Thanks for your post, because it gives me Comfort to know that an LCMS member, like myself, needs to find a way to balance the current weight the LCMS places on “doctrinal purity” with the weight the Church “fathers”—including Paul—placed on the need for us as believers to “put off” our “old self” and “be made new in the attitude” of our minds...through the power of the Holy Spirit...(Eph. 4:23) “so that Christ may dwell in” our “hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:17).
I think that corporate worship services can be a good keynote, but they don’t presume to satisfy every spiritual need. We have to carry the Lord into what we’re doing every hour of our “ordinary” day.
Just because a church wants to keep its doctrine true to the bible (which is exactly the right thing to do) doesn’t mean a life of faith has to be an utterly cerebral pursuit. The same God who made the brain made the guts too.