Lead Time
Lead Time
Journey of Faith: Reverend Dr. Dale Meyer on Ministry, Culture, and Personal Growth
Rev. Dr. Dale Meyer shares his profound insights on faith, ministry, and the church's evolving role in a rapidly changing world. He emphasizes the significance of building genuine relationships within local congregations and encourages leaders to embrace adaptability while reflecting on their vocation and the importance of community outreach.
• Highlighting the importance of relationships in ministry
• Discussing changes in parish ministry over the decades
• The impact of digital media and the need for local congregations
• Addressing issues of confession and accountability in the church
• Viewing retirement as a spiritual preparation for eternal life
• The necessity of good works as expressions of faith
Join the Lead Time Newsletter! (Weekly Updates and Upcoming Episodes)
https://www.uniteleadership.org/lead-time-podcast#newsletter
Visit uniteleadership.org
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2:Happy day. Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman. Here I pray. The joy of the Lord is your strength as you're, wherever you are. Maybe you're heading into work today after getting, hopefully, your water, getting some movement, moving the body, the temple of the Holy Spirit, hardwired for a day of significance, meaning and purpose, centered in your identity in Jesus, a baptized son or daughter of the King. Today I get the privilege of hanging out with a man that had a major impact on my life in my four years at Concordia Seminary in St Louis, and for many of you, you've listened to this man either in person or online. This is the one and only Reverend, dr Dale Meyer. How you doing, brother.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Tim.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me and to the audience. Take everything he said with a grain of salt. Well, yeah, no, this is going to be great. We're going to have some fun. I mean your life as an administrator, leader, pastor, lutheran hour speaker I mean you've kind of been. You've seen a lot of things over the decades in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, dr Meyer, and let's just hunt the good stuff. As you look back over your life top three kind of highlights you're like, wow God, I got to be a part of that. What kind of comes to mind there, dr Murray?
Speaker 3:Well, I always wanted to be a pastor from from little on. But the mountaintop experiences, I have to do a little thinking about that. One was the interview of former president Carter. That was just a mountaintop experience and I it came to my mind, you know, with his recent death. And then another one was preaching in the National Cathedral for the Navy's annual service of Thanksgiving and I was blessed to visit many military bases and appreciate the work that they do. But those were mountaintop things.
Speaker 3:Looking back at 52 years, what strikes me is the people. One of my regrets is that I was in situations where you come in, speak and go home and I developed many, many good friends, but I wish I could be with all of them more and more, and in heaven I trust we will be. The other thing, and I learned this from Dr Hoffman wherever the gospel is present, the Spirit is present to do the work. I was amazed by the faith that people have work. I was amazed by the faith that people have, especially in comparison to our rather often cushy American Christian life. So mountaintop, yeah, but it was the stuff down in the plane that really shaped me.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that's the way it works, and the plane prepares you for some of those mountaintop experiences, and I love just working in reverse order of what you just said. The reason we got into this, dr Meyer, was the people, our love for people, and seeing people come to come to faith and grow their faith and experience amazing things. And I'm, you know, right in the. I'm firmly in the middle of my life journey and it could be tomorrow, or it could be, could be another 40, 40, 50 years, who knows? But when I look back over now, 18 years of being a pastor, it's all about, it's all about relationship, isn't it? It's all about relationship, absolutely.
Speaker 3:A friend of mine was the president of the American Bible Society. I was on that board for about a dozen years and Dr Habecker always used to say don't tell me what a friend I have in Jesus until I see what a friend I have in you.
Speaker 2:Jeez, that's it. I'm just curious. I'd never heard your story of getting to interview. Was this, when you were in the Lutheran Hour Speaker, you got to interview President Carter? Tell a little bit more of the details of that story. How's that even happened?
Speaker 3:Well, he wrote a number of books and we were doing the television program on Main Street and one of the ways we could get guests was when the guest was doing a book tour. So we invited President Carter former President Carter to come on, and at the time I was actually in Finland, speaking to a retreat of our LCMS chaplains north of Helsinki, and the word came that we could interview former President Carter in Memphis, in I don't know how many days from now. So I was supposed to go into Russia but instead I flew back to Memphis, to the Peabody Hotel, where they have all the ducks that walk out and jump in the pond, and we did the interview and it was like talking to my father-in-law Very nice, very nice. But you may appreciate this. He spoke in paragraphs and speaking in paragraphs is not good media and I'm always thinking okay, keep going. And he paused once and I jumped into that pause and I asked a question and he said I was going to answer that before you interrupted me.
