Lead Time
Lead Time
Exploring Lutheran Heritage and Faith with Reverend Bill Hartley
On today’s episode, we have an open and engaging conversation with Reverend Bill Hartley, who takes us through his unique faith journey - from the Jesus movement in the 70s, through various evangelical churches, and finally to the Lutheran Church. His recounting of both the triumphs and trials he’s experienced reveals his deep love for God and the theological depth of Lutheranism itself.
As we journey with Reverend Hartley, we delve into the nuances of Methodist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran worship, emphasizing the importance of preserving the church's historical connection dating back 1500 years. We also explore how perceptions of God and man have evolved in the modern era, and why the focus should be on the church and the community over the individual. Reverend Hartley eloquently shares his perspective on the collective theological voice of the ages, God's grace, and the transformative power of the Holy Spirit.
Lastly, we tackle the tough questions of leading a church that is resistant to change, and the trials that come with pastoral ministry. Reverend Hartley’s unwavering focus on preaching the Word of God is a true testament to his faith. Join us as we dive into discussions about engaging both the head and the heart in worship, the crucial role of church planting, and the joy that comes from the faithfulness of the few. Join us and experience a journey that covers the highs, lows, and learnings of leading a missional church, all while staying faithful to the Lutheran tradition.
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Leigh Time is a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective, hosted by Tim Ollman and Jack Calleverg. The ULC envisages the future in which all congregations fully equip the priesthood of all the believers through world-class leadership development at the local level. Leigh Time taps into biblical wisdom for practical solutions to today's burning issues. Each podcast confronts real-time struggles facing the local church in a post-Christian culture. Step into the action with the ULC at unitel leadershiporg. This is Leigh Time.
Speaker 3:Welcome to Leigh Time, tim Ollman, here with Jack Calleverg and Jack, it's good to have you back in the saddle with Leigh Time and today, wherever you are at, whether you're in your car driving, whether you're at home, maybe you're working out, maybe you just got your water for the morning, jack, you know, you got water before coffee and now you're settling in. Settling in, it's a fact. It's a fact. You should do that. Now you're settling in for a conversation with one of my favorite people on planet Earth, a brother that I got to do life with, as well as his amazing wife Got to do life with for about four or five years. And then the Lord is deployed. He was discovered, developed and then deployed for ministry to the Lutheran Church of Missouri that's ended up in the Northwest and we're gonna hear his story today. This is Reverend Bill Hartley. How you doing, Bill, I'm well, I'm well.
Speaker 2:Thanks for calling me Reverend. I never knew that.
Speaker 3:The most reverend Bill Hartley. So a little bit of Bill's background. You kind of came into the Christ Greenfield family and was just looking for some respite. You'd served in congregations outside of the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod and man ministry. You can accumulate wounds. It's not easy For those of you who don't lead in the local church. It's glorious because Jesus is king and Lord. But we accumulate over time various wounds and so you got to hang out here with us for a while and right up front is you're gonna hear listeners. I mean, bill is so, so articulate, so in love with the Lord and so in love with really our Lutheran heritage. You came to it later in life and really just took to it big time and then went through the Colic we processed and was passed with flying colors and now been serving faithfully. Talk a little bit about that journey though, the wounds that came, and then how your congregation here just loved and it was way more than me man Loved and cared for you and Karen through that journey. Welcome Bill. Well, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, became a Christian as part of the Jesus movement back in the 70s in Southern California Santa Barbara was my hometown Grew up as a non-denominational I mean not interdenominational, but non that denominations were bad. Anyone who called themselves anything but Christian was bad. We're not, my church said. We're not the only Christians, but we're Christians only. And so those Baptists and especially those Lutherans, they're bad cause. They're named after things and people.
