Who Are We?

SurfOutsider.net is a service of Faith Lutheran Church of Capistrano Beach, in South Orange County California. We are Lutherans! We wish that explained everything, but it doesn't. The short, web-savvy answer to this big question is, "We represent the historic Christian faith as it is clearly expressed in the Book of Concord. " If you're a Christian and somewhat familiar with church history, you might be able to make some headway with this answer. If not, read on.

While it is difficult to compress 2000 years into a couple of paragraphs, we're still going to try. As the centuries wore on, after the founding of Christianity, the church strayed further and further from the central message Jesus had given them to deliver to the world. By the time Martin Luther the monk arrived on the historical scene in Germany, it was really getting bad. The Roman Catholic Church had hired a "used car salesman" type monk named Tetzel who ran around banging a drum and convincing people they could buy forgiveness of sins. Rome did this, in part because they needed to raise money to build St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome.

St. Paul had been pretty clear in his letters about the nature of God's forgiveness. Forgiveness is a free gift of God earned for us by Christ Jesus substituting life, death and resurrection. The Church had, in the large, forgotten what he said. It was as if Luther had rediscovered the Gospel, the good news, when he read in the first part of Romans, "...for in the gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed; a righteousness that is by faith from first to last. For just as it is written, 'the just shall live by faith.'" We Lutherans live in the shadow of Martin Luther's rediscovery. Jesus is our "righteousness that is by faith."

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