Lead Time
Lead Time
We Met With the Seminary Presidents: Here's How It Went...
This episode explores the current challenges and opportunities in pastoral formation within the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. Tim and Jack discuss the significance of seminary education, the necessity of embracing bivocational ministry, and innovative strategies for leadership development amid cultural change.
• Understanding liminal space in modern church leadership
• Emphasizing unity within LCMS despite passionate disagreements
• The crucial role of seminaries in maintaining scriptural confessions
• Exploring the Specific Ministry Pastor Program and its challenges
• Proposing decentralized models for pastoral education and leadership
• Addressing the stigmas surrounding bivocational ministry
• Inviting collaborative dialogue for innovation in ministry
Breaking down faith, culture & big questions - a mix of humor with real spiritual growth.
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This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time. Tim Allman here and I get to hang out with Jack Again. How are you doing, jack? It's been a good day. Good full day.
Speaker 3:Right, it's been excellent Good Lots of meetings. Today we're getting back in the office, having been away for a multitude of conferences the sermon writing retreat, a missional conference and then the best practices in ministry conference. So it's been a wild time connecting with some really awesome people both within our church and within the wider church. It's been really cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, my heart is filled with gratitude and I pray, as we enter into this conversation today giving an update on our conversation with both of our seminary presidents, that gratitude, joy, love. The God of the universe has called you into a relationship by grace, through faith, signed, sealed and delivered in the waters of baptism. Your identity is complete. You don't need anyone to give you affirmation, to prove who you are to God or really to others, because your identity is wrapped up in Christ and I pray that that gives you a winsome, a heart that's open toward change, toward new relationships and even toward challenging conversations in the liminal space, and that's where the LCMS finds herself. I've said that a lot Liminal space, liminal space, and that's where the LCMS finds herself.
Speaker 3:I've said that a lot Liminal space, liminality For those who haven't heard it quite yet. The liminal space is a period of transition. A period of transition where the old way works but it kind of doesn't work, and it's working less but it still kind of works, and the new way is starting to work but it doesn't fully work. And so it's this very awkward time. It's a very awkward time of transition for people.
Speaker 2:And we're embracing the awkward here at the ULC, to be sure. So I got the privilege it's almost a week ago now to sit down with Reverend Dr President John Bruss from Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, as well as Reverend Dr President John Bruss from Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, as well as Reverend Dr President Tom Ager from Concordia Seminary in St Louis, my alma mater, go preachers, and the backstory is President Bruss invited me to come and have a conversation. President Bruss invited me to come and have a conversation, and then he allowed LeJack to enter in as well, and really we're kind of removed from one another. There's not like a line of though. We're always accountable to one another, to be sure, but we just live in such different spheres, right, and I think that was evidence.
Speaker 2:But what we agree on, we're going to start the conversation on what we're thankful for, and one. What we're thankful for is it was a brotherly, warm conversation. These, both of these men are not our adversary or enemy in any way, shape or form. That we have the same confession, same Lord and Savior, jesus Christ. And and we want a desire. We have a desire to get the gospel into the hearts and ears of as many people as possible. I truly believe that's what unites us and which should lead us toward ongoing conversation. Jack, what were some of your things? You just look back at the conversation you're thankful for.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I think everybody around the table loves Jesus. They want more people to know Jesus. Everyone at the table was eager to see more pastors raised up, to see more vacancies filled, more churches planted. We're celebrating all of these things and that's something that we have in common and I genuinely did believe, coming out of that conversation, that we have way more in common than what separates us by far. I mean, it is tremendous how much unity, honestly, that there is within the LCMS, Like you don't see this in other church bodies. The ELCA, you know, is dealing with some pastors that don't even believe in the divinity of Christ. There's a huge spectrum of what's happening in other church bodies. The unity in the LCMS is much tighter, but there are things that there's, let's say, passionate disagreements about that are worth having conversations about. But it is remarkable how much we have in common. I think that's the key thing that I'm thankful for, and I think the family metaphor is hopeful.
