Lead Time
Lead Time
How the Light Shines Through with Rev. Dr. Chad Lakies | Part 1
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Believers are called to resist the discouraging narratives of darkness and hopelessness by embodying empathy, vulnerability, and resilience. Through creative community engagement, Dr. Chad Lakies inspires a refreshed understanding of church as a beacon of light, extending beyond its walls into the world.
• Importance of resilience in the face of challenging culture shifts
• Engaging with communities through hospitality and authenticity
• Understanding and embracing a broader view of vocation
• Practical tools for creating spiritual conversations
• The need for love and empathy amid societal anger and fear
Breaking down faith, culture & big questions - a mix of humor with real spiritual growth.
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Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time. I pray that the joy, the passion for life, the calling that Jesus has over you and your baptism, and the calling that he has for you today to bring salt and light into a dark and dying world is propelling you for a wonderful, wonderful conversation. I've been looking forward to this one for some time, a two-part episode with Reverend Dr Chad LaKeys. Let me tell you about Chad. He wrote a brand new book and this has been kind of making the circuit. It's called how the Light Shines Through A Resilient Witness in Dark Times, and Chad also serves as the vice president for ministry engagement here in the US at Lutheran Hour.
Speaker 2:Ministries Shout out to Lutheran Hour tip of the spear in terms of evangelical work in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. We're going to hear a little bit of his story, why this kind of is important. This work is important. Not only was it connected to his PhD, but it also is connected to his life Before he was introduced to the crucified and risen one, jesus, and was brought into the family of faith. So this is going to be a great time. How are you doing, chad? Feeling good? I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me, tim. Yeah, this is going to be great, so just tell the kind of origin story. How did you come up with the idea how the light shines through? I mean light and dark. It's such a powerful metaphor throughout scripture. What inspired you, though, to write this labor of love for the church, brother?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the church is really struggling with the massively fast way it feels like culture has changed in the last 30 to 40 years. And, as you mentioned, yeah, I came into Christianity out of unbelief a little more than a quarter century ago and church and culture stuff has just always been of interest to me. I've always wondered about how the church can better reach people like where I was, right on the outside, and it seems like that's just become more and more difficult, more and more scary. And from inside the church I hear so many assessments of our culture and they're all very dark, they're all very often negative, but even more it's a sense of helplessness at times.
Speaker 3:What do we do about this? How do we engage? There's a sense that we know it's important we should be, but, given all that's changed, everything that we were taught about how ministry was going to go doesn't seem to be. You know what works these days, so what will? It's really frustrating and exhausting for a lot of folks out there trying to do ministry. So I wanted to kind of step into that space and see if I could offer help, just based on things that I've learned and have found helpful. I wanted to give them away.
Speaker 2:I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, I can even go down that, that path. I'm pretty optimistic generally, but but things are just so different, like I don't know. Maybe we can go here Even since, even since COVID, like the acceleration or maybe deceleration in a lot of churches I've heard, I've heard pastors I just came from from a conference, I mean guys just saying what used to work for us in terms of community engagement, growing the church, et cetera, is just it's just not not there anymore and it can feel like I'm throwing a whole bunch of things you know against the wall and just trying to see what, see what sticks, what I do know. I'd love to get your take on this.
Speaker 2:Like churches develop reputations, I think within churches and church bodies develop reputations within the Christian community and outside of the Christian community. All I know is I want those who think about us as a church and a church body but right here in my context, in Gilbert, arizona, the East Valley of Phoenix, when someone would think about Christ Greenfield, what would they think? I mean, that's roughly our brand. We got to be concerned about our reputation. I think now more than ever are we here actively for the community, trying to add value into the community, meeting people where they're at. For us it sounds like felt needs, divorce, grief, et cetera, finance, or are we about, hey, you come here and you figure out how we do it?
Speaker 2:I think, if I could paint a general picture, churches that are moving toward, I would say, over the top, hospitality, arms wide open to meet people, not just when you come onto our campus, though we should be concerned about that. You know, I see the value of the local church and as I meet Jesus, starting to follow him together in community. Any observations there, as I'm trying to paint a wider path toward, I guess, arms wide open for the community, rather than you come and you learn. Here's the thing too, in a Christian culture, I guess it could work when you just open up your doors and at least enough people end up coming, even though you're internally focused, because they share, you know maybe, the liturgy, they share some of your values, christian ethos, etc. But that day is long since, long since passed. So, yeah, any general thoughts for church leaders as we're trying to go into the community a little bit more Chad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think positive, winsome engagement is always a thing. One of the challenges that we have is we're trying to make this shift into a time when that going out is required of us now, whereas for so long it just wasn't. And I wonder if it's just a basic assessment that those old muscles in the life of the church are atrophied. Right, we're not necessarily bad people or we just want to have it our way. It's just that we've lost a sense of concern that that was important because for so long it wasn't, we didn't have to pay attention to it. And now we're all of a sudden kind of realizing, and the pressure's on us right, especially with young people. We're seeing them leave and walk away. We're seeing antagonism from them about the church and the long. You know tried and true folks in the church, whether Lutheran or otherwise, you know they're looking at this exodus of people and they're thinking we've got to do something. They're looking at the sociological data that comes out from Pew and Gallup and the Public Religion Research Institute and a handful of others, barna. All of them are saying the same thing. They're talking about this observable decline that people are leaving and there is a strong feeling we've got to do something about it, and that's what I wanted to speak into.
