Lead Time
Lead Time
How the LCMS Can Live in Concordia (Harmony)
Pastor Andrew Jones shares insights on unity within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, exploring how harmony functions differently from uniformity and creates a more beautiful expression of Christ's body.
• Concordia (harmony) creates beauty through diversity of notes working together rather than identical sounds
• Musical metaphors illuminate church dynamics—dissonance and resolution both necessary for beautiful music
• Vulnerability in leadership creates safety and authenticity rather than maintaining false facades
• Curiosity about different expressions of faith builds understanding and appreciation across differences
• The prior approval process needs greater transparency to build trust and protect church leaders
• Churches facing decline must process grief before creating new visions for the future
• Post-pandemic ministry requires adapting to new realities like online worshippers becoming in-person members
• Community-facing spaces create opportunities for connection beyond traditional church activities
Find Andy's books "10 Questions to Ask Every Time you Read the Bible" and "10 Lies Satan Loves to Tell" wherever books are sold, and subscribe to his newsletter at biblecurious.substack.com
God, doubt, and proof walk into a podcast... it goes better than you’d expect!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
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:Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman here. Jack Kalberg has the day off. I get the privilege today, though, of hanging out with a brother just met have been influenced by his writing and we're going to refer to some of his writing, especially around the topic of unity and harmony toward the mission of Jesus, specifically in our shared context, which is both being pastors in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. So this is Andy Jones. He serves at Concord, california, in Concord, california, at First Lutheran Church. That's about 20 miles east of Oakland in the Bay Area. He is a graduate of Concordia Seminary in St Louis.
Speaker 2:He's a friend of for those of you who know, caleb Cox, caleb is a young pastor in the LCMS at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Fort Collins, colorado. He's been married for 17,. So, going back to Andy now, andy and Caleb are friends. Andy's been married 17 years. He was on the mission field for four years and then did campus ministry at Concordia, st Paul, for a bit and then went to the seminary. Now he's been at his first call at First Lutheran there in Concord for seven years. What a joy to get to spend some time with you today, andy. How are you doing, man?
Speaker 1:I'm doing all right. Good to meet you, Tim.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good to meet you. Thanks for reaching out. Let's start on the topic of Concordia. You did some writing, which was fantastic. You're an excellent writer on why Concordia is so necessary, but it's so hard to live by, Andy. Let's just orient ourselves there. Around the topic of unity, unity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know I'm not a Latin scholar. The word concordia means harmony. From what everything I've seen, it's sort of a unity and harmony concept, and I'm a somewhat musical person. I can sing okay, I'm not playing the piano or guitar or anything but as far as music goes, harmony is a concept that I think helps us understand what it means to be in unity and to be in harmony and to be in concordia with one another, because in music you could play the exact same note on multiple different instruments and it would sound fine, but it's not going to sound as beautiful as if you have an array of notes that work together in harmony, that build chords and movement and rhythm and all these sorts of things.
Speaker 3:And so I think one of the challenges that we have in the church right now and really forever, is how do we, how do we have unity with one another in that harmony, making a more beautiful church that sounds better, that looks better, that is better, through harmony. That is not just a singular note, and if you think about, you know what Paul talks about in both Romans and first Corinthians is that there's this concept of the body of Christ being, you know, many members. It's not good if the entire body of Christ is all a hand or all an eye or all an ear. You need a variety of pieces, a variety of body parts, variety of members, in order for the church to be the body parts that they're meant to be, allowing people to be the notes that they're meant to be, depending on which metaphor you want to go with. So that's where I'm coming from on this topic.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm coming from a similar, if not same perspective. Are you a fan of Cody Fry at all?
Speaker 3:I can't say that I am.
Speaker 2:He's a recording artist. For those of you, I'm a big fan of Ben Rector as an artist. It's good have you heard of Ben Rector. You know who Ben Rector is.
Speaker 3:I've heard of him, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he and Cody Fry collaborate some. I went to their concert with my wife and they had a huge orchestra. If you look up, if you're a Ben Rector fan and you can get to one of his orchestra concerts with he and Cody Fry unbelievable.
Speaker 2:Cody Fry's big song, if you look him up on iTunes or whatnot is I Hear a Symphony and the beautiful part of that song is there's like any good story you're going to have a setting, you're going to have movement, you're going to have dissonance, you're going to have climax, you're going to have resolution, you're going to have the ah kind of experience. You're going to have resolution. You're going to have the ah kind of experience. We're finally at rest. But I love the middle point of you know I hear a symphony or any good orchestra or any good piece of music is there is a little to be dissonance, chords that don't quite, and then it kind of there's something in me, andy, and in you and anybody that's attuned toward music, that wants to see resolution. But it comes through a good piece, comes through resonance, and I think a lot of times as human beings we just we want to get rid of the dissonance, we want to get rid of anything that is like slightly uncomfortable for us. But anyway, a great piece of art always has whether it's in song or in writing, it has conflict, and I guess this goes down to one of my kind of main recurring themes is I don't know that the church and the church that we're a part of the LCMS, that the church and the church that we're a part of the LCMS is wrestling well with dissonance and conflict, and I think we're pursuing uniformity, we're pursuing everybody.
