Lead Time
Lead Time
The State of the LCMS: Insights from the New Pew Research Study
The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod faces significant challenges based on the latest Pew Research Center findings, with declining prayer frequency, weekly worship attendance, and scripture reading. Tim and Jack offer candid insights into the demographic shifts and spiritual trends affecting LCMS congregations nationwide.
• LCMS demographics show an aging trend with only 19% of households having children, down from 28% a decade ago
• Lutherans maintain strong marriage rates with 69% of members married compared to 50% nationwide
• Weekly worship attendance has dropped from 47% to 34%, significantly below the national average
• Only 27% of LCMS members read scripture weekly, while 55% seldom or never engage with the Bible
• Members reporting regular spiritual peace has plummeted from 63% to 43%, with those reporting no peace doubling
• The church body is becoming more politically homogeneous with 66% identifying as Republican
• Strategic recommendations include prioritizing young family outreach, developing leadership pathways, emphasizing spiritual disciplines, and maintaining gospel-centered messaging
We must engage the community by offering Christ's peace in a troubled world, building bridges between our traditions and today's needs, and creating spaces for genuine spiritual growth in an increasingly anxious society.
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This is Lead Time. Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack Kauberg. It is a beautiful day to be alive. I pray the joy of Jesus is fueling you for a day of learning, curiosity on the grand adventure of following Jesus out into our community to reach people with the gospel. Jack, how are you doing, brother?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well. It's a beautiful time to be in Arizona, unless you have really bad allergies, like I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're struggling to get by day by day, spring has sprung and yeah, yeah, we have all these non, well, yeah, non-native plants that have been brought in here, and so, yeah, the allergens are strong. We have grass year-round here Yep, in here, and so, yeah, the allergens are strong. We have grass year-round here, yeah, green grass, rye grass that dies out when it gets to winter, grass that dies out anyway yeah, I have allergies to, to grass and stuff like that. But you want to be outside, but then it just makes it a little.
Speaker 2:A little kind of like a paradox. You want to be outside, but then the allergies get you yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, uh, kleenex at the ready. Nonetheless, I pray that, wherever you are, I mean maybe spring for you. It looks like I hope you're getting outside. To be quite honest, we need to move, we need to go on walks, we need to be out in nature experiencing the beauty.
Speaker 2:Sunlight is good.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, and really, if we're taking care of the body, then it leaves us open toward creative solutions to troubling strategic opportunities for growth. Right, there's always challenges in the local ministry and today we're going to talk about challenges for us as members of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. The content today is going to focus on the state of the LCMS, and this is insights from the new Pew Research study that just came out. So, for those that are unfamiliar with Pew Research, Jack tell us a little bit about Pew Research Center for Religious Landscape Study.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this was a study that was conducted. It was during the 23, 24 year time frame and they surveyed 36,000 respondents, or 36.9 thousand respondents. They were adults in the US just to get a sense of what the religious landscape looks like, and this is roughly. They're doing this. It seems like they're doing this about every 10 years now, so this is last time they're doing this. It seems like they're doing this about every 10 years now, so this is last time they did this was in 2014. So you actually have some interesting comparative data between how things are doing now versus how they were 10 years ago, and it's pretty fascinating to see some of the trends.
Speaker 1:It is. So we're going to walk through the report. Current membership of the LCMS 1% of roughly 1% of US adults. Let's get into some of the demographic insights. So location 58% of LCMS members live where Jack. This is not going to surprise much of anybody Shocker the Midwest. Yep 58%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, lutheranism is not the majority in Arizona, that's for sure, or California.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:California, east Coast. I mean, if you just look around the rim of, you've got pockets obviously in Texas where church planning has been huge. But by and large I mean the upper Northwest, upper Northeast to Arizona, here, california in general we are very much in the minority in the religious landscape. To be sure, let's talk about demographics, an aging membership, so we have an aging trend and declining youth, so we're getting older. At the same time we're not getting younger. Share a little bit there, jack. So we're getting older.
Speaker 2:I mean people are getting older. At the same time we're not getting younger. Share a little bit there, jack. So we're getting older. I mean people are getting older every year, but the people that are sticking with LCMS, they tend to be. There's the way we say aging out, right, and I would say we're probably not retaining as many young people as we should. So the overall population is trending older 19%.
Speaker 2:This is fascinating 19% of LCMS households have children in them right now. 10 years ago that was 28%, so that's about a nine percentage point decline. That's huge. And so we've joked a little bit about some of the research coming out of LCMS Inc. Talking about the fact that there's fewer families having children. Well, that's true. I don't know that there's less of a desire to have children. There might be some of that as well, but you definitely have an aging demographic where people are too old to be having children. Right, that represent our church body. So there's some there's definitely some, you know legitimacy in the concern that we're having fewer people to replace ourselves. Of course, we can't rely on demographics alone to grow our church body, but it definitely is the case that we are aging out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, for sure, and I think you know there have been leaders who have said we just need to have more babies. It's not that we just need to have more babies, but we need to have more babies, right. Yeah, I mean, I'm encouraging, I'm right now with I'm a dad of three teenagers and I've had this conversation more than once Find a good and, I would say, lutheran, conservative, biblically-based spouse. Get married 22, 23. Try to figure out life together, and not that you have to do it exactly like we did it, but we had, you know, three kids in our 20s, right, and we had some energy and things, and now we're moving into a new stage of life, like we need to replace ourselves. I think we need to have that kind of conversation with our kids that, yeah, two, three, four kids, like that's, that's wonderful, or more fruitful and multiply.
Speaker 1:Be fruitful and multiply Like yeah and I think, I think there's a tendency in the LCMS for people to think that those of us that have a strong missional zeal don't acknowledge the demographic decline right now. No, no, no. We definitely acknowledge it and our young people should get-.
Speaker 2:If anything, it adds urgency to the issue.
Speaker 3:For sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:It adds urgency In terms of being outwardly focused and realizing we're not going to replace ourselves just by having families. We have to look externally and see the wider community as a source of future members of the church.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so an aging membership means a smaller number of younger families. It means fewer future leaders, impacting our sustainability and growth as a church body. Second, strong commitment to marriage. Sixty nine percent of LCMS members are married, compared to 50 percent in the general US population. Anything to say there, jack?
