Lead Time
Lead Time
The Joy of Being Lutheran with Dr. Thomas Cedel
What does it take to go from fighter pilot to leader in higher education? We explore this intriguing question with Dr. Thomas Cedel, a man whose journey is as diverse as it is inspiring. From almost joining the ranks of NASA astronauts to leading Concordia University Texas, Dr. Cedel shares his thoughts on the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the spiritual richness that guides him. We discuss the comforting yet challenging path of dependency on Christ, celebrating the profound strength found in community and shared theological values.
Reflecting on the lessons learned in the cockpit, Dr. Cedel draws compelling parallels between military and church leadership. Hear about the balance of humility and confidence that defined his days as a fighter pilot and trainer, and discover how those experiences shape his approach to nurturing future leaders. We delve into the structured training models of the military and consider their application within the church. Through stories and insights, Dr. Cedel highlights the importance of character and skill in leadership.
The journey continues with a deep dive into the challenges facing the Concordia University System and its ties to the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Dr. Cedel discusses the complex dance of maintaining a strong Christian identity amidst financial strain and governance hurdles. With personal anecdotes and historical context, this episode unpacks the tension between autonomy and traditional values, urging the need for open dialogue and reform. From exploring the role of trust in leadership to addressing systemic issues within the LCMS, we navigate the intricate landscape of Lutheran education with honesty and hope.
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Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack Kalberg. I pray the joy of Jesus is your strength as we lean into a fun, jesus-filled conversation today with Dr Tom Seidel. He is a former Concordia Texas president. When we chatted a couple months ago he said I'm the only layman to serve as a Concordia University System president. Thank you for your service. Before that, though, he served our country as a fighter pilot and trainer. He almost became a NASA astronaut. This guy has been around. He was making money when he heard of the need at Concordia University, ann Arbor, and that is how he entered into Concordia University System higher education leadership. So, tom, thanks so much for your generosity of time and having a conversation with us today. How are you doing, brother?
Speaker 2:Easy pie. Like I said, it's a good day in Texas, temps below 100. And we're kind of leaning into fall here, so it's a good thing.
Speaker 1:So good.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Let's start out with the joy and the positives of what it is to be a Lutheran in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. What do you love most about being in this tribe within God's kingdom, Tom?
Speaker 2:You know what's so great? Well, there's a whole bunch of things that are great about it, that played into our life over.
Speaker 1:You know a couple boy, excuse me you're fine iced tea there you go, get it, get it that has played into our lives over.
Speaker 2:You know, we just both are hitting 75 years this year. Oh oh, I mean three quarters of a century. That's stinking old. But what I appreciate really is the clearness and the proclamation of the gospel. I mean long gospel and you know that's just so straightforward in our theology that I love it.
Speaker 2:And you know, the soul is scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone. It's not, it's not workspace, it's not all about me. In fact, it's exactly the opposite of being about me. And then how we weave vocation and calling into that is incredible, right, and what a concept to pass on to people and you know, in the educational context too is. You know, as much as our culture likes to say it's always about me, it's not, it's absolutely not. So I like that. We've obviously, penny and I, in our married life, have moved 19 times and been exposed to lots of different cultures and faith groups, and sometime we'll talk about living in Pakistan, in an Islamic country, and actually having fascinating conversations about original sin. And yeah, amazing, I mean just amazing. Yeah, amazing, I mean just amazing. But also then, looking on the other side of the whole thing, about works, right, the mean it's just a good, god-given thing to be able to clearly articulate the gospel.
Speaker 1:So that's it and to do it in community. I was on a call. I mean, it's about the relationships, isn't it? And one of the treasures, one of the chief treasures. I mean it's obviously doctrine first, but that doctrine mobilizes us from Christ into community as the church leaders, caring for one another, praying for one another. I'm just surrounded by so many really really healthy heart, body, mind, spirit leaders.
Speaker 1:And if you look in, then and this is not to disparage necessarily the non-denom movement, but isolated churches, a lot of these pastors, they really lament A lot of times. We'll get on calls with them. What do we got to learn? What do we got to learn? And they're like hey, do not forsake what.
Speaker 1:You have the treasure of doing this in community and do we have, as we're going to talk, opportunities for growth with 200, almost 200 years of history and all the ups and downs and changes in culture and context and all of that, yeah, we got stuff we got to work on, but the relationships of love and care and trust and a shout out to like I got seminary pastors that are across the synod that I just get to stay in contact with, especially now via technology, and just rejoice at what God is doing this boosts us up.
Speaker 1:This appears to be like the way of the Apostle Paul in the first century, right, I mean, he's just staying connected, staying tethered to the work of God in all these respective places. It's so invigorating. We do not walk alone and obviously we walk with the treasure of our wonderful Lutheran doctrine. To be sure, jack, as one who's since we're here, as one who kind of came from outside of the tribe I mean, you were baptized as a Lutheran but then had some time in kind of the charismatic Christian context what do you love most in addition to well, you can, yeah, what do you love most? I don't ask you that too often to well you can.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what do you love most? I don't ask you that too often. Yeah, the utter dependency on Christ as our savior.
Speaker 3:The freedom and this this is the thing is that that dependency on Christ, the hundred percent dependency on Christ, is at the same time super, super terrifying and at the same time, extremely comforting.
Speaker 3:So, you know, it's that whole kind of apocalyptic way, you know, like being remade into a new person, where you start to realize that God has done everything for you, that he is victorious for your sake, that he forgave you on the cross, that the promise of forgiveness has been delivered to you in baptism and continues to be delivered to you in the sermons and in the Lord's Supper every single week, that this sort of daily practice of confession and absolution and repentance and being born and being killed and reborn, that God is the one in charge, doing this, making this happen to you, for you, apart from me even wanting it I didn't even know that I wanted that and God comes into your heart and he transforms your heart, just like he did for Paul. Paul didn't want to become a Christian. Jesus insisted that Paul became a Christian. He pursued him and repented him and made him his.