Speaker 2:There's no divorce talk, there's, there's a. Mom and dad are different. You know, maybe grandma and grandpa depending on how you want to move that metaphor who, who grew up, maybe, maybe the grandma and grandpa to younger kids is a helpful metaphor. Like we grew up in a certain way, and a lot of our, those that are in our institutions, um, both at the international center in St Louis and in our seminaries, they, they have a little bit more of that fatherly wisdom. You know, and and what has worked. Why would we want to change what has worked? And as it relates to pastoral formation, it's, it's worked.
Speaker 2:And I have to say the seminaries this is one of their main points, and I agree, the seminaries have played a crucial role in the midst of cultural change to hold solid our confession, our teaching. We've not wavered and, while we still have wounds from seminics, et cetera, like we are walking in step. Is there some conversation still about, you know, some other things we talk about all the time? Yeah, maybe, but it's nothing to the, to the gravity of, of, like going against the creeds, for goodness sake, you know, or going against, or going against word and sacrament, the real presence of Christ. Like there's a lot of agreement, jack.
Speaker 3:Let's let's pause on that for a minute, because this is something that is really special, and I've seen this being said from people outside of the LCMS, pointing at the LCMS, saying here's one reason why you should celebrate the LCMS. The LCMS is a historical, what we would call mainline denomination in the United States, and it is unique. It is unique in that it is the only what we would call historical denomination that has remained absolutely true to scripture and confession and that sets this church body apart from any other I would say, american denomination that exists right now. It is very special, it is very unique, and you can absolutely thank the hard work of the seminaries for that outcome, for that outcome, and so I am praising God for them and very thankful for the work that they've done to form such a, with so much rigor towards this process.
Speaker 2:Well, now you got me thinking. Historically in the US context, like Anglican, there's been some Anglican movements, but they don't have the depth. There's been some splinter groups there. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, unfortunately, pcusa as you go down the Presbyterian. There's been just in the ELCA.
Speaker 3:They've just had a number.
Speaker 2:Methodists have had a number of different issues. So yeah, as it relates to the main lines, we got some struggles. But man, they're not the struggles, so I don't know that I've said this publicly. I would much rather have the struggle I've given that continuum at a presentation recently on the Orthodox to Pharisee, to innovation leading to heresy, kind of continuum. I would much rather have the struggles on the right of that continuum of let's keep our evangelical center, not compromising scripture, but remember the church serves in service to the advancement of the kingdom of God. And so what does it take for us to become all things, all people to reach some, you know, but I would much rather have that than like arguing over the divinity of Christ for sake or or or the energy of scripture, whether the Bible is true.
Speaker 2:Can we trust it? Like no one is happy and I think for those that disagree with us around probably the topic we're going to talk about the rest of this time I think that's something to give Jesus thanks and praise for to lead us to the table to have conversations like we had. It cannot be and maybe sometimes it's been understated by us as we get on our soapbox on this, that or the other thing as it relates to local leadership development, but that cannot be overstated, right.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, I totally agree.
Speaker 2:Let's move from gratitude to an honest confession, and this is a confession that my brother, dr Egger, kind of lovingly and he's so kind, I mean he's kind confronted me on. He said you know, tim, I reached out to you two years ago and then we reached out to you this time. You have not personally, even though sometimes I assume, well, this is a public invitation into a conversation, even though sometimes I assume, well, this is a public invitation into a conversation, I didn't send the email, even though he tried to reach out to me now two times over two years. So I told him man, that's a good point, I take responsibility the next time which I have extended an invite to President Nager. And if it wants to be a private chat, that's great, as the conversation continues. Or if you want to have a more public chat around this topic, we would love to do so.
Speaker 2:And then, as it relates to diminishing reputations, kind of discrediting leaders, man, this is heavy and again, every time I talk about an issue I am very careful to recognize this is a system or family problem. Right? There's never one person. This is what human beings love to do, right, jack? We love to say if this just changed or that person wasn't in a leadership role, blah, blah, blah. But sometimes in my passion, sometimes in my passion over the topic of pastoral formation, leadership development, I could be overly harsh in my criticism. And that criticism though I couldn't remember the specific time and it was probably over kind of it's a death by a thousand cuts, I guess, if you will, as we talk about this topic, president Agar, he thought I was doing some reputation savaging and that I had to ask for forgiveness. That's not my desire at all. And I asked for forgiveness and you were there, jack. He extended it warmly and that was good.