Speaker 3:I'm not sure that everybody quite knows what to do, but on your point of hospitality, yeah, that's one of the things that I did point out. There is this ancient wisdom in the scriptures and in the way the early church has lived that we can lean back on. I can't make that time happen again. We live in a totally different time and there are many reasons we wouldn't want to go back to some of those previous eras which have been heydays of the church. But there are good reasons to lean on this wisdom because there's historical precedent that shows this is how God seems to operate. He reaches down from heaven through the church to introduce people to Jesus through winsome, hospitable relationships, and that's often not in our church building, where they begin right. They begin outside of that and we slowly, through our relationships, our friendships built on trust, god draws them into the larger community centered around Jesus.
Speaker 2:Amen. We're really leaning in right now to raising up marketplace leaders, kind of a new serve team called Kingdom Builders, learning to talk and engage with our marketplace leaders in a helpful way, not just toward kind of resources and you know time and talent, but like you've been and treasures, but you've been given a gift to be in the marketplace as and we have a lot of a lot of leaders, you know, whether it's CEOs or mid-level managers, et cetera, but that is that is the mission field where you can winsomely hospitably engage people around spiritual topics about meaning and purpose and purpose and where God is at work or it feels like he's not at work in their life. I think there are wonderful tools and training that we as local pastors and leaders can offer to our marketplace leaders to help them engage more winsomely. Anything to add to that, chad?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I would say you never quite know how God's going to work and when it's going to happen. But on the one hand there's a whole all this research out there. You know, for the long while the church has been interested in these, these generational demographic buckets Right, millennials, for a really long time, and now Gen Z and a lot of that research will say something has shifted drastically from the silent generation and the baby boomers and it really began to show up in Gen X that people aren't just sort of going along with the way life is. Doing my work, even if I hate it. Right, there's a totally new growing sense that there are different expectations. For if I'm going to put all of this part of my life into doing this and making money, I want it to be more meaningful than just livelihood.
Speaker 3:And then, as you kind of get into that by asking questions, you know. So tell me, why are you doing this work? What really brought you into it? How do you find it to be meaningful or not? Right? And if you were to find the most meaningful fitting thing for you, what would it be and why?
Speaker 3:Those are really easy, conversational questions to ask and I mean we encourage that. We've just got a simple tool at Lutheran Hour Ministries called the Spiritual Conversations Curve, and we teach people how to discern where somebody might be their spiritual posture. How do you know when they might be ready to engage with the gospel, to hear about Jesus, and what do you do if they're not quite ready? Right, we've even got some strategies for people who are unreceptive. But it's sometimes a really long slog up that hill of dealing with somebody who's kind of antagonistic against the church, turned off, maybe they've been hurt by it. Who knows what their story would be. But we just try to teach you to lean into your God-given empathy skills so that you can hear where someone's coming from and walk through conversations that build trust and from there you might be able to introduce Jesus.
Speaker 3:Right, it could be those questions I was suggesting a minute ago, but it could be life circumstances. You know a tragedy or a triumph. You know something that's going on that you can really connect with and introduce. Well, hey, how has God at work behind that? Do you think he had anything to do with this? There are all sorts of approaches, right, that we can take in a marketplace sort of way, right, but there's not any sort of script you've got to use, and I think that's the really freeing thing about this tool for anybody that I've ever shared it with.
Speaker 2:Can you give us just a brief overview of the spiritual conversation curve Like? What does that look and sound like? And it sounds like there are respective questions as people are different places on that spiritual conversation curve, can you? Go deeper there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say in a basic way it's made up of three parts, and what might be great is I'll try to give you a link to this for some show notes. I wish I had very handy a little graphic of it so that people could see, but basically it's a curve, so it's made up of three parts. There's a bottom portion where we really kind of fit people into a spiritual posture. We really kind of fit people into a spiritual posture. It's probably the most important part of what we talk about is getting listeners right Someone who knows Jesus, who has a friend that they care about. They want to talk about Jesus more. With getting them to pay attention to where somebody is. They're either unreceptive, they're receptive or they might be seeking, and then we have a corresponding element that goes along with that a prayerful focus for someone who's in any of those kind of buckets, right. So as you discern where they are, we're giving you a tool about how to pray for them. And it's really just for someone who's unreceptive that God might open a door, that we could gain a hearing, you know, for somebody who is seeking God might open the door for us to give them the good news. For somebody who is seeking, God might open the door for us to give them the good news. And for somebody who is, you know, really sorry switching that up, because I don't have the grammar For somebody who's receptive, we're praying that we could give them the good news. And for somebody who's seeking, we simply want to be able to guide them toward faith in the most faithful sort of way. Right, which is as much, I think, an anxious experience for Christians. If we've got somebody who's interested, they want the goods right, they want to figure out how do I connect with Jesus? How do I become a member of this church? Should I become a member of this church? What does that mean? Right? Those are all kinds of questions that I think at times our people aren't really prepared to answer, and so I'm just like, look, if you don't know the answer, it's a really healthy time to say I don't know, but I know somebody who can help, right, and then you can go with them through some of that process and bring more folks in.