Speaker 2:So we are a church body that values family, say there, jack. So we are a church body that values family. We value family, we value children, even though, as we've seen, our demographics are aging out. They're aging out and staying married. That's great, that's a wonderful trend. I think that's something that we can highlight as a win, for our denomination is that we do tend to maintain healthy marriage and relationships and we see ourselves really entering into the vocation of husband and wife really, really well. So that's a win. It is a win. We need to keep it up and that is something that we can build on.
Speaker 1:Well, and we have lower divorce rates and fewer unmarried cohabitating couples within the LCMS. So that's great. Where's an opportunity for growth? Right, there's always a shadow side to a strength. Right Is how do we engage? And we're in active conversation as a congregation right now, too. Young adults, pre-married. Adolescence is elongated, right, Adulting is taking. So how do we engage the pre-married 20 something year olds in early thirties right now. Any comments there, Jack?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of people are waiting until their 30s to get married and have kids. I'm a case study of that. I didn't get that. We didn't have kids until we were mid-30s. You know, if I were to do it all over again, I would do it younger. Now that I'm dealing with a teenager and don't have the knees to keep up with him, you know, I would say like Tim, I would echo your advice to do that kind of stuff in your 20s. If I could do it all over again, that's what I would do. But I think that is something that we build on. It's a strength that we build on and we have to figure out.
Speaker 2:Like you said, the shadow side is because we kind of think of marriage as the norm. Are we good at ministering people that aren't married Right? Do people who are unmarried feel like they're insiders in the church? Do they belong in the church or does the church? Well, I'm just going to say it outright here. You know, when I was a member of Christ Greenfield, I really felt like I didn't have that. I really didn't identify with the other people here until I had kids, because we were such a kid-oriented ministry and that's great, that's something that we celebrate, but there is kind of what I call the donut hole there. How do we minister to the people that are single or married with no kids right, pre-kids, and that's more and more of the population now.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's just acknowledging it and then finding leaders. This is probably our best attempt right now finding leaders who are in that season of life, who will set up space for whether it's small groups, it's gathering, it's setting up at the local restaurants, whatever, so that people can find folks that are in a similar season. And well, our LDS neighbors do this pretty well, right. They have young adult like wards, right, and it's kind of you may think it's a little strange, I mean, I kind of think it's strange they're doing this, expecting you to find your spouse there.
Speaker 2:Find your spouse, yeah exactly, exactly right and I think this could be a strategic time for us to do that. You let's bring back.
Speaker 1:Walter League that was a major part of that. Anyway, let's get on to education level. A higher proportion of college educated individuals, particularly with postgraduate degrees, are in the LCMS, and we have a lower percentage of members with only a high school education or less. Any takeaways there on how highly educated many of our members are, jack.
Speaker 2:Lots of smart folks in the LCMS. And, of course, Lutherans value primary education. They value extended education. You can see that with the fact that we've got so many Concordia universities, that we put such a high value on all of our pastors having MDiv degrees. Right, we see this in Luther himself, who's considered to be the father of public education, believe it or not, because he wanted everybody to be literate to read the Bible. So I think that is something that is culturally embedded into Lutheranism. So that's an area of strength it is. I think one of the ways that we engage the country is probably through our strong educational systems Facts.
Speaker 1:I mean our schools are the backbone of our ministry. Two-thirds at least of our.
Speaker 1:Concordia plan members are in our schools. We do preschool all the way through university and seminary very, very well. Now the shadow side to this strength is that you could develop a pharisaical, legalistic kind of approach Tower, the tower mentality that if you're lower income, working poor, homeless etc. That God is not for you. Both things can be true at the same time and I think we're kind of living in an environment where you can have a ministry that is inclusive of a lot of highly educated people and those that are there can build bridges of love and care and understanding with those that are in a different socioeconomic place, recognizing that in Christ Galatians 3.28, there is no more Jew, greek, slave, free, young, old, rich or poor. We are all one in Jesus Christ. But we could have a little bit of ego to us as it relates to our education Anything there, jack.
Speaker 2:No, I agree, you develop what we call an egghead mentality, right? And you know, I think a lot of our pastors are really great academics and, you know, are there real practical skills that go beyond the academics in terms of really strong EQ skills that always match our strong academics and maybe sometimes, yes, and maybe sometimes no? Right, and that's an issue A lot of times in other church bodies they're raising up people based on their character and how well they relate to each other, right, more so than academics, and there's a pro and a con to that. There's a shadow side to to each other, right, more so than academics, and there's a pro and a con to that. There's a shadow side to that as well, right? So, yeah, I know what are your thoughts about that, the fact that we have such a strong sort of academic approach I'm getting into, like, the pastoral formation side of things Very, very, very, very academic, right? Well, it's rigorous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very, very, very academic, right? Well, it's rigorous, yeah, very rigorous. It should be rigorous and character should be assessed at every stage of that journey, and that's why the combination of not just content but character, craft, the doing of ministry, all that needs to be kind of intertwined in the process, or else the leader could come out with a big head right Thinking they're the center. I was talking to a pastor recently and he goes. I basically was trained and this is not in either of our seminaries and I'm going to leave the seminary. It was an international student.
Speaker 1:But he says I was basically trained to have the pastor me. But he says I was basically trained to have the pasture me be the sun around which everybody else kind of orbits, and if I don't say it it's not valid. And he goes. Now that I've got out in the parish he goes. I need a lot of help and that paradigm is not working.
Speaker 1:And he was asking with all humility, kind of how do I set up a place where I'm developing other leaders? So we talked, we talked that through and, um, it just could feel like if you set up the tower mentality, it's lonely at the top right and the pastor could be seen as the top dog, you know educationally, and he spent a lot of time and money putting that in into place. And then you get out and uh, if you're in a and uh, if you're in a, you, if you're in a lower income, maybe it's rural or you're in a, maybe an urban kind of mission start and you come in like thinking you're a big deal because you got a master, divinity or something like that, like there's gonna be so many people. They're like nah, nah, that doesn't mean much of anything here. So yeah, humility.