Speaker 3:Well, one area of clarification. So we've been critical about this issue with the white paper that was distributed, and one thing that was made clear is no like we were under an impression, and maybe communicated this impression, that this thing was just ignored. That's actually not the case and we really appreciate the clarity on that. It was actually received, distributed, talked about.
Speaker 3:I don't agree, but at least you know I think that's a little bit of a story that maybe that had been coming out of on our side that wasn't even talked about or considered at all and that wasn't really the case. Yeah, am I freezing up here, tim?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you kind of froze up there for a second.
Speaker 2:It's all right, okay, continue going. The last point that is clarifying, I guess, is that SMP, the Specific Ministry Pastor Program it leaves a pretty significant educational gap between completion of the SMP, the Specific Ministry Pastor Program. It leaves a pretty significant educational gap between completion of the SMP and the Master Divinity. It's not, especially if you're going credit hours like you do. It's not an easy six-month or distance thing, and this is where I'm still learning, right, I'm not an academic, so I like SMP, I would like for it to include Master of Divinity, and I guess the clarification for me is that that educational journey would simply be longer, at least in the current model, connected to either of our seminaries, to which to that I'm like. I don't think a lot of our Bivo or Covo guys like, as long as they're in a community, growing like who's to say, three years, six years somewhere in there, honestly, that's, if you're looking, mdiv online, full credits, 90 credits plus a practicum, that's probably what you're looking Like three years is going very, very intense.
Speaker 2:Six years could be a Bivo kind of. You're taking part time classes toward the end of your degree. So that was that was also very, very helpful. Am I missing anything there, Jack?
Speaker 3:No, I mean kind of how it was explained to us, is that the S&P gets you roughly 40 percent of an MDiv. I'm sure that the 40 percent that they receive is really really good, high quality, practical stuff, and I think I agree with you. This is getting back into a vision. We'll talk about vision in the next section, but I would say my vision is could that be opened up to more people? Right now their strong preference is the residential program. I understand why they have such a strong preference for it, but I would say, practically speaking, when we talk about vision, what could be done to make that more robust? They do have a pathway that S&P graduates can continue their education and get towards a general ordination status through completing more online education. But you know that's a process that could take you eight to 10 years, which for some people that's totally acceptable. It could be a total slow burn for them while they continue to serve Right.
Speaker 2:So now we'll get to areas of challenge and, you could say, polite disagreement. And the first one that was very evident is a vision gap, jack, you kind of shared the Don ratio and they kind of saw that as a pipe dream of sorts. I think, yeah, right One pastor of 500, that's kind of impossible. Go ahead yeah.
Speaker 3:So the Don ratio. For those who are unfamiliar with it, it comes from an initiative called Discipling All the World's Nations and basically what the study shows is that for Christianity to be normative in any area, there needs to be one really competent gospel proclaimer of some sort whether that's a church or somebody serving as a missionary, whatever that might be for every 500 people. So, as an example, we live in the Phoenix metro area. There's 5 million people that live in this area, so you could have the biggest massive mega church and you're still scratching a tiny, tiny, tiny little dent of the population in terms of who's actually being reached by the gospel in an area like that. Really, what needs to happen is there needs to be 10,000 pastors or some sort of pastor equivalent of people, 10,000 churches. That actually saturates a place like the Phoenix metro area. And so you know, big vision says okay, what could you do to actually do that? What we're doing right now doesn't do that. You'd have to think differently about the systems, and the way that you think differently is about creating exponential systems. What if the local church is developing pastors, who, in turn, they develop pastors, and all this is being equipped centrally from a really robust curriculum. This is where this is again, the vision that an institution like a Concordia Seminary would be feeding really, really great content into this process and then having a certification process and vetting people, that they're coming out of it, that they're solid and if they need to be in it longer, they need to be in it longer. It's a slow burn and it's decentralizing the process, but you can see if one person develops two and that two develops another two over time, over multiple generations, you absolutely can fill that gap of 10,000 people.
