The Rev. Dr. David Lose
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN
The Rev. Dr. David Lose holds the Marbury E. Anderson Chair in Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Visit his website "...In the Meantime" at www.DavidLose.net
David J. Lose joined the Luther Seminary faculty in July of 2000 as assistant professor of homiletics. In May 2005, he received the Marbury E. Anderson Chair in Biblical Preaching.
Previously, Lose served as a pastor at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Princeton Junction, N.J., and as a teaching fellow and visiting lecturer at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, N.J.
He received his bachelor of arts degree in English and psychology from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., in 1988. He earned his master of divinity degree (1993) and his master of sacred theology (1997) from The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. In May 2000, he earned his doctorate in homiletics from Princeton Theological Seminary.
Lose's professional experience also includes serving as visiting instructor at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa (Spring 1999) and at New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, N.J. (Fall 1998). In addition, he has served as pastor for two other churches in New Jersey (1993-1998) and has taught English literature, composition and public speaking at The Culver Educational Foundation in Culver, Ind.
Lose is the author of Making Sense of Scripture, Making Sense of the Christian Faith, and Making Sense of the Cross (Augsburg), and Confessing Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2003), named one of the "Top 10 Books of 2004" by the Academy of Parish Clergy. He is the author of numerous articles on preaching, biblical interpretation and theology, and is the editor of New Directions in Preaching (Chalice Press), a collection of essays from a new generation of homiletical scholars.
Latest Content by The Rev. Dr. David Lose
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(
ELCA)
...Then maybe it's time to start Rethinking Evangelism!
There's an old joke that, while it names Lutherans, I suspect could be applied to most "mainline" Protestants and Roman Catholics: Q: What do you get when you cross a Lutheran with a Seventh Day Adventist? A: Someone who goes door-to-door but has no idea what to say!
Read full article...
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(
ELCA)
I've been struck recently - recently as in the last 10 years or so! - by how frequently I hear people (and especially people in the church) name the challenges in front of us "problems."
We have a problem in church attendance.
Biblical illiteracy is the problem.
Read full article...
Other Recent Content by The Rev. Dr. David Lose
May 08, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
I found the following video fascinating. It’s not that the content is all that incredible – it’s essentially a simple retelling of the story of Jesus’ encounter with Mary and Martha followed by a brief interpretation of why this story is important to the narrator.
April 25, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Fred Rogers was a regular and important part of my childhood and continues, well after his death, to continue to serve as an inspiration. Recently the Huffington Post re-ran a picture of “Mr. Rogers” with some advice his mother gave him on how to cope with tragedy. Many have found it helpful as they think about how to talk with their children about tragedy.
April 19, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
When is the last time you heard a sermon on depression? Or for that matter heard anything about depression or other mental illnesses even mentioned in a sermon?
April 14, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
I found the results of a recent poll about patterns of reading the Bible fascinating, discouraging, and not unexpected all at the same time.
March 24, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Leadership is about the future. It’s that simple…and that difficult.
March 04, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Do you ever wish that annoying colleague or friend who always wants to 'improve' your ideas would just go away? You know the one I mean, he (or she) isn’t mean spirited or particularly unkind, just always a bit critical.
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
The Rev. Dr. David Lose joins us for a Day1 Reflection on what it means to want, what it is you really want, and ask you to look at how you think of your life from day to day.
February 22, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
I’ve found Downton Abbey has prompted me to think about the place and nature of the church. There’s been a fair amount written of late about the role of faith – or really the absence of faith – in the show.
February 17, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
So…five things I learned about prayer from you all that I wanted to share.
February 11, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
What is prayer? How does it work? What do we imagine we are doing when we engage in it? If we’re not praying, why not?
February 09, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
From the earliest time of the church, Lent has been a time for instruction in the faith. In fact, the season began as a time for those who wished to join the Christian faith to enter into a particularly focused time of reflection, penitence, and study before committing themselves to Christ at the Easter vigil service. Indeed, the rest of the church year grew out of and around this season of preparation.
February 04, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
If all this stuff about the power of giving money away is true – and we know that by our faith tradition, experience, and research – why do we keep talking about it in terms of money? I mean, aren’t we really just talking about generosity?
January 26, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Vulnerability is a big theme with me – in life, in relationships, in theology. It’s one of the reasons I’m such a big fan of Brené Brown. In her TED Talks on vulnerability and shame, and in books like Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection, she writes candidly and movingly about the importance of being vulnerable and the challenges to doing so.
January 19, 2013
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
First truth: We confess that baptism is the pivotal event in the life of a Christian. Second truth: Most of us have no memory of our baptism, no clear idea of what it means or why it’s important, and no active sense of how it might shape our daily lives.
