a Norman Rockwell family dinner, with the pastor leading a round of Swedish songs, and a young boy walking through the snowy woods, talking about his faith as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "What would you do without Jesus?" he asks. "How would you get along...