Speaker 2:You wouldn't expect anything else from that. That's the way grandpa's talking we may have one of those moments today, you know or a father in law talk. So yeah, that's amazing, don't feel. Don't feel the pause, but overall it was a great experience.
Speaker 3:Oh, great, great. A real man of faith, as was demonstrated these last weeks with his death and funeral services.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so amazing. So going back you said you always wanted to be a pastor and I guess we share that. I can't think of another outside of maybe a professional baseball player or something. When I was a little guy the Lord snuffed out that dream pretty quick. But who was it that shaped you? I mean, for me it was my dad, Pastor Dave Allman. I've had him on a number of times and just got to see the joy, probably around confirmation, honestly, that I was like, unless the Lord closes the door, I think I think I would love to tell people about Jesus as a as a pastor. Do you remember some of those formative moments or even people in with our work in the United Leadership Collective? We call it the I see in you conversation, where there one person or multiple people who said I see in you, Dr Meyer, the ability to potentially be a proclaimer of the word.
Speaker 3:It would be multiple. I'm a fifth generation Lutheran pastor in our family. Not in a straight line Some of us are deviant but a fifth generation. But I grew up in a 1950s middle middle class Christian home. Go to church every Sunday I went to Lutheran grade school. I don't know what it was, it was just kind of like the milieu that I was in and that's what I wanted to do. If I hadn't done that, my youthful ambition was to be a milkman like my dad and that would have been a heck of a business to get into. Milk is not a good industry anymore. So the ministry it worked out okay.
Speaker 2:It worked out okay? Sure, sure did so. Your dad was like delivery of milk to door-to-door, kind of the old school style. Yeah, sure did so. Your dad was like delivery of milk to door to door, kind of the old school style. Yeah, tell that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, he did that for like 30, 40 years, but he was on a route door to door, house delivery, and then he did a good job. So they made him a supervisor over routes, especially over wholesale routes. I paid my way through college and seminary by delivering milk. Every summer I went door to door and then when I proved myself, I was on wholesale routes, going to stores, factories, dot dot, and to this day one of my prized possessions show you how I'm losing it.
Speaker 3:I have a Divco milk truck. Possessions show you how I'm losing it. I have a Divco milk truck, 1972 Divco milk truck that I had restored. That's cool, yeah, so that was a bucket list thing for me. But yeah, and to be serious, I just get blankety blank tired of pastors who are straw bosses, who only create programs for people and hide in the office. You can't deliver milk and you can't deliver the milk of the Word by holing up in an office. You've got to be out where the people are. And so then I would say that why did I get in the ministry? I don't know, but that experience, the milk truck, was formative to me. I'm a blue-collar guy, you can see that I got my tools here. I got my books around, I got my tools here. I'm not in a fancy church office, reverend.
Speaker 2:Come on, you bet it's a fancy office in your day, but you're firmly in a man cave right now and it's for those that aren't watching or just listening, you need to look it up on YouTube because it is the ultimate. We got tools, we got it, we got a heating unit to your, to your right. I mean it's a, and then books, and then the Book of Concord, or some commentaries and stuff.
Speaker 3:They're all around you, the perfect man, you know you said I had a fancy office and that's true, but I actually had two offices the big president's office and the one in Seacol where I actually did all my work. That was always a mess. I use the president's office either to entertain an important visitor or to kick butt, and when you're sitting in the president's office before the president comes in, that lowered the guy's ego and it was pretty easy to tell him where the hog eats the cabbage.
Speaker 2:This is going to be so much fun, dr Meyer. Ok, so let's, let's look at the world. Let's do some commentary on kind of where the world is right now. A lot has changed. So, as you look at the world, what has changed the most since your ministry began? And you can kind of piggyback that into how parish ministry has changed, as you look at it, over, say, the last five decades, dr Meyer?
Speaker 3:I was born right after World War II, 1947. So I'm an early baby boomer. And one of the things that has changed and I think we've all come to realize this recently is the breakdown of the post-World War II international order. The United States did a marvelous thing for the well-being of the world with a Marshall Plan, with the way we rehabilitated those people that we have been fighting against, the way we staved off the Soviet Union. Well, that's collapsed and there's a number of reasons. But we're seeing the collapse also in the United States, and I'm not talking necessarily pro or anti-President Trump right now, but he typifies this worldwide breakdown in an international order that has, among other things, enabled the church to do its work in relative peace around most of the world. I mean, there are always exceptions, there are always flashpoints and so on. So that's the huge change that I've seen in my lifetime.