Speaker 2:Just do the same melody and you can refer to worship. You can refer to a number of things. Just do the bylaws or whatever it is. Rather than saying you know what, let's have the disagreement together. Let's honestly say you know, I don't agree with you on this, but we're still brothers in Christ and I appreciate the work that you're doing in your respective context. I don't know that we're cultivating theological hospitality, and maybe it's not theology as much as it is just contextual hospitality. Today we want to get rid of all dissonant notes. Anything more to say there? Andy, I love the metaphor. I think it's very helpful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think part of that is, I think, just learning to love various things, and often that happens through curiosity. Various things, and often that happens through curiosity. You know, I can think of a lot of pieces of music that I've sung over the years that, like the first time that we ran through them as a choir, or I just ran through them soloing or whatever I was just like I do not like this, like there's something about it that I don't care for, and usually it's, it's just unfamiliar to me. There's a particular composer named Eric Whitaker who has several pieces that are just like he creates chord clusters that's what he likes to do and so he's got like 16 notes that are just jumbled together and sound like this mess. And the first time you sing through it you're like I don't even know what my note is, like I can't even find it in the mess of this. I notice like I can't even find it in the mess of this, but then, as you say, it like releases into this major chord that sounds beautiful, but it won't sound as beautiful if you don't go through the chord cluster to get there. And I think for me what it often took was it took practice one. But it also took me learning to love the song over time, learning to be curious about like okay, so what is happening in this song that other people love it? Like, what am I missing and misunderstanding about this?
Speaker 3:I remember being in a choir once where we sang a piece that you know wasn't from my culture, it was from a south american context and there were parts of it where, uh, certain choir members were meant to make like bird song, like bird sounds in it and the and like the brightness of it. Everything about singing it was just like this doesn't feel like me and I listened to a, a recording of it, and I'm like I don't like that. But I learned to love it. I learned to sit with it and understand why it was beautiful, and it took me being curious about it and being like okay, I think I'm getting it and having other people explain why they love it.
Speaker 3:And I think in the church context we struggle with that Because we know what we like, we know what we're going to do and if someone is going to do something different, we're really reluctant to learn why they love that thing, why they're doing it a different way than we might be, and we really struggle to be curious about our brothers and sisters in Christ and what they're up to, and I think we're. We suffer for it because we don't learn what is good and true and beautiful outside of our, our little box and there's a lot that is good and true and beautiful outside our little box of the things that we love. And so I think being curious about why people uh appreciate not only just musical things, but why people appreciate different forms of expression in worship, why people want to do things a little bit differently, curiosity can go a long way to building relationships and building love toward one another.
Speaker 2:I can't be both curious and condemning at the same time. It's a different spirit. It's a different spirit. No, I mean, I've tried Like.
Speaker 2:I've got to do a conversation where I'm like you know I'm going to go down one of those paths really really quick, and the more I keep an open, invitational learning posture, because ministry is hard, Ministry is messy and it'd be really easy to lead. Thus, saith Tim, you will do these things. Why? Because I have positional power I'm the senior pastor here. Like it just doesn't work. It works short term, Like power does not work over the long term and it actually, it actually destroys me. Like that's the thing that Jesus is coming to give this new way where open, invitation, learning, curiosity, like that is the way of Jesus.
Speaker 2:Jesus was crucified because he did things that were slight. You've heard it said this way. Now I'm going to say it this way Like Jesus was initiating this whole new way of being. It was in line with the heart of God from the very beginning. So it wasn't entirely new. We just needed to see it modeled out, because we're forming our identity on pharisaical tendencies, centered in the law, centered in doing things within the box, and we don't realize, use the box metaphor every time we try to orient ourselves around. This is the way we're putting ourselves into that box and the witness to the world looks really, really, it's really sad. It's really small. It's a narrowing power pride tendency that really eats at a leader's soul.
Speaker 2:It appears Jesus says a lot of things that are fantastic, but I think it's in Matthew 25, when he's let no one call you rabbi, for you have one rabbi, your father, who is in heaven. You know, Matt, don't call anybody master. Jesus is like hidden straight at the power center of the apostles that they're going to be prone You're a big deal because you got to hang out with a risen Jesus. No, this is a dispersed model. Is it going to get maybe uneasy, and are you uncertain about how it's all going to take place? Are you going to lose your life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, many of them did lose their life. But it's the call of adventure that is in every human heart and the more we try to squelch that down and the adventure is learning all the unique ways God is at work out in the world and I get to be a small part of that story the tendency toward narrowing just crushes my spirit and I can only imagine for those that have that sort of a tendency, a disposition, man, there's so much freedom on the other side of just admitting I have that disposition. To want my way, it sounds a lot like confession and absolution, doesn't it Andy?