Speaker 2:Went to Westmont College in Santa Barbara Evangelical School, did historical theology work at Wheaton College, wheaton, illinois, again an evangelical school. It was at that time I started studying the history of denominational theological development and way back then back in the 80s, I thought I want to be connected to the church of the ages. I don't want to just be connected to my local congregation, who connects me all the way back to the fathers and Augustine, even through the Middle Ages and the best of the Reformation. But that wasn't my tribe. So I stayed in ministry for about 25 years in what you would just call garden variety evangelical churches, pastored three churches and three states, and overseas. It wasn't until 2013,. I had planted a church in Mesa, arizona, and it had gone really, really well, ran into some financial fiscal difficulties. And we suddenly found ourselves, karen and I, in a situation where we needed to just go to church. And we said, well, where do we really really, where do we want to go to church? We said we want to go someplace that connects us to classical Christianity, that still believes the Bible. And so, from my time of I was the church history instructor at Phoenix Seminary for several years and as I'd go through the different denominational realities, I'd always get to Lutheranism and say, well, you know, these guys are really solid. And then I really dipped in further to the Book of Concord and I said these are the ingredients that I want in my kitchen for cooking up ministry.
Speaker 2:And so I showed up at Christ Greenfield about the time you started, tim, and walked into the foyer and looked through the glass window and there's this young guy kind of jumping around and yelling as part of his sermon. And I thought this wow, could it be that you could be classically Christian, theologically deep and rich and be enthusiastic for Jesus? Because I don't want to leave my enthusiasm for Christ on the side in order to become a stodgy traditionalist. Ah, I can't, I wouldn't. And so, tim, thank you for being a model of that and for quickly having a cup of coffee with me. I don't know if you remember, but I remember it like yesterday. I said Tim, could I, what do you need around here? Do you want me to help park cars, or I can usher, what do you want? And you looked me in the eye and say why don't you get ordained in Word and Sacrament? Okay, I don't know what that means, so explain that to me and then maybe we'll do it.
Speaker 2:And now here we are, a few years later and I've been ordained now for five years. But so I came to the LCMS through the Confessions. Not, I'm not German, I'm British, which is weird to be a British Lutheran but we've got the goods theologically We've got. We have an amazing theological tradition and if I can jump a little bit ahead, this might set up the rest of our conversation.
Speaker 2:The struggle that I've had being a Lutheran is that we are the restaurant in town that has the best ingredients in the kitchen, but our front of staff and our servers and our creative cook line were not very good. Like, we've got the stuff but we have not figured out how to get it to a public that, oh, if they could just touch it, if they could just get to it, they would love it. And so that's part of the challenge I have in ministry. Moving forward is we just really wanna see this tradition that I've come to love be loved by the world around us, not just in the States but around the world. But in many ways we are not all that lovable. I hate to break it to you two guys, but so there's a lot to talk about on that build.
Speaker 4:But before we do, I wanted to ask a follow-up question, because you said that you started expressing a desire to be historically connected very early on in your walk as a Christian. What do you think that came from? I think it's worth exploring that, because you're not the only one I think that feels that way, and I think it's probably worth just talking about, like what happens when that's there and when that's not there for people.
Speaker 2:So I was a non-denominational student at Westmont College and I was taking a class in the modern church, modern church history, and we were supposed to do an independent project. So I went to the prof and said I just want to make a chart and on the wall I want to list a bunch of big denominations and a bunch of doctrinal ideas and I want to know what they all believe about everything he goes great, that'd be a great project. And I came out of that originally growing up thinking that all the nominations were wrong. I came out and said, oh, there's, there is a.