Speaker 3:And yeah, and that's what I love about it that God loves us so much that he works that much for us, that he is pursuing us, that he is not giving up on us, that he is just constantly coming after us and even will make us suffer so that we have nobody to come to but Christ alone. Right, that God loves us so much, that he does that for us. That's what I love about our faith. It's at the core of it.
Speaker 1:Tom, were you a Lutheran, I'll let you go off, but were you a Lutheran as you were going through the military, maybe go back and just tell a little bit of that story and add on to. What do you have to say to what Jack was ripping on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I love this because, okay, so I'm a pilot, so I frame things in flying airplanes, sometimes even theology, right, which is fundamentally weird, but it's the humility of what Christ has done for us that kind of undergirds this whole thing. It's never about us, and sometimes in some of our experiences outside Lutheran land it was about others and you know it's fun to say, well, I won't even go there, but it's fundamentally never about us. And it's this humility that comes underneath the whole thing, that undergirds it all, to understand that I am a sinful human being, right, and I can't fix myself. But I can't. And it's only that grace, it's only Christ's death and resurrection, it's the Holy Spirit, is the thing that helps keep me grounded. So in flying language, okay, we'll do that.
Speaker 2:Flying airplanes is constantly this tension between humility and confidence. Right, you got to be humble enough that something you do could kill you in about two seconds, right, but also confident enough in that grace, in God's gift to you, and the same in the training that I've had flying that airplane, that I'm not going to do that. But I just see that as an incredible tension and we live with that in the world all the time, and whether you're at a university or you're a pastor. It's that tension between confidence and humility. The confidence God's given us through Christ's death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit, that gift of faith, but the humility to know that I cannot fix myself ever. So, anyways, I'll probably do another flying example sometime. That's great, I love it, tom. Well, let's get into another flying example sometime.
Speaker 1:That's great, I love it, Tom. Well, let's get into your flying years. Tell us. This is a leadership podcast. We talk about a lot of kind of first article realities of leadership on this podcast. So tell us what you learned about leadership through your years serving our country as a fighter pilot and a trainer.
Speaker 2:Well and you know what. Well, and you know what. It's absolutely amazing with, as a young person, 22 or 23 years old, being given the incredible responsibilities you do when you go into the military. I mean it's phenomenal and actually for some things I was sort of brain dead about how much responsibility I really had. But as the Air Force, the military never asked me to do something I wasn't trained and prepared for, right. They didn't put me in the cockpit of an airplane without training me. They talked to me and put me in a sequence of assignments to said here's where you're going to go. And so when I became a commander of unit, I actually went to squadron commander school. My wife went to spouses commander school. There was a whole sequence of things that happened to prepare me for that position and then subsequent. So you're on this path and they talk to you about it and you know you may get off the path. Okay, but you learn incredible leadership things.
Speaker 2:And a friend of mine who was a business team we were going to write this book and I don't know we might still do it sometime but that meant the good times, which he called the Camelot experiences that you have in life, and then the not so good times, so one of my Camelot experiences. So I was an F-16 Squadron Commander at Shaw Air Force Base, south Carolina. I mean this is like the epitome, right. You've got hundreds of people working for you, you're flying the most amazing jet ever, you're leading and Tim I use this sometimes. I said you've got to understand when it's like to lead a bunch of number ones. All right, they've been number one in everything. That's how they got there. Whether they're a second lieutenant or another lieutenant colonel, they've all been number ones. And so how do you go lead those people is a fascinating exercise. So I was blessed at that time to have a squadron chaplain who was Lutheran. Alc eventually became chief of chaplains for the Air Force and I had the highest ranking officer in the Air Force that still actively flew flung with my squadron, which everybody said holy cow, you know that's a big deal. I said yeah, but this is great.
Speaker 2:I got a three-star general hanging around the duty desk with a bunch of the lieutenants. How much better is life gift than that? He was also Lutheran. His name was Chuck Horner, the guy that ran the first Gulf War.
Speaker 2:So when he would come, you know the senior officer in the building if it was me or somebody else was creative and he'd go fly and then we'd walk him out. So I walk him out one day and we have this. You know, we had we're measured on everything right and had to be able to deploy an eight hour, 12 hour timeframes, and so he knew we had death. And he walked out one day with me and turned to me and said Cedal, your job is to prepare the next squadron commander, and walked out of the building. That's a pretty good darn leadership lesson, right, and again it comes.
Speaker 2:What's that? Jack, amen, yeah. And the question there notice, his focus wasn't on me, it wasn't on him, it was about the next generation of people that were coming through that unit and saying of people that were coming through that unit and saying, yeah, we got to do all the things to be responsible and responsive for the people of the United States, but your job is to prepare that next squadron commander, that next leader in your unit. And, to be frank, it's not about you, it's okay, but it's about who the next one is.
Speaker 3:That's immensely cool. This is so fascinating. The first thing that popped into my mind is I can't believe that they actually trained your wife, that they sent your wife to a school. Oh yeah, that blew me away. She's still got the books. So I'm a retired Army NCO.
Speaker 2:Oh nice, thanks for your service, yeah.
Speaker 3:I've thought about this a lot, like what can the church learn from the military? Obviously there's similarities, there's differences. What would you say would be some of the like maybe really great lessons that the church can learn from the military?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's a really good point, and I think our district does some of these things. So oh, by the way, one other side note one of the other senior officers in the military an Army fellow, Jack, when you reminded me of this was General John Vesey. I don't know if you all remember General Vesey. He was an LCMS Lutheran. He started as an enlisted member of the Minnesota Army National Guard, fought in World War II, got a battlefield promotion, goes from, I think he was an E-2 or an E-3 to an O-4, which is a four-star general, Not only that, to be chairman of the joint staff under Reagan and Clinton, the whole enchilada, the whole thing. And he was. And I got to meet him actually as he was retiring my last tour in the Pentagon and he was already retired, but he was a speaker at my inauguration as president of Concord University, Texas. Wow.