Speaker 3:A little bit. Yeah. Yeah, the way that Jesus handles power is always such an interesting thing, because if you think about a few different stories that come up, like think about John 4, jesus with the woman at the well, you know he bestows dignity on this woman, he creates a relationship with her and he reveals his love to her and he reveals his love to her. And those things happen over and over again Every time that Jesus encounters anyone that has less power than he does, which is pretty much everyone. You think about Zacchaeus and how much dignity Jesus bestows on this guy that has been just shut out of his community entirely and totally. Think about how Jesus handles children. He bestows dignity on children, who are not thought of very highly in that culture, and he even does this with people who have power.
Speaker 3:One of the things that I think is overlooked in the Gospels is that Jesus doesn't just go eat with tax collectors and sinners. He goes to the Pharisees' houses too. He sits down with the religious leaders and eats with them and bestows dignity upon them. It's just that they don't want him to be a part of their lives, and it ends up with them being opposed to him and narrowing, narrowing, narrowing until Jesus can't fit inside their box, doesn't want to fit inside their box, and the result is violence. The result is Jesus' death. So yeah, the way Jesus handles power is something we have to take very seriously, because he is always humble and giving away the power, allowing himself to be harmed, even for the sake of others, giving away that power.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, he did it for us. He did it to show immense love for the world and a brand new way of living, and this is why the gospel of Jesus Christ changed, is still changing, the world, because it's completely counter to the flesh and it's a dying and then, on the other side of dying, being raised. I heard recently Russell Brand. Have you heard of Russell Brand? Right the stand up and he's kind of had an awakening of faith. Have you heard him speak recently, andy?
Speaker 3:Not recently. I've heard that that's happening.
Speaker 2:It's kind of fascinating. He was on the Jordan Peterson podcast recently and it's funny to listen to a deist who understands the scripture but only metaphorically, like encounter, this former hedonist now turned radical Jesus-loving guy, and what Russell said, because they orient a lot around humility and power in those kind of philosophical, the theological conversations. But what he says is I'm very evidently not Jesus and that's. Nothing could be truer than true, right, we're so not Jesus on so many levels. But then he said but I have a little bit of Paul in me, because I want to be the guy that starts the movement that releases everything. Paul is a humble leader.
Speaker 2:He's referring to Paul, though, as like the greatest I am, and so that side of me, the sinful, fleshy side of me, has to be crucified with Christ so that he would have his way. But I have to acknowledge it organization, institution or synod, when we don't acknowledge that, we're wrestling, you know, publicly, with our own sin, our own desire for my way, rather than other ways there can be. There's lots of different ways. Jesus released the Holy Spirit and it said about the greatest movement of love that crossed cultural boundaries the world has ever known. Do you ever just think about Christianity how, like other religions, don't cross cultures like the Christian story does. Why? Why is that? Have you ever thought about that, andy? Why? Why Christianity is so cross-cultural?
Speaker 3:It's a good question, um, I think it like. I think some religions can. It just depends on what it is so like, like one of the reasons that I think that Christianity is able to cross cultures is from from the inception of the church on Pentecost, there is a wide variety of languages spoken and cultures that are represented, and they all go home baptized and believing in Jesus. So I think it starts with that, already sort of embedded into the DNA of the church from Pentecost on.
Speaker 3:I think language is a huge, huge part of it. You know the languages of the scriptures. We want them to be translated into every language. You know we want everyone to have the scriptures in their heart language, whereas if you think about Islam, for example, the scriptures of Islam Cannot be in any other language and truly be scriptures.
Speaker 3:They, they, they need to be pure in this way, they need to remain in their original language, and I think that that's part of why it's difficult for Islam to become more multicultural, because if you want to really know the scriptures, you have to know the language. And so and I'm not a religion expert in various religions around the world, but I think language is a huge part of it and the encouragement to worship in your own language, to worship with your own contextual, cultural, musical stylings, the encouragement to have leaders from your own culture and your own community. All those things are really important, I think, to the church and help it to be more of a multicultural movement than perhaps certain other religions. That's a good question, though I'm going to have to think on that some more.
Speaker 2:I would have to think on it too. I think the heart of it is humanity's need for a higher story, an orienting, grounding story, and the story that's given in the 66 books of the Bible, one uniting story from creation to recreation, rebellion, promise. Jesus, the hero of the story. When everything seemed lost, we were going to be riddled with sin, we would be outcasts and immigrants, sent and dispersed, the diaspora of the Jews. God made a way in a person, for the Jew, but also then for the Gentile, for the world to see a new way of living, for sin to be eradicated and for life to be the ultimate outcome of our journey, when everybody recognizes death is so wrong.