Speaker 2:There are really good reasons why Methodist and Presbyterians worship in different places. They love Jesus but they have strong doctrinal understandings that that cause them to be the church separately better than together. Like if you believe that a man needs to make a decision to follow Christ and the other church says no, man doesn't make a decision, god's make makes the decision. It just changes the way you do evangelism. So it's okay to have different groups of people being followers of Christ in different ways. My, my becoming a Lutheran now I don't want. Well, I do. I want everyone to become. I want everyone to bump into this stuff that I bumped into. But no, there are all kinds of churches reaching all kinds of people, having different sort of emphases. I just love the depth of our emphasis. But when I went to Wheaton College I studied with a gentleman named Robert Weber Robert E Weber you might know his books Ancient, future Church.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:And he just started explaining. I remember one day he said you realize, of course, that for 1500 years of church history everyone believed that Jesus was present in the Eucharist. It wasn't until what we call modernism that the church fell off that understanding. And I thought well, why do we think we're so much smarter than all the people who were closer to Christ than we are? Could it be that we've got some intellectual idols in our head that cause us to not be able to embrace the depth of understanding? So you know, in our creed we say we believe in the communion of saints, which includes dead saints. So I started reading the theologies of people through the ages and started evaluating my personal theology in light of the collective theological voice of the ages. And the more I did that, the more I thought I want to be in that room, and the more I did that I also realized that one of the maladies of our contemporary church is that we just have so many people who say well, it's just me in the Bible. So you know, I'm a pipe fitter from Roanoke, but I have a Bible and I read it and this is what it says to me. So I'm going to plant a church and there's no. There's no depth of understanding. It's not a place where any anybody in our populace should want to park their soul for ongoing formation. There's nothing there. But that was me and I just didn't want to be a part of that anymore. So now I'm I'm, by becoming ordained in the LCMS, I'm now waiting in this big pool with a shallow end and a deep end and a slide and a diving board and the whole thing, and there is just richness to the depth of understanding and we can we can thank Luther for that. Just one little last edge Luther himself, during the days of the Reformation, was committed to staying historically rooted to the first 1500 years.
Speaker 2:A lot of the reformers just stopped, and I'm a big John Calvin fan. I really like him. But John was an isolated man who did most of his theological thinking in a study cubicle with documents, with just saying what does the Bible say, period? Now, he obviously referenced early church fathers and things like that, but there was an early modern emphasis to say let's, the dark ages are gone, let's just start from scratch. Luther kept us connected and so that I value that a lot. I feel like being a Lutheran. I am connected to the Middle Ages and the early church fathers in a way that no other Protestant tradition does, in such a robust way. So good, bill.
Speaker 3:I was reading Augustine, actually had Augustine read to me the other day and I forget where. I think, jack, you may be reading him in some of your classes and the way he eloquently and one of his passages elevates the Triune, god, the majesty, the otherness of God. And you could kind of say, historically, over the last 2000 years God has been maybe lowered a little bit and man has been elevated a little bit. And then you get the Enlightenment, individualistic age, and now God starts to kind of step under us. As individuals we historically keep the appropriate order. There is a God and we are not him, we are under him, and it doesn't go God to me, it goes God to us as the church. And then I find myself in the church and you could make kind of a general American evangelical statement to say that the I became more than the we. And so as Lutherans we say it's God for us, god distributing his means of grace, word in sacrament for us, poor, miserable, lowly sinners brought up into this thing called the fellowship of faith. If you're going to dig into our baptismal theology, bill, I mean you're going to find that the reason we baptize babies, babies, is because we are not in the church we baptize babies, babies, sinners, babies can die, all that fine, yes, but babies need to be incorporated into the body of Christ, brought into the family of faith, because it's we over me.
Speaker 3:Now to your point. If we can say that with love and charity and hospitality, and disagree, if we've got some fine nuances on our small little continuum there because I bet anybody who's a Lutheran, a historic confessing Lutheran, specifically in the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod, I think you're agreeing with what I just said. And so can we just start with the baseline of our deep, you know, quorum deo. It's about the righteous of God being fully imputed to us, coming down, flowing from the cross, the blood of Christ, the power of the resurrection Now, the indwelling Holy Spirit, not because of what we've done but because of what Jesus has done.
Speaker 3:If we can just agree on a lot of those things, the baseline of our confession, our Lutheran confession, man, how much more hospitable are we? Bill, I really hear in my years talking with you that's what you want and really that's what lead time. You all see, that's what it's all about. Let's make the Bible hospitable, hold it with an open, open hand, charitable for all denominations, most especially for the lost, those who are far from Christ. Anything to add to that Bill.