Speaker 3:Bringing it closer to home is the digital revolution. You know there have been four, three major communication revolutions in the history of the world. The first was the creation of the alphabet People who we read the New Testament documents and we don't think about it. Only about 10 to 15 percent of the Roman Empire was literate. They didn't read these things, they heard them. Faith comes by hearing Romans 10, 17. The second communications revolution was the invention of movable type, the printing press, gutenberg, and that enabled the word and other things to be disseminated wisely. Luther was savvy, he jumped onto that and it earthly-wise made the Reformation in good measure happen. And out of that eventually comes mass literacy in Western countries. Today we're in the digital revolution and we don't know where that's going to go. My wife worries about AI. I don't understand much of it, we just don't know where it's going to go. But that's having a profound impact. I mean, we're doing this podcast right now.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:I was raised a literate guy. I still, I still, I've got my books. I want a book in front of me, Okay, Uh, people now do tweets. What is 140 characters? Or or?
Speaker 1:or whatever it is.
Speaker 3:This digital revolution is giving us all kinds of information, but basically we're dumber than a horse's behind. You know, as a group, and you see it all the time. The digital revolution, the social media, has made us tribal and you guys who are in active ministry are dealing with that all the time. So this has been profound and I think mass evangel evangelism programs forget it. I think it comes down to local congregation and high-touch personal relationships, like we talked about before. It's an exciting time, I'll tell you, but God only knows where it's going to go. We may be getting closer to the apocalypse. The apocalypse may no longer be just something you study in the book of Revelation. We may be living it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I agree, I mean doubling down. This podcast exists to be one effort among many efforts to have conversations that other people can kind of listen into, with people that agree and or maybe lovingly disagree about not just the what of the church but the how we live today as the church. I mean our contexts are so robustly distinct. Right now, doing ministry in urban LA, praying for everyone there, is radically different than rural Kansas and unfortunately we've become in the LCMS and probably in many I would say definitely in many mainline denominations, ever increasingly the room is getting smaller rather than larger and one of the things as I read the scriptures smaller rather than larger. And one of the things as I read the scriptures I mean the gospel moving out.
Speaker 2:Dr Meyer was an expansive open. Was it maybe open to critique and maybe immorality? And Paul's writing. Let's just go here for a second. When Paul is writing, all of his letters are reactive to what the Spirit was already doing in local churches, to what the Spirit was already doing in local churches. It was shaping the theology but it was responding to how the Word of God was going out into all of these various.
Speaker 2:It was kind of chaotic. The Spirit is not chaotic but out of control, and this is what I see in the Pharisees and those that were against, maybe from Rome to the Jewish leaders. The Pharisees, they're already responding to something that is like whoa, it's, the world is being changed, right? They even say that the world's being turned upside down because of these people who are living a radically new way because Christ has risen. He's risen, indeed, hallelujah. The gospel is going forward by the Spirit's power and people are being brought to faith.
Speaker 2:And it just seems, for those that were in like leadership positions, who wanted to like, grab on tight. This is why I think there's a this is a new day and we can relate a lot to the yearly church, those who wanted to grab on tight and control the, how it looked like. That's not a good, that's not a good move right now. It's curiosity open. There's some things, as I hear you even saying with AI, like I don't know exactly how this is going to play out. But here's what we do know Jesus're seeing a move back toward local and it's life on life, it's, it's hospitality, it's they'll know you're my disciple, by the way you, the way you love one another.
Speaker 2:And so go ahead, Dr.
Speaker 3:You're right and, as you were saying that, one of the things that strikes me is that, institutionally, denominations are not set up to deal with this. Most people and I think this is not only true in our church but the institution of denominations, their procedures, their structures, were all set up for Christian America in the 20th century. That doesn't work anymore and the frustrating thing for me is that inertia, bureaucratic inertia, is hard to change. So when I look at the broad structures and no offense to denominational leaders, okay, but we built our institutional structures at the denominational and regional levels for a world that no longer exists and that means that if let's say that you have an ethnic church in Los Angeles and I know they're great work that can't necessarily meet the 20th century institutional requirements that we used to have, how do you sustain that? How do you fund that we used to have? How do you sustain that? How do you fund that?
Speaker 3:You know we talk about in our emails ahead of time you talked about the shortage of pastors. I think that's a bit of a red herring. I mean we worked at that at the seminary and, my goodness gracious, tuition is free at both seminaries now. So I mean we dealt with that. It's a red herring, I think, because congregations in many instances are not alive, vibrant and flourishing. So we can prepare bodies, is the church at large ready to take them, to pay for them and to facilitate the outreach of the gospel? There's all kinds of issues. The good thing for me, the encouraging thing, is I can find and you even better than I know of congregations where it's working, it's flourishing, the dollars are there, the people are there, not saying it's easy, but it's local.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, this is an adaptive leadership challenging season right now and I think the more you mentioned pastoral formation, I talk about it, dr Meyer, an awful lot because I have some strong opinions for some tests that we could run that could start to serve local churches. You're laughing at me and that's okay.