Speaker 2:I mean think about how many jobs are degree dependent. I mean, if you're a doctor or a lawyer, you need a degree, right. But a lot of jobs that I've held in my lifetime was way more about the competency than it was about the degree that I had. A degree might get you an interview but it's not going to guarantee that you're getting hired. There's a lot of other factors that go into that. Can you do that? That's right. So I'm not saying that to denigrate the value of education. I believe very highly on it. We're a church body that really encourages continuing education. But you can that can turn into a tower mentality and that's not always healthy.
Speaker 1:For the leader most especially. Definitely not for the organization of the church, but it hurts the leader. All right, let's move on From demographics. Let's get into segment two on beliefs and practices. We have a declining prayer frequency in the LCMS. Talk about that, jack.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so daily prayer dropped. So back in 2014, the number of people that said that they prayed daily was 64%, and that's dropped to 54%. So about a 10 percentage point drop, and this is an issue. I mean we are not sending our concerns to the right address, and you know, prayer is a part of our liturgy. Anyone who comes to a Lutheran worship service is going to be embedded in a lot of prayer, which is really, really good. But worship is not meant to be once a week. Worship is something we do every day and prayer is part of that.
Speaker 1:So having a daily rhythm of prayer is very, very important, yeah you wonder on that if, like the way you define prayer, I think often it's very narrow, right?
Speaker 1:Uh, I was talking to my friend Chris Pavala Pastor Chris Pavala, and he's going to be on here soon talking about prayer. There's a he's kind of leading a a prayer revolution, prayer reformation, you know, reformation of prayer, right, and and kind of de-stigmatizing what prayer is, because I think a lot of times then it's you know, okay, I remembered, and now, okay, I'm closing my eyes, holding my hands, and he's like we should just have some handles, like I am praying for that this happens, dot, dot, dot. Like I'm offering my entire life, this relationship, even this very moment as we're recording this podcast, to the God of the universe and if he doesn't show up and show off, like this is going to go sideways. So I desperately need your help. Is it defined as prayer, that, or is it like did you take your one minute a day? I'm just curious on the staff, like how are they asking people this question? I don't know Anything more there.
Speaker 2:We can go down a deep theological hole talking about the purpose and intent and benefit of prayer. I mean my personal view is that prayer is about your own transformation. You pray because it's needed for you, for your own transformation and your relationship of God. We start off by saying your will be done right and realizing that God's will is greater than our own will and that's part of our prayer, right In the Lord's prayer. And then realizing that God is ultimately the source of everything good in our lives and that we're depending on him. And even though, like we have all these anxieties and all these concerns to have God be our one true God, we have to send that to the right address, right.
Speaker 1:That's right. And then it just moves us to gratitude. Right, I have so many things. It's all undeserved, even this life. I have this breath that I take, the relationships that I get to be in man, it's all gravy, it's all gift and all I get to do for the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation that's mine by faith in Jesus. The invitation is simply gratitude. That's prayer, right, directing everything that's good to God. Obviously the negative stuff, but, yeah, I think we narrowly understand, too narrowly understand, prayer. It starts with gratitude. If you need a prayer acronym, you know praise, repent, ask, yield, whatever acronym helps you to kind of orient or using the petitions of the Lord's Prayer.
Speaker 1:All of these are very, very helpful. I would say in the LCMS we don't have a strong advocacy for expository prayer right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, talk more about that.
Speaker 1:Well, we have a lot of written prayers, colics that are beautiful, right, that are connected to the church calendar, and have we demystified in many respects what it means when Paul says to pray without ceasing? You know, and I think, think, I don't think we like our pastors modeling extemporaneous prayer for their people and inviting. This is always I mean, I've been a pastor now gosh, 17, 18 years and why, why is there this weird thing? Like we've been talking in a meeting, jack, you know, or about this, that or the other, but then and somebody may be like super passionate, articulate around this issue, and when I were to ask them, could you just bring that to the lord in prayer, it's like their heart rates are not, you know, like what? Yeah, I don't really get that. What?
Speaker 2:is that jack? Do you have any idea? Well, it takes practice. I mean it's. I would say, praying in a small group is like public speaking, you know, and which is one of the greatest fears that I mean people are more scared of public speaking than I think skydiving is in terms of, like, the amount of anxiety that it creates in people, and so I understand why. But I will say this I agree, we can. You know, it can become too mechanical. Prayer can be become too mechanical.
Speaker 2:But let me share this fascinating story. So I was with my mother-in-law on her deathbed, really, and Marta was urging me to share some gospel with her in her final moments. And I'm talking to her and I'm giving her encouragement and I can't really tell that she even understands a single thing that I'm saying. And then I said, ok, we're going to do the Lord's Prayer. And I started doing the Lord's Prayer. The moment I did that, she zoned in on that like a laser beam, because she had heard it so many times in her life that that became something that she could hold on to in that moment, which was really beautiful.
Speaker 2:And I've heard other stories, like pastoral stories, about that, where gosh, another pastor I talked to at the summer camp family camp I went to, it had the same thing. He was with his mother-in-law on her deathbed, completely unresponding, him and his spouse. They were doing the Lord's Prayer. All of a sudden three people were doing the Lord's Prayer. Isn't that wild how that type of liturgy gets into our. It just gets into our soul, it just bores in there and it becomes something that we can rely on. I can think of times where I felt like terrified, you know, being on a plane that was like really bad turbulence, boom, lord's prayer. All of a sudden calm. You know what I mean. So there's a, there's some beauty to that and I think you can go deep with that and I think there's also the benefit of like the liturgical sort of baking it into you. Right, that it's just you don't even have to think about it.
Speaker 1:And that's Luther's, not just the Lord's Prayer, but Luther's morning and evening prayer. Many people have memorized those. They're very, very hopeful and so, yeah, well, I was not saying anything against written or memorized prayers or. Lord's Prayer. For sure Like we need to be saying it consistently and using it as a springboard for our own petitions, our own prayers of gratitude and request.
Speaker 2:And real quick, though I think this is an area where a lot of Lutheran churches could be stronger and I want to highlight I feel like this is an area of success. In our own congregation, tim, we have a very, very vital, vibrant prayer ministry and I don't know that every church has thought as intentional about setting up a ministry, a serving team of people that serve the congregation through prayer and actually highlight that as a serving opportunity, because prayer is not meaningless. Prayer is extremely vital and we got a ton of people that are participating at that in our church, and so I think, if you know, that is one way that people can start thinking about adding more vitality to the church is creating a very active prayer ministry. Amen.