Speaker 2:As you're talking, I think about what we do liturgically and how, from the very beginning, we walk into a room together, we remember our baptism, which is our death to self and a new life that we're living, and the first thing we do is get on our knees before God and make sure that we let God know that we know that we're nothing, that the highest place in the kingdom of God is the lowest place. Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner and I grew up in churches that the opening liturgy Jack, you can appreciate this as a drummer the opening liturgy is click, click, click and we go. God, I think you're neat. That's no way to. That comes from this idea that, yeah, I'm pretty good and God's pretty good and I think I'll hang with God a little bit. He'll probably be very glad to have me as a customer at his religious business and I sure hope that they satisfy me and that's sort of a church world.
Speaker 2:I was in that church world and so we're in a place that says no, no, no, there is release for your soul. It was Bonhoeffer, in life together, who pointed out that I am the worst of sinners. Well, except for Jack.
Speaker 4:Jack is worse, but if you lost Jack, are you the worst of sinners here.
Speaker 2:You have dirt on yourself that no one else has. You know, there's nobody worse than you in your mind and there's no one worse than me in my mind, and same with. I mean for all of us. Once we get to that place. What did Jesus say about the public and who beat his breast in the back of the church? He said he's the one who left justified justified we like that word in the Lutheran world. We want to walk in our justification. Where do you fully embrace that? You fully embrace it. Another thing you said to me, tim, and again, this is a.
Speaker 2:You probably don't even remember these passing moments, but I said I was a worship pastor for years and, by the way, I was a CCM contemporary Christian. I was a Christian DJ. I was in a Christian rock band, my friend at a band. I had a mullet. There are pictures.
Speaker 2:I hope we don't find any, but I always thought a worship service, we serve God with our worship. And I remember that day. Tim, you go. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We go to worship because God serves us. We bring nothing, god brings everything. I went oh my gosh, I need to repent for 30 years of worship ministry where I was trying to work people up out of their selves to give something to God, and they would measure whether the worship was good by some kind of emotional quotient, like not only how I felt while I was doing it and how I felt God was reaching me in the midst of it, and if I leave all convicted and warm and fuzzy, then that was good worship. I'm not. I'm not hurling stones at any, I'm talking about myself. This is the worship that I led and the worship of the churches that I was a part of, and so you know. Just sorry that went off on a tangent there.
Speaker 2:But your whole issue of Bob Webber, when I studied with him, said the modern church focuses on the polar side of the imminence of God, not the transcendence of God. We care about Jesus as my homeboy, jesus as my buddy. I'm pretty good, god's good, he's good at taking me Jesus take the wheel. We're not, we're not really good at. He is beyond what we can ask, think or imagine and I'm not worthy to be in his presence. The liturgical, classical tradition in church, which the Lutherans I believe still uphold, is to is to start there in that right place, including in our theology, including in our mission. Everything comes from that. That baptismal death, and it's really cool, I mean, it's exciting, it's not. It's. When I talk like that I I sometimes sound old and icky. I don't want to. I don't want to be like that. There's life there. Yeah, that should. I mean that should just push us out the doors into ministry.
Speaker 4:So and it is counterintuitive to the American ethos, which is, I think, something that makes this type of ministry difficult in our community. The American ethos is a very rugged, individualistic kind of way of thinking. You know, pull yourself up from your own bootstraps, and there's a lot of good things about that, a lot of things that we appreciate about that, but you can understand why the form of worship that you were describing would be so appealing to people.
Speaker 2:To start right Well and if I could just write next to that the modern evangelical church preaches the law. Yes, and I was a law preacher for years. I preached a sermon and I was standing out in the back and people were coming out of the hall and they came up to me and went oh, pastor Bill, that is like you were talking to me. It just like hit me right between the eyes. Oh, I am so convicted, thank you, I'd go.
Speaker 2:Excellent, I must have done a really good sermon there, because they are just all bent by the word Right, but the law does. They have not received consolation, they aren't enthused by the gospel. But this is our problem. This is why mega churches are successful today, and the most successful ones are the ones that preach the law in a self-help sort of style, because that appeals to the contemporary listener. They're going to church because they've got a life to live and they want God's help. Well, classical church is Christ has a life to live in me and I need to go lay myself before a Christ who is now going to be Christ in me and live his life out. It's not me but God spirituality versus hey, it's me with God spirituality and the law is great, for that Law makes great self-help.