Speaker 3:Let me just butt in as president for 15 years and the faculty and I more the faculty than me came up with some innovative ways to form pastors, and we often, very often, bumped up against institutional entrenched leadership. That's the end of that sentence.
Speaker 2:As he rocks back in his chair. I'm sorry about that and I don't know. I've never been in your shoes and I don't think I ever will lead one of our seminaries, but I know there are systemic forces. It's never, as we talk about these things, whether it's formation or I've been quite pointed on prior approval lists and things like that it's never just one thing, it's in the water. It's in the water, it's just the way it kind of works and the pull toward institutional preservation is very, very strong. Let's just go down that path.
Speaker 2:It appears as if Walther let's just look at our founding father, that attractive man. He wrote a lot about the local church's responsibility for and that's a major part of our DNA story is you're still where Word and Sacrament is and there is a church. We don't have to go back to Germany when Martin Stephan has his struggles. He wrote on the local church's right to call their own pastor. He kind of early on as we started to form, I think, saw I'd love to get your take on this. I've never asked you this question I think he saw the potential toward creating institutions that must be preserved at maybe the expense of the advancement of the local church is an institution, but that's really the only institution that really matters at the end of the day, the gospel going forth in the local context and he saw like if we're creating all of these different things, the bureaucracy of maintaining those things could hamper our primary mission, which is word and sacrament at the local level. Any kind of response to that, though?
Speaker 3:Dr Meyer mission, which is Word and Sacrament at the local level. Any kind of response to that though? Dr Meyer, I've never thought about it in those terms. I suspect what you say is true. I wouldn't gainsay it. Our church believes that the congregation is a divine institution. Okay, the Synod is not. The district is not. The Lutheran Layman's League is not. The seminary is not da-da-da is not. The Lutheran Layman's League is not. The seminary is not da-da-da.
Speaker 3:The local congregation is where. The local congregation is obviously where you gather, but it's not only the place to gather simply to receive the sacraments. In the 21st century, the congregation is the place where you go to receive the means of grace but also to know that here is a place where I am loved. Here is a place where I am accepted. Here is a place where I learn how to live in this impersonal, often hostile world that we're in and an America that no longer privileges the church. The sociologists call this a mediating institution.
Speaker 3:I think Walther saw that. I mean we don't think about Walther in these terms, but it's true. He was very interested in charitable works. There was a fever plague or something in St Louis. He was front and center in that. We have drifted into an understanding of the local congregation, just as the house of God. Okay, and there we go, have a spiritual experience, and I'm not putting Sundays down. The congregation in a community, especially in this post-churched America, is a lot more than that. It's one of the few places where we can keep our head on straight and know that we're loved. So your Walther question I guess you're right. I've never studied it.
Speaker 2:I don't know he wrote a lot of things, but I think the heart of Luther and then and then Walther, obviously the heart of Paul was it's. It's all about the local church and and smaller, larger, it doesn't really matter Local churches taking more responsibility for building up the next gen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, follow up on that One of the projects I'm working on is a Concordia commentary on 1 Peter and I think when we look back at first century documents we kind of read them through our eyes. The church was minuscule, it was a subset of Judaism in those first years and in the case of 1 Peter he wrote to what we now call Turkey. It was existential. If those people did not stay true and I won't say it's true to the church, but if they didn't hang tight with Jesus and look forward to his returning, their fellowship would easily dissipate. We've got a lot of things going for us now that they didn't have.
Speaker 3:We have institutions. Maybe our institutions are somewhat outdated, maybe they're failing. They certainly need reinvigoration. We've got a lot more going for us than those first Christians did. And you mentioned Corinth. Look at Corinth. Look at all the moral problems they have. And we argue over who can go to communion and I'm not saying that's a trivial discussion, I'm not saying that. But they had people in Corinth who denied the resurrection, who were turning the Lord's Supper into drinking bouts.