December 24, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
I should probably admit up front that I’ve been a huge James Bond fan ever since my older brother took me to see Live and Let Die at the age of nine. (I’m still not sure if my parents ever knew that.) So recently I caught the latest Bond flick, Skyfall.
December 10, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
You’ve probably caught the online sensation photo of a NYPD officer putting a pair of socks and boots on the feet of a homeless man on a cold night earlier this month.
November 24, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
I have a confession to make: I started listening to Christmas Carols in earnest three weeks ago.
November 15, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
At its best, the church invites us to continue that conversation, not by silencing earlier voices or being silenced by them, but rather by adding our own voices.
October 27, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
What difference would it make to my preaching, or reading the Bible in church, or reading it to my kids, or talking about it with a friend if I approached the Bible both longing and expecting to be enchanted?
October 21, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
How do you picture God? I know that might sound like an odd question, but I have this hunch we all carry around a picture of God inside of us. On most days we might not even notice it’s there, but what that picture looks like greatly shapes not just our faith but also our outlook on life, our relationships with others, our friendships and parenting and all the rest.
October 15, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Sometimes things fall together better than you could have ever hoped. One of those things at this year’s Celebration of Biblical Preaching was the juxtaposition of Tony Jones and Michael Curry.
October 13, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
I have been regularly surprised by how little Christians seem to know about what the Bible actually says about homosexuality. For this reason, and in light of ongoing conversations and the impending votes in my own state and others, I’ve decided to post on this topic.
October 05, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
It’s tempting to want to play it safe, not change until you absolutely have to. Whether you’re a parent, a CEO, head of a division, or pastor, the conventional wisdom is clear: don’t fix what ain’t broke.
September 30, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
The Bible is notoriously hard on women. From seemingly attributing humanity's fall into temptation to Eve in the beginning of the Old Testament to barring women from certain leadership positions late in the New, the Bible is shaped through and through by the patriarchal culture from which is sprang.
September 28, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Concerned about the decline of many of our congregations and the larger Church? Dismayed by smaller attendance on Sunday mornings? Worried that your children or friends don’t seem interested in their faith? Well, now there’s something you can do about it!
September 13, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Among my very favorite days of the school year as a child were RIF days. You might remember them, too. RIF stands for Reading is Fundamental, a program with a 55+ year history of providing books to children for free. But today the program is in trouble.
August 18, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
By and large, I’m a pretty orthodox guy. I like to play by the rules and, middle-child that I am, typically try to keep everyone happy. But…
August 11, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
I’m a huge fan of the Christian concept of vocation: that God calls each and all of us to serve God by serving our neighbor in whatever roles we may have. So whether you’re working or volunteering or a parent or sibling or student or friend or citizen – whatever role you have you can serve God by serving others.
July 31, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
There is a huge difference, I’ve found, between “thinking” or “talking” about something and “doing” something. That’s certainly true with our talk about the relationship between our happiness and our stuff.
July 26, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Somewhere along the way of my early career in ministry, it dawned on me that the central task of preaching is simply to tell the truth. Actually, to tell the truth twice.
July 21, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
I know this seems like a heretical question, especially for those of us who teach confirmation but also, I suspect, for any of us who went through it. It is, after all, perhaps the most significant religious right of passage in mainline Christianity.
July 12, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
If there is one element of parenting that I have consistently found confusing it’s the role of incentives in a child’s life. That is, should we set up concrete and clear goals and rewards for our children? And, if so, when do we offer incentives, for what kinds of activities, and how much?
June 28, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
With some caveats, here are my five chief reasons I not only think the day of denominations has passed but also can’t seem to find it in me to shed many tears about it.
June 23, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Earlier this spring I read, and very much enjoyed, Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness. Despite what the title might sound like, it’s not a self-help book. And, to tell you the truth, it’s not really about happiness. It’s actually about what makes us unhappy.
June 12, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
When I read an article by Seth Godin on the woes of book publishers recently, I couldn’t help but think about the similarities between the situation he describes and the challenges facing our congregations.
June 03, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
The Church is not Apple. I know that. I wasn’t trying to suggest it was with my recent riff on Guy Kawasaki’s post about learning from the Apple store. But...
May 22, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Both retail stores and churches care about the people who walk in their doors and should give attention to the kind of experience they want those people to have. So noting that the two aren’t the same, we still might learn from one to help us do the other more faithfully.
May 08, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
What is postmodernism? Obviously, no single post can describe it. But one way to think about it is to recognize that we no longer live in a time or culture where there is a single agree-upon version of, or story about, reality.
April 26, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
There are so many things I love about this TEDTalk by Benjamin Zander that it’s hard to list them all. He’s talking about music – and he does that very effectively – but he’s also talking about so much more. I think he’s talking about what it means to be a leader and, perhaps most expansively, about what it means to be human.