Speaker 4:So, bill, this is so great, like if that's really how we see things. And then you said, well, why is? Why is that hospitality not there? Right? Because to me, when I think about that, that should be a radical transformation on the way that we care about people. We are. We are lowering the self, not trying to elevate the self and trying to, you know, make sure that Christ is, the words of Christ are being heard, not our own words. And so, you know, shouldn't that I'm going to use the word compel, but shouldn't that inspire us to have such greater hospitality for for others? What do you think? Where do you see the breakdown? Because you mentioned sort of an issue with the front door experience for people. Talk about that, oh gosh.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm just going to take filters off. I hope that's okay. This isn't being recorded as it Okay.
Speaker 3:Yes, for many to hear, but no, speak freely, bill.
Speaker 2:I serve now as an interim pastor and I have I'm working in the Bay Area, California, with a number of churches and also have was a circuit visitor for a very short time before making a change, but have really wanted to be a part of churches. So I've gotten to know, and even when I was in Arizona, Tim, you sent me out to just go talk to all the different churches about maybe shared ways we could do church planting. And basically what I've come to find out is we have this amazing theological heritage that if we had actually taught our people that, if we had equipped our people with the truth of the word of God, if we had done more than just cataclyze junior hires, that we continually cataclyzed our adults, if we loved our truth and actually lived in our truth, we would be amazing. I, I mean this. This word is quite an indictment, but I am just sick of going to Lutheran churches that have lost two or three generations of people because they have not raised up families in the church and they blame the culture for being. The culture is changing. That's the problem. It's because they're soccer on Sundays, they go. No, it's because you're not modeling this incredible thing. I mean people would not run off to McDonald's if they could eat a Bobby Flays restaurant every week for free, but they do because we're not. We're not providing it and we're.
Speaker 2:I spent I'm an interim pastor at St Luke Church in Santa Rosa, California. Fabulous group of people. They want to be on mission for Jesus there and so for the for the first six months, I had what we call a huddle where we'd meet at nine o'clock and I would just explain to them how awesome they are as Lutherans and how this city cannot afford to not have an LCMS presence because we've got a product that no one else has. We connect to the classical faith in a Protestant way like nobody else, and if you lose this, you lose the best that church can be in the city. So we were the keepers of that and they just looked at me like deer in the headlights.
Speaker 2:I had no idea we believe that about the Eucharist. I had no idea we believe that about grace before works, no idea that we believe that about the power of the word of God to change. And they're saying, wow, we're something, aren't we? Why don't you know this? Why don't our churches know this across the land? Because I think we've dropped the ball and equipping them. So, Jack, why aren't our people as hospitable, as hospitable as maybe they should be, or if they don't look at the world differently?
Speaker 2:I think it goes back to the way we've been church, and maybe it's also because pastors have spent too much time making sure the potlucks are well stocked and that the German religious customers in the church are satisfied with their experience. We've become a bit of a Lutheran museum where we invite people to buy a ticket and come in and look at our old Lutheran wares and enjoy those, and we hire our pastors to be the curator of the Lutheran museum. But that's not the job of the leadership. We should be equipping our people for works of service and we should be equipping them at every deacon in the church, as says in 1 Timothy 3, should embrace the deep truths of the faith. Do our people in our churches know the deep truths of the faith? If they did, it would change our praxis, I agree.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree you said something earlier, bill, that I want to double back on Enthusiasm. Now Lutherans can get triggered. We don't want to be enthusiasts, but we can, should be enthusiastic, true to how God has made us our unique personality as pastors and leaders. But the joy of the Lord should be our strength and that should be evident. The peace of Christ that governs our hearts and minds, the humility of Christ that invites disciples, even us, to the table and on mission with Him. And then the historical, the deep theology of our church should be taught in sermons and in Bible studies. And the small group leaders and catechesis should not stop, especially with our families, as they're trying to do so with their precious kiddos. We're partnering with parents right in raising the next generation.