Speaker 2:What are we doing? So, yeah, the church has always had problems and the church has always been centered on the one who came to solve it, I mean Jesus and the hospitality of Jesus for all of the sinners. You know, let's go down this path. Confession I've said this in many different and I've had to live it out. And being at a church now for 12 years, just making it in one place with a certain group of people in one place, I mean that's not a small thing and I'd love to be here for a long period of time, if the Lord and the Holy Spirit allows. But I have to say, I'm sorry, dr Meyer, there are certain things that I do or don't do. The list of things that are sins left undone are pretty much endless. And so I have to confess and I need absolution and I obviously offer that to one another.
Speaker 2:And it feels like in the LCMS sometimes we simply, at various levels, be it systemically or individually, we have a hard time saying you know what? I thought I was making the right, I didn't have all the information and I intentionally, or maybe unintentionally, hurt you, hurt our relationship, hurt this ministry, whatever we have to say, it seems so elementary, but I think there's this spirit of, of pride and fear that keeps us from confessing sins of omission and commission Like, let's just boil it right down Um, we, we need to be a confessing people, we're confess, we're confessional Lutherans, like that starts with an acknowledgement of our, of our sin. So any thoughts about the, the hesitancy, the systemic pride and fear that may be taking root? And well, it obviously is taking root, because sin has always been crouching at our door and so we just need the grace of Jesus, the forgiveness, the absolution of Jesus, over and over again. But that comes through the confessing door. Any more to say there, dr Meyer?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm just trying to. Okay, you may have had this experience, but I got a lot of criticism through the years and some of it was deserved and some of it was bogus. Okay, but I always thought, especially in pastoral ministry, which I did for 12 years I always thought you're complaining about what I did. You don't know the half of how screwed up I am. They just picked the easy fruits. I could have laid out a lot more. That would have shocked them, probably gotten me fired. I don't know. I didn't do okay.
Speaker 3:I won't go there, I'm not hiding any gross immoralities or anything like that, but the other thing, and retirement has given me a chance to look back at my ministry and also to look at theology, without some of the constraints we have in our denomination, and I believe our denomination has a wonderful gospel. Okay, amen. But one of the things that is very clear to me is Christ, as we present him, is often a first-century figure. You listen to services, sermons, bible classes, read literature, and it's often about first-century Jesus. Well, what Jesus did in the first century is absolutely necessary for our salvation. I'm not putting that down. But what we don't emphasize is where Jesus is today. He's exalted, he's reigning over all things for the good of the church. He is going to come sooner or later, probably sooner for me than for a lot of people, and so I think our lay people, who are good, faithful lay people, they can tell you about what Jesus did for us. Yeah, he died for my sins and he rose again. But by this and it's a result, I think, of the enlightenment affecting our preaching and teaching there's a void. It's like before a person goes on stage on camera, you wait in the green room. I think most of our people in effect believe that Jesus was on stage in the first century, did his good stuff, and now he's in the green room and he's not doing anything.
Speaker 3:Well, this comes. I'm probably getting deeper than you want to go. This comes because we have neglected in our denomination the ascension. We have neglected in our denomination the ascension. And by that I don't mean that Thursday in spring when the farmers would be planting, now when the kids are having their sports outside. I don't mean that. But our liturgy, our lessons, our prayers are all predicated upon the fact that Christ is not in the manger, he's not on the cross, he's been out of the tomb for 2,000 years, he is ruling over all things and he's the Lord of the church.
Speaker 3:Now NT Wright says and you can pick at NT Wright, go ahead, he's a heck of a lot smarter than I am. But he says if you neglect the ascension and all that it entails, you create a void and something has to fill that void. And he says what fills the void is the church. And that, to me, describes what I see today. The church has confused its being with Jesus. The church is not Jesus, the church is not Jesus. The church is over Jesus. He sustains us, he supports us, but he also criticizes us. If we had this sense of the Lord is over me and he's looking over me now.
Speaker 3:1 Peter, 1.17,. God is judging us right now for our actions. Okay, if we had this sense, it'd be no big deal to say, hey, I screwed this up, I really screwed this up. And it'd be no big deal for somebody to say, well, dale, yeah, you really did screw it up, but that's okay, let's get on with it. So I think the biggest theological issue facing the Missouri Synod right now and again I say that we have preached Jesus faithfully. I'm not saying that we're teaching false doctrine, but we're not preaching and teaching him as fully as we could. He's reigning over all things, he's guiding all things in the interest of his church. Okay, that's a whole dissertation that has to be looked at and he's going to bring us home and that Christocentricity then has to— I think Christocentricity is the thing that we need to get back to, more than we have, and that is going to separate us from nominal Christians and nominal churches.