Speaker 3:Kind of disappointing to me is that that was seen again. I think the word you used was a pipe dream, unreasonable, unrealistic. I think that is probably maybe a wider cultural conversation that we're having in our church body. How do we cast big vision and actually take risks into that big vision to actually do something like that where we do know that there needs to be way more pastors, church plants, realistically speaking and this isn't about creating anxiety, but there is urgency to it we know that there are hundreds and hundreds, probably somewhere in the range of 800. I'm hearing as high as 900 pastoral vacancies right now that are being filled. Another 3,000. What was your presentation? Around 3,000 that'll be retiring soon, over the next. What 15 years or so? Is that right Tim yeah?
Speaker 2:So there's an urgency. There is, you know.
Speaker 3:I don't want people to be anxious, but this is urgent and I believe that urgency demands big vision and I'm just not seeing that right now. I'm seeing more of a loyalty to the traditional system that has worked really well in the past but I don't believe is going to meet the need of the future. So that's an area of disagreement and people who love Jesus can disagree about that topic.
Speaker 2:And you don't. Here's the thing is I think a lot of times, when we're talking running tests, that doesn't mean you blow up, you know, torpedo the existing thing. That means you deploy a small amount of resources and people to build, measure, learn a test in terms of formation. That's what we've been doing down here, very openly, transparently, trying to a different model, a competency-based theological education. I don't make any bones. I mean that may not be the only. There's multiple models the credit-based online, mdiv, et cetera, and we value-.
Speaker 3:There might be 20 models. Tim, who knows? Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Exactly. We value life-on-life instruction. I think the best learning is in person. We do this via technology. Technology has its place, but a cohort model of instructors educating face-to-face for either a shorter, intensive or a semester, that is the best.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to throw something out, jack. There's numerous people that have said certain things. That is the best. I'm just going to throw something out, jack, and this there's numerous people that have said certain things like this in private. I'm just going to say it in public and I don't think this is. This is spicy.
Speaker 2:We have two, we have two seminaries right now that roughly have the same model of education.
Speaker 2:You could I don't know which one, you know people higher up than me had to figure this out but you could go down a path.
Speaker 2:Maybe you don't torpedo either of those, but you deploy a certain amount of capital and manpower from those to start regional seminaries in strategic spots where cohorts are already kind of there's a leadership development culture Hello, phoenix, we already have that here and so you deploy a certain amount of professors to do life on life instruction with cohorts, for intensives could be two weeks, or maybe they get deployed for a whole semester or two to come down and spend time immersed in a local context and I do not believe as you'd work with a lot of our students that that sort of open mindedness torpedoes at all what takes place at the local seminary. It honestly just builds the brand. I mean the extreme. If that actually worked right, if that actually worked, you could have then the one seminary I don't care which one you choose and then the rest of the faculty who are open to be deployed would be deployed to those regions. I actually dropped this kind of an idea and President Bruss was at least kind of open. I thought about that.
Speaker 3:He said back in the day I thought about that.
Speaker 2:Curious about it. I don't know if it's something we could do, does it take some risk and et cetera. Yeah, it's going to be a little bit risky, but I think the risk is well worth it for the advancement of the gospel. So yeah, I think the risk is well worth it for the advancement of the gospel. So yeah, I think the vision gap is huge. Pretty much the seminaries, and I don't. I think it comes. These men are speaking for themselves, not for anybody else. I don't know. They may get pressure from other places. I'm sure they do actually to maintain institutional fidelity.