Speaker 3:But I think we've become so adverse to anything of emotionalism that the general culture of the LCMS has just become kind of remarkably introverted. And even for those of us that will enthusiastically communicate the truths of our word, you're kind of looked at like what in the world? What in the world is that? Or for churches that want to be intentional about going to where people are we talk about it with the ULC meeting felt needs they have to their stomach has to be satisfied before their mind can be engaged. So the struggles of parenting or the struggles of addiction or loneliness, whatever, like those things, the church needs to be the hands and feet of Christ, to go where they're hurting and the broken are, and then, after they're at a baseline level of peace, we start to feed them from milk to meat.
Speaker 3:I don't know that we've welcomed enthusiastic and, I could say, churches, not just pastors, but churches that have a little bit more of an extroverted, aggressive, behavioral bent. Aggressive not in a negative sense, but just we're going to get after it for the sake of those who don't know Jesus. And has that permeated from pastors to all of the baptized? I don't know that we've done that and I think that's why, as the culture has changed, we're not against the culture. Jesus loves the world, right. But as Satan is having a heyday and people are believing truths that are counter to scripture, it's almost like a 180 for us as, sociologically, in many of our churches We've got to learn a whole new way of being and we feel like, if we learn that new way of being, that somehow we're going to compromise good theology and I think that's a false dichotomy that we need to speak against. Anything to add to that is, you know, articulating that kind of wrestle. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2:No another thing you said to me one day. I said I'm not sure all the people here at Christ Greenfield are enthusiastic about their relationship with Jesus, and you told me Billy, you've got to understand. There are German Lutherans who are proud of the fact that they're not enthusiastic because we don't need to be excited about Jesus. We know the truth which, from that day on, I've treated my wife like that.
Speaker 4:I said well, I'm going to encourage people.
Speaker 2:You know that I love you. I told you that at our wedding day.
Speaker 4:I'm going to encourage people. If you're triggered by the word enthusiasm, then swap it out for passion, and you know the simplest definition for passion. It is that you care enough that you'd be willing to sacrifice something for it. If you care, like if you care that people hear the gospel, what would you be willing to sacrifice so that people get a chance to hear the gospel? You know, and maybe that inspires you to be more hospitable. Maybe that inspires you to think about using your resources differently to reach the community. I know for me it does. I feel passionate about it, and when you read Luther's writing about it, it's all over freedom of a Christian right that you've been given everything, that you have everything in Christ. If you have everything, why would you not empty yourself out and be a type of Christ for your neighbor? This faith is the source of your inspiration. It is the source of your passion for others.
Speaker 2:Well and you use that word to inspiration. You know, like our doctrine of the Holy Spirit Very clearly in the book of Acts there were moments where it says Peter full of the Holy Spirit. Well, he received the Holy Spirit as baptism. He received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, yeah, but there are moments when it says in the text he is filled with the Spirit. There's this ongoing breathing that we have with the Numa spirit that it says in Ephesians or Galatians be being filled with the Holy Spirit. It's part of our ongoing walk and we have the tendency in our tradition to doctrineify the reception of the Holy Spirit to a static condition as opposed to a living condition.
Speaker 2:I believe that when we come to church, there are spiritually gifted people in the pews that we fan into flame. Paul said to Timothy the gift that was given to us at the laying out of hands. We receive that spirit and then we fan it into flame together. We are filled with the Holy Spirit and that's experiential I'm sorry but it is and it's wholeheartedly biblical. And for us to say no experience things, we just go, we just latch on to truths and keep telling ourselves truths. But no, I encounter God, I can't go to the table without being emotional and the fact that people can go. I'm just reminded of the woman who poured the perfume on Jesus' feet and tried to dry it with her hair. Just the messiest, most ridiculously awful, inappropriate worship thing that's ever happened. And Jesus goes excellent, I like it. You know, I don't like, I don't like you.