Speaker 1:Yep If you want more information just email either of us. We'd love to get you connected to those that are leading that, what it looks like and how it gets executed in a week in, week out, not just Sunday in Sunday out, but weekly, a day in, day out basis, yeah, so, all right, good, we need more prayer in the church.
Speaker 1:Useful, useful, all right. Let's move on to church attendance. Weekly attendance declined in the LCMS from 47% of our members worshiping weekly in 2014, now to 34% worshiping weekly. And I have seen this, we've seen this. I think every church is now. I mean, you can grow right now in your membership, but your weekly attendance may stay pretty flat right, because people are just worshiping less frequently. An average worshiper for us, a regular worshiper and I don't like this at all, but it is what it is is once a month.
Speaker 1:Like we count them as a regular worshiper.
Speaker 2:It used to be twice a month, right, and you see that in the stats, you know 47% would be about twice a month right Now. 34% is probably about I mean, let's call it every third week. You know, that's kind of what we would equate to in terms of a practice. But yeah, about once a month, I would say the vast majority of people would label themselves as regular worshipers if they come once a month, which I don't agree with. I don't think that's regular, but I'm thankful that we at least get the once a month to engage with people, and obviously a lot of people do that more than once a month. But yeah, that's something that churches need to work on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that online worship is a part of that.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, they can say, oh, I can just stay in my jammies and get the same thing, right, but obviously you're not getting the Lord's Supper in the same way. So that's an issue. And the same amount, it's not the same community building, right? The same communal experience.
Speaker 1:No, and some may say, well, you should stop doing online worship. Then, well, I mean, it is what it is Like your front door is people getting to look in on your internet, on the website and and seeing services so that they don't know you're not weird or whatever Like so it just a thing. I, the council, is not to stop doing that. The council is to encourage people into in-person worship. Really, I think our worshiping community is a third, third, third. So a third of the people are like every if they're in town, they're there. The other third is like the once a month or so, and the other third are made up of a mix between new, you know, first, second, third time guests and your less frequent folks, like the husband that comes with his wife just to get her off his back every quarter or something, something like that you know. So we should encourage in-person worship. Unfortunately, we are behind in the LCMS, the national average. The national average is 37%. We're at 34%.
Speaker 2:One thing about. Just another note on online worship. That is becoming more and more the front porch of the church. A lot of times people will have checked out your online worship a few times I'm hearing as many as four times before they'll set foot in the church now. So if you don't have a really good, decent online worship experience for people, you may be missing the boat in terms of actually trying to get people from the community to come to your church and try you out.
Speaker 1:Now some people say that denominations in general are in decline. Some people say that denominations in general are in decline. That is true. In the US, there are two church bodies that are actually growing, and obviously we don't align theologically, but there are probably some practical things in terms of leadership, development, church planting strategies that these two denominations the Assemblies of God and PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America. They're growing faster than the national increase in population. So PCA is a smaller church body, only 940 churches. Another stat, though, is Anandanam is growing at a 1% increase. As we're declining over that time, go ahead, jack.
Speaker 2:That's a little misleading. That's a one percentage point increase in terms of the population, which equates to several million people. So they've gone from like five percent six percentage points of the population to seven percentage points, which is actually a sizable like increase over a 10 year period. So we're seeing rapid increase in what we call non-denom even though it still remains a small percentage of the LCMS, but that's about seven times bigger than LCMS.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, sometimes I think we have an over, we overestimate our significance. Right, there are other church bodies and the non-denom world are growing and yeah, so why do you think that?
Speaker 2:would be. I'm going to just speculate on this a little bit here. Why do you think that would be? I'm just I'm going to just speculate on this a little bit here. Why would you suspect that these two church, uh, um, these two expressions are growing?
Speaker 1:uh, I mean, I think they don't have as many restrictions, um, as much history, like I love our history, right, our heritage, but the history can also be a part of the death of us in that we don't do things that way Right, and I think in the non-denom world we interact with a number of these leaders Like they build a bench, local serve, lead, coach, direct. Like these churches are nailing it in terms of raising up leaders internally, all the way up to pastor, the way they engage technology, the way they are able to create attractive and people bristle at this, but it just is what it is Attractive brands that meet felt needs. They just generally are better at it than many denominational churches. And we're we're.
Speaker 1:We're right in the thick of it here, like people in the LCMS may look at Christ Greenfield and think we're like a really big church or whatever. Nah, I mean, we are exponentially smaller than many of the multi-site churches here in the East Valley and really the Phoenix Metro and every metro has probably a similar type of story. They're just crushing it at scale, they're doing way better at church planting.
Speaker 2:I think that's kind of the two things that I see in both of those streams is the heavy emphasis on church planting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, cool, we have opportunities for growth. On church attendance, let's move into this one. This is really a drag. Okay, scripture reading In the LCMS, only 27% of our members read scripture weekly, significantly down from past years. We were at 36% reading scripture weekly back in 2014. 55% seldom or never read scripture, which is up from 39% in 2014. This is rough, jack. Any comments there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, what we're seeing is, in our church body, a rise in biblical illiteracy, and that is rough, especially for a conservative Lutheran church body to see a rise in biblical illiteracy. That is like holy smokes. What is going on here? If anything, we should be dominating in these stats, but we're falling behind the Baptists right now at 50%. So we really and I've just made some comments on here A lot of times I agree strongly with the view that our Orthodox Lutheran exposition of scripture is right, but I think and I think most members here would agree that it's right, but they're not as good at defending their positions in a conversation. A typical lay Lutheran is not as good at defending their positions than a lay Baptist would be, simply on the basis that they are not in the word and that they're actually not actually examining. You know what? What does this say and what does this mean and how does it apply to me? And that's really rough.
Speaker 1:I mean scripture alone, jack, like that's. This is the heart.
Speaker 2:We're the whole people basis of our denomination Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the whole reformation was based on that this is a shout out to one of my favorite professors back in the day who now teaches at Grand Canyon University, Reverend Dr Paul Robby. He gets very passionate, he goes. I sometimes wonder, Allman, if we're reading the Bible.
