Like WheatT Arising Green: How the Church Grows and Thrives

(Excerpt) The theme for the 1991 Institute of Liturgical Studies is taken from the hymn Now the Green Blade Rises. This wonderful Easter hymn, No. 148 in The Lutheran Book of Worship, concludes each stanza with the refrain, Love is come again like wheat arising green. The resurrection of Jesus is portrayed as grain which sprouts from seed. The imagery comes from the Gospel of John, from a saying of Jesus, the whole context of which is instructive

Identity and Witness: Liturgy and the Mission of the Church

(Excerpt) The text for this lecture is a provocative aphorism which I owe to Stanley Hauerwas. In a 1987 presentation at Trinity Seminary, he said: The church has missionary power in direct proportion to its liturgical integrity. I cite this because Liturgy and Mission are often perceived as unrelated, if not actually opposed, to each other.1 Manuals and exhortations on evangelism often do not relate the Church\u27s mission of evangelization and conversion to the administration of Holy Baptism. Programs and advice on outreach which focus on inviting persons to the Sunday gathering of the Church often do not assume that what t~kes place at the Sunday gathering is the Holy Eucharist. For many advocates of the Church\u27s mission, liturgy belongs to the task of nurture, and attention to nurture must be balanced by attention to nurture. Liturgy is thus viewed as an inward focus, and the fear is that too much attention to liturgy makes the Church narcissistic

Holy Communion Is an Artifact of the Future

(Excerpt) A bit of reminiscing seems appropriate on this anniversary occasion.2 The Institute of Liturgical Studies was founded by true pioneers in the liturgical movement. The blessings granted to that movement in terms of its achievements are awesome. I don\u27t know if anyone counted such things in the 1940s, but in the decade in which the Institute of Liturgical Studies was founded there were not a hundred congregations in all of North American Lutheranism where there was a weekly Eucharist

History and Dogma in Christology

Careful examination of a recent convention resolution of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (Resolution 2-16, “To Affirm Historicity of New Testament, Denver 1969) provides a basis for the author\u27s discussion of the way in which church bodies can best prepare doctrinal statements and of the proper role of historical investigation and dogmatic formulations in the process of framing the church\u27s Christological confession

The Gospel and the Smalcald Articles

The Smalcald Articles (hereafter abbreviated as S. A.) provide us with an excellent focus for the problems and possibilities which the 16-century confessional documents pose for 20th-century Lutheranism. The fact of our historical distance from the 16th century confronts us with the most obvious problems

The Treasure of the Church

If being on the cover of Time magazine is the status symbol of our age, then Martin Luther has it made. The issue of March 24, 1967, carried his picture, painted by Time cover artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. There\u27s not much left in the status department, except perhaps being named Man of the Year or being belatedly canonized. The latter has been seriously suggested, but the former won\u27t happen. This is 1967, not 1517. Religion could hardly be called decisive in national or international affairs. A protest against the sale of indulgences would be meaningless. Poor Tetzel couldn\u27t give them away, let alone sell them. There is a sense, therefore, in which the Reformation is locked in history. The observance of its anniversary might then seem to have little more than antiquarian interest for Reformation buffs

Potential Chemical and Energy Uses for Lignite at Hawkdun and Ashers-Waituna, New Zealand

This preliminary study brings together publically available information and work from earlier studies of the South Island Lignite resources in order to examine the potential value of the lignite deposits held by Kenham holdings to meet New Zealand’s emerging demand for primary energy

Error assessment of GOCE SGG data using along track interpolation

International audienceGOCE will be the first satellite gravity mission measuring gravity gradients in space using a dedicated instrument called a gradiometer. High resolution gravity field recovery will be possible from these gradients. Such a recovery requires a proper description of the gravity gradient errors, where the a priori error model is for example based on end-to-end instrument simulations. One way to test the error model against real data, i.e. to see if the a priori model really describes the actual error, is to compare along track interpolated gradients with the measured gradients. The difference between the interpolated and measured gravity gradients is caused by, among others, the interpolation error and the measurement errors. The idea is that if the interpolation error is small enough, then the differences should be predicted reasonably well by the error model. This paper discusses a simulation study where the gravity gradient errors are generated with an end-to-end instrument simulator. The measurement error will be compared with the interpolation error and we will assess the latter as a function of the sampling interval

Correcting for Antibody Waning in Cumulative Incidence Estimation from Sequential Serosurveys.

Serosurveys are a widely used tool to estimate the cumulative incidence, i.e. the fraction of a population that have been infected by a given pathogen. These surveys rely on serological assays that measure the level of pathogen-specific antibodies. Because antibody levels are waning, the fraction of previously infected individuals that have sero-reverted increases with time past infection. To avoid underestimating the true cumulative incidence, it is therefore essential to correct for waning antibody levels. We present an empirically-supported approach for sero-reversion correction in cumulative incidence estimation when sequential serosurveys are conducted in the context of a newly emerging infectious disease. The correction is based on the observed dynamics of antibody titers in sero-positive cases and validated using several in silico test scenarios. Furthermore, through this approach we revise a previous cumulative incidence estimate, which relies on the assumption of an exponentially-declining probability of sero-reversion over time, of SARS-CoV-2 of 76% in Manaus, Brazil, by October 2020 to 47.6% (43.5% - 53.5%). This estimate has implications e.g. for the proximity to herd immunity in Manaus in late 2020