Speaker 2:Pharisees talking about how bad that was Because, and back to what we were talking about before Jack what? How does Jesus close that story? She loves much because she's forgiven much. She knows how broken she is and how much God has done. But if you get to a point where you're not all that broken and therefore God didn't have to, god just had to do a little bond bondo on you to get you back on the road, if that's your spirituality, you're not going to. You're not going to, you're not going to feel it and you're certainly not going to exude it in your worship. But Jesus looks at people who are like that or the public can be in his breast and say they're onto it and we need to be onto that.
Speaker 2:I've been a part of churches all my life that probably overemphasized enthusiasm, but never once did I say this is a bad thing to be enthusiastic about Christ and I came to Christ during the days of the Jesus movement and there was a lot of enthusiasm because there was a lot of the flowing of the Holy Spirit, people coming to Christ. It should just stir your heart and it's weird to me to be in a place again that has such this great theological tradition that touches the realities of our brokenness in God coming in and replacing our bad cells with his good self through baptism. I mean it's so great. How can we not be enthusiastic about it?
Speaker 3:It's stunning, it's absolutely stunning. And the mercy and grace of God, the fact that Jesus comes to me as I am, whether I feel it or not, and gives me his body and blood for the forgiveness of my sins, gives me his word, whether I feel it or not, simply the fact that he receives me as I am man, that gives me great joy, great, great peace. And I think we've kind of overemphasized and we've been talking in the ULC about this for some time we've maybe overemphasized the head, right, but, as we know, human beings, we're not, we're not Gnostic, we're whole beings heart, body, mind, spirit, right, and so just a balanced Christianity that, yes, engages the head but the heart, and then the hands and the lips to carry out the word of God, to preach and to teach the word of God, to bring the message of Christ to our homes and into our neighborhoods. That is, that is the call in this day and age in which we live. That's always, that's always been the call. And I guess, to summarize this conversation, we pray, we do so with great joy, being immersed in the Word which, to double down on what you said, the Word is living, it's active, just like the air we breathe. The Spirit is living and active and we're not one of the struggles as it relates to the Spirit.
Speaker 3:Well, god told me, the Spirit told me to do it. Well, no, as Lutherans, we're going to be enthusiastic about backing up what the Spirit told us, based on what the Word of God told us, and if those things are incongruent, that wasn't the Holy Spirit, that was another Spirit, you know. But but are we immersed in the Word and then allowing the Spirit of God to give us the Word? God's never changing Word in the right, in the right way, the posture of humility and and hospitality. I'm just praying for that. More and more we're coming down the homestretch, bill. We're going to have to have you back on. Maybe a question for those who haven't been in pastoral ministry before and you've been in a number of different settings Give me your greatest joy, as well as your one of your greatest struggles as as a pastor, and give me some, give us something that that folks probably wouldn't, wouldn't even realize about the joys and and maybe the struggles.
Speaker 2:I'm going to pull all those things that you just mentioned into one one thing Philemon, chapter one. Well, philemon, the book, verse seven, I think it is Okay. I want you to be active in sharing your faith so that you know the riches of your relationship in Jesus. When you turn to a church and you want it to be missional, you want to. You want to take the people out into the field to share the gospel, so that people come to the gospel. You're not doing that just for the people who need to hear the gospel, You're doing that for your flock.
Speaker 2:To be a shepherd is to know the best grass for your sheep, and your sheep don't know, and there are times when you just know if you could, if you would just go over to this hillside with me and eat this grass, you would love it. But the people say no, no, no. We love where we are and we want to stay where we are. That's the hardest thing about being in ministry is having a vision for people's lives that comes out of the text of the scriptures and, I believe, out of the inspiration and leadership of the Holy Spirit, to want to lead them to this green pasture of being involved in the actual doing and work of Christ and they just won't go and they blame you for the tension that's created in you wanting them to get there. And I have never run into a fellow pastor who doesn't want absolutely the best for his people. I've never run to run into a pastor who doesn't want to hang out with people, doesn't want to meet them in the hospital, doesn't want to coddle and shepherd all those things that we say is shepherding but the reality of shepherding is leading them into this experience with God. And a huge part of that experience of God is being on mission with God. And those times when churches and this has happened to me and probably to a lot of pastors where the church turns on you, when all you want is for them to be experiencing something, but they won't go with you. Instead they get rid of you so that they don't have to go where. Oh, if they only went there, it would be so great for them.
