Embracing the Fortresses of Family, State, and Church

October 12-13, 2023

For our 2023 Fall Conference, Dr. Adam Koontz presented both the A.A. Pedersen Lectureship and the Friday Continuing Education sessions.

On Thursday evening, Dr. Adam Koontz offered a critique of misunderstandings of “law-gospel” preaching that have turned it into a framework that overrides the study of the text, and generates a law-then-gospel structure to every sermon. Instead, Koontz exhorted a traditional Lutheran understanding that privileges the text over these more recent approaches.

On Friday, for the full-day continuing education sessions, Dr. Koontz offered a summary of God’s establishment of the spheres of family, state, and church. He also shared how an understanding of these spheres and their interrelationships can guide Christian life today.

Meet the Speaker

Dr. Adam Koontz

Adam Koontz served on the faculty of Concordia Theological Seminary from Fall 2019 until Spring 2022. A 2014 CTS MDiv alumnus, he was the pastor of Mount Calvary, Lititz, Pennsylvania, and planted Concordia, Myerstown, Pennsylvania. He successfully defended his dissertation on the imitation of Paul in the Greco-Roman world in January 2020 and was awarded the PhD in Religion from Temple University in May 2020.

He and his wife, Jennifer, have seven children. He currently serves as Pastor and Evangelist at Trinity Lutheran Church in Denver, Colorado and co-hosts the podcast “A Brief History of Power” with Rev. Johnathan Fisk.