Lead Time
Lead Time
Sports and Sermon Writing with Peter Nafzger
What if the discipline and hard work you put in playing sports could be translated into a fruitful ministry? Join us in a captivating conversation with Peter Nafzger, a professor at Concordia Seminary, as we explore this exciting intersection between sports and ministry. Pete carries an enthralling perspective on sports and teamwork, which he relates beautifully to collaboration in ministry. We reflect on our shared experiences on the basketball court and how these have shaped our outlook on teamwork.
Communication holds a significant place in all relationships, more so in pastoral ministry. Pete walks us through his journey of developing love for homiletics and presents a refreshing perspective on competition, seeing it as striving with and not against. We also touch upon the crucial role of life-on-life conversations in the digital age where unplugging from technology seems rare. You'll gain insights into Pete's unique method of sermon writing and memorization, visualizing different rooms in a house and assigning images to each page of the sermon.
Finally, we explore the evolving future of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. We discuss how the church can better serve its congregations and the role of collaboration and respect in these future adaptations. We also reflect on the early church and how the gospel moved forward with little organizational policy or structure, imparting a sense of trust in the Holy Spirit and the story of Jesus. Listen in for a hearty conversation with Peter Nafzger and enrich yourself with valuable insights on ministry, sermon writing and the church's future.
Join the Lead Time Newsletter! (Weekly Updates and Upcoming Episodes)
https://www.uniteleadership.org/lead-time-podcast#newsletter
Visit uniteleadership.org
Leigh Time is a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective hosted by Tim. Ollman and Jack Calliver. The ULC envisions 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 UniteLeadershiporg. This is Leigh Time.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Leigh Time, tim Ollman here. Jack Cowberg is still, if you listened last week. He's still not with us. He's flying in. His flight got canceled and so he's not able to be on this recording today. But I do have a wonderful, wonderful friend, a guest today, peter Nafsker. Pete has served in a rural congregation and now been a professor teaching homo-letics at Concordia Seminary in St Louis. Now for how long has it been, pete? Has it been like seven, eight years, something like that?
Speaker 3:This is my eighth year.
Speaker 2:Eighth year. Yeah, yeah. So Pete and I know each other. He was a respected, wise, sage fourth-year student when I came as this young 22-year-old, 23-year-old, to the seminary. You were a part of many of my first experiences at the seminary. I remember playing basketball at Fontbonne and lifting. Maybe it was a Fontbonne, was it Fontbonne? What was that gym? The floor that? It was just a crummy floor. What?
Speaker 3:was that? Yeah, when we were in transition, when the field house wasn't operable, we had some other gym we played in.
Speaker 2:That was really I don't even remember the name. Anyway, I remember talking to you and one of my conversations that's always gonna ring true is just getting my theological mind about me. I think I was in Okamoto, lutheran mind, and having this real fear of the Lord. I don't know if you remember this conversation. It's one I definitely do. We're shooting free throws or something like that, and I think I said something like Pete, this is kind of a big deal because we could really really mess this up, like if the old man or woman, the old man in me, kind of shines forth and like I could lead people away from the promises of God toward eternal damnation. Are you kidding me? Is something like that? And I remember you? Do you remember what you said or do you even remember that conversation? No, I don't. Yeah, you said, like Tim, one, it's not about you and two, the Holy Spirit lives within you and you're just gonna go on a journey to grow as a proclaimer of the word of God. Basically, settle down, bro, you're gonna be just fine and I know you've offered that sort of love and care. You're a spiritual father for many of our students that are at the seminary and just thank you for being who you are.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about basketball, though, before we get into, maybe, deep theology. What did sports teach you? That's translated into ministry, because, in my experience, pete man not that everybody has to be an athlete Some people got blessings in different ways. You were a very good, very good basketball player, very good point guard at Concordia, seward and then, obviously, at the seminary. But what did God teach you in athletics? That's translated into ministry, bro. Thanks for hanging out with me, by the way. This is fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my pleasure, it's good to talk. Yeah, those years shooting free throws and back in seminary days that's about as fun of basketball as it gets in my opinion. But yeah, playing, especially team sports any sport is good in terms of discipline and hard work and working toward a goal and that kind of stuff, but especially team sports like basketball, where you have to find your role and fulfill your role and depend on others. I wrote a blog post about this a couple of years ago. I don't do much online, but I did this for our theology blog.
Speaker 3:In my opinion, some of the best pastors were the best basketball players and vice versa. And not because there's something about sports, but because you have to work with others. You have to sacrifice, you have to mourn together, rejoice together, put others ahead of you and learn to play your role. And I think that's to me for ministry. You know, in a congregation especially, but in a church body is such a team sport. If we can't work together and collaborate, then we're not gonna be very faithful. And the same happens with sports. If you can't work together on a team, you're not gonna succeed. Even if you win, you're not gonna succeed.