Speaker 3:There's rules of the church body that people are dealing with, you know.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and I do not believe this would hurt. I think it would only help the brand of the seminaries. So, nonetheless, vision gap, some theological perspectives. This is probably the most interesting to me is I was asked who gave me the right to be about raising up pastors? Right, yeah. And it wasn't said like snarky or anything like that. It was an honest kind of exploration with the background of the seminary saying this is the church is generally given seminaries the right to train pastors, right, well, this would be that some are called to do it and others are not called to do it.
Speaker 3:Basically, it's kind of like a more blunt way of saying pastors right? Well, this would be that some are called to do it and others are not called to do it. Basically, it's kind of like a more blunt way of saying it.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and kind of an either or, and what we would say is I think more of our pastors need to be embedded in the formation from day one, and not that a lot of our pastors can't be sent to other locations. Frankly, I think if a leader is raised up local, what's to prohibit us in his training from having him be? If he gets his MDiv, whatever, having him be a general ordination, general rostered pastor. Sure, he's serving here for a time, but his vision or his potential may outlive what we're doing in a local level and he can be called, offered to the wider church. And so I just think more congregations like ours need to be involved. It's a both-and, it's not an either-or.
Speaker 2:And to answer the question just bluntly, who gave me the right and responsibility? I really believe Jesus gave it to the apostles and the apostles entrusted it to those of us who are responsible for word and sacrament at the local level, and we didn't get into this. But there is ample literature of scripture and the confessions and CFW Walther on the congregation's right to choose and call their pastor. And so if the only let me land the plane right here If the only justification for wanting to silence or sideline this conversation and voices like ours is the constitution and bylaws. I didn't. I didn't. My ordination vows were not to synod bylaws or the synod handbook, it was to scripture and the confessions.
Speaker 2:And can we get back this conversation toward that end and figure it out? Figure it out in our current context, and if that's the only, if, bylaws are the only justification and I did, I was pretty, you know, pointed about this whoever gets to be in the formation room meaning this is both of our seminary presidents and then Kevin Robeson and James Bannick at the office, the pastoral formation committee they have the most power in the system to then set forward who's on the floor committees receiving various resolutions and overtures that are coming from district conventions, right, and is that? I mean in all honesty and this is a fair question that I would love to get the president's response on have you honestly put together the breadth of leadership development acumen in our church body in that room, in that floor committee? And I don't know that the answer could honestly be yes up to this point. I mean, we've been talking about this publicly for a long time. It doesn't have to be me. I'll just throw a name out Bring Joe Barron. Bring Joe Barron to the floor committee. I'm calling out that group to bring Joe Barron into that floor committee because he has a number of creative ideas. He's a bright mind.
Speaker 1:It's a challenge and he's a churchman.
Speaker 2:He's a churchman, so whatever like just make that floor committee indicative representative. There's the word representative of the entirety of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod in all of our various contexts. So off the platform there, jack follow up called and not called to do.
Speaker 3:I know there's a lot of deep theology on this topic, but here's the thing, tim, you serve at a congregation that cares deeply about formation and I know that the work that you're doing here pleases the congregation and that your call is to this congregation, to serve this congregation. So I would say that whether or not this is my own perspective whether or not a person is called to do formation, has to do with the context that they serve in. Is this what the congregation wants? The congregation has the power to call people and, you know, have strategies and process in place for developing people and expect their pastor to be a part of that. That is totally a congregation's right to expect that within the scope of an individual's call, if I think, a lot of times, jack.
Speaker 3:If Chris Greenfield said Tim, we don't want you doing that. Then you would have to honor that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure yeah no, it's on overdrive. You want to talk about pressure here. It's more pressure toward development and growth than it is toward protection and fear and scarcity.
Speaker 3:There's a deep thirst. This is a unique place.
Speaker 2:There's a deep thirst in this context. Yeah, we need to get to know one another's stories better, right, because what I would tell both presidents? I know you have different pressures that come at you. Like, the externally focused missional perspective is on overdrive by the power of the Holy Spirit here and we must honor that. So is it acceptable to raise up people into bivocational ministry? So, um, bible, is it acceptable to raise up people into bivocational ministry?
