Whose Church?

I’ve been doing some thinking here. The phrase that keeps popping up, especially under “comments” on the petition is, “This is not your Grandfather’s church.” The phrase, as you know, is a certain synodical leader’s turn of the phrase, “This is not your Father’s Oldsmobile.” This of course makes my mind jump to Dave Barry’s 25 things I’ve learned in 50 years.

Number teen-something states:
“The value of advertising is that it tells you the exact opposite of what the advertiser actually thinks.For example: If the advertisement says, "This is not your Father's Oldsmobile," the advertiser is desperately concerned that this Oldsmobile, like all other Oldsmobiles, appeals primarily to old farts like your father. . .”

In good Lutheran fashion, I pose, what does this mean? Obviously Dave Barry is attempting to be funny, yet I ask if he is inadvertently commenting on the fact that no matter how much we try to move away from our grandfather’s church, there is no getting around the fact that that’s exactly what we should be?

What is/was our grandfather’s church? I speak with others who say our grandfather’s church is nothing more nor less than CHRIST’S church. Never was ours. It wasn’t Peter’s, the Pope’s, Martin Luther’s. . . it is Christ’s. I’d like it to stay that way. Period.