Speaker 2:I think that's one of the main reasons why the Christian story it plays a note or it's a harmonious, let's use your image. It's a harmonious story. That is truer than true. It's a grounding narrative and it orients me, rather than me having to orient myself to it. It's just like it's in me. I think this is where passive faith kind of comes in right. It's very evident that I have no way to make it through, to orient myself to the world, apart from being oriented by the hero of the story, the God of the universe, who's made me his own. Anything more to say about the power of story, though, andy.
Speaker 3:I think that's solid. We, as God's people, we are a part of that story. I think that's one of the challenges that I think pastors face is trying to get people to recognize that the stories of Scripture are one, unified, and they're heading in the same direction. They're all pointing towards Jesus and his death and resurrection for us. But I think, getting people to recognize like, no, you're a part of this story. This isn't some old history book, this is your story. These are the patterns that form you into the person that you are, and they will continue to form you and Christians for generations to come until Jesus returns.
Speaker 3:And so there's something about your identity being centered in that story that that just makes sense.
Speaker 3:And you, you step into that story and you recognize who you are, both as a sinful person who desires their name to be known and desires more power than is good for them, but also you are a person who's been saved by Jesus.
Speaker 3:You're his beloved child, and I think for me, the paradox that we don't talk about often enough in the church is this paradox of courage and humility. There needs to be this courage to share and to want other people to know Jesus, but there also needs to be this humility of you. Know, I don't need to be the Apostle Paul. I can be where God has placed me and have the influence that he has given me with you, know and receive whatever influence and power is given to me with an open hand, yeah, but use it with humility and not try to seek after it and grasp it and gain more and more, but rather, if it is given, it is given by the one who has all power and authority to give it. I'm not going to try to take it away from him or those he's given it to.
Speaker 2:That's good, that's good. I'm thinking about language, and when we speak to one another, we're making a type of, and we're even like, testing certain ideas. We're making an offering of sorts have you ever thought about it that way? We're like we're offering these words, this idea, to God, right, and to scripture, and we're juxtaposing our offering. You could say to God, is it in line with scripture? And then we're offering it to our neighbor in the hopes that it will be received and an offering will come back, right. So courage is in line with making these verbal offerings to one another, to God, and, and centered in the word of God. And and then humility. The other side of courage is is receiving another type of offering that may be dissimilar.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking of Cain and Abel. Right, some offerings God accepts is higher, you know, more worthy, more sacrificial than maybe my offering. And so humility is confessing, okay, my heart, my offering may not have been in the right spirit. Right, I need to be humbled as I offer my words under your word there. Anything more about the offering motif as it relates to. Most of the time, we think of offerings as like a physical something, money, or in the Cain and Abel it's a grain offering, or a fruit offering, or a sheep offering, an animal offering, but I think our words this is very, it's deep to me right, we were created by the word right, everything we well, actually God got dirty, but he spoke creation into being for everything we see, and so our words are a type of offering. Anything to add to that, Andy.
Speaker 3:I mean as an author, that rings true for me. I have a couple of books that are published by Kikoria Publishing House and I try to think of those as offerings. That's a good way to put it. I have this desire that I think is placed on my heart. I offer these words and I hope that they are received well and they resonate with people and people are strengthened and encouraged by them. And then, so you know, my last book came out last month and in the middle of January, and I'm already working on like the third book in the series and just thinking about trying to offer this proposal and put this forward into the world.
Speaker 3:And as an author, there's always this constant struggle that you face where you think that everything you do is really good and everything you do is really bad. And it's really hard to sort that out because one day you could be super confident and think they're going to love this. But the reality is I'm going to submit a proposal at the end of March and the reality is this offering might be rejected, it might be pushed aside and said you know what this really isn't it? No, thank you. And that's a risk that you have to take.
Speaker 3:You know, as pastors, sometimes you preach a sermon and it just doesn't work right. It just falls flat and you feel terrible about it. That happened to me two Sundays ago. I preached what I would call a bad sermon and yet it's an offering, and sometimes that offering is received by people in a way you don't expect.
Speaker 3:And so so two weeks ago I'm preaching on John nine and the healing of the man born blind, and I don't know. You know, it's just one of those, one of those days I'm tired, it doesn't go well, it ends my I just ended poorly. And as people are walking out of church, you know, one of one of the people that walks out of church has an adult daughter with disabilities and and she tells me she she was following along and when we, when you got done, she just turned to me and said Jesus is the light of the world and so, like that offering that I thought was garbage, the spirit does something even with that and transforms it in this way that is beautiful and wonderful and received. And I get something in return, this encouragement that says, even when you're at your worst and weakest, the Spirit still does what the Spirit does and encourages and gives faith to God's faithful people.
Speaker 2:Andy, that is so good, that's so true. And the reason I'm laughing is like if you've been a communicator for any length of time, you've had that moment where you're like, whoa, this isn't going as well. Did you ever think about how it's going? Humans are funny, right, our brains are funny. I can almost look down on myself. And the more I acknowledge in those moments and it could be because of I didn't put the prep in or there's something physically going on the more I kind of allow the Holy Spirit to look at oh, look at this sweet little guy giving his best shot right now the more I kind of allow the Holy Spirit to look at oh, look at this sweet little guy giving his best shot right now.