Speaker 2:One of the one of the points this is another one that I'm that I had a hard time wrapping my mind around was was a pastor is worthy, the shepherd is worthy of his hire. Um, and Paul talks about you know, I don't have to get paid, but others, others should be paid by by the church. So the argument goes we're almost discounting the words of the apostle Paul if we don't have a system that sets up a congregation to be able to afford to call a full-time pastor, to which I know every apostle. And Is this a law? I don't know. If you just look at 1 Corinthians in those contexts, like I don't think an economic system was put in place, immediately at least, and when there's 50 Christians in the midst of 150,000 people, and it's this totally new thing, like there's no way the economic engine was there and that doesn't mean pastors were not being raised up, who are serving for a time in the midst of their bivocational or co-vocational realities. That just had to be. Is the best system a one where a church is healthy and some of the leaders maybe not all, but some of the leaders are paid full time, like you and I are? Yeah, great, that's an awesome system.
Speaker 2:I'm just not saying that. That's every church and this is where it gets. Sorry to get off this, this is my last point here, but if you're going to go down the line to say, unless a church can afford a pastor, they're not the church, that is counter to our Lutheran confessions, right, I mean, it's counter to the LCMS story. Where are we going? Stephan left, like Walter. What are we going to do? No, where the word and sacrament are preached and rightly distributed, there is the church, Not where we got to orient ourselves around a bishop or a pope. That's totally counter to the Lutheran story. So yeah, I'm done, jack, land that plane.
Speaker 3:No, that's great. I mean, Paul himself made tents so by his own example certainly is an acceptable option for somebody in pastoral ministry to do work and make money while also preaching and raising up leaders in a local ministry context. So it happens and I don't believe Paul violated any laws when he did that, but he was encouraging the local church to support those who were doing ministry and we encourage that. I would say congregation, be generous, support the people that are doing ministry, you know, be generous, Open your wallets and support them. 100% agree with that. But practically speaking, as you said, Tim, I mean there's a very, very large number of churches that have less than 50 people right now and would not be able to put together a budget of what you would call a working wage for somebody where it would actually make sense that that's the only thing I do, this is my only source of income and I've got to be comfortable. You know, or not, serve there.
Speaker 3:I think we're shutting doors that don't need to be shut. If we open up, you know, let's say if we destigmatize by vocational ministry and then open up a non-residential route that's inexpensive, then we can actually fill many of the vacancies in some of the churches that need to be served right now. Now, quick story. I was presenting at the BPM, talking about some of the you know, the ideas and visions that we have for pastoral formation. Somebody came up to me and said I serve in a local church. We had a long-term vacancy, so five of our elders decided to go through the SMP program and then, after I don't know if they had completed or nearly completed, they were all told none of them were allowed to serve as the pastor of that church. This was a tragedy, in my opinion, right? What?
Speaker 2:was the rationale.
Speaker 3:Do you know their SMP? I don't know. I don't know. I don't understand what the rationale was. As far as I know, I mean, they went through this process and they were told they weren't allowed to serve. So SMP is, from what I can gather, not universally being allowed to serve in certain roles, that there's restrictions on it that maybe in some cases are seen as lesser than I don't see that way. I think it'd be greater for them to have. Again, we've talked about the more robust education for them as part of their long-term education plan. But I don't see why you wouldn't want somebody serving especially in a vacancy type of role to at least have somebody filling that vacancy. It makes no sense to me. Practically speaking, you're keeping an unhealthy situation unhealthy by doing that, by having that type of restriction. So I don't know. We just have to rethink this, I think.
Speaker 2:We do, and we've put restrictions on how many men can enter into SMP, I think in the hopes that when they say no, I hate us, them. So when we say no as the church, I guess toward SMP that they're hoping that they're just going to pick up and go to the seminary. I know the seminary is filled with a lot of amazing sacrificial future pastors whose wives are so generous to say you know, honey, I'll follow you there, I'm taking care of the kids and I can do that. Another. Another obstacle, though, for a lot of men are when the wife has a career.