Speaker 3:And then in the middle it's really made up of these six panels, right, For each unreceptive, receptive or seeking sort of person, what kinds of conversations can you try to prepare for. And so for somebody who's unreceptive, chatting about life, relating about the goods and the bads, the ups and downs that happens, we're simply arguing that this builds trust. It's probably the least explicitly evangelical part of the whole tool. We're not about sharing our faith here. We're about being careful and paying attention to when they're ready, but by loving them. Well, right, it's the deeds of care and compassion for another person that is its own witness. And then you know, later on, when somebody who is receptive well, I can talk then about how Jesus fits into my life, how I see God working in my life. That's the very, you know, subjective way of talking about it.
Speaker 3:And then there's the conversation where we start to apply the gospel to them. The objective here's where you might want to have one of those tools like the Roman road or the bridge metaphor right, when you draw the cross between God and us, you know, and Jesus makes the bridge to reconnect us, or any other variety of tool that exists out there like that, just a way to share the gospel with them in a nutshell and say this Jesus, right, this gift of the good news is for you. And then for somebody who's seeking yeah, it's really trying to help answer their questions, right, and maybe talk about the costs and benefits of following Jesus. And I always like to say you know, one of the costs is this right, God says come to us as you are. You know Jesus expresses it that way. But the follow up to that is but you're not going to be able to stay that way, right, and there's this element of dying to self. That's always part of following Jesus and it's a daily thing, Right, Daily repentance, as Luther would talk about, remembering your baptism, as he would talk about.
Speaker 3:But then there's the benefits, Right, and I love to talk about our doctrine of vocation, which I just don't think gets enough use.
Speaker 3:Right, it's, it's this treasure that we have that doesn't get enough attention or application in the church. It's gotten more in the last decade or so that I've noticed. But I just think it's so great because even the most mundane, ordinary, even gross, disgusting I don't want to do that sorts of things can be the kind of thing that are making an eternal difference in somebody's life, all the way from changing a kid's diapers to taking out the trash every day at your house, right, and then there's many more glorious things, but the doctrine of vocation just shows us the benefit of being caught up into God's grand plan, where he reaches down through me, uses my life to bless other people. It's just incredible, right, and it's also a way of telling the story, of gaining a hearing. You know, for people in that marketplace, I think, thinking about their calling and talking using that language. It hits, it connects with people. So that's kind of the tool. In a nutshell, you went bottom middle.
Speaker 2:Is there a higher? Did I miss?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the higher part is the prayerful part over the top of those conversations. So as you're preparing to talk, you know there's a guided way to pray. It's very simple but there's a guide.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is excellent, Chad. I took copious notes and I can't wait to see the graphic.
Speaker 3:It's been anybody I've presented it to. They find it so helpful. They're just it's releasing right. It isn't. It's not not to say that D James Kennedy's evangelism explosion was wrong or bad. Ours is a different tool. It does it differently, but many people taught in that paradigm. You know they're taught a very specific script. Ours doesn't give you a script. It liberates you into being a friend, right and using the God-given skills of empathy, listening, waiting for the Holy Spirit to fill your mouth with the right words and then let him work right. The pressure isn't on you to get a sinner's prayer, as it were, or to have somebody sign up for adult baptism in the next week's church service or enrolled in pastor's new member class. Hopefully, you know those will happen along the way and it may be through you. It may not be, but we're hoping that, by using the skills God's given us, the Holy Spirit will be at work deeply in the background as we pray for him to be at work in the hearts and minds of these people that we're trying to reach.