Speaker 2:You know, the more I then just acknowledge, or even in the middle of a message, like I'm going, like we're leading toward, hopefully, a satisfactory conclusion of that rhetorical unit, right, but then I just my mind goes blank or something the more I just stop in that moment and say I don't know what I'm supposed to say next. Let me reorient myself. There's a removal of a mask, and I just become more human Every single time. I choose humility to acknowledge what everybody else knows, and I just have to say that I acknowledge it too, like this isn't going that well and it could be in anything. It could be in preaching or teaching or in a podcast, or this isn't going like.
Speaker 2:The more I acknowledge that, the more people are drawn, rather than like putting up that false front Like everything is absolutely great. No, I'm a human and I'm going to have some days are going to be better than others. Some days my mind's going to work more sharply than others. Right, what is it about sin? That wants to put up a mask? I think that's a really good image. It's just nothing to see here. You know, I got no words, nothing wrong. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that vulnerability takes off that mask right and says mask and says no, I'm a human being who makes mistakes like anybody else, and I think oftentimes we believe wrongly that putting on this persona of this mask of I got it all figured out, it's going to be safe for other people and they're going to be drawn to that. But the reality is that vulnerability is a much, much safer place for people to entrust themselves to you because they realize you are like them. You are vulnerable and you make mistakes and especially, you know, as people who spend a lot of time in front of other people and, you know, hear things like you know, I could never memorize a sermon. I don't know how you do that right, like it's like that's not the point, but they unintentionally, I think, hold up pastors higher than we ought to be held and I think that can lead to both a power trip in some cases of like yeah, I'm great, look at me.
Speaker 3:But also it can lead to this crash and this and a need to keep that facade up because they've held you up here, so you got to stay up there. They've held you up here, so you got to stay up there, so it's a really challenging thing to just be honest and say this is not my best work this week, I'm exhausted, I'm not ready really today. And how do you do that in a way that that is honest, that is vulnerable but also doesn't, you know, make people lack trust in you? Like, how does it increase trust rather than make people think that you don't know what you're doing, which you probably don't at least I don't. But yeah, it's this complicated, tenuous balance. I think that we have to strike in leading God's people and being honest with them, being vulnerable with them, but also still trying to lead them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's, that's really great. You wonder? I mean, let's go to Paul I mentioned him earlier like he has to consciously lower himself right. Chief of sinners, romans 7, the good I want to do, I don't. Some people think that's like Paul being kind of over. Well, Paul didn't really do things or not do things that he shouldn't, you know. No, like he really did, like this is a wretched man that I am, like he's calling himself out, and so I think we just need to go to the scriptures and the apostles.
Speaker 2:You can go into the Old Testament. You've got a series of unfortunate events. In the story of Job. You've got a series of unfortunate highs and lows, but more lows, I would say, in the story even of King David, a man after God's own heart. These are very human people who were fallible, and I guess I'm just going to dip my toe. This is lead time.
Speaker 2:So we talk about the current trajectory of our church body and leaders, the struggle of not staying engaged, and I think we're moving in a good direction here around the topic of formation. And I think we're moving in a good direction here around the topic of formation. How does a pastor become well-formed? What is the role of seminary education and how should we maybe be looking at different ways to do it, not downgrading our theology, et cetera. I think there's more openness to that conversation right now. I'm grateful for that.
Speaker 2:But the other one that's just a hard one to get my mind wrapped around is the prior approval process and how leaders get raised up or not acknowledged for certain positions, and it just feels like the whole thing is more.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of gray dark around, there's a lack of clarity around it, and I know you are a friend of Matt Barrasso who put together, hopefully, a resolution that will get discussed so that there can be greater, and I say this I think there needs to be greater protection of our leaders, respect for our leaders, for President Harrison and right now, because a lot of it's like behind the scenes, some of us can put kind of the worst construction on what appears to be why did a certain amount of leaders not get considered? I don't know why, because they're leaders in good standing in the church. So we just would like to have greater transparency on that, and I know it's complex for sure. So, anything as I just kind of dive head first into the struggle of the prior approval process right now, because I think if we can get clarity on this, we can we can bring more trust to those at different leadership positions in our synod. Any any more comments there, andy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think with prior approval in particular, having transparency is just really important because it opens up the conversation and you know, if there's a person who's applied for a job and they're told, nope, you can't have it, and by all accounts, they're qualified, they have all the necessary degrees and years of service and all those sorts of things, they have all the necessary expertise that the seminary or the university wants to hire them, and then they're told by a governing body, nope, we don't want you. And they're not told why. I feel like that would be really disconcerting for someone and really difficult for them to think like, okay, so what am I supposed to do? What is wrong with me? That I'm not being included? And I feel really bad for people who've gone through that and not had that transparency, not had an opportunity to clarify any of the statements that they had to make and filling out paperwork and whatnot, Because I think transparency is just shining light on something that is in darkness, and I think there's a lot of scriptural depth to that particular metaphor of light and darkness and there's nothing wrong with shining a light on something that is in the dark. That's what we do as God's people and so, and I think it would also help. It would help universities. It would help seminaries, I think it would also help. It would help universities. It would help seminaries. It would help the people who want to apply for these jobs to know okay, if this is a line that I cannot cross or I won't receive prior approval, then at least I know that and I won't waste my time trying to apply for a position that I know I'm not going to get.
