Lead Time
Lead Time
Facing the Facts: An Urgent Call for Accountability in the LCMS with Rev. Drs. Scott Seidler and Ben Haupt
What if the centralized control within the church is holding back its mission?
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Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with Reverend Dr. Ben Haupt and Reverend Dr. Scott Seidler as we dissect the Mission Partners Platform—a groundbreaking initiative aiming to build a stronger, more interconnected network within the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). Reverend Dr. Ben Haupt shares his profound experiences from his new role at PLI and the awe-inspiring mission work unfolding in Mexico. Meanwhile, Reverend Dr. Scott Seidler brings an urgent call for accountability, stressing the need for congregations to set tangible goals for growth and outreach against the backdrop of current challenges facing the LCMS.
We'll also scrutinize the limitations of the current centralized system for placing theological teachers and workers within the Synod, advocating for a revolutionary shift towards a more decentralized model. This bold move could empower local entities and district presidents, restoring both trust and efficiency. Additionally, discover how contemporary tools like podcasts are reshaping the church's engagement with culture, and get a sneak peek into the upcoming Unfettered Word Conference in Ann Arbor. This conference is set to stimulate meaningful dialogue and action, urging local pastors and congregations to take ownership of their ministry missions, creating a 'Coalition of the Willing' committed to active and immediate mission work. Don't miss this riveting discussion on mobilizing for the Great Commission.
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Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time, a special episode. Today I get to hang out with two of my favorite people on planet Earth. My name is Tim Allman and I get to hang out with Reverend Dr Ben Haupt and Reverend Dr Scott Seidler. How are you, brothers, doing today? Man, doing great, doing well. Yeah, good to be with you, good, good. So we are on for a couple reasons. One we're going to be talking about the Mission Partners Platform, a group that has been up out of Michigan looking to create kind of a network of networks, and they have a conference coming up. We're going to talk a little bit about that and then just talk about the need for mission vision, more workers, more accountability in the Lutheran Church, missouri Synod. And both of these men have served faithfully Scott for gosh 25 years as a pastor, scott in the LCMS how long 28 years this past week.
Speaker 2:Praise God, but Scott and I are blessed to serve in the Phoenix Valley and Ben Haupt served for many years as a pastor and then as a leader at Concordia Seminary in St Louis and now recently has taken over as the main dude with PLI, both domestic and international. Ben, I guess just before I get going, man, a lot of people have been praying for you in this transition. And how's it going? Let me say this I just got back from Mexico City with the Mexico Lutheran Synod about 10 pastors and their wives there working with Scott and Lori Ritchie.
Speaker 2:How much fun it is to see a group of men on fire for the mission of God, seeing Word and Sacrament and the mission of the church being necessary, because God has a mission to get all of his kids back. The switch that's gone off in a lot of their heads is fantastic. And we got a whole bunch of trainers ready to be trained down in Mexico so that the Mexican Lutheran Synod would multiply churches and leaders. It's very, very inspiring. So how are you doing, ben, with your new work with PLI? I'm doing.
Speaker 4:Well, I get to work from home. I'm living here in St Louis. That hasn't meant just me kicking my feet back. I've been on the road a lot in these first two months of work, but I'm loving it. I'm loving the networking that I get to do. I'm loving how all these friendships that God has given me through the years in the Florida Georgia district and then at seminary have just begun to be rekindled. And hey, how might we work together? And so just really a sweet time uh meeting a lots of a lot of people. The pli team is. I couldn't say, uh things better about that team. They're amazing. Um, jock and gail ficken uh set us up really well for success going forward. I'm I'm especially excited about our, our core team. Scott Rishi, that you were with Scott, and Lori, that you were with Tim, with your wife Alexa, are just amazing people and they, they are really in a great spot to lead us. We have we have global partners around the world. So, yeah, things are good. I'm having fun Good.
