Lead Time
Lead Time
Our Current Frustrations with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod
https://www.uniteleadership.org/post/from-power-to-invitation-easing-frustration-and-building-trust-within-the-lcms
In this conversation, Tim Ahlman and Jack Kalleberg discuss the impact of culture on the local church, focusing on leadership styles, the importance of values and mission, and the frustrations within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS). They explore the contrast between coercive and invitational leadership, emphasizing the need for humility, transparency, and a spirit of invitation to foster unity and growth within the church. The discussion also touches on the role of synod and the aspirations for a vibrant future for the church community.
• Exploring coercive and invitational leadership styles
• Importance of clearly articulated mission and values
• The role of humility and confession in leadership change
• Need for transparency regarding governance within the LCMS
• Engaging local leaders in the conversation on pastoral formation
• Embracing collaborative efforts to foster unity in the church
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This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2:Happy day, welcome to Lead Time. This is the first of a number of shorter, very practical maybe culture system structure podcasts that Jack Kauberg and I are going to have today. It's just Jack and I. We'll have guests on into the future, but today, for our first episode along these kind of very short, practical conversations, we're going to be talking about culture and specifically culture that impacts the local church and also impacts our walk together as the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. So how are you doing, Jack? Doing?
Speaker 3:good Tim. It's a great time to be in ministry man. I'm loving it and I'm excited about this new series that we're doing. Like you said, culture, structure and systems super, super practical. And to kick things off, you just recently wrote a blog that I thought might be good for us to talk about, called the Power of Invitation, and in your blog you kind of talk about two different leadership styles, and I think this is important because this is something that we're walking through today as a church body. But two different leadership styles, coercion versus invitation.
Speaker 3:And just a little bit about my background. I was in the military, so the military knows about how to do coercive leadership sometimes, but you know what. Don't be surprised. They also know how to do coercive leadership sometimes, but you know what. Don't be surprised. They also know how to do invitational leadership. They are very, very knowledgeable about the fact that there's formal, systemic forms of leadership, very structured, you've got a rank and you have to obey that rank. But they also know that leadership happens through influence. So why don't you talk about that? Why don't you talk about these two styles of leadership?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So here's what I've found, both in my variety of vocations as a church leader and you learn this more even as you raise kids right, that telling people what to do does not work. It works in the short term, but it doesn't work in the long term, both for the person who is being told what to do we have this, I guess, sense of who are you and I think there's a little bit of sin here too, especially if it is someone in authority over us. So that's not always a good urge, but we do have this. Well I don't know that this is in my or our best interest when you get told what to do and ultimately, for the person who chooses coercion power over the long term. Those are not the types of leaders that people want to follow.
Speaker 2:I've come to know that and I'll just talk about right now with my kids when they're younger. When they're younger, you got to don't touch that, don't go there, you might kill yourself, right, that's definitely. You keep them alive. But then they get to the adolescent years and it's much more the guide by the side, the apprenticeship model, like leading like Jesus for teenagers into young adult years. That looks. That translates a lot better.
Speaker 2:Hey, son, you know working hard is going to be helpful for you, and choosing short-term pain for long-term gain Like this is the way of Jesus for you. Trust me, son, but I also release you to your own will, and I pray that that will lead you in the Jesus direction rather than toward pain and suffering. I'm your dad and I love you. That seems to be the discipleship even of God. The Lord disciplines those whom he loves, so if it's not centered in love, then what are we doing? And the final point is just let me Jesus is an invitational rabbi Come and follow me. He didn't like force them to do it. He said come and follow me, learn how I do it. And they dropped everything and they came and followed him. Any follow up to that, though, jack? Yeah.
Speaker 3:The difference between directing somebody and inviting somebody. It's, you know, issuing a command versus having a conversation about our shared values. That's right. And about how we work together to support our shared values as an organization right. How we work together to support our shared values as an organization right. Hopefully, as leaders in the local church, we're doing a really, really, really good job clarifying our values, Like these are our values and these values are defining or about. And the more that you do that, the more that you don't have to create rules to direct people what to do, because people are being self-directed based on our shared values. That's probably an example right there, between an invitational style versus a coercion command style of leadership. Would you agree?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean mission and values are huge, Clarifying who we are, where we're going and how are we going to treat one another on our way to their organizations that don't have that clearly articulated, then it's all about like relational negotiation based on your position in the organization and you're eventually led. If you don't have clarity on that, I don't care if it's leading at the local level or leading at a district or synod level in the church, you're going to eventually get at petty power place Right. Just do it, because I said, well, you haven't even articulated who I am.