Speaker 3:If whatever it is, whether it's music related or a particular I don't even know what, because there's no transparency. I don't even know what the issues are. Whatever it is, I just need to know so that I don't waste my time and I don't waste anyone else's time. So that's, I don't know. It's one of those issues where I don't understand why the transparency thing is just not built into it. It seems obvious to me, but apparently it's not, and so I'm trying to be like Matt and I are both trying to be as curious as possible about this as just being like please help us understand this. And it's really hard to do and not get frustrated. As you said, it's really easy to have the worst construction on something when it's in the dark. It's a lot harder to do that when it's in the light, and then we'll just know, and I think that's for me anyway. That would be satisfying just to have that transparency.
Speaker 2:Does that make sense? It does. I don't know that I've ever shared this publicly, but Jack Kauberg and I and this goes back to Pastor Jake Besling we taught for every other year at Concordia University in Irvine in the cross-cultural ministry program and really and I'm not being I think it was a great, great experience. We, I think four different iterations, we, um, we taught in that class and got to know our students really well and and the class got really great kind of reviews. It was like a kind of mission to execution at the local level. Those were some of the concepts. So two thirds of it was mostly like leadership disciplines from the personal to the corporate reality and building healthy culture system structure A lot of the stuff we talk about with the ULC.
Speaker 2:But we were not asked to return to that program and the director of the program God bless him he like was called and it was a super awkward conversation from his.
Speaker 2:I was like I know what you're going to say. I'm not being invited because the seminary kind of was taken in St Louis, has taken more responsibility for the program and the only way I could kind of conceptualize it is I was on a list, right, I obviously was associating with the wrong people or maybe publicly had said certain things that were too challenging to the status quo of synod, or people looked online and saw that one of our worship forms includes a drum, you know, or whatnot Like. Those are the only ways I can really kind of make sense of it right now. And could some of those things be a disqualifying notion? I guess it's just not clear. We don't have any synod bylaws that say you can't have drums in worship or anything like that. We've not spoken of the synod and you associate with people that we don't really like and so that kind of keeps you off the list. That's the best I can have as to the rationale of why certain people don't get onto certain lists. Any comment there, andy, as we pivot, so uncomfortable.
Speaker 3:I don't know, and I think that's what's frustrating about it is like that's your story, and I've heard a handful of other stories of people who you know weren't asked back or, uh, didn't, didn't meet prior approval, so didn't get a position somewhere, and they all have different guesses as to why. Right, because Because they don't know, and at least one person I'm thinking of, none of the things you said would be true about them Not at all. So what is it? I don't know, and it's not that I need to know, it's just I feel so bad for this guy who wanted this job, who's qualified for this job and was told you can't have this job, like it doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 3:And nothing, nothing about nothing about the people I know who've been rejected by prior approval. I cannot find a reason why, a legitimate, disqualifying reason. And I think the other thing that I'll say about prior approval that I think is frustrating is I'm struggling to understand why someone who is rejected from being a theological professor rejected from being a theological professor we say nope, can't do that, you can't be training pastors. Why is that person in the parish, where that's really the church at its true heart, like if there's something disqualifying about being a professor? Why isn't there something that's disqualifying about being a parish pastor? And't there something that's disqualifying about being a parish pastor? And?
Speaker 3:there's not, and I think that it's very clearly not in the parish pastor sense. So why are we holding up these positions so much higher than they ought to be held? Being a pastor and shepherding God's church, being in the congregation, that's the church, and I understand that the training of pastors is very important. I know that's something that's very close to your heart, but the idea that you could do more damage somehow in a seminary setting or a university setting versus the congregation just doesn't make any sense to me.
Speaker 3:Versus the congregation just doesn't make any sense to me, because anybody who's been through the seminary will tell you that there are plenty there. You know, there's like 40, 50 professors. You're going to be shaped differently by different professors and if there's one that's not quite your jam, you just sort of ignore them and you are formed by someone else, right. And so if if that's the case, like you know, for me I was formed by Bob Cole and Rev Rosso and Dave Schmidt, like those guys are the the three main guys who formed me when I was at seminary, and if I had never had them, well then it would have been someone else right.