Speaker 2:Man, yeah, it's so good. It's so good and we're praying for you and praying that a lot of what has happened internationally the churches and leaders that have been multiplied internationally would take place here in the United States. So we need it more than ever right now. So, Scott, maybe with that you've been on a kick of accountability, Scott, saying we have to be about raising up workers who want to improve themselves and go on this accountable mission journey. Talk about your kind of evolution in terms of accountability, Scott.
Speaker 3:So accountability was something that we were never really taught in seminary. You know we were raised in a day. I graduated in 1996, when the Synod was still fairly flush and you were called to be a chaplain, hopefully expand a little bit the mission. But that kind of idea that every year we expectantly reach out to, you know, get baptisms happening and new members affiliating and wayward sheep returning, just not there. And now we are at a crisis point in our synod. Our synod, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, along with every other major denomination seemingly in America, is dying.
Speaker 3:It is not long for this world and we can either bury our head in the sand and believe that by somehow providing preschool workbooks and coloring books we're going to somehow turn the tide of American Christianity relative to the Lutheran theology. It's just a delusion, if not an outright lie to ourselves. So we have to press into accountability. We have to be able to say and Tim, you and I have talked about this in a city of four or five million people, with 100,000 moving in every year here in Phoenix, is it reasonable to assume that this congregation at Shepherd, your congregation at Christ Greenfield, we may grow by 100 or 200 people in this particular city. I think it's reasonable to believe that. I think the Holy Spirit expects that. I don't know that for sure. He could frustrate our plans. But at the same time, if we're not living with a spirit of accountability and accountable achievement, we likely will never get there. Aim at nothing and you will hit it almost every time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Ben any follow up to that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, the scriptures command us to bear fruit. Right, that's straight from Genesis 1. The whole point of God putting people on the earth is to bear fruit, multiply, increase is to bear fruit, multiply, increase and to rule over the creation that God has given us and put in our stewardship. And that's a heavy responsibility. But responsibility always comes with accountability. So yeah, absolutely, we're accountable to God. We will all stand before Jesus someday and give an account. Paul is clear about that. By, of course, with the good news of justification, we we will be not guilty and because of Christ's grace, we will, will be redeemed. And yet we will have to give an account. Um, and I will have to talk about, um, the fruit that I did or did not produce. Um, I think Paul's pretty clear about that in, uh, in his epistles. Yeah, Scott.
Speaker 2:Just to get back to the need for vision in the LCMS, I mean that's been one of my biggest struggles in the 17 years as a pastor. I have seen a vision gap and we see certain districts and we're blessed to be in the Pacific Southwest districts we want a hundred new, you know, starts in the next 10 years and and I think our congregations want to be a part of that. And so there are, there are pockets in in the LCMS, to be sure, and district presidents, to be sure that are that are casting that vision. But from a national perspective, we've just, we've just really, really struggled and I think the need for vision along the you could say the traditional and you know, very, very liturgical because we're very, very liturgical to maybe more modern worship, like if there could be vision from the national level, I think vision would unite us in the midst of the diverse, diverse context that we find ourselves right now but where there is no vision. And maybe there is a vision, I just am not hearing it.
Speaker 2:From my perspective, it's a vision that focuses. Maybe this is a vision. It's a vision that focuses on purity and being the right type of Lutheran, because how do you know, vision. It's the stories that we tell, right, and I don't think we tell all the stories of what God is doing in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and it's just a very narrow, protective, maybe fear-based. The world is changing, we have to circle the wagons, and yeah, so maybe that's the type of vision that I hear, and we're just praying for a more future-focused, lost people found new ministries, started churches, growing and thriving type of a vision, and so we're trying to take responsibility, let's cast that type of vision, even though we're just normal, everyday parish pastors, you're just a leader in PLI. We just need that vacuum, that vision vacuum needs to be filled, and so we're just trying to be voices in the wilderness of this crazy chaotic, secular world in which we live, saying, hey, god is not done with the church and God is not done with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Scott, anything more to say there?