Speaker 3:Why would I want to do that? Like, what's the point? Am I just, you know? Am I just here to get a paycheck? Right? That's not what we want church work to be about. Especially, we don't want any work to be like that, that it's just about a paycheck. We want it to be to be about calling which. That it's just about a paycheck. We want it to be about calling which means that there is a huge why behind what we're doing and, at a certain point in time, if an environment becomes too coercive, that coercion is overriding the why that brings people into service and it's just going to completely implode in on itself. It does.
Speaker 2:We just sent out a survey for all of our staff and it was remarkable. So again, we're a larger church, school, et cetera. We had, I think, over a hundred folks who filled out their full or part time. One overarching theme, Jack, is that people want now, we're not, we're definitely not a district or synod, but even in our small little organization, the big scheme of things, people at every level want to have connection to the what and the why and then the how. We interact.
Speaker 2:If people feel like and this is where communication with your direct supervisor, et cetera if people feel like I'm not intimately connected to shaping the culture and the vision of this organization, they walk. So that's a dance, we walk through this. It's very easy to maybe say, oh, you know what, Just do it, Don't ask those questions. Or the way of Jesus is humble confession. You know what and we've had to say this I didn't bring as many people to the table to own this why as I wish I should have. So please forgive me and we're going to work to do better. It seems simple enough.
Speaker 3:How does a person let's just say practically speaking, let's say maybe somebody has found themselves in that rut where they've realized they've taken on too much of a coercive slash command style of leadership? You've already talked a little bit this humble confession. What does that process look like to embrace a different style of leadership? What would be like the first step? Confess, yeah.
Speaker 2:Then what Confess and team and change and change. So I didn't have the right people maybe advising me as to you know who needed to hear what when.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to continue to bring more people where I can hear, and I need to make sure, whatever the message is, the invitational message, the vision message, whatever gets disseminated out to the right people, for feedback loops to be created. And then I'm constantly evaluating those feedback loops and giving real time updates on we heard you and now we're changing this right. So it's humility, it's team and then it's change Anything more from your perspective, jack.
Speaker 3:No, I think. Well, let's say humility is, I think, a good substitute word for that is vulnerability. I'm not perfect. I messed up sometimes my commands and I've I've fallen into that trap. I have to say, you know, I confess my sin, I can man, I am a very direct, blunt speaker and I again, 22 years in the army. It's hard for me to to let go of that and think in a more churchly way about leadership, where it's really about love and calling. You have to just acknowledge hey, you know I'm a mess, I confess my sins. My pride, my guilt, my shame is influencing my speech and I need every single day to be reminded about my identity in Christ so that I can have a more peaceful, joyful, inspirational spirit about the way that I lead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amen. So people may be wondering why are you talking about this right now? Let me be so. People may be wondering why are you talking about this right now? Let me be clear I have been in a lot of deep love and care for the culture of our synod, desiring us to be united in our common confession making Jesus, jesus, lord. But here are the two. Here are the two frustrating themes that keep coming up consistently, and we're going to have more conversation on this with people who have differing opinions. But two frustrating themes frustrations of Concordia University, respective board of regions, getting names of leaders through prior approval process, through the prior approval process. That's one and frankly, for a local pastor guy, there's so many details in that whole thing that I'm still kind of learning and sussing through. So I'm just an eager, eager ear to hear. But I've heard from Board of Regents leaders and from respective faculty members who may have been dismissed from certain roles, that something is a little bit off on that whole process. The second one is this, and this is a little bit more intimate to us at the ULC frustration and needing more vocational leaders for local LCMS churches. And continuing to hear we just need to keep doing what we're doing. Your creative ideas, your experiments, your tests and formation are not welcome. We know best, and I'm praying a spirit of humble confession. There could be other ways to raise up local leaders, and then an invitational spirit is what wins the day.
Speaker 2:Let me just speak to what I heard at the last Synod Convention. I was there in the room I heard from seminary leaders, and this was from Dr Larry Rast who retired and now is no longer the president at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne. He said and he was kind of representing that whole committee around pastoral formation we are going to be open and eager, expecting to hear from those who are exploring different. And they were speaking to me and to our congregation and the tests were kind of running for sure, but it wasn't. We weren't specifically named there per se. We're going to be exploring more of that.