Speaker 3:And that's awesome and.
Speaker 2:I learned yeah, I learned as much from him as 10 other people. But I think the church, the question of understanding the incredible responsibility when we put pastors in positions and members of our schools, and whether they're preschools or elementary schools or high schools or universities is preparing those people to take those jobs and one of the most frustrating aspects to me of higher education. Okay, I'm going to give you a quote here and these will be non-attribution, I'm not going to say, but I was in the process of being elected for the Concordia University of Texas position and I asked in one of those parts of this process I said how are you going to help me, prepare me to be a president of the university? I have not done that before. The answer was we're not. I mean, that's your job. And so I see districts now I know Texas which I'm most familiar with that really do intentional processes to serve pastors and pastor spouses and then other church workers which I'm kind of really proud of in this district to help them through you know all these transitions they go through and in their leadership and congregations.
Speaker 2:Do I think it could be more intentional? Yes, I do. Do I think things like PLI and other programs help? One of the things that I'm on a roll, jack, here. So if anybody, if I get on a roll, I've got more to add here. But yeah, go, go ahead. You go ahead, ed, and then come on, I'll come back.
Speaker 3:Let me go to this point real quick. So I'm Army, right, yeah. And one of the things that impresses me about the military in general, the Army, I know the Army's perspective Number one is we're raising up different types of leaders for different types of roles. That leadership development is both a centralized and decentralized process. Yeah, yeah, and I'll give the perfect example here. So the United States Army has what I believe is the premier officer development school in the world. It's a place called West Point. It's a residential college that raises up officers. I know there's an Air Force Academy, right, but West Point is first right and it's got traditions and there's prestige and it is like the gold standard for raising up officers in the United States Army. Now here's the caveat in the United States Army. Now here's the caveat Probably less than a quarter, maybe less than 20% of the officers that are raised up in the Army go to West Point. The vast majority of officers that are raised up are raised up in a local ROTC program. Yes, in partnership with a college, in partnership with 1,400 colleges, yeah, right. So the United States Army has a centralized approach and a decentralized approach to leadership development.
Speaker 3:And here's the other thing Like you said somebody could be private, an E2, right, an E2, right and at some point in time, transition from non-commission to commission, become a lieutenant, go to ROTC right and become joint chief of staff someday, even though they didn't go to West Point. This is what happened with Colin Powell, right? Yeah, yeah, so both commissions are considered equally valid. They strengthen each other. There's more diversity because of the decentralization. There's greater scale because of the diversification, but there's also a standard of excellence because there's a West Point that pushes out what it means to be excellent, right? So I think this is something that a national church body, whether it's the LCMS or any other kind of large national church body, can take a lesson from. What is your West Point? What is your ROTC Right?
Speaker 2:I love it, I absolutely love it and, jack, you'll like this. We actually hosted the leadership chair from West Point at Concordia for his sabbatical from West Point at Concordia for his sabbatical, and he taught a class a deeply faithful man and walked in in his BDUs one time and had everybody do push-ups. I mean it was just great and the students are going what the heck is this? But I think that's right and it's the question of understanding what's important to you in leadership and how do you transmit those values through these systems. And you know, and one of the things we would get I was in this air force think that air force had no idea what to do with a phd fighter pilot.
Speaker 2:They could do math, I mean just kind of mutually exclusive events maybe, or something. But I got this think tank and it it's sort of the several questions got to what you just said, jack is, when you look at it, you got to express the value of places like west point and the naval academy and the air force academy, because they're not cheap, right, and it is actually cheaper to to have officers go through Air Force ROTC or to go through OCS or something. But they've formed a foundation, a basis. The Air Force Academy has this huge leadership center that helps ground all that. What disappoints me in the Concordia system is we need a system, too, in grounding and developing leaders in the system, and I've been on my high horse about that for a while. That is, we do not put people in senior positions in our universities or our schools that have not gone through the processes you're talking about, jack. How do we prepare them, and you know what. They don't need to be the CFO. What they need to know is what questions to ask the CFO.
Speaker 3:What are the great qualities of a CFO? If I have to hire a CFO right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's just not that you do spreadsheets right. That's pretty cool. But learning those types of things you know, one of my friends in the Concordia says, tom Risa, I think, is a perfect example. Here's a guy that's ordained, he's got a PhD in communications, he's got an MBA, he moved through the church's systems in all these different places and he goes to be a president. It's like a no-brainer, he's got it. But I think you're really right, help do the rest of the kind of transmission of values and skills and things. Okay, I'm on a roll again, tim.
Speaker 2:So I worked in this program called the Lechner Fellows and our basis for leadership development was a verse from the Psalms 78-72. And I think, tim and you and I may have talked about this, but it's where the Psalmist describes David. This incredibly flawed human being ran up and down the 10 commandments that he shepherded, led the people of Israel with an upright heart and skillful hands. It's both those things, it's not one or the other right. The character, the repentance, the humility's got to be right, but they got to be good at what they do. You know, whatever that may be, and those two together, people trust people with upright hearts and skillful hands when I was flying on the wing as the second lieutenant of a, you know, a major major or a captain, four feet from his airplane, I trusted him, and I trusted him because he was really good at what he was doing and I trusted him because he wasn't going to kill me, because he was an incredible pilot.
Speaker 1:So anyways, hey, this is awesome Operate hard and skillful hand. It's an honor to listen to two veterans talk about leadership. It really is, warms my spirit and we got a lot to learn in the church, to be sure. So tell us a story about your time with the Concordia University system and your interactions with Concordia Ann Arbor. And then you wrote, you sent me some of our struggles to communicate well, and I think you are well positioned, especially seeing the current struggles with communication connected to the Concordia Ann Arbor story, to speak words of love and truth into our community right now, in the LCMS Especially, you're one who led transition Well, praise be to God the move of Concordia, texas, a number of years ago. So just tell kind of the CUS and the CTX and the CUAA what other acronyms can I throw out? Story though from your perspective, tom, and go OK.
