Can a Christian use someone's preferred pronouns with a clear conscience? Find out in my column

in the latest issues et cetera journal. We'll send it to you for free. Just click the red

journal subscription button in the right-hand column at Issuesetc.org. In the Wittenberg trail feature,

Dr. John Bumbarrow recounts his story to confessional Lutheranism from Roman Catholicism

and Reformed Theology. The free online issues et cetera journal, issues etc.org. Does this sound like

your church budget process at the end of the year? You get last year's budget and go through

with a committee line by line maybe what we should spend

next year? Maybe you have a prayer. But where's the Word of God in this process? When do the

people hear what the small catechism says about giving and why we do it? Contact us at LCMS stewardship

so that we can help you fix this process, put the Word of God first, and put your

congregation on a good fitting.

LcMS.org slash stewardship.

For some reason, we have made the gold standard for the average American congregation, that suburban box church where you can go, you don't necessarily need to know anybody else there.

You might know a few people.

The pastor may or may not, probably doesn't know you by sight,

although he may shake your hand every Sunday. But I wonder, since more than half of

Christian congregations in the United States are rural or in small towns, and in my particular

denomination, Luther Church, Missouri, Senate, that rises to 60% of the congregations.

Maybe the gold standard should be the small town church.

Now, you want to listen,

because if you are a member of one of those small town churches

or grew up in one of them,

...