Speaker 2:Facts, dude. I remember a few years ago I've been back a couple of times playing the alumni game and that was some of the most fun, dude being just yucking it up and we are remarkably out of shape and we happened. I don't know how it happened, but three or four years ago it was right before COVID we happened to win a game. And like that doesn't happen for us in the everyday experience, what about a cool memory? What do you remember of that victory? That was spectacular.
Speaker 3:I was so torn on that because I'm the coach of the team too, so I know these guys that we were playing against and I love these guys. And yet I talk smack all year about the big alumni game at the end of the year, and so we're getting the end. I had this. It's one of these moments, you guys. You know this moment when kind of time stops just for a second. And the last shot that went up, I remember thinking to myself, oh that better go in. I want to win so bad. And also thinking at the same time, oh that better not go in because I don't want these guys who are on the team now to lose to us. And it was conflicted, but I was happy to win, but it was a conflicted joy, I guess.
Speaker 2:Oh man, have you heard of? This was new for me, a new learning. That competition comes from the Latin word I don't even remember like what it is in Latin, but the heart of it is not striving against but striving with. And that competition, whether it's in a church, looking at another church, who may be doing some things, the Lord's really blessing. It's not I'm competing with them for more people, no, I'm learning with them. There's this like worthy rival component.
Speaker 2:And in athletics I'm coaching football right now, getting ready to go play our first game down the road, and I respect my opponent, the preparation they're putting in, and I obviously respect the preparation we're putting in. But this like striving with my brain is also going to like the husband and wife relationship. This striving with she's like one who complements me but sees all of me and wants to help me develop as a leader in my home. All of relationships are really this striving with, rather than on our worst days, it's a striving against and that's riddled with our own pride on the one hand, or our fear and our insecurity on the other hand. Have you ever heard of that kind of understanding of competition, though as a striving with, not against?
Speaker 3:And not necessarily in those terms. But I know there are some people who are starting to write about kind of a theology of sport. Because in a culture where we kind of idolize athletes and in my opinion at least, a lot of sports has gotten way out of whack in terms of how important it is for us and our children the gut reaction might be as Christians to kind of reject sport and competition as un-Christian in some way. But there's been some helpful reflection the last decade or two on kind of this kind of issue where what is good about this and what does sport teach us about human nature? That's not only fallen but also kind of a creation of God and I think some of this collaborative working together, striving with fits pretty nicely with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I agree. Another reason I love sports right now is I really like being kla ta lego and looking at的是HEY, even though I've playedMinustvor, and that is a scheme of Zoom sorry, 고き. It's uninterrupted time with no technology, where you're doing life on life. You know, eyeball to eyeball, shoulder to shoulder, and there is no technological interference in relating to someone else, and that's remarkable. Our kids, they love it, they need it right now because of how heavy technology is so super fun. How did you develop your love, your love for just communication in general? You and I both come from pastors' families and your dad was a formative and actually sending me to my first congregation in Bethlehem, lutheran, and then my dad got the privilege and honor of having you as a vicar back in the day. Man, that's pretty cool. So, yeah, how did you develop your love for pastoral ministry in broad sense, but then even homo-letics? That's what your kind of day job is at the seminary right now. So that story.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean. So relationships with people are impossible without communication, right, I mean you and I can't. We can shoot around on the basketball courts, shoot free throws all day, but if we don't engage each other in conversation then there's no relationship. It happens in families, it happens with friends, it happens in congregations and, of course, you know the scriptures are very clear that the one true God of the universe is a God of word. He's a God who relates, through speaking and attention then, to your speaking and your words and your communication is attention to relationships. And so you learned this pretty quickly.
Speaker 3:I was a pastor for nine years, and a sole pastor, preaching every Sunday that the relationship you develop with your members and your congregation through speaking, through the speaking that you as the pastor have the privilege to do, but also the listening that you do as you listen to your hearers speak back to you.
Speaker 3:It was so hard when we left our congregation up in Minnesota after being there for so long and we were so close to them, and it was because of our communication, our conversations, both formal and informal.
Speaker 3:And so, when you know, I didn't actually apply or look for this job teaching homiletics here at the Seminary, it was. I never kind of imagined doing this actually, but when I was asked to think about it I started thinking about why am I even in this ministry thing in the first place and what am I doing here? And I think about the preaching as such a central piece of a pastor's ministry for so many people. And to dive more deeply into communication, both kind of from a first article, kind of rhetoric and how do you communicate, and methods, that kind of stuff, and kind of a theological how do we? What has God doing through His word, the word made flesh, the word spoken, the word written All this is around communication and words. So to me it's fascinating and there's no end to the amount of fruitful reflection and conversation around the preaching task and the speaking task.
Speaker 2:Frankly, so good. Picture me as a young still I'm. I got hopefully a lot more years of getting the privilege of declaring God's word, law and gospel to God's people. But picture me as one of your incoming for second years. You take homiletics right.
Speaker 3:Second, third quarter first year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, spring year first year. Yeah, spring year first year. So I'm 23 years old. What are some of the first lessons you teach me, as it relates to declaring God's word in the spoken preaching form?
