This week I am prepping my sermons for two Lord's Days from now as I will be leaving this Saturday for Grand Rapids, Michigan. In my stead OURC will be in the capable hands of Rev. Steve Oeverman of Escondido URC and Mr. Jon Moersch, our intern (more info on their sermons will be posted towards the end of the week).

While in Grand Rapids I will be preaching for Rev. Brian Vos at the Trinity URC (home church of uber-blogger and commenter "Rick B."). I think there may even be a "Zrim" sighting in the evening service (I'm still not convinced he's real). Here are my sermon texts and titles:

AM—Genesis 11:10–12:9, "The Beginning of a Pilgrimage"
PM—Genesis 25:1–18, "The End of a Pilgrimage"

Yet the purpose of my trip is not preaching but learning. In partial fulfillment of my ThM at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary I will be taking a course on Lutheran Orthodoxy with Dr. Robert Kolb, Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. The class looks great:

Jan 21—Foundations of Lutheran Orthodoxy
Jan 22—Martin Chemnitz
Jan 23—Theology of Lutheran Orthodoxy
Jan 24—Piety of Lutheran Orthodoxy
Jan 25—The Culture of Lutheran Orthodoxy

Also, here's my reading list (nothing like immersing oneself in Lutheranism as a means of strengthening one's Calvinism!):

Required Reading
Primary Resources
Chemnitz, Martin, Examination of the Council of Trent, Part 1. trans. Fred Kramer (St. Louis:
Concordia, 1971), pp. 457-494, 547-611.

-----. The Lord’s Supper, trans. J. A. O. Preus (St. Louis: Concordia, 1979), pp. 13-103,
119-126, 149-157, 195-224.

Gerhard, Johann. Sacred Meditations, trans.C. W. Heisler (1896, Malone, TX: Repriestination Press, 1998).

Quenstedt, Johann Andreas. The Nature and Character of Theology, trans. Luther Poellet
(St. Louis: Concordia, 1986), 9-99, 133-204.

Secondary Sources
Kolb, Robert. “Confessional Lutheran theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Reformation, ed. David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 68-79.

-----. “Dynamics of Party Conflict in the Saxon Late Reformation, Gnesio-Lutherans vs. Philippists,” The Journal of Modern History 49 (1977): 1289-1305.

-----. “Lutheran Theology in Seventeenth-Century Germany,” (review essay), Lutheran Quarterly 20 (2006): 446-473.

Recommended Reading
Kenneth G. Appold, Abraham Calov’s Doctrine of Vocatio in its Systematic Context (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998).

Friedrich Kalb, Theology of Worship in 17th Century Lutheranism, trans. Henry P. A. Hamann (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1965).

Bodo Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession. The Second Reformation in Brandenburg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).

Robert Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 2 vols. (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1970, 1972).

Robert P. Scharlemann, Thomas Aquinas and John Gerhard (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964).

Jonathan Strom, Orthodoxy and Reform: The Clergy in Seventeenth Century Rostock (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999).