Speaker 2:Dr Meyer preach. That was spectacular. Oh my gosh, you need to go back, listener. Those three minutes, a little homily. Jesus is, yes, the crucified, risen and reigning one over all of creation. He sits at the right hand of the Father. He's not in the green room, he's at work. So I got a couple. Let's go deeper theologically in this. So what would you say to someone who says judge by my works, what's Peter even getting at?
Speaker 2:I think Lutherans, in our two kinds of righteousness law, gospel, et cetera we struggle with this. He's going to judge On the last day. I'm going to have to give an account for it. This is all in the Bible, dale Are. Are we reading the Bible? Like, how are we supposed to make sense, sense of this? You know that. Um, that Jesus is and I've actually referred to this recently Like I have to confess, I will confess how I led those who desire to be an overseer, desire, desire. You know a hard thing. Um, you'll be held to account for how you cared for, led, shepherded the people of God Like I do. I do not take this lightly. Is that the law? Yeah, I guess, but it's leading me to confess Holy Spirit. I need a lot of help, because if Tim gets in the way, this is really going to not go, not go, great. So what do you say to the person who say I thought I'm judged according to my faith, not by my, not by my works. Dr Meyer, let's go, let's go deeper.
Speaker 3:Well, several things. First of all, about our screw-ups in the ministry, and earlier I told you about my mountaintop experiences. I could give you a long list of my screw-ups. Martin Luther says in his Heidelberg Disputation from 1518, that every Christian has to do whatever we do in the fear of God, the fear that what I'm doing actually might be a damnable work, but we entrust it to the Lord in the fear of God. And that fear of God is a reverential fear. It's not a slavish fear. God, and that fear of God is a reverential fear. It's not a slavish fear. But as Peter says in 117, if you call him Father, who judges impartially according to each one's work, okay, so our Father is also judging us. He's watching what we're doing. 2 Corinthians 5.10,. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that we may receive for what we have done in our bodies, be it good or evil. And it's all over the place. It's all over the place. We have these sometimes Lutheran blinders on that. We skip over those passages and we'll say, yeah, Jesus is going to take care of that, he's going to take care of that.
Speaker 3:The Reformation was the first time when we made a sharp distinction between justification and sanctification. Up until that time, Christian theologians said that God sanctifies you and that's total body, sanctification, justification and sanctification, sanctification in the broader sense. Well, the medieval church twisted or followed human nature and all of a sudden it becomes works that you do so. Luther very correctly made that sharp distinction works that you do so. Luther very correctly made that sharp distinction. What's happened since is, I think, that we have stressed I'm saved by grace, through faith, not by works, and we hang our hat on that without and we forget that we're still come before judgment for our works. Now, what do we say? Okay, so I've been an itinerant preacher. Nobody has me back, but everybody will have me at least one time. And as an itinerant, I would often use two questions.
Speaker 1:I said I'm going to.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm going to ask you a question, two questions, and if you get this right, I'll end the sermon and you can go home and watch a football game, okay? First question is does God judge according to works? Well, you know Lutherans, their necks don't move. Okay, eventually, some sweet old lady will say no, shake her head, no. I said well, I'm sorry, but God does judge according to works and the passages that I recited before. I said but okay, if you can get the second question right, I'll still end the sermon, go home and watch the football game.
Speaker 3:Are we saved by works? Well, now they're an extra loose. No, no, no, no, no, we're not saved by works. Yes, we are. And they're looking at me like what's this new heresy coming out of St Louis? I said we're saved by Jesus' works, not by ours. And then I quote it's in the Lutheran hymnal. I don't know if our new book we've had a number of new books in my ministry Thy works not mine, o Christ. Thy works not mine, o Christ. Be gladness to the heart. They tell me all is done. They bid my fear depart. To whom save thee? Who canst alone for sin? Atone Lord, shall I flee? And Augsburg Confession teaches that we have a gracious God by the gospel. How does it go when we believe this? My memory is failing now, but this augsburg five, which talks about the ministry, talks about the works of christ. When we believe that, so yeah, we're saved by the works of christ, not by our works, and and faith in the confessions is hanging on to what Jesus has done.
Speaker 2:Well, so this is exactly right.
Speaker 1:So I'm glad. I'm glad to know that.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. You've been reading the Bible, dr Meyer. Praise God. So, like the parable of the talents, they're already in relationship with the master.
Speaker 2:Let's just look at this one parable, a late parable of Jesus, and they've been given different gifts to steward. You know, a talent is money, but it could be, you know, just your influence, your vocation, your various vocations of influence, to advance, to multiply, to risk, to actually invest the master's resources. And the sin of omission in that one is the third one given one time he buries it and the master comes back and says you, wicked servant, like there is this. All I'm saying is there is this response to whom much has been given, much is required, and for those of you who are in a respective seed of influence that could amplify, multiply, move the gospel forward, but we're living with protective fear, we're hoarding the gift.