Speaker 3:Yeah, one of the first thing I do in our hom class. For I mean, these are guys who've come to the seminary. They're thrilled to be pastors, they're excited, and yet they're also I mean, you and I were there they're also terrified because they get to hom and all of a sudden it's no longer just turning papers for your professor to read, it's getting up and going public and that you know, everybody knows that that's one of the greatest fears that anybody experiences speaking publicly. And so these students come and with one. It's a beautiful thing because they're eager and they're scared and that makes them very teachable. And I remain convinced the single most important quality for pastors to be teachable Someone who can learn, continue to learn throughout his ministry.
Speaker 3:But so we do this exercise the first day of class and I read a section of a really great book by Frederick Buchner and I read about a page about what's going on when the sermon hymn ends and the pastor gets ready to speak. He kind of spreads out that moment to like a whole page and reflecting on what's going on in the hearts and the minds of the people who are putting their hymnals away. And what's going on as the preacher is kind of walking up and he's laying out his note cards like a riverboat gambler, buchner says. And then he says, well, he's about to open his mouth to speak and what's he gonna say? And it's this pregnant moment that I read nice and slow for the guys. And then I stop right at that moment before he speaks and I tell the guys what are you gonna say, what are you doing?
Speaker 3:And the rest of the class period is they have. I give them a blank sheet of paper and say write as much or as little as you want on this page. What is the preacher doing when he opens his mouth to speak? And then the next day we come back the next class period and talk about what they wrote. And it's that moment of preaching. That is such a privilege, I know you feel?
Speaker 3:this. I don't preach every Sunday anymore. I don't preach nearly as often as I used to, but the idea that the congregation every week will stop what they're doing, set aside all distractions and look at you and invite you to speak into their lives. You can lose their attention pretty quickly if you're not careful, but you have it at the beginning and that's a huge gift in a holy covenant that they're entrusting their attention to you and you get to speak to that. Now, how we do that and what we say, then that's what we gotta study for a while.
Speaker 3:But it's a good joy to see guys think about that and take that seriously and to think about what God then is doing through his word. That's spoken, that's exciting.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it is exciting, sometimes well, it's just about every week. My pre sermon prayer is Lord Jesus. Jesus equals joy. May your joy come through every word that I say, and then how I say it. May people leave here with less of me and more of you, the kind of psalmist prayer. Not to us. Oh Lord, be the glory this is yours. But then in my human nature there's a part of me that's like I can't believe.
Speaker 2:These people are here, you know what I'm saying it's just to double down on what you're saying. Like they came, they don't wanna hear Tim, they wanna hear God's word. They wanna taste of heaven and a taste of the fruit of the spirit, the love and joy and peace, et cetera, that comes from the Holy Spirit who has claimed them in the waters of baptism, and the awe and the audacity that I would get to be the mouth beats of God. It should lead us to remarkable humility. Who am I to do this? So even my thoughts to you as a first year, I think that's an appropriate posture, because a lot of times you've been doing this for so long and you kinda get into a rut. Oh, they showed up again.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm gonna talk about what's the gospel life, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus and we're telling the same story over. And no, no, no man. You could have told the same story from so many different angles. And the fact that the word of God is living and active, to speak exactly the right word. How many times has this happened to you? We're someone, pastor, I really need to hear that today. I mean, I know the person, but I don't know all the ins and outs of what's going. But the Holy Spirit translated that word into their respective life. The mystery of it all. Pete is extraordinary. Anything else to add to that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean just the expectations that the God is gonna work, the God is gonna do something through this. Now it really is kind of a remarkable thing. It's to the external observer it's just a speech, somebody just gets up and talks. But you read the scriptures carefully and you realize that God has invested himself in the words, the faithful words, his commands and promises that we speak. He's invested himself his spirit, his power, and that's I tell guys here at the SEM. That demands our constant best efforts. And the day you stop growing as a preacher is the day you start disrespecting the office to what you've been called. Because it is tempting, when you've been doing this for a while, to feel like, okay, I kind of got this and I'll just whip out another sermon or something like that. But it's a holy task and it really is. It really is.
Speaker 2:It really is and I'm gonna go down a line of thought here. I'd love to get your opinion. With a number of the vickers I've had over the years, I really and I got this from my dad and then listening to other really, really passionate and well thought out communicators of the gospel, like memorization or letting the word kind of marinate and inform not just what you say but how you say it, and then good communication, eyeball to eyeball, looking at folks I was just at the Synod Convention and I was just at the Synod Convention and they're a number of amazing men, amazing theologians et cetera. But one thing that I was curious I guess not disappointed, but just curious is a lot of the preaching. And I get there's a time limit, so this is probably why.