Speaker 3:Oh, about five or 10 hours. Just sit back, boys. This is going to be a while. Tim, you know, the thing I hear out in the church from those who get nervous with folks like you and I, as pastors, with Ben, is that you're always talking about vision and vision this and vision that, and it's it feels very, you know, kind of immediate. It feels very enthusiastic in the strict theological sense of enthusiasm, direct revelation from God. What is this vision thing you're talking about? So, and I just I just want to get underneath that and point out what I think is the real rub in our synod.
Speaker 3:Tim, I don't believe there is a 50,000 foot vision problem in our synod. I think that if you talk from Matt Harrison to any district president, to the most liturgical conservative chasuble wearing pastor in the middle of Nebraska, to guys like you and I, or cross cultural ministry on the West Coast, east Coast, anywhere, coast in the middle, that everyone agrees conceptually. We want to grow the kingdom of God, we want more Christians. That is the reason why Christ came. He is earnest for the redemption of all people. So that's number one. So I would say we don't have a vision problem at that level. But then we get down to increasingly smaller levels of vision conceptually, vision strategically. How do we do that? Jameson Hardy, just the other day in the Lutheran Reporter, said that the colleges and universities of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod are the greatest evangelistic field we have. It's a lie. It's a lie. There are 6,000 other places called the local congregation of the baptized that are the greatest mission fields from which the Lord Jesus Christ will enter even more lands. So, strategically, let's be clear. We have to have a conversation about what is our strategic vision. Mine is congregations matter. Congregations are the place through which the Spirit of God moves into communities.
Speaker 3:But then there's a third area and I'll wrap up after this and that is logistics, the tactics by which, whatever strategy you're going to take, vision wise, you get after it. And this is, you know, my favorite phrase logistics are for professionals, strategy is for amateurs, and we've got a synod filled with amateurs who want to talk about the concept of the mission or the strategy of the mission. And I want to raise my hands, like I know you do. Tim and Ben, you are in PLI as the great heritage. What are you going to do on Monday morning? The first thing you get in the office in order to advance the mission, because Sunday is behind us now. We've got another six days before. We've got to get up and prance around the chancel and preach messages and offer the sacrament. That important work will come.
Speaker 3:But until we get there, how are we going to advance the mission?
Speaker 3:Not, how are we going to care for the sick, how are we going to counsel the weak and needy?
Speaker 3:How are we going to encourage fellowship and a spirit of camaraderie, or, you know, navigate the ladies aid devotion that we've got to do on Wednesday night at seven o'clock after tea and crumpets? How are we getting after logistically, tactically, the mission? And I think, tim, that's where we have the vision gap, that's where we have the anxiety in our synod, because there are some who agree top line, we're all in agreement, we get together, have a district convention, it's all good. But the moment we get to tactics, the moment we get to accountable behavior in order to realize strategy and therefore greater vision, that's when I find the greatest pushback.
Speaker 3:You can't put the Holy Spirit on a clock, you can't quantify God, you can't measure spirituality. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, you can. We have an entire book in the Old Testament, as the old saw goes, called Numbers. We have accounting in the book of Acts for the achievement of conversion on the day of Pentecost, numbers, and the expectation is that that numbering orientation is going to carry over and carry farther into the church's history. It has come to a dead stop here in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, in my humble estimation.
Speaker 2:So we have to talk about more churches, more workers, healthier churches, growing churches, and we have major opportunities for growth as it relates to the worker shortage. Everybody across the board agrees toward that end and we're simply, in our context, running a local test, saying pastors and leaders have to take responsibility for raising up the next generation, not just the comfort man, but the young. Just look at Pentecost man. These were grown men who were sent. You know who said here am I send me, just like Isaiah before, like I'm ready to go.
Speaker 2:And the Holy Spirit I just read this this morning and the Holy's a sense of urgency in the LCMS for the sending of workers to bring in the harvest. And that's because I agree with you, scott. I mean, we all realize the Great Commission is the thing that God wants to get all of his kids back. But OK, what is that actually going to take? And that's where we move into the kind of edgy while you're threatening institutions, you're threatening the way we've done things over the years, and and then we don't want to talk because you're threatening the infrastructure of, of Synod. And here's the thing. Like, if anybody wants to talk to me about the how you know that's in any of these positions. We would love to have the conversation right, but I don't. My inbox gets filled with way more pastors who are in struggling congregation saying how could, how could I help with the transition, way more of those than folks in in higher ed or or in in the infrastructure of Synod right now. Scott, I know you really want to say something in response to that.