Speaker 3:And if one professor isn't exactly up to this uniformity standard, I don't know. I feel like we're going to be just missing out on so many good people if we create a standard that is too uniform, that isn't harmonious enough, and we're not going to have the true expertise that we need, because everyone is going to be too cookie cutter, both in teaching and in coming out of the seminary, and that's just. I don't think that's good for the church. The church needs variety.
Speaker 2:Yes, needs variety. Yes, yeah, well, the reason I I kind of think it's it's, it's uh, almost it's a juvenile thing to be even even talking about. Uh, I mean, we, we should talk about it. But, like the, the reason, it's very it's like I, I choose my friends on the playground. It's very, it's like I choose my friends on the playground. It's almost like a playground mentality, right, like I like these guys, but I don't like those guys.
Speaker 2:It's just, human beings are more prone to be drawn toward. Like, are you going to acknowledge it, call it what it is, or like say you know, I like this brand of Lutheranism better, you know, and this person that subscribes to this brand is in and this person that doesn't is out. And Lutherans have always been kind of wrestling with this and there's nothing new about this. Who are we going to listen to? Who's going to shape us? And I guess the concern to land this is that we're narrowing in terms of what confessional Lutheranism is, rather than and I'm not talking theology, but it's the approach, it's the sociology of the way we're orienting ourselves, rather than having a widening tendency to utilize all of the gifts within the body of Christ to let the full harmony, the symphonic harmony song be played. I just think we're very narrowly trying to determine what it means to be a confessional Lutheran in the LCMS, and I think it would break Luther's heart, to be quite honest, because it was about freedom, it was about the priesthood. It still is about that. It's the freedom in the gospel, it is the movement out for the sake of the world which is obviously the heart of Jesus, rather than the narrowing tendency. Jesus definitely had a widening heart for Jew to Gentile, et cetera. So yeah, it just is what it is and hopefully we'll see some changes on the prior approval to bring more light.
Speaker 2:And again, this is to protect leaders, not to call leaders out. Like, I need to have clarity about what I can do and what I can't do in the local context or else my leadership trust in the local congregation will be decimated If things kind of stay in the dark. How are you spending the money? Who gets to be? What are the? What are the means by which certain leaders get to be on a leadership Like it's not rocket science. There needs to be transparency of that process. That's all we're. That's all we're calling for, andy. Anything more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I don't think it's a a new problem, right, like this goes back all the way to 1 Corinthians 3 and the Corinthian church being like I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, and Paul's words to them are pretty clear like knock it off. You are all better for having listened to both Apollos and me and we're. You're not following either of us. We're all following Jesus together. Paul and Apollos are just servants of Jesus.
Speaker 3:And just as as we, as you follow one person, it's like a. It's a false choice, right? Yeah, Following Paul and following Apollos is a false choice, because they're both following Jesus, amen. So what's the point of having sides when they're on the same team, or we want to be on the same team and we're constantly being told that we're not and that just feels I don't know. That just feels really difficult because I don't think I'm on the opposite team and yet I get treated that way sometimes. I know you've gotten treated that way from what you've revealed in this episode and so trying to just recognize like no, we're all following Jesus together and we can disagree on certain things and have some dissonance about certain things. And let's move towards synthesis, let's move towards the resolution of the dissonant chords, that we can all make this beautiful music and be this beautiful church together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's good. And, to be clear, I have no hardness of heart toward any person in leadership, from president Harrison to any kind of seminary president. So they're doing that. We're all just doing the best we can and uh, and we need. We need one another and we need all the gifts, that's all the all the call is is it doesn't have to be me Like it, it's just.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people who have had similar experiences to what I have. Who cares if I'm teaching a class? I'm not, honestly, I'm not even there as to what I have. Who cares if I'm teaching a class? I'm not, honestly, I'm not even. There's plenty of things to do. I was, I was, um, like I just loved the, the heart of the cross-cultural ministry program, that's. That was the only kind of sadness. I was like, oh, that was, that was fun to learn with those guys. So, hey, last question, this has been good. Um, how is your congregation? Let's close with hunting some really good stuff how is your congregation seeking to raise up leaders to advance the gospel locally? I'd love to just close with a story or two of man. We're trying, we're raising up leaders and the Holy Spirit is out ahead of us and we get to be a part of kingdom-expanding efforts in your local context. Tell a story or two of God at work, andy.
Speaker 3:Sure, sure, sure. So you know my congregation. I arrived, you know, six, seven years ago and they had been vacant for about two and a half years and when I arrived it was a congregation that was, you know, sort of it had seen its glory days in the past. They were down to maybe 60 to 70 people in worship on a Sunday and I was there. For, you know, in the first 18 months I was there I'm only the fifth pastor at this congregation in over 80 years and while I was there, two of my predecessors, who are still, you know, in the congregation, passed away.