Speaker 2:Are we reading? Unfortunately, no. So, tim, what do you think I mean? What could local churches do in order to encourage more biblical literacy? And it needs to be beyond, like the Bible readings and Sunday Like I think what's happening is a lot of people we do a Bible reading on Sunday. I'm done. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you could do in your Lenten study right now, right, and I don't if you're a pericope, whatever I create a Bible reading plan connected to the sermons that you're going to be preaching and have it be a daily, a daily Bible reading plan. Right now we're walking through the gospel of Mark. This has been one of our habits we look at a gospel on the way to the cross, right, and so we've got a daily Bible reading plan that mirrors a lot of the topics that we're going to be going deeper on on Sunday, right, and that's not. I guess it takes some intention, some planning, I guess. But my goodness, let's do it for God's people At the very least. There's so many Bible reading plans that are out there. Read through the Bible. In a year, you know, or two years have.
Speaker 1:Give Bibles, give Bibles away. Like, if we're going to buy something as a church, maybe you strategically buy a whole bunch of a whole bunch of, you know, esv Bibles at cost and just have them. I had two guys come up here recently, jack, which we need to do this? Have Bibles at our welcome center. We could get a whole few caseloads of them. If you don't have a Bible or you want to give a Bible away, come and get it. If there's an action item for us at Christ Greenfield, this should happen right now. An action item for us at Christ Greenfield Like this, this should happen right now, you know.
Speaker 1:So a member came up said you know, I come down from the North and I don't. I didn't bring. I got like two or three Bibles at home but I didn't bring my Bible. Do you have a Bible that I could have here? We walked back into sure, we got a whole. We got a whole bunch of them, you know. So, yeah, just encourage it, talk about it. And I mean the recent study. This blew people's minds when I dropped this data a few weeks ago and this was from I'm going to draw a blank, you can look it up. If you just Google or look on Grok AI, where did the four times a week or more Bible reading study come from? You'll find it Exponentially. This study said exponential mental, emotional, physical, spiritual health comes when you open up the words four times as likely Right Discipleship conversations grow exponentially if you just read the Bible four times or more.
Speaker 1:So, a pastor, you could share that study, that research. People were taking out their phones. It was bonkers.
Speaker 2:So yeah, let's get into the word. Major transformation tied to frequently reading the Bible, not just once a week, but you said, four times a week or more Seemed to be a critical catalytic point for people in terms of transformation. For sure?
Speaker 1:All right, let's keep moving here. We got more to talk about my internet's running a little bit slow. There we go, all right. Segment three spiritual well-being and social beliefs. Spiritual peace. So weekly spiritual peace experienced by LCMS members declined from 63% in 2014 to 43% in 2023. What that's rough A 23% decline in people experiencing peace connected to the Prince of Peace, jesus, and a doubling of the number of people that say they have no spiritual peace whatsoever.
Speaker 2:So it was. Sadly. It was at 11% 10 years ago. Now it's 20%.
Speaker 1:No, it's doubled. What I don't even know. How are we functioning? I mean, this is just one sign that anxiety, depression, mental health crisis like we are at a major, major breaking point right now as it relates to mental health. So if you're not speaking about meeting people where they are mental health, so if you're not speaking about meeting people where they are counseling, care, pastoral care, prayer over people, you know setting up spaces for grief sharing and you know economic, if you're walking through a lost job like how are we caring for one another?
Speaker 2:The church should care about that, setting space for people who have no peace 20%, man, that's rough and we're getting at to what I'm starting to call lag measures. So let's call going to worship, praying and reading the Bible as lead measures. Now we're seeing the lag measures. A lack of spiritual peace, isn't that wild?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, let us not give up getting together. There's no silver bullet outside of Christ and community, right? So how consistently? If you're listening to this and you're like, yeah, I listen to lead time so much and I just get angry or anxious, we're trying not to make all of our podcasts about that, but flee to your local church, flee to your pastor for prayer and run into the arms of Jesus, who is the Prince of Peace, get into the Word of God. Spiritual habits are really, really helpful.
Speaker 2:Join a small group or a Bible study.
Speaker 1:Join a small group, move your body. All of these things will give us peace. Resilience, really, jack, is what we need to pray for more. The church should be the most resilient group of people. Why? Because we know the ultimate end of this story Jesus comes back to raise the dead, make all things new, and we get to experience the inbreaking of the kingdom of heaven right now. How, through the word, through the spirit, through the body of Christ, the living manifestation of the presence of Jesus through his people. So let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but evermore, as you look eagerly for that day, gather to remind one another, right, I mean, the scriptures were given to us so that we could remind one another when despair, anxiety, fear, worry, doubt come. We're not alone. There's a God who's radically in love for us and we know that through the person of his son, jesus. So this is one of the toughest the scripture reading and the spiritual peace. No peace man. The church has to care about that. Any closing comments there, jack?
Speaker 2:No, there's deep hurting in this country, and we're not immune to it. As Lutherans here, we have to be on guard, and the time for both pastors, but also pastors raising up people to be spiritual caregivers is more urgent than it's ever been.
Speaker 1:Well, that's that's a great point. So, um, we have a spiritual care team here that's made up of 20, over 20 people who are, you know, in prayer. A lot of them are also on that prayer team. It's overled by one of our pastors, michael Hyden. They get together monthly for ongoing conversation around those that are experiencing deep hurt, grief how are we connecting with them? And ongoing training for becoming better at sitting with and weeping with those who weep and mourn. So, yeah, the church needs to be a respite place for the weary and those that are experiencing anxiety, who need the peace of Jesus. All right, let's get into the next topic social conservatism. This is not surprising.
Speaker 2:Not surprising.
Speaker 1:The LCMS is becoming more conservative. Say more there, Jeff.
Speaker 2:More conservative, yeah, so I would say more conservative across the whole spectrum of things. It's becoming more conservative in terms of the style of worship that you know. I would say, 10 years as a, you still see lots of congregations that are in that, but there's probably more of a national trend to unify around more traditional liturgical expressions and politically conservative, and this was fascinating. So, yeah, the percentage of people that we're we call tolerant of I'm trying to come up with the right word here accepting of homosexuality has decreased. So it used to be 56 percent, now it's 50 percent. So there was more tolerance of that. Now I'm not saying you should be tolerant of that, more tolerance of that. Now I'm not saying you should be tolerant of that, or you know, I think there's a lot that goes into the word, describing what tolerant means, right, but we are seeing a shift socially, politically and I would say, liturgically, in a more orthodox direction towards conservatism. This was interesting in the political affiliation.