Speaker 2:And Jack, we got gotta talk about what was your mos? Just one question I, I had.
Speaker 3:I was a. You're not going to believe this. I was a musician in the us army band all 22 years wow that's another story.
Speaker 2:So we retired from the military. I'm on a route like jack. You know, I was in these promotable jobs and for a couple of reasons, penny and I kind of said it's either time to stay, and it's going to be another 10 years and probably back overseas again, or it's time to go. And so we prayed this. You know it was a discernment process and we finally said you know what, if we want to do something else, it's really time to do it now. So we did that and I was working for Secretary Cohen when he was Secretary of Defense and so I had a bazillion clearances and all that stuff. So I got this really good job and I get this job and I still have my 1040 income tax form from that job. And I get this job and I'm making. I still have my 1040 income tax form from that job. It's in the drawer right down here.
Speaker 2:We were making buckets of money and but we, 10 months in, both Penny and I said this isn't it, it's not about the things that are important to us. It's, and we were serving, certainly still, but it wasn't. It just wasn't it. And we in certainly still, but it just wasn't it In our hearts. We knew it wasn't it, if that makes sense, whether it was the Holy Spirit to put it there, but we knew it wasn't it? So, honest to goodness, this actually happened. So we lived in the DC area three times. So we were part of a mission church that was an offspring of an LCMS congregation in Springfield, outside Washington DC, and so we used to call it Church in a Trunk and then we got a building. So we were back for the third time and Penny and I are going through this process and literally walking down the hall in the church, a Lutheran witness was pinned on a bulletin board, on a page open to a job at Concordia in Arbor Seriously on the wall For somebody biochemistry, modern genetics, the whole thing and we both looked at it and went this could be it, and again thought and prayed about it.
Speaker 2:So I put my name in, never expecting to even get a call, and I did, and so we went through the process and eventually went up for an interview and my wife puts up with more things she's actually next door, right there, than you can ever imagine. So we get up there early for the interview, the in-person interview, and so I said, hey, let's go to the University of Michigan, check in with the Air Force ROTC detachment. So Tom's going warp eight and Penny's going like warp four, which is all fine, and she trips on some construction stuff, said oh I think I. On some construction stuff. Said oh, I think I. Anyways, we go visit dad and she. We stop and get her a cane and a crutch in a local drugstore Walgreens and then go to the interview process and I think it went well. I didn't know which way it was going to go. On the way home we stopped. We'd lived in, we grew up in Pittsburgh and it turns out she broke her leg.
Speaker 2:Oh no, wow, oh yeah, yeah, I just let you know how tough this woman is. And so we get home and it goes on, and then they call me up and said we want to offer you the job. And I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked. But we took it and took a huge pay cut and went there and it was transformational in our lives for a whole lot of reasons and you know what. It just was right. We just, you know we're working with incredible students. Lots of things needed to happen there and we were glad to be a part of it. What we didn't like were Michigan winners.
Speaker 2:We had a long ago left Michigan winners behind us, and so eventually we said you know, maybe when we're done here at Concordia, ann Arbor, you know we'll go back to South Carolina Shire Force Base or something like that. So, anyways, time goes on. Become a dean, then become a vice president, and the school was having issues. We were having issues back there, tim, and, but there was a path. We were having issues back there, tim, but there was a path. There were things we were working on. So Concordia Texas opens up a presidential search, so we call ourselves Texas Retrends. First off went to pilot training in Del Rio, texas, and then we were actually stationed in Austin when Bergstrom was an Air Force base.
Speaker 2:We went nope, this isn't it. Our call, our vocation is here. Goes through the search. They give the call to a guy. He turns it down. A week later he says no, I was kidding, I want it back. But the search committee said no, spring, early spring, february. That was an interesting process. Somebody puts my name on the list for the call again to Concordia, texas. I call up the person and say nope, take my name off. You know, our call, our vocation is here in the Ann Arbor.
Speaker 2:Two days later I get a call back from this incredible friend and said Tom, that's not your vote, it's not. This is about vocation and calling. Go through the process. If that's God's will, then that'll be that. If not, you don't have to worry about anything, you're still doing your thing. So we did trundle down the road and I'm going ah, never going to happen. You know, lay guy, it would have been if I was a commission minister. I think it might have been. We would have had different feelings. But God's sense of humor is amazing, I think sometimes we just underestimate that.
Speaker 2:So we go through the whole search process and then we have the final one and we get our call back. What I didn't know was my doctoral dissertation advisor had left Pitt and went to the University of Texas, and so my last couple meetings were at UT, which all worked out. My final defense was that Pitt was not here. What turns out, the administrative assistant's husband had him as my dissertation advisor, as his dissertation advisor, they knew more about me than anybody that I have ever known because Stan, anyways, big connection. So we go in, have the final interview. The final one was our national church body president and members of the board of directors, the CUS president, some members from there, and then the local board and the board chair. So this was a room with two of us walk in and there's 20 people in the room. And I told Penny afterwards I said this is a fight. If I had been flying I'd have gone back and got all my buddies because I didn't have enough bullets and missiles for this one. But anyways, great conversation kind of went on. Then they said we're done. We said no, we're not. And I didn't tell you. Tell you, jack and Tim, I sent the board six pages of questions, single spaced midway through the search. I think I may have told you that, tim, and yeah, because I wanted to know. Anyways, we get all done these. Next morning they said go drive around. They called us back and uh, and I told Penny this isn't going to happen, it isn't going to happen. So we sat in a room and it was with the new board chair and the chair of the search committee and Penny and I, and he just looked at me and said Tom, we want you to be the next president of Concordia, texas. And Penny said that's the first time in her life, our married life, she had ever seen me speechless and um, and it just went on from there and the school was in trouble. We, we moved down, um, I thought I knew everything and I didn't. That's okay. It was really hard leaving there. A lot of tears shed, leaving concordia and arbor, um and uh, and started a path there. That, um, and started a path there. That you know.