Speaker 3:In my first 18 months I got to do both of their funerals and what I learned through through the process of doing their funerals and just being there for 18 months, was that this congregation had just so much unprocessed grief, uh, over the glory days being gone, and you know they were. They were a 200 to 1st and Sunday they had a K through 8 school. They had all this stuff going on in the early 2000s and then all of a sudden it just fell off, school closed and just wasn't going well. And so my ability to just name that and say you guys have a lot of unprocessed grief. Every time we talked about where we were going, like vision for the future, they could only think about the past. They just lost all their creativity. They wanted things to go back to the way they were. Being able to name that, to process a little bit and then to create a vision for moving forward, was really important. Of course, we did all that and then, like three weeks later, the pandemic happened, and so that created a sort of surge of emergency with them.
Speaker 3:But since I had been there just long enough to create a little bit of trust you know, in California it was very much an online only sort of thing, like we weren't in person for several months, but I think ultimately thankfully, mainly because of my wife, who's very tech savvy we were able to put something together that sort of kept people together and what we discovered, I think, over that time period, was just how to care for people in different ways.
Speaker 3:And on the other side of the pandemic, you know, I would have a new member class and there would be people showing up that I'd never met before, we'd just been watching online, and the first time to show up as a new member class, I'm like I didn't know you existed, and even still today, there are tons of people who become guests for the first time, and it's weird to have someone who knows you because they've been watching you online and you've never met them, and so we've really, I think, transitioned from that grief stage into okay, what does Jesus have next for us?
Speaker 3:And so part of that is identifying some new leaders. There are several new people in the congregation that we are investing in and trying to give them roles that are not. One of the problems that I think churches have is someone's a guest and then six weeks later they're asked hey, do you want to be the vice president of the congregation? No, so giving them like little steps to like involve themselves in different things is something we've been up to, and I think the biggest thing that we have going at our church right now is we have a lot of space, like we have this outdoor area, that where we used to have school, where mobile units used to be for the school, and it's just sort of sat there for 20 years and nothing's really happened to it.
Speaker 3:So now we're developing a plan to make that more community facing just a welcoming outdoor space. You know we'll see what that turns into. Maybe that's community garden bocce ball, pickleball. You know we'll see what that turns into. Maybe that's community garden bocce ball, pickleball, you know something like that, where the community can gather together and be on our space and get to know them. So that's cool. That's some of the stuff we're up to here.
Speaker 2:Well, you don't need this, but congratulations and God's proud of you. Thanks, congratulations and God's proud of you. You persevered, are persevering and you did all that you could to care for people. I say this to any pastor, right? I mean it was a discombobulating time, very confusing.
Speaker 2:It's unnatural for a pastor to have people that know him and he doesn't know them. The identity, the online whole world added another dimension to pastoral ministry that I think we're still kind of wrestling with more of a detached figurehead as a pastor than a human who has highs and lows and, um, good days and bad days and, uh, just as doing the best they can to bring word and sacrament to to God's people, um, and so I say all that to to say, man, well done. And especially in a context like California. I know you know you want to talk about a post-Christian culture like that is. That is the waters in which you are walking through there.
Speaker 2:So, way to go, and better days, your, your. Your move toward opening up space and offering your campus that the Lord has given to you for the sake of community connection is the right impulse and you're listening to that impulse and moving in that. Praise God, andy, this has been so good. My principal is actually waiting to connect with me right now, so we have to land it. But if people want to connect with you, how can they do so handy.
Speaker 3:The easiest way is I have an author newsletter that I call Bible curious. It's a sub stack. You can find it at biblecurioussubstackcom. That's the easiest way.
Speaker 2:If you want to follow what I'm up to. I should have shame on me. I should have asked about your books. So what are your books? No worries, yeah, yeah, that you wrote, shout out.
Speaker 3:Sure. The first one is called 10 Questions to Ask Every Time you Read the Bible. It's about building biblical fluency, being curious, and the second one is called 10 Lies Satan Loves to Tell. It's about deception, you know, and Satan, but mostly about Jesus and the truth and light that he brings to us.
Speaker 2:Love that, love that and, if you don't mind, what's the project you're offering to CPH?
Speaker 3:The third project I'm working on is in the same series. It'll be about prayer. I don't have a title yet, but, um, something about like, the takeaways we have from prayer, the benefits that we have of praying, and you know some of the different things jesus teaches us about how to pray, hey let let's sign it.
Speaker 2:If I had any kind of influence, which I don't I would say let's book that deal. Yeah, anyway, I can't wait to read it. Well, you're a gift, andy. Thank you for the generosity of time. This is lead time. Please like, subscribe, comment. Wherever it is you take in these conversations, and we pray, the ultimate outcome is not frustration or anger or division, but it's working toward unity, to play your part in the symphony of God's mission, carrying that amazing, harmonious symphonic song, which is the Holy Spirit song, out into the world and entrusting it to the God who wants all of His kids back, and we get to play a small part in that huge, eternal, eternal song. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Wonderful work, andy, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thanks, tim, appreciate it.
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.