How do the global flood, circumcision, and the Israelites wondering in the wilderness foreshadowed the baptismal flood in Christ?

Find out in the issues that set a book of the month for August, the baptismal river, studying the sacrament throughout Scripture.

This new Bible study is published by Concordia Publishing House, their phone number 1-800-325-3040, or find out more about the baptismal river at issuesetc.org, the baptismal river studying the sacrament throughout Scripture.

When we think about the battle for the Bible in the 1970s in the Luther Church Missouri Senate, we don't often think about church and ministry.

That subject really belongs farther back in the history of the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate near its inception.

When that was the big question, are we church? What is the relationship between the pastoral office and the congregation?

Well, even though the battle for the Bible really was mostly about Scripture, it also involved an ever-evolving view of the church and of the ministry.

Welcome back to issuesetc.org, I'm Todd Wilkin, joining us for part 6 of our series on the Lutheran Battle for the Bible to talk about church and ministry.

Dr. John Wall-Rabi, assistant pastor of our Savior Lutheran Church in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin.

Sixth Vice President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate, an author of a chapter in the book, rediscovering the issues surrounding the 1974 Concordia Seminary Walkout.

John, welcome back.

Thank you very much, Todd. It's good to talk to you.

Tell us about how the pastors and congregations that would become the early Missouri-centered struggled with and resolved issues of church and ministry.

Oh, it's probably the Saxons who followed a pastor named Martin Steffen. They felt that he was being persecuted, that they were being persecuted.

So they came to Missouri, first arrived in St. Louis, then settled in Perry County, and they had based their whole concept of being church and the ministry upon the leadership of Martin Steffen and the pastors.

And so when it was discovered that the leader was being inappropriate to say it violently, and they wrote him across the Mississippi River and dropped him off on the Illinois side.

They were really disarray. They really struggled for over a year. The people were starving. They weren't really prepared for life in the new world.

And the whole question of whether they were church, whether the pastors at Ballot Hall came up, they really struggled with that.

And finally, they had a debate at Alton Bird in 1841, and pastor C.F.W. Walther debated with layman, who was a lawyer by the name of Franz Marbach, and Walther put forth the idea that they were indeed church.

That the church, it consists of all who truly believe in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the church is invisible since we cannot see in people's hearts, but God knows.

The church exists wherever the word of God is preached, and the sacraments are administered. The word of God is preached purely, and sacraments administer rightly.

But even in heterodox organizations where enough of the word of the gospel is proclaimed in the sacraments administered, they're the Holy Spirit also works faith.

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