Speaker 2:Going back to this leadership question, sometimes it's really little things that make a difference. Right, and especially when an institution is in the woe is us place right, things were not being fixed, there were all kinds of issues and sometimes it's just small things. Example I walked into the library one day and our librarian was just a curmudgeon. I mean, great guy, librarians are great people, right and he's putting plastic sheets, these huge plastic sheets, all over the books. I said, what are you doing? He said, well, it's supposed to rain tomorrow and the roof leaks. I mean, think about that. And yeah, it's never asked for help. That institution is in a place where they didn't even want to ask for help. So, thank goodness, a great staff and we started doing some things that helped. But we fixed the roof in the library.
Speaker 2:Well, that rippled through the institution, right. And then some other things and great people, david Cluth, there were incredible people on the staff and it took, you know, the flywheel concept, right, you know. And so that wheel can spin down or spin up. Sometimes you get a spin up. Sometimes it just takes little things, just changing people's ideas and in self-perspective. So we start getting better, right, enrollment starts to grow, things start to happen, confidence starts building a little bit, and then we end up in this place and this one's really funny that you could park nowhere near the campus, which is a blessing right, the residence halls.
Speaker 2:And we started a planning process and in the meantime we had hired a couple people and some people moved on and we said we need to ask some fundamental questions here about our mission and our values and how we live those things out in this place. And so when I was in the military, one of my last jobs in the Pentagon was this planning stuff, and I got to meet some fascinating people in that. I don't know if you ever read the book Future Shock, alvin Toffler it's back in the 70s, so I actually knew him and he worked with the military a lot and they had a process that we went through. And so what we said is here are the core values, here's our core mission, here's the things we do. Now, how do we live those out in three different environments, staying where we are, which we've called it urban oasis. My predecessor named that urban oasis.
Speaker 1:Are we an?
Speaker 2:urban oasis, which means we can still do our mission values, but we're going to do them differently. And Simon said you know what, how and stuff those things are different.
Speaker 2:We could do it in suburbia, you know someplace, or we could do it in country living, and so we started that and all of a sudden that got into press because a friend of the church offered us property and it blew up. I mean, it really did. We were in the newspaper, I mean we got the best publicity you could ever imagine. And understanding that where we were was our real asset, we had the largest contiguous piece of real estate still left in central Austin. Wow, we owned it. Huge, yeah, it's huge, right. So we began I don't want to take, but we began this process and the question was how do we seek a way to do God's will in this place, you know, and wherever that may be, god's will in this place, you know, and wherever that may be? So it took a lot of work and went through a process. But this place opens up, which had been built on 400 acres actually 420, by the Schlumberger Corporation. It was their research laboratory in the United States, their main headquarters in Houston, but they're the people who learned how to drill wells sideways and all this stuff, and it became available and very environmentally sensitive area. Anyways, we get all these offers. There was 420 acres, hundreds of thousands of square feet of buildings already in place laboratories, cafeteria, all that stuff. And as we went through the process, eventually, if we're going to move, that's the place. So, again, prayer. Through this whole thing, we went to city council about the property and us it had to be rezoned to university and we became I'm serious, we would have full pages in the newspaper about this we became the white knights for that property because it's environmentally sensitive. So we went through the rezoning process in a major city in the United States and never had a no or a negative comment from anyone about us going out there. Our zoning change passed in one meeting. Is that a God thing or what? Totally, totally, and so make the short story longer or longer story shorter. We eventually moved to campus in three and a half days, sold our campus, converted that to cash for the new campus.
Speaker 2:David Clues, dan Gray all these people did incredible work moving to campus and started up with a new beginning in a place that, in one sense, changed nothing mission values, vision, state but in another sense, changed everything, because we were proud of being pre-pol on campus. People go holy cow, this is the most amazing thing. So am I ever going to do that again? The answer is no, not going to happen. Not going to happen. And there were blocks in this whole thing that God just took them away. God just took them away.
Speaker 2:And you know, I talked to the University of Texas grad school the dean's retired and I used to talk every time there about this because it was one of the biggest changes that actually ever worked in central Texas and things like that. And a student in the back we actually this was their master's and PhD program. We had some Concordia students. But one day a young lady in one of these briefings said Dr Seidel, did God tell you to move Concordia? Hmm, a good right-hand, left-hand question, kingdom question. I said we would have really liked to have had a burning bush, but we didn't. But what we did do was pray about this the whole way through, keep vision and mission and values in the forefront, walk down this road, did the very best we could and then trusted God and did it. Praise God. Yeah, we couldn't have thought this up, and so, anyways, that's making a story.
Speaker 1:No, it's a great. It's a great story and, uh, CTX has obviously been in conversation a lot recently and we don't need to go down that path per se. We've spoken with Dr Christian, et cetera, but I think, but I think there's a higher level, or maybe you could say grounding story of distrust right now connected to the Concordia University system, and you wrote me an email and said here are three of the kind of pain points and parts of the story that we've been working on as the CUS for a number of years in partnership with Synod. So would you tell a little bit of that story, Because I think this is where we can hopefully lead toward more growth and understanding and unity in our mission together in the LCMS. So thank you for leaning into that kind of more sensitive story, Tom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and let me so. After I retired and worked in the Selective Fellows and I just got to be a nutcase on Christian colleges and universities and when I was working for the contractor Jack, after I retired, I had a coworker go off and take their kid to a university and I'm not going to name it but Christian, a university, and I'm not going to name it but Christian. And they came back and they said it was a great place, a great visit, all that stuff, and you couldn't even tell it was a Christian university. And I went wrong. Answer right, that's not the point of the exercise.