Speaker 3:Go ahead, no no, I just I agree with you. I think that, ultimately, our sticking point is getting down into the vision, that is, the tactics. And, as I've said on another episode of this, I really don't care what priority you're taking New baptisms, new converts, sheep stealing from wayward unorthodox heterodox congregations? I mean, pick your poison as far as your ministry goes. Whatever God is leading you and your church board or your elders to do, well then get after it, but get after it with accountability. What can we do better this week in order to maximize the likelihood of the outcome? That we, as a congregation of the redeemed have agreed is our greatest priority and our most likely area of achievement. It may be different for you than it is for me, I don't know, but that urgency, the spirit of urgency, gets us deeper, from vision to strategy to, ultimately, tactics. And when we don't move down into tactics, that's then where I agree with you. I think there might be a lack of urgency, because urgency moves you into the fire.
Speaker 4:All right. So, to borrow your phraseology, scott, I want to talk about a strategy that leads to, I think, two tactical changes that we must make in the Missouri Synod. So here's the strategy. The strategy is a big problem with the Missouri Synod right now, and I've talked about this on a previous episode with Tim, where we talked a lot about vision and confessing Christ, clearly accomplishing the mission. Everybody's agreed that these are things that we must do. I think we do need to focus a little bit more on mission and our theological heritage around mission. So go back to that episode where Tim and I talked about it, but at the end of that episode I threw out kind of a zinger. And here it is to unpack it even a little bit more.
Speaker 4:I think the Missouri Synod has borrowed the playbook of progressive liberalism as defined by the Great Debate by Yuval Levine, and essentially operates as a central planning, operates as a central planning, very big government approach to two things placement of theological teachers and placement of workers. So instead of having this be dispersed out and having power dispersed out to local entities like Concordia's or the seminaries who I think should be able to call their own workers without a centralized top-down system which we call prior approval right now. Our Synod in Convention gave President Harrison these powers. I think the Synod in Convention erred. Luther said councils can err. I think the convention is theologically incorrect. It is a bad idea for there to be a centralized office that places all theological teachers in our church body. Bishops did that back in the early church. That smacks of papacy, I think.
Speaker 4:Secondly, the placement of workers. We have a huge problem where local congregations do not have the right to call their own worker, like CFW Walther encouraged congregations to do. He has a whole book on this. Congregations cannot call their own worker. District presidents cannot place workers into their district. We have in the past as a church for thousands of years 1,500, maybe 1,900 years the way that workers were placed was by the local bishop, which in our case would be district presidents.
Speaker 4:But district presidents today do not have the power to place workers into congregations in partnership. They don't have the power, we would say, to certify workers. That's a very centralized process and I love our seminaries. I want our seminaries to thrive and to continue to produce workers. I spent a lot of time, sacrificed a lot of my own personal life to do that work and yet I don't think that it's right for there to be the centralized process where, if you don't go to one of our two seminaries, you can't be a worker in the Missouri Synod. I think that smacks of progressive liberalism, big government, centralized planning, and I think it's damaging the church. I agree.
Speaker 2:And what is? What is that done, scott? I mean we've lost trust when we get that far away. What has that done, scott? I mean we've lost trust when we get that far away Trust. You know there's going to be local leaders like myself that say I don't know why I can't get who I need at the right time and I don't know why my friend, who is well, he's well, able to serve in X role, I don't know why he was not like there's been no transparency around the prior approval list. We've been talking about this for a while and you're you're exactly right there, ben, I think. I think the Senate convention did did err, and to give President Harrison the benefit of the doubt like this is the way the system is. This is not against him at all. Actually, it's what the church said, it's how the church is going to operate and it's just. I agree it was an error, scott.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, I was just informed yesterday that I can't even serve on the CUI Board of Regents without prior approval from the synod president. So it's it's centralization, not just of church workers, it's centralization of governance itself. So you're caught two ways from Sunday At the end of the day. I ask the question again. I'm trying to be reasonable. What's the worst thing that's going to happen?