Speaker 2:And so the story is that committee reached out to me and then I reached out to my district president and said, hey, do we want to have a larger conversation? Dr David Peter at Concordia Seminary in St Louis said hey, we have a joint group of faculty members getting together. Would you write us a paper? Our team got together, wrote a paper on kind of a alternative view toward pastoral formation. We gave nine recommendations and then that group didn't end up talking about it. It got brought up and basically sidelined at a Council of Presidents meeting and it's kind of been crickets ever since from those who are in those leadership roles and the invitation.
Speaker 3:So the promised dialogue just for clarity here the promised dialogue did not happen.
Speaker 2:Did not happen.
Speaker 3:Did not follow through.
Speaker 2:And I guess, speaking at a broader sense, it appears as if those leaders at our seminaries are doubling down rather than widening. There's a narrowing of perspective toward residential being the only way. And it's all kind of connected. Jack, If you in our system right now, if you have like, if you're associated with a group that has an alternative view, you get put into a certain camp and then it kind of rolls up. This is one way I think it rolls up If you've been associated with people that have any kind of alternative views, you're obviously anti-institution, which nothing could be further from the truth. You're anti-institution and you therefore can't serve as a faculty member or potential president in any one of our current institutions. It's complex, it's difficult, but there it is.
Speaker 3:We need to pause on this because some people are like oh yeah, I'm totally aware of what's going on. Some people this might be a little bit surprising here, especially if you're just a typical LCMS member what does it actually mean to be LCMS? Right, when we think about what it means to be a Lutheran church or to be a member of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, we're talking about ultimately saying amen to our Lutheran confessions. That's the boundary right.
Speaker 3:But what's happening is in our church body we're saying the only way that you can do that is if you follow this exact, very narrow, prescribed model of pastoral formation based on this specific institution. And, first of all, I don't see anything in confessions that says that. I don't see anything from the Bible that says that We've now kind of elevated allegiance to an institution to be equal to. I'm just giving you my impression here, right, and I have nothing to lose here. I'm just giving you my impression here that we've elevated loyalty to specific institutions to be equal to-ish our confessions and if you're not loyal to that institution, then it's almost seen as the same as not being loyal to the confessions that we share as a church body.
Speaker 3:That's my impression, tim, maybe that's too harsh in what I'm observing, but it kind of feels that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, the loyalty then extends to synod and convention resolutions and therefore for bylaws, which a lot of this is just negotiated relationally between leaders in our various institutions. And then so case in point, like if I went to a voters meeting and we voted on something that was kind of controversial and I only got 55%, or even 60% of the vote at the local level, is this unity driven?
Speaker 3:That's not unity.
Speaker 2:That's not unity, and then all they end up coming. We agreed in this. Well, according to constitution and bylaws, yeah, 55 to 65, maybe percent agreed, but there's still a fair amount of us that are like hold on, I don't know that we're being heard or listened to, and so is this messy. Is it hard? Does it require more work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but like you're in a national leadership role and I say this with all due respect to the complexity of your role, whether you're at a seminary or you're in the synod, and it's difficult, you know, like crossing the aisle to people who have different perspectives is difficult, but it is your calling. It is your calling and I did a little bit of work in the blog, jack, about what synod actually means. Synod has been thrown around in the 17 years I've been a pastor to mean walking together. Now, I'm a strong fan of unity. I want to walk together. Yet this is not what synod actually means. You can fact check me on Google Synod is derived from the ancient Greek word synodos, which means assembly or gathering.
Speaker 2:It's a voluntary group of people getting together and, in the case of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, assembling to share our common confession of Christ as Lord, as rightly articulated in the Lutheran confessions. It's a voluntary. It's a voluntary gathering, confessions. It's a voluntary gathering. And if you're listening to this and you're in a synod leadership position and your compulsion is to a guy like me or the 35 to 45% of folks in the Missouri Synod who voted, it may be actually higher than that, friends, if you get right down to the congregations and the members of those congregations. If your compulsion is well Allman, why don't you just leave? You're exactly proving the point.