Speaker 1:Well, hold on, jack. Before we move on, before we move to politics. Uh, this is fascinating. Uh, belief in hell is up to 75%, that's, that's kind of so 25% of our members it was less. 25% of our members still don't believe in in hell.
Speaker 2:Okay, of our members, it was less. 25% of our members still don't believe in hell. That's scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there should be urgency.
Speaker 2:Yeah, compared to the broader society, lcms is more conservative. On the topic of homosexuality, as an example, general acceptance in society was 67% and that doesn't mean that everybody's like pro-gay marriage or whatever, but in terms of just like cool, whatever, do what you do, you do you about 67%, and that number is much lower in the LCMS, and that's no surprise, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to pause right there. I mean, this is a potential toward, and not just in institutions but in the local church, and not just in institutions but in the local church. The potential for us to become legalistic and pharisaical exists in the LCMS right. And so go back to the book how the Light Shines Through by Chad Lakees. If you want a handbook on walking the middle road of Jesus on this Jack, go ahead.
Speaker 2:We had Kishnick on a while ago and he had some of his critiques of our national church body and he mentioned the Romanization of our clergy and I believe that this is going to trigger a lot of people. I believe that that is an actual trend. What we're looking at is more centralization, more focus on unity of orthodoxy in terms of expression for worship. You know, gosh, I would say just in that tighter sort of more structured way of doing things, rather than being very at peace with more congregational model of doing things. We're seeing that as a trend as well, and you could say that that's an outpouring of what we call conservatism in our church body. That's just my own analysis on it. People may get upset of that. Take on it, but I think that is definitely a take of what's going on here. Tim, you've seen trends in terms of more conservative student bodies with some of our seminaries. I mean, these are just some personal observations that you've made. These are not scientific by far, um observations. Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:Well, it's just, it's true, and I think it's a normal reactivity to secularization today is to control what you can.
Speaker 3:It's a snapback.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a snapback. You can control what you can control and we can control the snapback. You can control what you can control and we can control the liturgy, the appropriate doing, and then we end up finding our identity. This is, I think, more of what it is. We end up finding our identity, and this is where Pharisaism or legalism can come in and what we do, how well we do it, rather than our identity as baptized children of God, and there is no mandate, while I think we could have conversations, should have conversations about in this generation, of what it means to be confessional Lutheran in the LCMS a best practice, if you will, for liturgical sharing. You're not going to get close to I don't know what the stat is probably 50% of our churches who have some form of modern worship. You're not going to get them to stop, and so we should be honest about where we've potentially erred, as it relates to maybe singing songs that were not the greatest. It was too me-focused or not narrative-focused, gospel-centered, jesus-centered, it may be more emotive, etc. And so shout out to the Songwriters Initiative. They're just understanding the times and they're working with a number of different professors to help write great new songs for the church and hit them up on YouTube Songwriters Initiative. You're not going to change some of these just by mandating. You should stop doing it like that's not. That's not going to work.
Speaker 1:Can some of our practices become better, more Lutheran, more distinct in the marketplace of the wider? You know a lot of songs, a lot of singing, a lot of long preaching Like I think we have something of value to offer connected to our liturgy. But we better not move toward a fair. It better look exactly like it looks in rural Iowa, in Phoenix, arizona. There's going to be room for and this is going to Dr Bierman's Dr Bierman's Adiaphora conversation. The formula of Concord speaks very clearly about becoming wed toward the mandates of man rather than what God has said in scripture. Anything more to say there, jack, we might as well just go head first into it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll just say this Lutheran worship has 500 years of tradition and sometimes we pretend that there's only 450 years and we delete the last 50, right, or you know, the last 20 or whatever that is like. We don't want the last 20 years to be a part of it, we want the stuff that's before the 20 years and we call that the Lutheran tradition for worship. But in reality, the spectrum of Lutheran worship he used the word Lutheran worship as wherever Lutherans are worshiping, period, and I agree with that definition. And certainly there's what you would see as the norm is some liturgical elements being baked into that because it's so good for people. We talked about the Lord's Prayer as an example.
Speaker 2:How does worship help to bake certain things into us which is really, really good? But that doesn't mean that it has to be done with robes or without robes, or you know the smells and the bells and all that kind of stuff. Not that anything of those are wrong. A lot of times those things are great, but do they? You know, really the question is does it serve the community to communicate the gospel without distraction and get there? You know, that's really the ultimate, the ultimate goal here. If such a large number of the population is coming from a non-denom background. I'm not saying that we become non-denom, but can you show hospitality to people that don't have a Roman Catholic background in their worship style? Right, how do you show hospitality to that group? And that's really at the core of it. It is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. What's Bierman in his Adiaphora video, which we could link that for people if they haven't?
Speaker 2:seen it. It talks about not being I don't know if he wants us linking to him or not, but we'll see.
Speaker 1:He's coming on. He's going to be on the podcast. So, yeah, it's cool, but he talks about not being frivolous on one end. What's the other end of frivolity as we talk about Adiaphora?
Speaker 2:Adiaphora Narrow. Yeah, narrow, narrow and frivolous yeah, I thought those were beautiful handles for us and I don't know that we handle that tension as well as we could. I would encourage this. The convention's coming up, see how many overtures come out that have the word heterodox put into it, right, not that those things shouldn't be talked about, but is there a bunch of overtures with the word heterodox on them? How many of them are going to have the word mission in them? Right, or outreach, or planting, you know that kind of thing. So look at that in terms of like, count the number of overtures that have those types of phrases in it and see what the culture of our church body is.
Speaker 1:There is no question. In the LCMS today we have a narrowing potential, so use this. Many people listen to us and don't like you or I, and that's okay, we don't all have to.
Speaker 1:I'd hope we could be brothers and sisters in the faith. But you're listening and you're getting. If this conversation triggers you, that means you may have a narrowing potential. You may be imbalanced toward a narrow.