Speaker 2:This is an inappropriate response to the gospel of Jesus Christ and we can't hang our hat. This is cheap, this is cheap grace, right, we can't hang our hat on. You know that God doesn't really care about how I'm stewarding the people, the resources. No, god is, god is a judge and there will come a day of judgment, and praise be to God. We're saved by the work of Christ, but this always leads to a response of faith and dependence, humility, the fruit of the spirit being more seen in our, in our lives. So any, any responses, the Holy Spirit's kind of working on your mind, as I even bring up a parable, like the parable of the talents, dr Meyer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the talents are about the faith that God's given us, and some people have mustard seed faith. I always think that I have a mustard seed faith. Well, it's going to show you. Don't bury your talent. And one of the places that that that faith shows, I think and can show, is in good works in the community. No, we're not saved by good works. But Luther says because in the freedom of a Christian he says, we've been saved. The only reason God's leaving us here is to do good works. Goes back to show me what a friend I have. Don't tell me what a friend I have in Jesus. Tell me what a friend I have in you.
Speaker 3:One of the challenges is our congregations, in my estimation, need to be much more active in our communities. Whatever that is and I'm not talking about evangelism efforts, homeless soup kitchens, habitat for humanity, carter thing, that's love, that's faith in action. Ministerial Alliance in our town here in Collinsville, is called Faith in Action. That's yeah, that's it. So the talents, you know, even a mustard seed talent is enough for salvation. But 1 Corinthians 3 says on that day, the day of fire, the last day, all that we do is going to be tested, and a lot of the things we do as church leaders and me are going to be tried by fire and they won't endure. First Corinthians are a huge passage, so yeah, this is good.
Speaker 2:Thanks be to God that we have one, and this is one of the gifts of being a Lutheran. We sit in the tension of saint and sinner right and the tension of two kinds of righteousness. For those of you who don't know the righteousness that I have by faith in the Son of God because of the work of Christ, that's a quorum deo vertical and then horizontally. That gets lived out. God doesn't need our good works, but our neighbor does, and we're actually a living manifestation. God has been unleashed upon the world through his people and Jesus is, yes, our Lord and also our judge. So there's this kind of duality, this tension that exists in good Lutheran theology and that's all you hear us talking about, like everybody's been talking about since Jesus came the juxtaposition or the interconnection between faith and works Really commentary on James here, as we've been coming down the homestretch. So I got one kind of last topic I'd love to discuss and I know you've discussed this in other settings as well Retirement and this kind of season. We're hardwired to work and you continue to work, you continue to preach. You're hilarious.
Speaker 2:People don't have you back. I'm sure many have had you back multiple times, dr Meyer, but it's different now in this chair, in your man cave, than it's been in some other chairs you've sat in. Would you talk just about what this experience is like in this season of life? And before I turn it to you for these last comments, I want you to know and I think there's a number of different leaders that I try to reach out to men who used to occupy one and they're not in the same chair anymore. Your voice is still very, very significant for me and for the church. I know you don't need to hear that. The ego doesn't need to hear that I just have been privileged for the last 45 minutes to spend time talking about Jesus with you. So you're not, you're not retired, you're just in a different, different season. But there is some grief, I guess, to land the plane. There is some grief in this season for you. Would you talk about that, dr Meyer?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I appreciate the question. In my jobs especially the last one at the seminary I wake up early, four o'clock, that's the milkman in me and one of the first things I would do is check my emails. You know, where did I screw up? What needs to be done? What meetings do I have to go to? Da, da, da and bingo, the day I got my last paycheck, that all stopped. You know, I'm thrilled now to get junk emails because at least somebody's, somebody's writing to me.
Speaker 3:So I've had a hard transition, and not that not saying that that's true of everybody. If you've been cooped up in a factory your whole life, man, it's probably like the bird can fly out of the cage and do whatever you want, but it's been hard for me. But either way, if retirement has been easy or difficult, what has become obvious to me is that the church is not preparing us spiritually for retirement, and I'm indicting my own ministry and I'm indicting my own ministry. The church teaches us how to die, but how do we live between that last paycheck and the 5, 10, 30 years before we decline and die? What we pick up, what I pick up all the time, is well, be active. Okay, I don't know how your congregation is, but I think most of the volunteers are retired people. Be active, and that's fine. My mom was active until she passed away at almost 97 years old and I've got so many irons in the fire. I need to live and be active for the next 20 or 30 years, okay, but that's a dodge. That's dodging. You can't always be active. The end is coming. You're going to die.