Speaker 2:I have to follow up. So good, I have to follow up on vocation. You think it hasn't got the airtime or we're increasing in airtime. I mean it was a huge revolution in the Reformation in elevating the priesthood of all believers in all of our respective vocations. I think that's one of the things that Luther is probably most known for in the wider church. It's getting the scriptures into the every man's hand so that they can see God is at work out in the world and all the places. He's called me and sent me to be his, to be his hands and feet, his mouthpiece, and so it's so amazing. So what? What do we often miss? Just today, in twenty twenty five, on the topic of vocation, you said we get caught up into God's grand plan. Is that kind of? Maybe our understanding of what God has called us to do is too small, it's too narrow, it's not incorporated into how God does his thing out in the world. Say more there. Chad, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think that's exactly one of the issues that's challenging about it. We are are always kind of in the world, but not of the world people. But one of the ways that the church is influenced by the world is the language of vocation hasn't necessarily been hijacked by the world, but it's gone through a really serious reduction in terms of what it means. Vocation has really become, in our time, synonymous with job, and, as I would teach this at Concordia University when I used to be on the faculty there, I would always say to my students every job is a vocation, but not every vocation is a job, right? We've got this whole set of estates. Luther called them I've tried to use the word realms. There's really nothing kind of in our time, spheres, if you want to grab something from the Reformed. There's nothing really that kind of applies in a direct way. It's kind of good updated language for our time. You just got to work through it and get used to the way Luther talks, the way Lutherans talk about it. But I think, talking about the family right, and all the various roles and relationships they are their roles that come with responsibilities, same in as a neighbor, right, and that's just such a vague and general category, and so I often like to talk about our neighbor as the person that God has equipped me to serve in this moment, who has a need. Right, and that limits it significantly. Like I don't have to take care of everybody, right, I've got certain abilities to take care of certain kinds of people and God brings them into my life, you know, making the possibility of my service available to them.
Speaker 3:You know, we've got the workplace, and then we've got civil society, the state. You know a number of ways of talking about that. And then we've got civil society, the state. You know a number of ways of talking about that. And then we've got the church. Depends on which vocation scholar you read? Sometimes it's four realms. Sometimes these are kind of smashed together.
Speaker 3:Often the household and work go together just because of the Greek origin for the name of household and economy. But we do our work, we work for our livelihood to support a household. So that makes sense. But there are all these roles and it's just so fascinating and that's the grand plan that I'm talking about. You know, my calling isn't just this job, it's not just this career, it's these roles and responsibilities, and he's reaching down through me to meet the needs of my neighbor through my gift, skills, talents and abilities on a regular basis and look at how much I'm being cared for by all of these people who may or may not know Jesus, but he's reaching down through them in their stations as Lutheran state or vocations to care for me and other people in my life.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to be straight up, honest. Thank you for that overview. Sometimes in ministry, as a pastor, the word and the way we talk about vocation has been boring. Okay, it's just not captured my imagination. You use the synonym calling like that. That kind of does something to the heart and to the head. It's like God is, God is calling me out, he is there. You know, God is already at work in the world, wherever I live, work and play, and he's inviting me to listen to him and respond to him and then respond in turn to other people. So maybe for those of you who are like me, who have looked at vocation and it's so narrow we got these categories you know that God calling that, God calling me into these respective spheres to be his mouthpiece, his hands and feet to respond to the needs. I love that to respond to the needs of others. Maybe that captures the heart a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Any, any follow up to that chat. I'm not trying to throw vocation under the bus, but I'm just saying, yeah, it's sometimes hard, honestly, to preach on if I don't have words like calling, because it just gets so kind of heady rather than experiential, I guess Can you follow up there.
Speaker 3:I absolutely feel you, and that is one of the challenges of talking about some of these older teachings, right, like, how do you relate to those to our age? Right, we find them so valuable as a rich part of our heritage. But there's there's nothing wrong with using calling. In fact, that's what the word vocation means. It comes from the Latin vocare, which means to call, you know.
Speaker 3:The question then is who's calling? Right, and there are some other places, like you can go to the story of the prophet Samuel when he was young. Right, you know I hear this voice. And finally, he's guided to. I'm pretty sure this is the right story, you know. Guided to say you know your servant is listening, you know what do you want? And then the other side of what you were talking about, all these roles, I think, to go back to that comment I made about the data we have, about demographics and how the younger generations are wanting something meaningful, something fulfilling from life, if there is any story that can give meaning to a person's life, it is the story of being caught up in God's, the grandeur of God's creation and the way that he reaches down from heaven and uses us for his purposes. I don't have to make it up, I don't have to find my way. My identity is not a task, it's a gift, and that is a glorious and liberating thing.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the gospel.
Speaker 2:It's God's grand love story for me, for the world, for my neighbor, so much so that he sent his son to show me the height and depth and breadth of his love, shown through a cross and an empty tomb and the hope that we have the calling of God. I mean, that's why the early church blew up like it did, is because people, the gospel, had been unleashed through the Spirit's power to every man, woman, boy and girl to live this entirely, entirely new way. And maybe let's go down this path. I think it's so different it's hard for us and for me, even as a communicator of the gospel, to capture and only the Holy Spirit can do that. But for the everyday, you know they're sitting in our pews or chairs, they're listening to the word consistently, but to help them experience what it was like to put themselves in these shoes, I'm seeing so much power right now in storytelling connected to the biblical narrative and we just walked through a trauma series, looking at Peter, job, elijah and the woman at the well in John, chapter four, and like doing a deep dive, using even our imagination. Luther loved that. He gave this invitation, using our imagination, to experience what it was like to be there on the margins whatever.