Speaker 2:But a lot of the preaching is just kind of reading off of a page and it could be, if I'm going, kind of worse construction, this kind of fear of saying the wrong thing. You know to be like perfectly buttoned up, rather than this kind of freedom to express. If they have a personality that's a little bit more gregarious, like myself, it feels like in our church that kind of get, that kind of passion gets kind of snuffed down from time to time and we put on this kind of preacher voice and then, like I said, a lot of it is kind of kind of red. Yeah. Thoughts on that. I don't know, I don't know where that that comes from, because that's not how I learned in terms of preaching proclamation at the seminary under David Schmidt and others at the seminary. Any thoughts on, now we're getting into a little bit more of style as it relates to proclaiming the Word of God.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I'll just share with you kind of how I try to help students think about this. On one end of the spectrum I kind of when I teach on this in terms of using notes and referring to notes and preaching, there's kind of two ends of the spectrum and they're not exclusionary, they kind of work together. But on one end is the content focus. I really want to make sure I get this content straight and I have a lot of sympathy for that because I put a lot of effort into exactly the words I say and I want to get that out the way. I think the spirit works in the study as much as he works in the pulpit and so, getting the preparing, I want my content to be as tight and as intentional as I can. On the other end of the spectrum is engagement focus and I want to make sure I'm engaging these. Here is the stuff I'm talking about is life and death and I can't look in the eye. Then it's going to diminish the authenticity and the reception I think of it. That doesn't mean I don't believe it, but it's going to give that appearance, perhaps, of less personal investment. And so you've got these two ends of the spectrum content focus and engagement focus, and you can kind of lean too far to either side. Sometimes people lean too far to the engagement side and that leads to be a little sloppy or a little bit repetitive or rambly, or sometimes a kind of a goofy theology of the spirit. That kind of will just lead me here. Sometimes that's the air a little bit too swing too far that side. Sometimes there's so much focus on the content that you forget that you're engaging these people for their good and for their benefit and that your lack of engagement with them might actually hinder the content from getting there. And so I kind of try to help guys kind of close that gap and I give them kind of a method where they don't fudge an ounce on their content and they are fully, completely engaged.
Speaker 3:Now, to do that takes time. You can't just whip out a sermon in a couple hours and then stand up and help or stand up and read it or just shoot from the hip and you're gonna lose one of those. And so to me I couldn't get around the fact I spent a lot of time not working only on my sermon, because I was always working on my sermon no matter what I was doing, but my sermon was front and center of my seven days a week. I was, the sermon was in my head and then I had to have some dedicated time, frankly, to learn it, but to compose it in such a way that it was learnable. And so I don't want to sacrifice content or engagement, and that's what we're trying to help guys do here. We don't let them have any notes in their first sermon that they preach, but they have to turn in a manuscript, and so the idea is you're turning in a manuscript, you're paying attention content, but when you deliver it you're not allowed to look at anything.
Speaker 3:And sometimes one of the one of the greatest experiences I had preaching was this last year, a really sharp student, first year guy from one of our Concordia's really good guy, and he was really resistant. He was more leaning on the kind of the content kind of side yet and I said you know you're not getting any notes and he did not like it and he got done. So we always debrief at these during the semester. We do this, and I said guys, guy, okay, reflect on what you just did. And he's here, is his hand. He said I hate to admit it. He said but that was really good. Yes, can you go a?
Speaker 2:little bit deeper. You mentioned the method that you use. A number of our listeners are trying to keep from getting into into the rut, and I love that paradigm of content and engagement, not compromising either of them. That's what. That's what we strive for in our with all of our vickers here as well. That's a really good paradigm. So talk more about the method of memorization. Have you heard of a guy by the name of Jim Quick and Limitless? He wrote a book called Limitless and it's just a lot of brain science in terms of helpful tools for for memorization, and I'll give you one of mine. That that helps, helps me orient.
Speaker 2:As of this Saturday I'm prepping. I visualize coming into a respective house and I'm in the, the front room, and there in the front room I see a shoe and the shoe reminds me of my, my hook right, I've been saved by the Savior or whatever it is. This is gonna be my main theme, that kind of rolls. And then I move into the, to the kitchen, and there I see a pot and the pot connects me to the potter who's molding and shaping whatever it is. So there's different, there's different visuals that I see as I walk into different rooms and so on each page and our pages are about.
Speaker 2:We still write manuscripts here when we do collaborative sermon writing, pete, I don't know if I've told you a little bit about that, it's so much fun. So a number of different voices have kind of spoken into it. I don't need to go into all the details. But two preachers, because it's being preached in five, the message being preached in five different contexts, three different churches and then a multi-site. So two of those preachers have kind of put together the master manuscript and then the preacher gets two and a half if it's being in different spaces, two and a half weeks, because a lot of them are vickers right to then to then make it their, make it their own, and so it's about five pages and I got about five different, four to five different rooms that I'm walking in so I can memorize this movement through a house and 20 different images to help me. Help me on my journey of memorization through that. It's just a mnemonic device basically that makes the memorization task a little bit, a little bit easier.