Speaker 3:We live in a country where, if you don't like something, there's another 599 denominational affiliations you can go to in a second. You don't like the lcms, go to the lcmc. You don't like the lcmc, go to the nalc. You don't, if you're too, too liberal for that, go to the elca. There is a lot of different options and, at the end of the day, I just don't find it as an honest statement that somehow, if we don't have this level of centralized government, we are going to lose our theological moorings. That's just stupid. It's absolutely a false statement based on the reality of our national mission and our national forms of Christianity and actually in terms of the real ministerium of our Lutheran church. I was just thinking about the fact and, ben, you can opine on this, since you were at the seminary, you know, over the past 20 years, let's just say for the sake of argument we've graduated 100 to 150 new seminary pastors through our St Louis and our Fort Wayne Seminary. That means that one-third of our Synod's ministerium has basically been trained under what we all assume is very strident orthodox, liturgically oriented practice and theology. I just find it to be ironic that we need this level of centralized governance to ensure that the distrust we have for 20 years of seminary education on both campuses is in such abject failure, without which this, then we will have aberrations and unorthodox teaching and practice over here. That is the greatest irony that is being perpetrated onto the church today.
Speaker 3:Great education, but we can't trust them. Fascinating. And if we can't trust them, why can't we trust them? The education was faulty or the certification was faulty? Well, which one is it? Is it that we're letting bad pastors through? Well, that's not my problem. That's the seminary Fire, the seminary president Fire, the seminary faculty Fire, the district presidents. If we're having a problem with certification of faulty pastors, or if we've got problems with curriculum, if we don't really trust the curriculum that we're teaching, that's a whole, nother thing entirely. Why would I here's again? This is where this, the logic, just blows me up. Why would I be asked to send any of my young men to seminary if, by your corporate behavior, matt and others, you don't trust the product being put out from the seminaries? That doesn't make any sense. So I don't want to send my guys to the seminary because you're telling me you don't trust them. It's all a logical fallacy in action. Our synod is a logical fallacy, and no one is willing to stand up and say this. And this means what? How can that be?
Speaker 4:I'm done. Here's part of the problem. I think what we've tried to do in the tactic of helping the church to confess Christ clearly according to the Word of God, the tactic to protect our confession and to ensure our clear confession, we've incorporated power in order to police it, and I don't think that that is the vision that the Reformers set out. It wasn't Luther's vision. That is the vision that the reformers set out. It wasn't Luther's vision.
Speaker 4:In the Invocavit sermons and I teach one of Luther's Invocavit sermons in this D-Min class that I'm preaching right now, called Leading by Preaching Luther says I won't force you, I will preach the word of God to you, and I love that. That's what we need. We need people talking. I might get in trouble for some of the things that I'm saying. That's unfortunate. Let the, as one of my favorite professors in college used to say, pat Ferry, let truth grapple with falsehood, right?
Speaker 4:So this book right here, the Book of Concord, did not come together because people came to convention and they voted for a power structure in order to impose the confessions on people. It's an opt in thing. Right? The confessions, each of the confessional documents, have signatures at the end of them, of them. We subscribe to these right Willingly, voluntarily. That is the way that the church succeeds and continues to confess Christ. Clearly, we act much more to this book right here the Square and the Tower by Neil Ferguson. I have all my props behind me. Neil Ferguson talks about the square and the tower, and I wish that our church body, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, looked a lot more like a square, like a network, and much less like a tower or an institution.
Speaker 2:So that's part of the problem. It is part of the problem. It is part of the problem. Luther's work on the freedom of a Christian is something we really need to wrestle with. A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, subject to none, and at the same time if you miss this a Christian is a perfectly free servant of all, subject to all. I don't know that we're modeling what it looks like to be a sacrificial servant and therefore recognizing all the gifts of the body, and Paul gets at this so eloquently, obviously, in 1 Corinthians 12, romans 12,. Where would I be apart from people who have different perspectives and different contexts, with different gifts? Who who handle change in diverse ways?