Speaker 1:The interesting thing is, for those of us that have been Lutheran liturgical also have experienced some, you know, modern forms of worship. The group that's in the church songwriters initiative, like none of them, are saying you should stop doing what you're doing in the Midwest traditional. But there's a lot of people in the Midwest which a lot of our're doing in the Midwest traditional. But there's a lot of people in the Midwest which a lot of our members are in the Midwest, those crazy people down in Arizona doing crazy. You know, like, if that, if that is your gut response to this whole conversation, trying to move toward the middle, not going cause. This is Adiaphora. You can't. You can't argue that worship is is not in terms of the narrow forms that we take, right, that it's not already out for the formula of concord. It's very, very clear about this and so, yeah, maybe we need to take that anxiety to the Prince of Peace Jesus.
Speaker 2:Or maybe we need to be more legalistic about not being legalistic, I don't know Well.
Speaker 1:I don't know, yeah, I don't know. All right, well, let's move on. Uh, this last one's not gonna surprise anybody either.
Speaker 2:uh, political affiliation 66 percent of lcms members identify as republican or republican leaning, compared to uh 46 percent nationally now, yeah, there is a trend, and this is there does seem to be a trend of that being a thing happening in the last few years that there's more people starting to identify as Republican, but more so in church bodies, and especially the LCMS has become very much more Republican leaning. What's interesting is some of the stats from before had a much larger number of people identifying as independent, and basically the independents have disappeared almost entirely from our church body. So there was slightly more people leaning Democrat and a whole lot more people leaning Republican.
Speaker 3:So Democrats have grown too in the LCMS.
Speaker 1:What's that? Democrats have grown in the LCMS too 30% A little bit.
Speaker 2:A little bit, yeah, but what's completely vanished is the sort of none or independence.
Speaker 1:Well, that's just consistent with our culture, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The word of the year in 2024, polarization. Yep polarization you demon Democrats or the righteous republicans like, let's watch ourselves there. We definitely have to watch ourselves in terms of, yeah, who are we doing ministry with and for? We bring word and sacrament to all different types of people and we do not worship the emperor or any kind of president. You know, and I think it's really easy if we only get the right guy and then sin is going to be taken care of. Give me a break. Jesus is the only answer. Go ahead, jack.
Speaker 2:So these stats don't surprise me at all, and I think that's probably consistent with what we would see at Christ Greenfield 65%, maybe even more than that. And at the same time, the urge for what we would urge pastors and churches to do is to say we're not a political organization. For what we would urge pastors and churches to do is to say we're not a political organization, we're not here to get people aligned with any political party. We put Christ front and center. Let's follow Christ and then let Christ be informing all the other decisions that we do. Right, yeah, so any thoughts on that in terms of how we engage politically? I mean, we, we did.
Speaker 2:We got into this spicy election season, tim you and I, we did a session about politics. It wasn't a, it wasn't a worship service. It was sort of a midweek kind of what do we call it? It was a panel discussion panel where people could talk about not what to think, but how to think right. How do we think? How do we use our Christian lens to think about issues of politics right? And the answer is it's not about having a strong affinity with a party per se. It's about being at peace, knowing that government has a function that you're being called to vote. That's something that you're being called to do in the society, that not everybody gets to do in other countries, and how do you steward that responsibility for the sake of your neighbor?
Speaker 1:Yep and political homogeneity can impact church in the best use of the word here inclusivity, outreach strategies and member engagement if we come too tightly identified and churches have gone off on this right. I mean our ELCA neighbors. They're definitely, as you look at them, politically liberal and theologically liberal right, that's one side.
Speaker 2:And then the other side might be in some of the non-denom churches, where they'll bring in Republican guest speakers and they'll essentially preach, you know, or give a political statement on a Sunday morning, which I've never heard happen in an LCMS church. So good for us in that area. But think about you know again, think about that from a lens of hospitality. If you're making your service about politics, you're basically telling Democrats you're not welcome here, right, and that's not the position that we have. The position is sinners belong in church, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. Right, that's where you belong is in church, hearing the gospel, hearing, confession and absolution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and is this messy? Yeah, totally, Because we're people of the way of Jesus and so we can talk about certain political issues like life, like sexuality right and love for your neighbor, God's love for the world and I love your statement sinners belong in church, and if you are not in agreement on some of those or have a difference of opinion, this is still a place where you can come in here, receive the word of God, be reminded of your sin and be reminded of the work of your savior. Like you know, that's the middle way that we have to walk right now, and there's nothing against like we're going to be at a. Our church is going to be represented at a right for life rally here soon. It's not like that's woo, that's like the main thing, that, no, but it's. It's a part of our biblical neighboring work is to care about things that are connected to scripture, that are hurting people in terms of knowing who God is and how much he loves them.
Speaker 2:So, yep, it's not an affirmation of sin. It's a confession of sin, is really what it boils down to, and it's a hospitality.
Speaker 1:Let's all come together and confess our sin right, that's what Lutherans do, so we have opportunities for growth in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, to be sure. Recommended path forward, segment four I love this and I don't know if you came up with this or these are great, great points, so I'll let you go down our recommended path forward, so proactive outreach programs targeting young families.
Speaker 2:I believe that churches that are going to have the most influence in America in the future are the ones that are most successful at reaching young families period, and it's also young families that are probably the most in desire to be in connection with church. There's such a mess trying to raise a family, tim Like especially sorry, my phone's going off here Especially, you know if you're a first time parent or you're just newly newly married. You're trying to figure out things that you didn't realize. You know you didn't realize how difficult it is to give your life away to become a husband or a father or a wife or a mother Like the the. The amount of sacrifice is huge and the stress that it creates is huge, and having a strong spiritual community that surrounds you and supports you is a huge opportunity.
Speaker 1:No, couldn't agree more. Next one intentional leadership and discipleship pathways for young adults and for youth. Talk about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, as we said, the definition of youth is expanding because you got a lot of people that don't leave home till, like, maybe, their late twenties. We have to be rethinking about that. I think that the most successful youth ministries are the youth ministries that engage their youth to be leaders, co-leading the youth program, right. So can you have one of your youth? Can you disciple them so that they're actually able to get there and give a talk about a particular topic or testimony about a particular topic, and think about how that impacts that community of youth when they see people being raised up to do that, that they are contributors rather than just consumers. I think that's really what it boils down to is creating a contributor versus consumer mentality in your youth and young adult ministries.