Speaker 3:So I'd love to hear your, your method for memorization, pete yeah, I mean, what you're talking about, I think, is a memory palace which is kind of an ancient practice right where you you kind of locate physically or at least in your mind physically ideas with objects, with images and that kind of thing. And there's a number of really helpful books that have kind of applied that to preaching. In fact, I just preached an ordination this summer for graduate and I, you know, I did it this this summer because my eyes are going bad, I can't read hardly or without glasses and I don't bring my glasses after. So I thought I'm gonna just this one, I'm gonna plan on it and I, you know, I compose a very tight manuscript and then I practice it in the, in the pulpit, in the sanctuary, there, with kind of this. This approach, the big, the big method that we use here is we talk about oral composition and the idea that you compose the sermon with the plan to preach you without dependence on notes. You still compose it, but you compose it in such a way where you're gonna deliver it, and so that means you're paying very close attention to structure. Dave Schmidt, you mentioned when my colleagues here kind of the Dean of our homileticians group. He's really big into structure, organization of your sermon. A well organized sermon is really easy to remember, but also the the way in which you you actually talk it out.
Speaker 3:I could never be one of those guys. I know some guys compose sermons in a coffee shop or something like that. I could never do that, because when I'm working on a sermon, if it's too quiet my office for too long, then I'm not. I'm I'm not being very efficient because I'm gonna have to re-speak it. So I get my best sermon writing done when I'm walking through the park or mowing the lawn or back when I was in Minnesota, snow blowing, because I think you gotta, you gotta talk it out and then. So I have a very lively interchange between talking and then capturing what I hear myself saying and refining and then talking that and then capture that. So the manuscript I actually produce is more like a transcript that I've heard myself say. That's my personal way. Now guys have you know, god's made us all a bit different, and so how exactly a guy gets there, there's a couple different ways to get there, but oral composition is big. You compose it orally so that when you deliver it then it's it's what you've already prepared to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah no, I love that, love that so much. And it is, writing a paper is radically different than writing, writing a sermon. So you talk about structure. We use probably 60 to 70% of the time Andy Stanley's communicating for change Me, we got you, we so me. They have to like me before they listen to me.
Speaker 2:The, the theme kind of gets set connected to the scripture, and then, and then I invite the here kind of into there's a little bit of golemality, means here, right, I invite them into. There's construction in the background. Right now, from time to time People were building a gym here, pete, so, which is very exciting, neither here nor there. So then I invite the here into the theme. And then what does God say about this? And then we're going to. Maybe there's some expository preaching that takes place, and then the now, what so? What? You could say, the third function of the law, the invitation to live out, this gospel message that we've we've heard in the, in the you, the, the invitation, and then the. Imagine if, what he does on the we is, imagine if we lived as if this were were actually true, how the world be changed, we'd be changed, etc.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of eschatology that can kind of enter into the last section of that. That's about the five page sermon that that many times we end up writing. So there's that structure. There are many, many other structures that I think are very, very helpful. So give me a couple of three of your, your favorites. That may even stretch into more of the story. First person narrative use that a number of different times. So, yeah, what? What are some other structures that you and Dave really love?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a couple that are. I mean there's just, you know, as Dave talks about it, there's 30 or 40 different structures that you could employ to organize, organize your preaching and, as I tell the guys in my classes, probably the best structure is one that you didn't use last week in terms of variety, because to me I found it helpful as a pastor not to get too much of a rut of following the same structure but to push myself to do some that are kind of verse by verse expository. You take a scripture, a passage of scripture, and you go verse by verse and you reflect on that verse, you apply that verse, then you move on to the next couple of verses. That's one way to do it. You mentioned narrative preaching and story preaching. I find that to be a real helpful way to help bring people into the biblical narrative. I mean, in a way, our preaching is. Our task as preachers is to preach people into the story of God, to kind of get them out of their own false narratives. We all make up stories that we tell ourselves. We're all told stories from the outside, from our culture, that are not, that are not faithful, not accurate. We're preaching people into the narrative. I find it helpful to draw them into the narrative. There's a number of narrative structures that can be really helpful A narrative interrupted, where you bring people into the story and you step out of it once in a while and help them reflect on what we're doing. Now let's get back into the story. A story framed where you set the people up to listen to a story maybe a familiar story, but from a different perspective and then you bring them into the story and then you reflect in the back end of the other frame what just happened here and what did you experience and what does it mean for your life now as a Christian? You mentioned the story told sermon. That one's harder to do. Well, it can be done really well, but it can also be done really poorly. I can show you files of sermons that guys tried and I said I'm glad you tried that for a class because you should never try that again. But yeah, when you speak from kind of an authentic first person and you're helping people take seriously that God and Christ interact with real people who had real struggles and real emotions and real challenges, and so even a story told type of sermon could be helpful.