Speaker 2:So I think there's a struggle, though, for us to in the West, with all of our, with all of it, all of the wealth, all of the now, to put ourselves in the shoes of what it was like for the first, second, third century follower of Jesus, who was experiencing suffering and loss. Their life expectancy was far less Like they were just sold out. They'd encountered Jesus. They were not afraid of death, they weren't afraid of Rome, they weren't afraid of any other authorities, but they were still. They weren't jerks. There was a winsomeness to their call out into the world. How do you help kind of the 2025 believer place themselves, I think, in the sense of Holy Spirit, dependence and faith, with a sense of urgency, but not, I mean, always be looked at well by outsiders, and they were generally. I mean always be looked at well by outsiders, and they they were generally. I mean they were a weird group of people. To be sure, they're eating the body and blood of Jesus.
Speaker 2:You know there's all these kinds of weird insider, but they were still the brand of the early church and we know this because it spread so winsomely right To all four corners of the world. It was just a different sense and I think the Holy spirit could be doing something on that. It was just a different sense and I think the Holy Spirit could be doing something on that. I don't think I know God is doing something right now to kind of capture that sense of awe and wonder of what it was like to live on the edge more in the center. Am I? Am I painting an OK picture Like how do we capture that living on the margins rather than in the center? Yeah, a little bit more today.
Speaker 3:Chad yeah, I, I heard a great sermon yesterday by my pastor, just tremendous. Um, I've heard a lot of complaints. So this was yesterday, was life Sunday? Um, in the in the church calendar, at least the one that that we follow and I've heard a lot of complaints over the years of you know why? Why doesn't your past? Why don't pastors these days say you know anything negative about you know what's going on in the culture? Why don't they call out things like abortion or LGBTQ or euthanasia, addictions and things like that? I hate that question because if the church has any really significant reputation right now, it's being known for what we're against. That's right, and we get fired up by rallying speeches like that that bind right, that hold community together.
Speaker 3:Works is when we all come together to talk about why we're here and who we are, and part of that why we're here and who we are is how we're set apart and different, but often better, than people who are outside of us. Instead, my pastor went down a totally different route. He didn't not name those things, but he went down the route of saying he did not name those things, but he went down the route of saying when we're talking about life. Here is what we're for. When God is talking about life, here's what he is for. And he went on to talk about the healing ministry that we've got going on in our congregation for people who are addicts right In a variety of ways. There are three or four AA groups that meet in our congregation and then there's groups for people who are connected to and have had to deal with the trauma and the challenge of people who are addicted right and how to care for them. Well, after you know, they start to go through a different way of life. Right, it's a huge adjustment for not just the person but everybody around them. And he's talking about the social ministries that you know where we're caring for, you know, not just people who had to make the choice that we think is the right one.
Speaker 3:Right, which is don't have an abortion, carry that child. But there's a whole lot to do after that child has been born and there are often a lot of needs to be met and often those moms are alone in those situations. They're brave and courageous in ways many of us can never understand, but there are ways that we can support them. So I don't know that. You know, going back to the early church that they did anything radically different than what's possible for us.
Speaker 3:I think one of the things is having a leader, like my pastor yesterday, narrate for us what it is we can do and what it is we are doing, how we're contributing to the good of the world and lifting it up and how that's just such a glorious witness to these people who are coming into our building, or that we're showing up to their place, or that they're at least receiving something from us to improve their life and help them to flourish that they would experience that as a gospel witness. That's gentle, it's winsome, it's upbuilding. It's not always hey, you can have this if you come to our church, or hey, you can have this if you'll listen to a spiel about Jesus. It's building a relationship first. It's offering a space, offering an opportunity and expecting the Holy Spirit to be working in the midst of that relationship, however it might be happening.
Speaker 2:Hey, yeah, couldn't agree more. What is it about? Anger and fear? These are the two primary negative emotions. I would say pride could be a third, but anger and fear just sell in the marketplace today.
Speaker 2:I mean clickbait, this, this podcast. Sometimes we'll talk about things that are a little bit more, I guess, hard to talk about in the church, kind of how we're connecting to one another. Right, and it's, it's wild. Those podcasts get three, four, 10, x. You know the views and listens. But I mean we were trying to have the conversation in a helpful, helpful way. But sometimes there's some controversial topics that we talk about.
Speaker 2:And anger you can gather a crowd of people who get, and even we use the term. I don't think this is a shout out to Jeff Gibbs and his work on anger. I don't think there is such a thing as righteous anger. I think, you know, judgment belongs to the, to the Lord, and he's going to sort it all out. And so I love that posture of, rather than working for um toward what we're against, rather than working what we're for, we, we must go in that direction.
Speaker 2:I'm just, I guess, expressing as a local parish pastor, that is not the quickest way to grow your church.
Speaker 2:You know there are some churches right here in the Valley who went on one side or the other in the political season that we just walked through and made these hard line.
Speaker 2:You know we're vote the Bible, all this kind of stuff, and we chose some may say we kind of did that.