Speaker 3:In view of that, how do we understand these retirement years? That? How do we understand these retirement years? My answer to cut to the chase or, as you say, to land this plane had an old guy in my first church. He called it a fliver. He says a fliver. It wasn't an airplane, he talked about flying on a fliver. What is a fliver?
Speaker 3:I've never heard that term, dr Meyer. It's an old, old name for an airplane, a fliver. I mean, I'll have to Google it when I hang up, but this guy was a character and he always talked about flivers. Maybe he meant the airplane. Anyway, so to land this airplane, the best way that I've come to understand retirement is the Sabbath.
Speaker 3:Okay, the weekly Sabbath, understood in a Christian sort of way, not a legalistic Saturday off. Okay, but Jews kept the Sabbath when they rested with God, just as God rested with creation. On the seventh day. A big day for the Jews was Friday, the day of preparation. That was a day of activity. That's a day when you get all the food in, the things that you need for the Sabbath day because you're not going to do it on the Sabbath day. But Friday was an active day of preparation. That's how I'm understanding retirement. Retirement is the day of preparation before the eternal Sabbath, hebrews, chapter 3. That makes sense to me. But going back to my own ministry and what I've picked up in the church, we're not preparing our people for this spiritual understanding of retirement. And Dale Meyer, who's he? Billy Graham said this in his book Nearing Home. He said you know, the church teaches us how to die, but it doesn't teach us how to live before we die. Amen.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen. I I want to be like you when I'm in your season, Dr Meyer. I'm serious about that. I think our personalities are kind of similar. I'm just a generation or so behind, I mean driven. Similar I'm just a generation or so behind, I mean driven. You love moving and trying and failing and I love entering into difficult projects and even interacting with difficult people. I find people very, very fascinating and that work for you while it's you're in preparation stage. It's just different but you're still right. So what are your final like two or three things that are getting you up every day? You're writing commentaries. What else are you doing to advance the gospel in this day of preparation, dr Meyer?
Speaker 3:Well, the seminary doesn't need me anymore, lutheran hour doesn't need me anymore. I volunteered our church to teach a Bible class. But the answer to that question is tomorrow needs me.
Speaker 2:Amen.
Speaker 3:Tomorrow needs me, Even after I'm laid to rest in the church cemetery, the things I'm writing and hopefully that will have some endurance. I'm doing this for tomorrow when I'm gone.
Speaker 2:Hey, I've done gosh hundreds I don't know if it's thousands of podcasts now over the last decade and this is one of my top. I've laughed and had so much joy as I've gotten to talk to you today. So thank you for spreading the joy of Jesus and for continuing to charge. The Lord has given you a charging voice. You're I don't know if I'm going to throw out apostolic prophetic I mean, you just are one of those leaders that we need to continue to listen to today. Your voice, your perspective, the way the Holy Spirit rests upon you, connected to the never-changing word, is a gift to me and to all who are going to take in this conversation today, Dr Meyer. So thank you, Thank you, Thank you. If people want to send that email that you just may open up with joy, where could they send that email? And I hope honestly listener, like just send, Dr Meyer, a story or two of how you've touched my life. I got to tell it to you in person, but, yeah, where could they connect with you via an email, Dr Meyer?
Speaker 3:Well. Thank you, pastor, for your kind words and blessings on you. May you have 30, 40, 50 more years of active ministry. I do put out a I've resurrected a little mailing called the Meyer Minute Just 300 words of thought. People can write to me at MeyerD M-E-Y-E-R-D. Small letters, m-e-y-e-r-d. At CSLedu, concordiastlouisedu MeyerD. At CSD-U, concordia, st Louis, dot E-D-U. Meyer D at C-S-L dot E-D-U.
Speaker 2:Thank you, pastor. They can get on that Meyer Minute there as well. They can just request to be on that email. That's so good, okay.
Speaker 3:It's a mom and pop operation but yeah, it's so good.
Speaker 2:Hey, dr Meyer, this has been a kick. This is lead time. Please like, subscribe, comment. Wherever it is you take in this conversation, subscribing and commenting really helps multiply the message and hopefully you're leaving today filled with joy, filled with challenge, for Jesus is the lover of our souls as well as our judge, and the days are too short to do anything other than work to advance his message, his message of love and care, and a day of judgment quickly approaching, where the sheep and the goats will be separated. It's a wonderful day. Go and make it a great day by the power of the Spirit and the Word. Thank you, dr Barron.
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.