April 22, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
I’ve often thought that before the good news is good news, it’s bad news. Why? Because it’s so totally what we don’t expect. We expect fair, and we get generous. We expect justice, and we get mercy. We expect “getting what you deserve,” and we get grace.
April 04, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
One of the great challenges in reclaiming the power of saying “I don’t know” and avoiding the pitfalls mentioned in the last post – namely, giving bad information and limiting your ability to learn – is our current conception of intelligence. We tend to measure our intelligence – or, more commonly, how smart we are – in terms of what we know.
March 29, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
We have, I think, a cultural bias against admitting what we don’t know. It’s as if by admitting our ignorance in a particular subject we undermine our credibility on any subject. I find this particularly true of leaders – whether in a church, corporation, faculty, or family.
March 24, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Why are the popular kids usually mean? It’s good question. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s because the very category of “popular” demands exclusion in the first place. I mean, if there aren’t unpopular kids, how can there be popular ones?
March 18, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
In his sermon for Lent 4, the Rev. Dr. David Lose takes a hard look at one of the most beloved Bible verses, which with he has a love/hate relationship: John 3:16.
March 11, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Do you ever worry your kids have too much? How have you striven to parent well without over-parenting? And – perhaps most importantly – have you found a couple of other parents to think all this through with. This may be one of the toughest challenges for today’s parents.
February 09, 2012
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
I'd argue that believing in God -- or not -- is only the first, and perhaps the easiest, element of faith. The rest deals with how one acts in the world as a result of this initial belief.
November 29, 2011
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
I know, I know: given that I teach, preach and write about the Bible for a living, I'm hardly the kind of person you think would ask this kind of question. But maybe it's precisely because I spend so much time with the Bible that this question occurs to me.
October 15, 2011
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Actually, a whole lot less than you might imagine! That may be hard to believe given the fierce rhetoric Christians often employ when talking about homosexuality,
August 18, 2011
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Did Adam and Eve exist? No. Then again, George Washington didn't cut down a cherry tree, and Paul Revere never yelled, "The British are coming," either.
August 09, 2011
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
About a third of the American populace takes everything the Bible says at face value, reading as they would a history or science textbook. I don't read the Bible this way, and can't imagine doing so. Here are four reasons why.
July 19, 2011
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Though the number of theories has grown, the three most popular are sufficiently well defined that we can consider them as we might various options on a multiple-choice quiz. So read carefully and then make your selection.
April 06, 2011
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Most people - liberals and conservatives alike - tend to evaluate the Bible's veracity based on it's factual accuracy. But what if Bible never sought to be history or science textbook in the first place? By paying attention to what the Bible actually says about itself, we might be in a better position to appreciate in what way it is true.
March 20, 2011
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
At the heart of John 3:16, the world's most famous Bible verse, is a message about God's scandalous, even offensive, love for the world.
December 30, 2010
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
When St. John writes that "no one has ever seen" God, he puts his finger on one of the most painful aspects of Christian faith. But John doesn't stop here, and his unique "Christmas story" gives us faith and hope as we enter a new year!
November 30, 2010
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
How does Matthew's distinctive witness to John the Baptist shape our understanding both of John and of Jesus?
September 12, 2009
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Stephen Colbert looks at what happens when we revere the Bible more than we read it. When he interviews the sponsor of a bill to post the 10 Commandments in court rooms, Colbert discovers the Congressman only knows 3 of the 10 commandments.
September 13, 2009
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
The Rev. Dr. David Lose explores the phenomenon of shattered expectations in light of Christ's question of his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?"
September 06, 2009
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Most Christians say the Bible holds authority in their lives, yet different Christians mean very different things by that. Here is the first of three ways contemporary Christians read and understand the Bible.
August 23, 2009
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
What do you find curious or confusing about the Bible? Let's hear your questions and join in conversation.
August 19, 2009
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
Do you read the Bible? Statistics show that most mainline Christians don't - why? Join the conversation!
August 23, 2009
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
The Rev. Dr. David Lose probes Jesus' difficult teaching in John 6:59-69, and how we should respond to it today.
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
The Rev. Dr. David J. Lose talks with Day1 host Peter Wallace about his new book about the Bible, Making Sense of Scripture.
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
The Rev. Dr. David J. Lose sits down with Day1 host Peter Wallace to discuss his love for preaching, the work of Luther Seminary, the Celebration of Biblical Preaching conference and the values of Biblical Preaching.
March 30, 2008
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
The Rev. Dr. David Lose proclaims that Easter is knowing that because we have been joined by Baptism to Jesus and that we participate in his new reality and are liberated from the oppressive realities of this life.
March 16, 2008
The Rev. Dr. David Lose
(ELCA)
The Rev. Dr. David Lose helps us see with fresh eyes and open hearts the power of the passion story where Christ embodies God's radical love for creation.