Speaker 2:So as we struggled, I understand there has to be tension within these schools because it's too easy to go down the way of culture and the way of the world. I mean, that's been the tension since the creation of the world, right? And there's been some Birchell Dying of the Light. Robert Benny, who actually first book, said Birchell was wrong. Dying of the Light was about how schools inevitably go down this path, beat the path. Then Benny writes a paper a couple of years ago and says well, maybe Birchell is right. So how do you keep and there's some schools out there that have successfully done this keep that connection intentional and vibrant, both in terms of symbology, in terms of curriculum, in terms of everything, and the whole thing comes down to people. Anyways, this tension in the schools has been going on my whole career in the CUS, starting in the 90s when the Senate walked away from funding schools. So when that stopped, which everybody understands, you know the schools eventually would have to stand on their own. But they're like people, they're organisms that are going to do whatever to survive and hopefully not give up on their values. But things like Pell Grants and federal aid, and you know, none of our schools had the capability to go say we don't need any of that stuff. So in the end of my tenure at Concordia and Arbor, we were in trouble because the Senate had promised money and it never showed up. So things have been built and done depending on that money and it never showed up, which, not begrudging the Senate, they had to make tough decisions. Concordia and Arbor had to make tough decisions because of it, right. And then Concordia, texas, when I got here we had a size building half built and had the same sorts of issues.
Speaker 2:The president's issues centered around a couple of things. One, this question of ascending liability. And if you say you own us, then that is also a statement of responsibility. And now the question is you've got 10 schools with budgets bigger than anything. The Senate does I mean approaching a billion dollars with tens of thousands of students? Senate does I mean approaching a billion dollars with tens of thousands of students and employees? I mean it's an incredible enterprise. Something goes wrong. It's going to go up. So I had an argument about this once at the little committee things they had before the Sniper Conventions. They said, well, but nobody sued us so far. Well, that's not the point. That's because we stopped most of them, but someday it's going to happen and it's happened. Right Now we've got Concordia, portland and $300 million.
Speaker 2:At one time in the mid-2000s the CFO of the Senate said take everything off your websites and stuff that says the Missouri Senate operates and owns you because of issues about that liability. So there were these types of questions. Then there were types of questions about accreditation and the accrediting agencies in the United States, which are regional, and responsibilities we have from them so we can get financial aid, and that kept going back and forth. I think the credit agencies are a little bit better today than they had been back then. But the big issues they had were interference in governance of the local campus. You know, does the campus self-govern itself? Does the campus self-govern itself? And our arguments always were you know, the National Senate, we get it, but really our regional districts are the ones that understand what the school's doing. We need to have that type of close connection with our districts, and the presidents never wanted to not be part of the Lusit Missouri Synod. That was not the point. The point was how do we work out a governance structure that allows us to integrate into the higher education landscape but not give up on those values and things that make us distinctive, and still be honest and straightforward with the church? So that Tim and Jack has been going on for decades okay, decades, and the church's response has been, unfortunately, to want more control, not less. And I get it, the schools have not been perfect. Concordia Texas has not been perfect in this. But I think what we need is a time to say yes on both sides of this argument. We have not been perfect. So let's both repent and say let's work on a way to walk forward on this. And Concordia Texas' solution was to say we want our governance local, not national, and so that's the process they went through After trying to have a conversation with the Senate for more than two years about it.
Speaker 2:Here's what I've learned being an old guy right Is, and my interactions with lots of other universities it's been amazing my time since I retired is how do we codify those values, those missions, inside the institution? So it always comes down to people. It's people, and so the people that you hire, the people that are in leadership positions, have to be part of that mission. So when Concordia did its thing I mean the board's still all LCMS, the Texas district presidents, you know, a voting member of the board is still that is now state stuff in charter. So what I found in and I'll give you a couple examples of schools so I went to, I worked part-time at one school after I retired and this institution is incredible academically. And, by the way, I need to tell you the eight goofiest things colleges and universities do. Those are talking points I use when I go and talk places now, so I'll tell you those at the end.
Speaker 2:But the question is it's always people, so people you hire have to know the values and positions of the institution before they're hired, and then that's all reinforced after they're hired. That has to be a continuing piece of the institution. Well, this one place said oh yeah, that's really important to us. We tell people about it after they're hired. I'm going, that's the wrong time. They need to know beforehand and you need to see we used to call it in the military, jack, we need to see your lips moving right that you agree with this and you're fully in, because if you're not, then you're not going to be happy here and we're not going to be happy here. So that's kind of a thing. But it gets to Burchell and Benny and all these people that have written things is we need to be straightforward about that that we're a Christian institution, that we're all about the gospel of Jesus Christ we love all. The gospel is for everyone. You know it's for everyone and that when you come here, that's who we are and go. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:It's not impossible to think that a university can be very healthy, lutheran LCMS and self-governed. How do I know that? Every single congregation in this country is self-governed, and there are thousands upon thousands of self-governed schools being run through or independently from Lutheran congregations. It's a different level of scale, obviously, running an elementary school and a preschool, but virtually every one of these I mean like certainly the vast majority of them are self-governed, even though they are aligned and in affiliation to and connected to, and oftentimes staffed by, by called workers through the LCMS, right? Yet here we are, tim and I, at Christ Greenfield. We have a school. We call it a mission school because we really, really want people to enroll their non-Christian kids in our school so that they can learn about Jesus every day. So we see the school as a mission and it is independently governed, even though we're part of a district and we're part of a national body, right? And so these two things don't have to be inconsistent, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:Right yeah, hey.
Speaker 2:Tom.