Speaker 2:I think of what we just taught in change management with the pastors in the Mexico Lutheran Synod. I mean, you've got 2.5% who are the innovators and we're annoying, you know, so I need, I need the late adopters. You know the, the data people that like, oh, slow down, you know, watch. I need, I need the late adopters. You know the, the data people that like, oh, slow down, you know, watch out. Like we just need everyone. And here here's the thing. I think, unfortunately, because the top tier, the early adopters, as well as the innovators a number of them have said. I don't know that I can do this here, like, is there room? Is there room for me in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod? And I guarantee and I can't guarantee I don't think many of the top and this is data back to your guys 2.5 and then the 13 percent who are in the early adopters, I don't think many of that group are on many of the lists for leadership in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Any response there?
Speaker 3:Craig Groeschel said in the recent leadership summit out of Willow Creek. He said average never changed the world, and his point was you need people who are going to take risks, you need people who are going to step out and be the vanguard, the tip of the spear, and that's the only way that meaningful change happens. Think about the Gutenberg Bible, think about Martin Luther. I mean, martin Luther in his day would have been if our synod was overseeing Martin Luther's behavior. He would have been removed and defrocked from the church, make no mistake about it. But Martin Luther decided that he's going to stay the course and commit and by the grace of God he had princes and electors all around him that were able to protect him materially and physically so that the things that he was saying correctly about spiritual matters, theological matters, could withstand the assaults of the evil one. So at some point in time we are going to learn in this Senate and it may be 20 years from now we need people like you, tim and Ben, who are going to continue to press the envelope and say our world is changing and this unchanging gospel needs to find different methods and tactics by which it meaningfully engages the world today than it did years ago. This podcast, by the way, is a tactic. It's a new tactic that we've adopted in order to reach this world. Nothing wrong with it, nobody's freaking out about.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, podcasts are of the devil. They're not. We have to be pliable, agile, responsive to what the culture in which we find ourselves needs. It's a new kind of vernacularity. Oh, that's a good one. I'm preaching that, I'm copywriting that word. It's a new kind of vernacularity, that word. It's a new kind of vernacularity, and it doesn't have to do with the actual phonemes and allophones of language. It has to do with the technical, digital, but, most importantly, behavioral aspects of the mission.
Speaker 4:Hey, speaking of that, Scott, I want to talk about another tactic. I want to mention a conference or a gathering that's coming up that all three of us have been a part of organizing. It's called the Unfettered Word Conference, happening October 23rd through 25th at St Luke Lutheran Church in Ann Arbor, michigan, october 23rd through the 25th, and the website we can throw it probably in show notes, but it's missionpartnersplatformcom backslash unfettered. And at this gathering we're going to start talking more about the kinds of conversation that we've had on this podcast today. In fact, part of the planning for this gathering was hey, let's do this podcast to talk a little bit specifically about some of the things that we're thinking and some of the conversations that we want to have. So I'm looking forward to being there.