Speaker 3:That's not unity Power coercion, that's not unity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the opposite. I mean, let's just give a case study here. Let's just say in theory and I'm sure that this has maybe happened in some churches you know we have in our church body traditional and contemporary expressions of our Lutheran worship right, still very rooted in our law, gospel and our confessional views, and oftentimes including liturgical elements. But it's traditional expressions, contemporary expressions. It's possible for a church body to get together and because a majority prefer one style, they say let's have a vote to only do this one style and exclude this other one because we don't like it. You can legally do that. Legally you can do that, but that's not unity. You've just disenfranchised a large part of your church body because they happen to be a minority.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, we're praying for a new day, and when you hear me say new day, it's not new people, it's a new spirit. It's moving from power and control, pride to humility, confession and invitation. For folks that you may have labeled as not confessional Lutheran because they have a difference of opinion on things like formation, which is certainly adiaphora, so to close, frustration will ease in the LCMS, as humble confession is exemplified by those who are I use in my blog gatekeepers and in control, and I put that in air quotes, but it's just a reality. There are leaders who are in positions who can have an invitational, open-minded spirit or a narrowing spirit. I'm praying it's. It's an open spirit and I pray they ask for help from the Holy spirit to embrace the spirit of invitation, curiosity over power and coercion. This will lead to honestly answering these two questions why does the prior approval panel dismiss many of the names requested by board of Regents? There's no formal, agreed upon rubric for dismissing potential candidates.
Speaker 3:Transparency is what you're saying.
Speaker 2:We're asking for transparency.
Speaker 3:We're asking for transparency, and I think transparency is a fair request For the sake of people who are even making recommendations. Right? Can the people who are responsible for making recommendations actually know the basis for which somebody may be included or excluded, so that they're not wasting their time? Yeah, exactly. What we're hearing is we don't have that and they're being nominated and then they're being excluded and we don't know why.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you need to have a certain pedigree, a degree, etc Advanced degree to do that. And then if you're a leader in good standing in the synod, like why shouldn't a board of regents be able to consider you for faculty, or you know something? That's of a character nature and I think that's. I'm just kind of pinging on something here. I think that's where it comes down to. Well, they could be a hothead or they could be kind of there's a character flaw that I know about that you may not know about, but you just got to kind of trust me. Trust me on that one. That's definitely a gray element. But there have been lists that have been sent back to boards of regents where you know dozens you know at least a dozen names were taken off of respective lists without a whole lot of understanding.
Speaker 2:We're going to be interviewing some Board of Regent members former Board of Regent members to get more clarity on what that process looked like. The second question that needs to be answered is why are LCMS pastors who multiply lay leaders and churches who do so not consulted by institutional leaders when designing vocational church work programs? Yeah, so.
Speaker 3:I don't know the institution of, let's say, the synodical body as an institution exists to support the local church, and there are local churches that are excelling, more so than others, at doing multiplying leaders right. So shouldn't we be deeply consulting with those that have demonstrated success in this area to figure out how what's happening at the local level can be amplified by the efforts of Synod, rather than just saying we've got a very cookie cutter model and if you're going to do anything you have to do it this way, whether it works in your context or not?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So humble confession and a spirit of invitation could help us walk together as synod, and I pray that posture is chosen over prideful power. So this is lead time. This is a little bit more of a controversial spicy. We're not all of these, aren't going to be around this, but the reason this fits in this kind of genre of our every Friday kind of podcast is because this is culture, this shapes it. Is the local pastor looking to multiply leaders with a spirit of great joy, optimism, courage, or is he and then his team saying no, we can't, we can't do it. The church needs more leaders and the days are too short for us to do otherwise, jack.
Speaker 3:Amen, tim. And the reason we're. Let's be clear with people the reason why we're doing a show like Lead Time. Right, the purpose of Lead Time is not to get on here and complain about things. That's actually the furthest from our hearts of what we want to do.
Speaker 3:The reason we do Lead Time is because we have an aspiration for an incredible future for the church. We see a pathway forward in which the local church in our synodical body can be one of the healthiest, most vibrant churches, not just in the country but in the entire world. There's tremendous potential in our church body and we want to awaken that and just kind of do our part for that. Maybe you feel like that's not our job, but we feel called in our own way to try and inspire other people. We're embracing an inspirational style of leadership, definitely not a command style of leadership here. We have no authority to command anybody to do anything, but we're hoping that what we talk about inspires you to take some steps, um with the resources and the influence that you have, in a positive direction. Amen.
Speaker 2:So this is a lead time, like subscribe comment wherever it is. You take this in YouTube, spotify, itunes, wherever and we pray that wherever you have influence, you use the right word there, jack wherever you have influence in your local church, which is great. That's where, that's the heart of the whole thing A local church on mission to make Jesus known, bring word and sacrament out into into the community, but maybe it's more at a circuit or district or synod level.
Speaker 2:Wherever it is that you have influence, may that influence be used toward an invitational spirit and a humble confession. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Thanks, Jack. Great work, God bless man.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theuniteleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.