Speaker 1:I'm curious to whether there's a change in spirit, because and this is having spoken with so many different leaders at so many different levels um, it appears as if trust has eroded. And because trust has eroded, say, between synod incorporated and respective other institutions, et cetera, because trust has eroded, rather than opting in as a leader, I want people to opt in. I don't want to force anybody to like you've got to be a part of our church, et cetera. No, people opt in. Every single week I'm preaching to a group of people who could be doing thousands of different things right, but they opt in because they need word and sacrament. It's the freedom of the gospel.
Speaker 1:But when we move to power and coercion, this is not an opt-in thing and the immediate moment that happens on any human being, they pull back and or fight right. We get to our amygdala hijack, systems being and we're seeing the amygdala hijack at an institutional level right now in the LCMS, leading to the erosion of trust between Concordia, respective individual universities and the CUS in partnership with the LCMS. So how do we just come back to the table? Come back to the table. I will be praying.
Speaker 1:I've said this publicly. I'm praying that Concordia, texas and there's all this stuff, the litigious nature of the relationship right now. Can confession and absolution win the day? I know it's way more complex than that, but there have been moments where confession and absolution publicly could have taken place at the last Synod convention and unfortunately power and then litigious nature of the relationship spiraled out of control and we have what we have today in the separation of CTX. So anything about the nature of the opt-in, I think the military too right, the folks that have opted in saying I'm called into this and it's been ratified, rather than the draft per se. I know there's a lot of wonderful folks with the draft, but like there's a different spirit to it when I'm opting in rather than living by power and control. Anything to say there, tom?
Speaker 2:how do we get there from here? That's the hard part, because we live in a broken world and now we have broken relationships right, and we got legal stuff going on and the church is called concordia to repentance with this whole list of things, but the church has not said we also need to repent here because we may not have done the very best we can. I think if, if there could be this question of mutual humility right, that that that comes down and says, hey, we're willing to step back, if you're willing to step back and let's, let's kind of meet where the Holy Spirit and and we can say, yes, we're sorry, because like I said.
Speaker 2:Even King Cordelia Texas knows it hasn't been perfect in this whole thing. Right, and, and so I pray every night. I got my prayer list Right Every night. That's right there, and and here's what's. I'm on a roll again, tim. Ok, so you can go time out whenever I can.
Speaker 2:But the intentionality it is hard work to keep these institutions from drifting Really really hard work, and the leadership has to be completely invested in that, because I have seen so many examples in this fellows program. Larry Rask, it was a lot of fun. He would come and talk to us about the history of all the you know, lutheran educational. He's a big history of American Lutheranism, right. And so we would have him come to this program with ELCA and LCMS and say here's where your school came from.
Speaker 2:It was amazing the number of people that had no's where your school came from. It was amazing the number of people that had no idea where their school came from. You know what was its basis. And so I think, jack, I think you're correct, I think there's ways. But I'm a science guy. It's this question of entropy in the second law of thermodynamics Things always proceed to disorder. It takes hard work to end the gospel and blessings and the Holy Spirit working in people to do this, and I still hope and pray. But, tim, there's no easy answer to this. There is not, and I wish I knew an easy answer but hey, tom coming down the homestretch, here we're just praying.
Speaker 2:We're just praying that all of the gifts.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, you don't have to be sorry that all of the gifts of the body of Christ are utilized and that requires a relationship and diverse, very diverse gifting. And I think I've said publicly, I think the top you could say the innovators and the early adopters, looking at the trajectory not just of our Concordias but the trajectory of the church at large in the LCMS we have been and I'll put myself in I'm the annoying innovator, right, there's a problem, let's try this, let's try this. You know, and I frustrate people that are the late adopters, but we need all types of folks at the table today. We need to listen and learn from one another, and one of the places where trust has been eroded is in the prior approval process and the controlling of respective lists and what type of Lutheran are you?
Speaker 1:and not just what type of Lutheran are you, but who do you associate with? And unfortunately, and this is no fault of President Harrison, this is synod and convention, which Ben Haupt in a recent podcast said Synod Convention erred when they gave too much authority at the highest level to this prior approval list and this impacts our concordias and who they hire specifically into their theology department. So any thoughts around kind of the maybe potential heavy top-down control around the prior approval process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we had talked about that some, and I think that the issue is and I actually talked to President Harrison about some of this and one of the things was my frustration with that there's not a pathway to prepare people to be presidents of universities and it's better, better, but people were put in positions and and I actually got into this with a prior, uh, chair of the lcms board, jackie and mighty joy was the chief master sergeant retired so we could do the colonel chief thing. And I said, first of all, it's impractical to put these people in these positions because it's not going to be for the good of the institution. So it's not a good thing and ultimately it becomes a process where you have not just done damage to the institution but to that person. So it's also not just impractical, it's irresponsible. So it's also not just impractical, it's irresponsible and finally, it's immoral. It is absolutely immoral to expect these people to do that.
Speaker 2:So I wrote him a paper and said you know, here's the way to do it, just like we had in the military for command positions. I knew when I was a commander there were three people lined up behind me, right? So put people some number, four or five per school, or three or four not a particular school, but that number and say we're going to do this, and if you want everybody to be ordained, say it. I mean, don't just mess with it, just say it. And then you know, help them go be head of the LCMS Foundation or to be CEF or to be whatever. And then do the DAC, shuffle the DAC. So now you've got a pool of people that can read a financial statement.
Speaker 3:So leadership pathway for them, right, yeah, and talk to them and tell them, and so I think that process.
Speaker 2:Now the question is when you're not the right version of LCMS. That is immoral. You're either LCMS or you are not LCMS. There is no version A, b, c or D, and if we have to do that, there's something deeply wrong inside the system, and that's when people need to come to repentance. When they're classifying pastors and church workers as well, you're great, but you're not good enough to go do this because you are here or there, and that's that just drives me nuts. So I think, tim, I wandered a little bit from where you were going, but I think that and that is where the distrust comes from. But I think that and that is where the distrust comes from when you say and one of the examples I think I said in that note was this was way back in the mid-2000s where a person was in one of our schools called this person to be on the theology faculty. They were turned down for the theology effect by prior approval, but then they were hired by a seminary.