Speaker 2:We talked about some of the issues, some of the concerns, but we did so in a winsome way. But there were some churches that grew exponentially and people just flocked to those churches because it was very clear it was a rally, for I'm just going to say it, it was a rallying group for Trump, for President Trump, and God bless him in his work and now that what he's doing, and we're going to respect all of our leaders, et cetera. But the narrative can easily Christians can easily get pulled into that narrative of anger and really looking and, while I'm going down the political sphere, really looking for one man or one party to do what only God can do. No disrespect to President Trump he cannot take care of my greatest need, which is defeating sin, death and the devil for me and giving me a life of meaning and purpose. Anything more to say, though, to pastors who may be moving down that line of speaking into fear of our culture, rather than arms wide open on what we're for Chad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say you know anybody who's experiencing a lot of anger. Right, you need more Jesus. You need to take that to the Lord. Right, bonhoeffer would argue that Jesus is the ultimate author of the Psalms. Right, and there are so many outlets there of kind of taking your anger, your frustration, your exhaustion, your depression, your resentment to the Lord and laying it at his feet and unburdening yourself.
Speaker 3:I don't know how many people have brought up some of the language of the black church in recent years and through some of their really sort of Jesus-minded, jesus-centered leaders like MLK and John Lewis and some of the others, but I think it was John Lewis that talked about that. Hatred is a burden to carry around and in Christ we are invited to unburden ourselves from carrying around hatred. And I would think, similarly, anger, resentment can pull people together. Right, when you didn't get your way and you feel like everything's being taken away from you, that can be a rallying cry that draws people together. But I also think you're totally right all those people together. But I also think you're totally right, what we've lost in American culture since the late 80s is a sense of who we are and what we're for collectively, and this affects the church.
Speaker 3:What's happening in the church is microcosmic of what's happening in American culture, and what happened at the end of the 80s was the Cold War came to an end and for the first time in many, many generations we didn't have anybody particularly to be against, or any movement right, any sort of really big ideal that ours was meant to stand up against, and so there's been a vacuum and we've lurched here and there and an identity talk really kind of rose up in this time and the over-politicization of just about everything has happened during that time, and so we can see here's the social outcome of having nothing that kind of holds us all together as a people, right, and then we see it trickling over into the church, right, the right and the left in the church, you know, and the zero-sum games you've got to be 100% for what I'm for, or you're a terrible bad person who's a sinner and going to hell, or whatever the argument might be. But these sort of outcomes and the way they're articulated, argued for, they're not the way of Jesus, right? He never let an issue prevent a relationship, and we're willing to cut people off right and completely dissociate if we experience disagreement from them, and we love to use that language us versus them. But the gospel is the most inclusive kind of language that there is. And if we claim to be people of the gospel, right, we're people for whom the blood of Christ was shed, and it was shed for everyone.
Speaker 3:Now, not everyone accepts that, and that's very clear.
Speaker 3:But this is a message that God has given to us that we're meant to steward and proclaim to anyone who can hear.
Speaker 3:Right, we're all similarly made in the image of God, so there's something indelible about every human that when we cut them off, we're cutting off something you know divinely put together in the hidden places of their mother's womb. Right, the fingerprints of God are there and we're saying no, and oftentimes not just no, but they're less than human because of what they think, believe, who they follow, whatever. And that's happening in America at large, but it happens in the church as well, right, but it happens in the church as well, right, because I think the way that we've lost our way as a society, right, we're in the world, but not of the world of people. But the church is inevitably always affected by what's going on culturally around them. And to the extent that we can recognize that and become aware, repent and God, help us right, help us move in a way that's healthier for us to become the people that you want us to be, so that we can be the witness that you've called us to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I think you don't have to speak to this specifically, but I will. In the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, a confessional, historic church body, with all of the changes in culture, it feels like there is a narrowing move right now Could be around worship or looking and saying the right things, to kind of distinguish ourselves as the right type of Lutheran. And I don't know that that move is winsome. And one of the reasons I know this is true is I'm trying and we're seeing some inroads here trying to build bridges of love and care and trust toward people in different contexts and different roles so that we can have compassion for one another, to not shut off the image of God, the gifts, the unique gifts that come for people in all different vocations, all different callings in our church. But there is a spirit of silence and tribalism that I'm praying that spirit would just be rooted out so that the gospel, the gospel truths from the scripture, from the confessions, would have a wide, wide reach right now. I think this is a great day to be a Lutheran, because what we're basically talking about for those of you who are not aware, you're like it's the middle way of it's attention-filled law, gospel, saint and sinner now, and not yet realities, the right and left-hand kingdom. It's the middle way of Jesus. Jesus, he welcomes everyone. And yet if you come to Jesus like thinking well, I've kind of figured it all out, like here's the way it's got to be, the pharisaical spirit.