Speaker 2:That is the heartbreaker of ministry for me and I've come out of a tradition that's very again, the evangelical world is very good at reaching people. I tell people regularly I've never been a part of a church that isn't growing, because the gospel changes lies and people come to Christ and you baptize and they reach their friends and churches grow, healthy churches grow. The Lord adds to their number daily those who are being saved. But if you're at a church that isn't experiencing that regularly people coming to Christ you're missing. The best thing that God has for us is to be a part of his kingdom.
Speaker 2:The parable of go out into the highways and byways on my behalf. You're the ones who are going to be there already, but you go, get more people and there is life there at the ultimate feast because of the guests that you have helped usher in. I don't want to miss that and I don't want the LCMS to miss that. Other churches are doing that. They don't have the big doctrinal heritage that we have, but they're doing that thing and I envy their the impetus and the fruit that they're bearing. And if we had that, along with everything else we have, oh my goodness. That's the church that I'm hoping to bring leadership to. I hope that we can all become.
Speaker 3:That's really good, you know, in my experience, because I share sometimes the frustration of maybe the masses, the church. The shift for me is the masses not coming along, going kind of where you think the Holy Spirit is calling you to go in your community and beyond. The shift for me Bill and I got to go here is to find joy in the faithfulness of the few. And if I here, in my mind, if I can get the Holy Spirit, can get who cares, but I can't do just what? But if the Spirit can just spring around a faithful few, say 5% of the congregation, or start with five men or women who are on your leadership team, who have that shared vision for where the church is going to go over time. And this is hard, this is hard. This is why it's probably easier a lot of times, bill, to start a new church than to revitalize a church that's struggling with where they're at and where they're going to go.
Speaker 3:But, man, if I could just get a team of five, jesus had 12 and he changes the world right that. I just moved to that smaller group of people and we agree on man, we are going, we are starting. Here's some language and that's gonna kind of trickle out through the congregation. We have a better shot if it's that way and I'm not saying that because you haven't done that, I know we try that Sometimes even getting though in some churches even finding the five is hard who can be aligned on mission for the expansion of the kingdom of God. So praise be to God. Any final words, bill, this has been a lot of fun. I really love you, care for you and your amazing wife Karen. We haven't even got to talk about Karen because she's a major part of your story, but any closing words and we'll have you back.
Speaker 2:I just want to affirm what you just said Finding a few. Because of our congregational church polity, it's easy for a congregation to collectively snuff out a few, so it takes a dynamic brand of leadership to support and lift up the few in a way that the rest will allow them to run forward. I do believe church planting is going to be critical for the LCMS in the future. I don't know if we just snap all these old wine skins into shape. We'll probably have to do a new thing. But I appreciate just having a few moments with you guys because I know you're hard. The only reason you guys do what you do is because you love Jesus and you're just whatever we can do to help advance the gospel in the best way possible and redeem the time, because the days are evil and Jesus could come back at what is it 10? Maybe at 11.
Speaker 2:So we got to be ready and we don't have that much time. So thanks for all that you're doing to help push things in the kingdom.
Speaker 3:We do love Jesus and more than that, jesus loves us, and that's why we're about getting after this gospel proclamation ministry. Sharing is caring. Please like, subscribe, comment wherever it is you're taking in lead time. Jack Great, to have you back again. That was a fun theological con and then moving into a practical conversation.
Speaker 4:We got pretty deep there on some stuff. I like it Super good, super good.
Speaker 3:So we'll be back next week with a fresh episode of lead time. We'll see you then. Thanks Jack, thanks Bill. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collector. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel and go to theunitel leadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.