Speaker 1:What the heck is that? What is that I?
Speaker 2:don't know. And does that mean? And that was one of the first things in Jack, I told Tim about this all 10 presidents, after a couple of these incidents, signed a memorandum of no, a vote of no confidence in the CUS board. All 10 presidents signed it.
Speaker 1:What year was that?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'd have to look it up. 2008-ish or so, something like that. Yeah, all 10 presidents signed it after some of these shenanigans were going on. We can't trust. And again, Tim, it comes down to that trust issue, right? What's the ballgame going on here? Tell me the rules.
Speaker 3:So it was not. A transparent process is kind of what I think people need to get a sense of, and I think that's deeply frustrating right. How do you prepare people to lead when there's not transparency on what you're looking for?
Speaker 2:There's not transparency on what you're looking for. Yeah, it's deeply frustrating and I think, tim. So that breaks trust. And now you become this spiral of distrust where you go. Well, you know that didn't work. I'm not sure I'm trusting you over here or over there.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, what it's produced is a number of pockets, or you could say tribes, and I'll just I have to speak into, like the larger church network, lcn now, and used to be kind of mega church. The word of law that I would bring to my brothers most of a different generation would be you disengaged, you didn't stay connected to listen and learn and love and care for maybe the smaller church pastor or the pastor who may have some good comments regarding maybe we're falling too far on a contemporary worship. We're kind of you know or or charismatic kind of. We didn't stay connected and I think the day and age for connection needs to come and it needs to be like my generation and a number of us that can challenge our own small little groups and our friendships and that's just to challenge at the local level. To be clear is to be kind, right, I mean we have areas of growth and could all parts of the Synod, from the top down, have a posture of humility to confess where we've erred and to confess we deeply need one another and all the gifts within the body of Christ in the LCMS, because we man it was Billy Graham or some people, I think, falsely attribute this quote but the sleeping giant of the LCMS, the Lutheran hour, the innovation that came out of the clear proclamation of the gospel into many, many homes. Could we be seen as a very, very conservative, confessional, very, very biblical, orthodox, confessing church body and, at the very same time, an innovative, sending, going, trusting, trying church body? I have to believe that's the case right and I'm just praying for that day and a lot of folks have. I think we've touched on something.
Speaker 1:I get emails from folks whenever we talk about the prior approval process like this is the thing right now. We talk about the prior approval process like this is the thing right now. If we can't just call a thing what it is, the lack of trust that is evident at the highest levels because of the prior approval process that was ratified by synod and convention. Unless we can actually talk about that, what else are we going to talk about? Like this is the pinpoint of unity or disunity in our church and we need to work toward resolving this together.
Speaker 1:And it's all about relationships. It's not just waiting around for the next Senate convention. It's about relationships, crossing the respective aisle, listening and loving one another. And hey, if you've I always say this at the end of podcasts if you've got a difference of opinion or if I'm misappropriately speaking about the prior approval process. You want to correct me? Email me and we'll have a conversation. But I think it just gets down to a trust issue, and this has been around for some time. Well, it's been around since the very beginning. God says do you trust me?
Speaker 3:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Do you trust one another? I don't know, right. And so this is just what it means to be a human being in a fallen, broken world, with the joy of of getting to follow Jesus as his hands and feet, the body of Christ out into a dark and dying world, and they will know we're Christians by the way we love and lovingly challenge one another. The world is watching and I want the world to watch the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and say, wow, that looks like Jesus. That looks like a confessing and absolving church body. Tom, anything to close, brother.
Speaker 2:Sign me up. I'm all in for that. And here's. We talked about some not so good things. So I was on campus yesterday for chapel. It was packed. It was packed, and every one of those kids at that school here's the good news of Jesus Christ. So maybe some mistakes in me, but every single one here's the good news of Jesus Christ. We don't even understand the impact of that today over time. That's, that's why I go to work. That's why I do the things I do. That's why you all do the things you do.
Speaker 1:So thanks yeah, I appreciate. Thank you, jack, I gotta point out two things.
Speaker 2:Can I point?
Speaker 1:out something for jack. Point it out, Tom.
Speaker 2:That's an F-16. See at the end of my finger. Yeah, and that's an F-4 Phantom. Just to point them out.
Speaker 3:And across the Jesus. It's right up there. Did you fly Phantoms?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh wow, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's all good. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:But anyways, tim Jack, thank you very much. It's, you know, and we just keep praying and we keep walking and we keep trusting God. That's it.
Speaker 1:That's it, and he's coming back very, very soon, and may he find a church that has a sense of love and joy and urgency to get the gospel into as many ears and hearts as possible. Until that day comes, it's a good day. Go make it a great day, tom. If people want to connect with you, man, how can they do so? You're still engaging.
Speaker 1:I love your energy, by the way, and we didn't even get into, like, what is it to be 75 years old and I'd love to be there and have the energy of a Tom Seidel. I mean, this is next level, bro. I love it. I love your passion.
Speaker 2:Well, it's having cancer twice and still being alive, so that's a good thing. We thank God for that, and but thomas T-H-O-M-A-S, dot C-E-D-E-L at concordiaedu.
Speaker 1:So good, wonderful, so good.
Speaker 2:Okay, plus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is Lead Time. Sharing is Wonderful, so good. Okay, pluses. Yeah, this is Lead Time sharing is caring Like subscribe comment, wherever it is you take in this podcast, We'll be back next week. Actually, two podcasts are being released a week. We'll see you maybe later on this week with another fresh episode of Lead Time. Wonderful work, Tom. Excellent work, Jack. God bless, See you.
Speaker 2:Jack, thanks for your service.