This week on the word of the Lord endorse forever we continue on in James with more grace,

resist if the Lord wills warning to the rich and patience in suffering.

Join me, pastor Will Wheaton, for the word of the Lord

endorse forever your daily 15 minute verse by verse Bible study on demand.

Listen at the word indoors. the Christian faith, the resurrection of Jesus. But we have a

tendency in big and little ways to forget not that Jesus is raised from the

dead. We know that we believe that we wouldn't be Christians if we denied it. But what it means right now

and what it means for our future and our hope, in fact, because Jesus' future is bright, so is ours.

Welcome back to issues, etc.

Joining us to talk about despair and finding hope in difficult times,

Dr. Adam Kuntz, he's associate pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Denver, Colorado,

author of a column for the March issue of the Lutheran Witness magazine titled Quiet Despair

and its Remedies. Dr. Coons, welcome back.

Great to be with you, thank you.

How would you describe the sense of despair that permeates many Christian congregations today?

Yeah, the despair comes out of a sense that there is not a future for the church and maybe that means in the person's thinking or in the congregations thinking the church broadly, but it has to do more specifically with the visible

decline in church attendance in most American congregations. It's not unique to

our Synod, It's something that affects all Christian churches in America by and large and the sense that there won't be a future for their congregation that not only was the past in some way better.

There were more people on Sunday or more kids in Sunday school or in the confirmation class,

but that it won't get better or it can't and it's mysterious as to why or how it ever could.

So they have a sense of the future closing down and probably also of in time, maybe a time they can see coming in five years,

their congregation closing, the doors closing, the congregation dissolving, and then

...