Speaker 3:I also personally find image-based preaching really engaging. And for image-based preaching you don't actually need to show an image. You can. Sometimes you've got screens or banners or piece of art or something. You can do that. But to help people imagine by painting a picture or by helping them reflect on an image, and it doesn't have to be some famous piece of art. It can be a kind of an image that you describe, that you've seen in everyday life. Sometimes those are probably more effective because they're more engaging on the everyday level. So I find image preaching very helpful too. There's so many structures you can use. You mentioned the Stanley one, the relational structure, and that's a really helpful way to help people think about their various relationships with each other and with God and how God relates to us. That's a really effective structure too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's so many, that's so good. Let's try not to get in any ruts as preachers for sure. So how do you A lot of Lutherans listen here, pete to lead time, and how do you differentiate Lutheran preaching from just modern evangelical preaching? What are some of the handles? And obviously this is the integrated life. As theologians we get trained in systematic history, etc. Right and practical theology, but then how do you talk about really solid Lutheran preaching?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean real solid Lutheran preaching is really solid Christian preaching, which is really solid biblical preaching. I don't really want to be distinctively Lutheran if that means somehow separate from Christian or Bible, but Lutherans are pretty intentional about making sure we don't leave certain things out, and you could summarize that really simply by Well, you could do it a couple of different ways. One is to say Jesus, jesus is. I tell guys in our class, if you take Jesus out of the sermon it should fall like a house of cards. And what's funny is that guys often will say, oh yeah, that would never happen. And then they'll compose a sermon and they'll talk kind of vaguely about God this and God that, but they never actually get to Jesus. And I have to point them out and point out to them that you know, notice here that you're speaking kind of in a very vague general way about God. But what about Jesus? What about his death and resurrection? That has to be central and if that falls out the sermon's got to collapse. So one way to put it is Jesus is going to be central to every sermon. Another way to put it is you know, we talked to Logospol as Lutherans and I actually find some confessional language a little bit more helpful to me personally than Logospol, and that is commands and promises.
Speaker 3:We speak God's commands, we speak his promises, which are all, yes, in Jesus. And so when we talk about the commands of God, well, they accuse us where we don't follow them. They also lead us, and so I'm going to preach God's commands. I'm not making stuff up here. These are God's commands, but even more so, I'm going to speak the promises of God. That's what, in a way, I think of a preacher as a promiser. Your job is to promise things on Christ's behalf, with his authority, promise things like forgiveness, life, salvation, eternity, restoration, healing, all these things that you promise as the scriptures promise them. So commands and promise. So a Lutheran approach to preaching would make sure. Yes, normed by the scriptures, yes, we're biblical, yes, we're theological, but we are Jesus front and center, and we are preaching the commands and promises of God in Christ in every sermon, and that's leading our hears to trust in Jesus and to live in his name.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 2:There is something unbelievable and this is going back to what we were talking about before when you get that moment where you know the struggle, the law, the commands have done their work, and then, because all of scripture, old Testament news, all of it points to Jesus, he is our, he is our head, and I agree at all, it falls apart unless, unless true gospel proclamation, life, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus being the fulfillment, the promised Messiah, etc.
Speaker 2:Enters into our preaching. And when that, when that work, the work has been done, the Holy Spirit is, is present for the hearer to hear and apply God's word, it almost is like and I'm not, I'm not a charismatic or whatever, but it's like this is so good, this is way bigger than me. And this, this moment where Jesus becomes just front and center as as the one who's fulfilled all of God's promises that have he did you. You look at the hearer and there are, there are some, you know, in our Lutheran context they may be like this or whatever, but some people are just like leaning in and even there's some emotion that's seen on the face, you know, and it doesn't get much better than that man to to provide the promises of God and Jesus Christ through the, through the proclamation task. It's anything more to add on on just that kind of gospel Jesus moment that takes place in the in the spoken preaching, preaching task.
Speaker 3:Well, earlier we talked about communication and engagement, kind of relating to people. And you know, every preacher knows this, as long as their eyes aren't too focused on their manuscript, when, when you're speaking in a way that that gets to the heart of the matter for people even even some of us Stoic Germans who are kind of have a hard time expressing ourselves even then we'll show just a little bit of engagement and that's communication, that's, that's acknowledgement and speaking in a way where I got into the habit you know, our congregation in Minnesota was kind of a traditional LCMS congregation and I got in the habit of saying you guys with me, are you, are you getting this, and even nods are okay, even even a little bit of recognition. But that, that two-way street, that when you're, when you're kind of getting off yourself and getting to Jesus and the things that really matter, then that really does impact people in a holistic, deep, profound way and and you don't always get to see it, but those times you do get to see it that's really a gift.
Speaker 2:What would the amen? What would the average person coming they want to hear? What would they not know? The average person not know about the preaching task? And how could they more specifically pray for their, their pastors or preachers on a consistent basis as they prepare to hear God's word? What would they not know? Pete, do you think?