Speaker 2:Now some of you are going to say, well, the wife shouldn't have a career. Well, it just. Do you want to go by what is, or do you want to go by what you think it should be? I don't know. She's got a career, she's a professional, and so like are you? Are you actively? I don't think we've actively attracted that, that population of our synod, two professionals. He's in the marketplace, she's killing it as an executive leader wherever, but they, there's no, there's no path for them, especially when we've they're not, they're not going to go to the seminary. That's just just right. We've kind of have narrowed down the pool exponentially by not recognizing the financial but the financial realities. I mean we haven't even gone into the disruption of moving three times in four years and right, and what that does to kids, and you know it's just, you know it's a, it's a burden for young couples to do this that are just starting out in life.
Speaker 3:Imagine somebody who's in their late 30s and they're changing careers. And for me, I'll just give myself as an example. I'm not putting myself out there as somebody for ordination or whatever, but I'll just use myself as a theoretical example. I'm an executive director serving here at Christ Greenfield.
Speaker 3:If somehow the church wanted that to be an executive pastor, right, you know I should leave Christ Greenfield, resign my role, and you know, and leave and go into, like you said, a vow of poverty, serving in a different, you know, studying in a different location. So, you know, would they not see me as also being called to this community, as also, you know, having a view of them wanting me to serve in this different role? So doesn't the community, you know, have the ability to say we believe this person should be serving here, right, and we want a system in place that equips people to serve here. And can you give us the resources to equip somebody to serve here? So I think a lot of people, when they think about their calling, it's not just a calling to ministry, it's ministry to a particular location that God has led them already right, and I think that's just something we have to come to terms with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jack, if I ever you know I've worked together for a while If I ever tell you to go to the seminary, it's just a passive, aggressive way to get rid of you in the.
Speaker 1:Christian field, that's right.
Speaker 2:You're not going to the seminary. Well, you're learning. You're a learner. I've said this publicly but our Lutheran conversations, our Lutheran mind conversations in our congregation have only exponentially grown as you have gotten training and a number of our students have received training and I'm praying that there's an openness from our seminary leaders, from our synod leaders. I can tell you this from a district perspective our district president, president Mike Gibson, and many other districts throughout the synod would love to see some newer ideas, fresh ideas for what it means to reach various people groups in our various districts. I mean the PSD.
Speaker 2:The Pacific Southwest District is so racially, ethnically, economically diverse it's hard for many folks in the Midwest to fully grasp how white the fields are, ripe, the fields are into harvest, you know like it's time right, right now. So the sense of urgency as we get kind of passionate about it. Hopefully it's all taken from the right perspective. Again, dr Bruss, dr Egger, your brothers in Christ, I'm grateful for you, I pray for you. I want the seminaries to grow. I want more men to go to the seminaries, those who can, and for those, for whatever reason, who are not able to economically or just their season of life, I'm praying for an adaptive model to raise them up, to send them out to preach the gospel so that all may hear and bend the knee to Jesus as King and Lord.
Speaker 2:Jack, a wonderful work, as always. This is lead time, like, subscribe, comment, wherever it is. Honestly, your comments help move the conversation forward. If you've got a different model idea, I threw out a model like this isn't in the Bible, it's not in the confessions. We're just trying stuff out and we'll see where the Holy Spirit works. But we do know the church is in service to advance the kingdom of God and we take that. We're going to have fun with it, but we take that responsibility, especially at the local level, very, very serious.
Speaker 3:Jack, any final comments? No, I would say, you know, hey, some of the things that we're throwing out as big vision might seem audacious, you know. But I do know this that God's vision is bigger than our vision. And I've got gratitude, you know, I'm doing everything I can, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to keep my attitude centered in gratitude rather than anxiety, right Because I know, at the end of the day, that we can trust in the Lord and that he is the source of our hope and our peace, and we can just acknowledge and passionately advocate for the things that we need to advocate. Love each other and disagree with each other in the spirit of love. That's my hope, amen.
Speaker 2:Amen, it's a good day. Go make it a great day. We'll be back next week. Another episode of Lead Time. Good work, jack.
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.