Speaker 1:Well, I wouldn't be a pastor if it weren't for DCE Tim Lindeman who allowed me to take part in formation, in discipleship conversations, teaching a small little Bible study. Tim, you take the first 15 minutes of this and then I'll kind of keep it going from there. That was huge for me my junior and senior year in high school and then you go off to college. I got to be youth and youth leadership. You know, at Concordia Seward I got many opportunities before I ever went to the seminary to talk about Jesus to see do I like it and do I have the potential to be somewhat good at it, you know, and there were people who said, yeah, don't get the big ad, but you got potential to go and be a communicator of the gospel. That was huge, so good stuff. Another strategic emphasis on spiritual formation practices prayer, scripture reading, spiritual support groups, small groups more there, jack.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so can you invite your community to like? And basically, this is where we have to think of church as platform. Right, that the success for the member is to do these things. The church then has to think of itself as a platform to help facilitate the members doing this type of thing. So you know, setting up small groups Guess what happens in small groups? Prayer, bible reading, right, serving, supporting each other. You know all of these things that we want to happen. So you start with small groups. Get people into small groups. You're a facilitator, you're a platform for small groups, and then you can do additional tools for people in their individual rhythms.
Speaker 2:A lot of churches are seeing success by creating congregational Bible reading plans and having that tied to their app or some other technology. Or you know, texting people to try and lower the lift on that. Because you know, if I don't know anything about the Bible, where do I start? Do you tell people to go to Genesis and read the Bible through, or do you curate a more hospitable experience for people that might be new on that topic? So that's where we have to think platform right. How do I help the person win in their strategy to do this? So you're encouraging people and you're giving them the tools to do that and for us.
Speaker 1:The app is a major part of that platform. Right, we have a Christ Greenfield app where certain next step invitations are clearly given toward leaders, small group and beyond. So, yeah, huge, All right. Last two here Clear prioritization of gospel-centered messaging over political identification we kind of talked about that. A fair amount.
Speaker 2:Well, this is what we don't want the LCMS to be. We don't want the LCMS to be the place to go because it's quote unquote conservative. We want the LCMS to be the place that people go because we have the gospel. That's the reason why people want to be. You know that is the right reason to be attracted. Now, that may be. You know there is a political trend of attractiveness towards conservative church bodies. That may be the reason why you're seeing the rise of Nandenam, because a lot of them are very conservative. So you know that may be a piece of the whole thing.
Speaker 2:When you're reaching out to the community, we know, for example, tim you and I have seen this that there is an attractionalness to traditional worship that didn't used to be there, you know, a few years ago. A lot of young families are finding that very attractive. But at the heart of it is your identity is not conservative. Your identity is gospel. Your identity is mission. Your identity is outreach. Your identity is priesthood of all believers, right, and so that's the key thing there, and you know the types of decisions that people make. That's the fruit of your faith and that is not the thing that is. You know that is not the core of what it means to be church.
Speaker 1:So we want proactive outreach. We want intentional leadership and discipleship, invitations, pathways. We want to be inviting people into spiritual formation practices prayer, scripture reading, et cetera. We want to be a gospel-y. We're gospel-y in the world, right, Right and then final. We're engaging thoughtfully and lovingly on social issues that maintain doctrinal integrity while compassionately connecting with broader communities. Final, final point there, here we are pro-life.
Speaker 2:As a church, we believe we should be protecting the unborn. That's not the first message you're going to hear about us, but we believe the Bible is true and so we honor the commandments and as part of engaging the community, loving your neighbor means loving the unborn, and so we're mobilizing people to do that. We've partnered with local organizations on that and there's many other opportunities where you can say you know how can the church be immobilized to love their neighbors in a way that's authentically biblical Right, and on one hand, there's a lot of freedom in that we believe in Christian freedom. On the other hand, there's a lot of truth that balances that and helps us guide us in the types of programs that we programs and organizations that we partner with, and I think it means a lot to see that a church actually engages in some of these activities and doesn't see itself completely divorced from it 100%.
Speaker 1:So my closing comment, if I could pray for one thing for every church and member of an LCMS congregation, is that the word of God would be our driving force. Because when you read the word of God, especially as God's love story to get all of his kids back, god is on a mission from the very beginning of time, since our active rebellion, through Abraham, isaac and Jacob, through the nation of Israel, through a repenting message of the prophets, to focus us on the person and work and way of Jesus. Don't neglect the way of Jesus, how he invited other people to come alongside him, how he ascended after his crucifixion and resurrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit. That would have a mighty work in our church body. The Holy Spirit only works through the Word. Right, this is like deep Lutheran theology. We're not, you know, we're extra-nosed people. The Word descends to us, the Word changes us by the Spirit's power. It crushes, kills and raises up to newness of life, and then you cannot help.
Speaker 1:I love this in the book of Acts. Look at how the world is being turned upside down by this small group of people who are radically. They're radical in their allegiance to the only King. His name is Jesus. Jesus is Lord. You can take my life, but my life. I've already been crucified with Christ. I no longer live. I live in the one who gave his life for me. So if every member had that sort of a missional zeal to let the word of God read them like discern us, crush us and raise us up daily to new life by the spirit's power, everything, like all the conversations that we're having in the LCMS about a narrowing, controlling, we would move to abundance. Like you can't even imagine the dreams to reach people with the gospel would be so, so persuasive and invasive into our community that, like everybody, every institution would have to take notice. Like we have to raise up more people to bring the gospel to folks, and it starts with getting into the word of God. So final final thoughts from you though, jack.
Speaker 2:No, I think you you you shared some very inspirational words right now and I would just encourage people to not get down and out on some of these numbers. Societies go through these types of transitions and I see it as an opportunity. Like there's more people that need to hear the gospel, the. The harvest is plentiful, the workers are few, so let's get busy raising up workers.
Speaker 1:So let's also pray to the Lord of the harvest, the Lord of the harvest baby to raise up workers.
Speaker 3:So this is a lead time.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe, comment wherever it is that you take these podcasts in. Thank you to Pew Research for giving us this data. It's very, very helpful Data just kind of grounds us. Data doesn't cripple us, it grounds us in our present reality and allows us strategically as local leaders and district leaders, national leaders to make strategic changes to reach more people. With the gospel, it's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Thanks so much, jack, good work.
Speaker 3:God bless, 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. 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.