Speaker 3:They probably wouldn't know how, how, how much is going on in a sermon. You know when you, when you prepare to preach a sermon, you're dealing with the text of the scriptures, you're dealing with our confession, you're dealing with the commands and promises of God, you're dealing with your hearers, which is the most complex, and I tell our students that's the most difficult. We talk about a sermon as four threads comprise a sermon the theology, the scriptures, the gospel and the hears. And the one that's the hardest is the hears, because you know you're preaching to however many, whether you're preaching a 30 or to 300 or whatever, you're preaching to people who are in very different situations, and that makes preaching really hard to try to do right by all four of those. And I think what I'd want to encourage hears is recognize the complexity and recognize your role. The role of the hear is really important in the sermon. The hears are participants in the sermon and so the hearers shouldn't just show up and say, okay, what do you got for me, pastor, I'm just going to be a consumer here, but you should come to a sermon and a service prepared to do some work with the preacher, and sometimes that work is kind of expressing yourself, letting the preacher know when he's kind of touching you in a way. Also, sometimes that work is making connections that he couldn't possibly make because he's not in your life.
Speaker 3:In terms of prayers for preachers, I would, you know, in some ways it's preacher specific. I mean, your hears probably know the areas in which you need to grow. Some preachers need to grow and get to know their community. They need to be out in the community more. Some preachers need to spend a little more time studying the Bible. Some preachers need to revisit kind of their confession. Some preachers are all kind of just heavy on law and there's not a whole lot of promise, not a whole lot of gospel, and so if you're actively involved in the preaching, then you will be equipped to know kind of how to pray for your preacher.
Speaker 3:To that end, one of the things I recommend to guys very strongly is that they would invite and solicit feedback from their hears. Sometimes preachers don't you know most people are too nice. They'll either say good sermon, pastor, or they'll go out a different door. You almost have to recruit people to give you feedback, honest, good feedback, and then you take it to heart and that's the best way to grow as a preacher. It's not necessarily to read more hometechs. I think I read one hom book in nine years as a preacher. I didn't have time for that. But you can ask your hearers what they heard. You can ask them what was helpful, what was not quite so helpful. You can have regular patterns of getting feedback from your youth, from your elderly, from your elders, from the ladies' guild, from the choir, any group, any individual. But if the preacher doesn't seek that out, most of our hearers aren't gonna be explicitly helpful to them, and so you gotta ask for that kind of help.
Speaker 2:I agree, totally agree. So there's no one way to procure feedback, right, pete? One of our methods that's been helpful is we invite a lot of different people into the, because we're seasonally sensitive, from Advent all the way into the season of Pentecost. But then in the season of Pentecost we'll do a number of different cultural series, you know, and we want a lot of their feedback on what should we be speaking about, not just what, but then the how, and I found that to be very, very helpful. So for some context, it's gonna be your board of elders, et cetera, but you really there has to be that level of trust that they want what's best for you and they're not just a consumer, they're actually a contributor, not just in the preaching task but in the ministry in general. So find those people, those women and men, and set up a rhythm of getting good feedback. I 100% agree with that. While we're coming down the home stretch, pete, I have a staff retreat I gotta get ready for here doing the pastor and church and school United thing. It's super fun, it's gonna be a good day, but this has been amazing.
Speaker 2:You and I are both multi-generational LCMS members.
Speaker 2:We care about our church almost 200 years of history and I think if people have listened to me and seen the way engage at sinning, convention and things they may have certain ideas like I'm against the LCMS or against your institutions then nothing really could be further from the truth. I'm just a parish pastor guy in a growing community trying to be faithful, to steward the people and then raise up leaders in my local context to start a new ministry to reach people, as many people as possible, with the gospel, recognizing that I think the future of the church is going to be smaller churches like ours are probably gonna be less the norm, and so what are the systems and structures that we need to come alongside developing and deploying those respective leaders? So, as you think about the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, say in 10 years from now, what are you hoping? Some of the changes are how have we evolved? And you could look at this from a culture, system, structure perspective, the vision how are you hoping the LCMS has become healthy or moving into 2033?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess I'll put it like this I don't know. I'm aware enough to know what I. There's a lot I don't know, okay, and I don't know what it's like out where you're at, out West. I knew Minnesota pretty well when I was up there. I don't know what it's like in the East Coast and the South, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:But one thing I do know is that God brings us together as His people and he calls us to work together to address both our joys and our challenges.
Speaker 3:And if I could have one hope and wish for the Synod, I don't know what it's gonna look like in 10 years and it's probably gonna look increasingly different.
Speaker 3:But if it can look like a church body that works together, that brings voices together who have different perspectives I mean in our Synod we're so close together in our Synod and the grand scheme of things, if we could have all voices at the table and if we could be respectful and thoughtful in our dialogue, I actually am convinced that the Spirit dwells in His church and he dwells in all of His baptized members and if we could work together, the church is probably gonna look a little different in Minnesota than it will out in Arizona, than it will in Seattle, than it will in Texas, and I think that's not only okay but that's actually necessary because as our nation and as the world even as it kind of as there's one global nation, it's also kind of fractured into kind of different types of groups, different areas We've got to have the ability to support each other in doing ministry in our own context in a way that is respectful and accountable but collaborative, and so I don't know what it's gonna look like, but each place is gonna have to struggle through that and we gotta struggle together.