Speaker 4:I know that you, scott, and Tim, are also planning to be there. We're looking forward to conversation with more people, and I think the church is blessed when people like the Bereans in Acts gather together and discuss the word of God. This is not a political conference. This isn't for us just to try to win some power for somebody. In fact, I'm quite opposed to something that would just be to win an office. I think we need a much bigger change in our church body than just one leader being in one seat. So I'm excited about that today, and I don't know any other thoughts that you all want to share about unfettered word.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Scott, talk about Redeem 21 too, and how we're praying. This conference leads toward accountable action, Scott.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, so we're going to gather and we're going to find out who the again like-minded are. The coalition of the willing. You're exactly right. The offices of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod are virtually irrelevant at this stage. The Synod in convention, the Synod by majority vote, is going to continue to decline. It is simply not able to be stopped unless there is a substantial change by choice in the upper echelons of our synod, and those that are in power there essentially have a coup and say we're going to maintain our outlook, but we're going to change the leadership in a wholesale change, so that we can get after this jewel of Christianity which is the evangelical Lutheran church, this jewel of Christianity which is the evangelical Lutheran church. Ultimately, though, it's irrelevant, because it's going to come down to what individual pastors and congregations and commissioned ministers decide to do in their local contexts, and will they pursue accountable achievement of mission and ministry. In other words, just to put numbers on this, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that you had two adult baptisms in the last 10 years. Is it possible, in your context, to find two adults in the next 12 months that may be responsive by the Holy Spirit's power? Let God be God, we can't control, we can't coerce. But to adults who, if we share the gospel with them, show them we're a caring church, show them this is a place where their souls can be restored and healed, that they might go under the waters of holy baptism. Is that possible? Can you put into place the behavioral changes in your professional work that are required for that to happen? You can't. That's where, ultimately, we're going to have the cross in the air. Of the two you know fighter jets. On the one side, one jet is going to continue to go to the right and essentially die, and that is most denominations in America. On the other side, there's another jet coming in the other direction, and these are the jets of accountability, methodical, constant behavior, and that's where we need to go. So in the aftermath, ben to your point of this conference, we're going to be putting together regional webinars, the three of us, in order to begin to stand up in our regions, the Coalition of the Willing. That is much more again locally, regionally based, where we can see each other more often during the year, and then, by God's grace, if we need to go below that into sub-regional gatherings, if that's the possibility, then we pray. The Holy Spirit would bless and anoint that kind of work as well.
Speaker 3:But at this stage the Synod, as we know it, has really come to a functional end in terms of moving national mission forward. More concerned about the pro-life movement, more concerned about raising up preschoolers in 20 years to be pastors down the road, it's too late for that. We have to be focused today it's September 5th, 2024, today on the mission, because night is coming when no one can work, and night may come tomorrow. So I'm not going to be thinking about 20 years from now. 20 years from now, I may be dead. Frankly, I'm 53, 73, do the math. About 20 years from now? 20 years from now, I may be dead. Frankly, I'm 53, 73, do the math. So I'm getting after it today and we're going to put together that regional structure and it'll be under the radar. It's just going to be a collegium of the faithful pastors of the Synod who are there and faithful to the mission achievement of the gospel, more Christians under the banner of Lutheranism.
Speaker 4:Amen. Final thought Ben, so good. I was just going to back you up theologically, Scott, with some stuff from lead and lag measures and how clarifying 4DX four disciplines of execution is. I used that at the seminary when I was explaining how can we set out a goal for how many pastors might come to the seminary. That sounds like we're co-opting the work of the Holy Spirit, but everybody was supportive when we talked about getting more pastors and actually setting a goal. Now, if we don't hit, it.
Speaker 3:We're not going to fire everybody.
Speaker 4:But we are going to then go back and look at some of our strategies, what were called lead measures that we hoped would lead to. The lag measure, the result of more people at seminary. Or, in the case that Scott was talking about, more people baptized, more adults baptized. It's saying, if we didn't get somebody that wanted to be baptized, what are we going to do differently next year? Like the story of the person that needed to shovel around and fertilize a little bit more in hopes that the tree would bear fruit. That's what we're all about. So great conversation, great to be with you guys, fun times.
Speaker 2:So if you want to hang out with us in Ann Arbor, missionpartnersplatformcom slash unfettered would love to see you there on October 23 through 25. It is a good day. Make it a great day. I'm so grateful for both of you your intellect, your love for the word of God. More than that, your love for the mission of God, god's intent to find all the lost. He leaves the 99, he goes after the one, and we just want to be a part of that mission, because the days are very short, night is coming and it is day to day, so we got to get after the work. This is lead time. Sharing is caring, like subscribe, comment wherever it is you take in podcasts, and we will continue to have Jesus-centered, mission-focused conversations, praying for a new day in the Lutheran Church, missouri Synod. Peace, the Lord. Go with you. Good job, ben. Way to go, scotty.
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