Speaker 2:I think we have a tendency in the LCMS right now toward that pharisaical spirit. Or on the other side, I come to him broken, hurting, I've got very few things to offer the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And yet by his spirit's power, as I come to him with humility, he says I'll take that, I'll take that story, even the broken parts of your story, and I'm going to connect that story to my grand story. And off we go in this grand adventure. Like I want that grand adventure spirit, the God's higher calling, to be present in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod with leaders at every level. So I like let's go down this path. I like your drumming analogy. We need to learn to play or live softer rather than harder. You could also talk about the elephant and the rider metaphor. That's super helpful. So you could also tie this all into our struggles with church being in fight mode, not just at the local level, but even in different pockets of our synod. I think this will be very, very helpful. Chad Go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, to go back to the idea of when we don't know as a collective what we're for and therefore everything kind of feels chaotic. I think what we're experiencing in American society, in our church but in a variety of other churches I try to read widely and pay attention we're not unique. What's happening, but as human beings, as collectives of human beings, sociologically, we're trying to find something that we can control. Can control, and I don't believe anybody that I may disagree with is somehow nefarious just because we disagree. I think probably I've got an idea of how things should go. They've got an idea of how things should go and they're trying to make their best darn efforts to get us in that direction, right To do something that they believe is faithful to Jesus. And to the extent that we're not aligned in that, I think we should probably try to talk about it and understand one another.
Speaker 3:But at the same time I think it's more important to start out with a posture of when I disagree with somebody, that doesn't make them my enemy, right From wherever I'm coming from, whether we're talking about the deepest convictions we have theologically or the deepest convictions we've got morally or politically as we engage with people. That lends to be able to see them as Jesus sees them. His blood was shed. Someone made knit together the deepest fabric of their being by the hands of God himself. That changes everything about our posture to any other Right. That includes people that we feel like you know they're on our side, we're in total agreement, we get along super well, and people that that you know it's a little bit rough to, to try to make some inroads in with and get along with. Um, I've, I've appreciated the privilege to, to be able to talk to just about anybody like that, and and God has used me in that way and I I really want to keep doing it, so, um and yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of funny, Um, and it's not funny.
Speaker 2:I guess it's Holy spirit funny in that every time I get together with someone that I know we could talk about some issues that that are we have different opinions on, et cetera, every time I get with them face to face, the Holy Spirit shows up and shows off and we end up leaving, uh, liking each other, not just tolerating, every time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, eat a meal together, drink a beer together. I mean, look at what Jesus did over and over and over again right Table fellowship in in the basic way, right. Not capital T, capital F table fellowship, but just basic have a meal together, right. And it just does something to us. It's a primal thing. All of us human beings have got to eat.
Speaker 3:I used to joke with my students. I said do you remember when you went out on your first date and you had to let somebody watch you eat? And we don't think about that anymore, but it was a vulnerable thing in that moment. And to eat together just takes us to the basic levels of who we are as human beings and it just opens a space for conversation, for fellowship and for the ability to relate to one another. To relate to one another.
Speaker 3:That's different than doing it over the medium of the interwebs or, you know, even in the old way of doing things right, publishing journal articles and disagreeing with one another over a period of months and months, or the way Luther used to do it, writing letters and kind of going on a tear and all the language that he would use. That just absolutely, you know, we would all say it's totally politically incorrect and inappropriate. These days, you know, we kind of look at it and laugh. It's humorous to read how he would get along with his fellows and his peers and people whom he liked a lot and cared for a lot. I think that's the reason he wrote the way that he did very much. But yeah, our approach, our posture, these things aren't difficult, but it does take some vulnerability.
Speaker 2:Definitely, I think that's the word Humility, vulnerability, authenticity. I'm showing up as one human with certain ideas. I got gifts, I got gaps and I need the gifts that God has given to you and I want to work from a place I liked, how you and I first met because the first thing that happened was, you know, we sat and drank a beer, but you just pummeled me with question after question after question and I'm like, I feel like I'm being selfish because I'm not asking him anything about himself.
Speaker 3:I feel like I'm being selfish because I'm not asking him anything about himself. So I mean it's that basic right. We humans know how to do this. That's why, you know, I go back to the God-given gifts of empathy. Right, we know how to do this thing called sharing Jesus with other people. We know how to have friendships. We know how to have conversations. We know how to have relationships. We act like it's an impossible challenge these days because you never know what what's going to happen. Is the relationship going to be broken? Is somebody going to yell at you or you're going to have to disagree and conflict avoidance is pretty normal for us humans.
Speaker 3:But asking questions that that changes the whole tenor of things. Right. Showing curiosity, being vulnerable right. If you listen to somebody for long enough, the likelihood that they're going to want to reciprocate and listen to you and where you're coming from. I love that from Daryl Davis, right, he does a lot of work. He's a black man, he does a lot of work with white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan and he just asked them how can you hate me without even knowing me? And for so many of those conversations they've turned into lifelong friendships. Some people have left the white supremacy cults and the Ku Klux Klan and he's just trying to be a human being to other humans. You know he's trying to ask them can you see my humanity? But by doing so he's showing them he sees their humanity in full and it just ends up changing things.