Speaker 3:If we don't struggle together, then we're gonna be unbalanced and probably unfaithful.
Speaker 2:Truth. I've been praying for contextual hospitality, or just kindness toward unique contexts today, from the urban center to the rural center, and that we would listen to those leaders who are boots on the ground, trying to do some unique things to reach people with the gospel, because it's going to take collaboration and creativity while not compromising the truths of scripture, and this is just what the church has done. It's nothing new here. Right, I'm a historian. You look at what's going on in the global South Currently. You look at the way the gospel moved in the early church. And what's wild to me, just going to the early church, is the gospel went forward.
Speaker 2:Church multiplication, discipleship multiplication happened pretty much without a whole lot of structure for almost 250, like you know, there was not a lot of organization policy, bylaws, god's, there was just none of that. It was trusting. And what is the book of Acts? It's the book of the Holy Spirit. It was trusting the Holy Spirit keeping us aligned to that one faithful story with Jesus being at the center. It's God's story, his work in the world and our getting to partner through Word and sacrament with him. So this is nothing new. I don't think we need to be afraid. Fear should not govern our conversations. Institutional or synodical preservation shouldn't be at the forefront. What should be at the forefront is the gospel of Jesus Christ and trying to get it out to as many people as possible and as faithful of means as possible. Anything to add to close down? This has been so much fun, pete.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let me just say this. So when I came to the seminary eight years ago, I traded in a ministry to a congregation that was, first of all, really healthy. It was a blessing to serve there. But they knew why they were there and they knew who they were there for, and not for themselves but for their community. And when I came to the seminary I realized I was trading that in for kind of a support role.
Speaker 3:And I'll just say this on behalf of Concordia Seminary, even though no one's really authorized me to do this, but I will anyhow If we're not serving and helping congregations and pastors like you, then I don't know what the heck we're doing. And so this is why I so much value and appreciate your participation in the conversation, because I want to be helpful to you, to the pastors that go out there, to congregations, and the only way we're gonna do that is if we have these kind of conversations and we listen to one another. And I really view the Ministry of Concordia Seminary as a servant ministry where we are serving congregations, pastors, church workers, and we really do value what you say and what you're experiencing. So thanks for your participation in the conversation.
Speaker 2:No, thanks for your kindness and your friendship and man. It would be an honor if the Lord called. I only have one son. I have two daughters and I think they go into teaching again, like with yours. We're not forcing that at all, but Concordia, Irvine's right down the road from us here and my son would probably. I've already planted Concordia, St Paul, and Concordia, Texas and Wisconsin in the back of his mind because he wants to play football in college. He's a freshman right now, but if the Lord were to call him into a pre-SIM and into a seminary program, it would be an honor for me to have him be at St Louis residentially learning from many men who are like you.
Speaker 2:Pete, You're a gift to me and I'm grateful that you're in your role. Continue to serve with confidence and courage and humility. You're a team guy and one of the best and I'm not saying this to just one of the best examples of a churchman in our church body today. Buddy, and the way you relate to people who have a variety of different personalities and opinions, the way you relate is very spectacular. It's a gift of God for you and I know your family and those who have formed. You have a lot to do, a lot to say for that posture that you have, Pete. So continue to lead with confidence and courage, knowing Jesus is Lord of the church and we simply get to be his vessels man. So thanks for who you are Any final comments?
Speaker 2:Pete yeah.
Speaker 3:I want to see you at the alumni game in February. It's on my calendar, so get working on your free throws and we'll hopefully we'll see you back here in Santa Cruz.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, we're building this gym for our growing school in our growing community, right, and we've not had a gym Pete in Phoenix, Arizona In a hundred. It's like 110, 112 today and kids have heat warnings and they're not even able to go out and move their little bodies. They got to stay inside and so now at least we'll have some place where that's air conditioned for them. But here's what I'm doing. I'm committed to about 15 to 30 minutes of jumpers. I'm going to run me some lines, I'm going to come ready to go, Because it's one thing to shoot like just playing pig or horse. It's another thing to get your heart rate up to 150 or whatever and then knock down the 22, 23 footer dude. So I'm going to come in ready to go. It's going to be so much fun it is actually on my calendar and shout out to the preachers what a wonderful. The history of that program at Concordia Seminary is spectacular. We're not losing to Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne these days, are we?
Speaker 3:No, we've made sure to take care of that.
Speaker 2:That's good stuff, man. Shout out to the brothers at Fort Wayne as well. It's a good day, going to make it a great day. This is lead time. Sharing is caring. Please like, subscribe, comment wherever it is that you're taking it in, and we promise to have very, very practical conversations like today for you preachers, for those aspiring to become proclaimers of God's never changing word. We pray this was helpful for you. Pete, you're a dear friend. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today, buddy.
Speaker 3:My pleasure man. Good talking to you, tim See ya.
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, then go to theunitleadershiporg 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.