Speaker 2:It's so so great I have so many other questions, chad that we're going to get to to dig into the book. I don't know, I didn't even hardly talk about any of the things I thought I was going to talk about, but this was so much fun. We're going to do part two here soon. That will be released, the next podcast here with lead time that comes out. What final, final question, as you look at the book, as you look at the book, was there like cause I write and say more and then I forget what I wrote or said? You know cause you're moving on to the next thing that you're curious about, et cetera. But if there was like one sticky thing that you're like, this changed me when, when I had that aha moment with the Holy spirit connected to the person and work of Jesus as I wrote this book. This is, this is the through, this is the thread that I just want to hold on to and what my my readers to hold on to as well, with how the light shines through. What would that be, chad?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the one thing that that just strikes me as as um probably most pressingly important for people to pay attention to is that third chapter, how not to let issues prevent relationships. And it seems to have been one of the things that just kind of hit a nerve in my presentations when I've talked about this. But for me it goes back to just a moment that God used that I remember that kind of brought about the name of that chapter in a way. I was sitting with an old friend of mine. Paul Lindeman used to be the Northwest District President. We had the chance to visit with him on occasion when I was teaching at Concordia Portland, because we would always do, you know, some get togethers with people, other faculty members, even other theological faculty folks, and then you know district staff and pastors from around the area.
Speaker 3:So Paul's coming in one time and he's just, I think, very offhand, telling us about a Bible study that he's, you know, preparing for some group of people that he's about to spend time with, and he's talking about John, chapter four, the story of the woman at the well, and he just offhand said Jesus never let an issue prevent a relationship and if anybody, she's one of the primary people in the scriptures.
Speaker 3:That has a lot of issues, right, and he calls them out in his very gentle sort of way that only Jesus can. But that stuck with me like the Holy spirit just took that and, and you know, put it inside my head in a way that I couldn't forget. So I definitely give a little credit to him and there for that kind of language. But. But I wanted to talk about the how right and then point people to Jesus in terms of he, he does this with us right. Of all people who have issues, it's me and you but he doesn't let any of our issues prevent a relationship and in a sense, we're called to go and do likewise Because he has forgiven us and empowered us to live like him. We're therefore empowered to set aside issues with other people and not let them prevent a relationship.
Speaker 2:That's love it, love it. I just preached, actually, on the nameless woman at the well yesterday and in our trauma series and we, everybody one of the things that stuck with me everybody has a story and Jesus hints at her story. We don't know even all the details of the five husbands. You know, was there shame, potentially, but I think there was probably more. She's a woman of pity, been divorced Women couldn't seek divorce in that culture. That's likely a part of it. And she probably has a widow, maybe one or two or three times, three times over. And now the man she's living with right now we have this like oh, it's sexual, it's immorality and it may, maybe, I guess, but it could be that that she's just with a man who's providing because all the men in her family have died or left. There's a man that's kind enough to provide her protection in his household. So there's always other angles to the stories and when Jesus looks at us, I don't think he looks at us with like contempt or anger. It's over the top. It's over the top love. The look at Peter after his denial right Luke brings out, after he's denied Jesus, knowing him three times, a very serious thing to do. Jesus looks at him with love and I think to bring it home with a Lutheran lens right, it's not about you knowing me, it's I know you, I know you and I'm doing this, I'm doing this for you. So this has been so fantastic.
Speaker 2:If you haven't got the book yet, how the Light Shines Through Resilient Witness in Dark Times, it's fantastic. I actually we're just finishing. I think you have 10 chapters here or so. The last 10 weeks. The 6 am study that I've been doing with a number of it just turns into male leaders. Dudes get up, women are welcome, but a number of our vicars, our learners, our leaders get together every Sunday at 6 am and this is for the last three months or so has been our book of choice and it's blessed them, it's blessed us immensely, chad. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3:I'm so thankful for that. Yeah, I think I think the best gift that you can give to an author you know beyond hey, write me a recommendation if you found it helpful is just to tell me that you found it helpful. Right, that's all I really want to do in giving this away is God. I pray this is helpful to the church and hearing from people like you that you're finding it to be that that's just such a great gift. It's so humbling that God reviews me that way.
Speaker 2:Praise God. If people want to connect with you, how can they do so? Chad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean my Facebook is pretty much open. I don't post a lot on there but occasionally, so you can find me out there. But otherwise it'd be chadlakies at l-h-m dot o-r-g.
Speaker 2:And that's chadl-a-k-i-e-s. Lakies, You're a gift man and excited for going a little deeper into a number. You have so many, so many relevant talking points that we're going to be hitting on in our follow-up to this conversation. It's a good day. Go make it a great day. This is lead time, Like subscribe, comment wherever it is, Wherever it is that you—so I've got to pause as I'm closing here For other people to hear these helpful conversations centered in the person and work of Jesus in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod and hopefully outside. When you subscribe and or comment, that really helps get the word out to more folks. So, thank you, Thank you. Thank you, Chad. As always, man, you're a friend and thank you for your generosity of time.
Speaker 3:Tim, thanks for having me, for the great conversation, the great questions, as always.
Speaker 1:I look forward to next time. All right, bud, god bless, see you Peace. You, god bless, see you Peace. To create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. No-transcript.