Lead Time
Lead Time
Rethinking LCMS Conflict: Lessons from Seminex to Today
Tim and Jack welcome back Nick Graff, a former Marine Corps sergeant and special forces member, to discuss the aftermath of Seminex and its implications for the modern Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.
• The aftermath of Seminex resulted in a more confessionally unified LCMS while also creating a spirit of disunity
• Contemporary debates about worship styles often conflate adiaphora (non-essential matters) with doctrine
• "Liturgical pietism" can potentially make the liturgy, rather than Christ, the focus of worship
• Political identities increasingly supersede baptismal identities in church conflicts
• American politics have become more tribal, affecting how Christians relate to one another
• "Backdoor ecumenicism" allows non-Lutheran theological concepts to enter through political associations
• The church tends to focus on power struggles rather than creating hospitable spaces for sinners
• "Sinners belong in church" remains a foundational Lutheran principle
• Only Christ—not human efforts to enforce conformity—can bring order to a fallen world
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Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack Kalberg, it is a beautiful day to be alive, I pray. The joy of Jesus is your strength, jack. You feeling well, doing well.
Speaker 3:Oh man, it is a beautiful day and I am under absolute assault by allergies right now.
Speaker 3:So, keep me in your prayers as I bear this thorn in my flesh. Just a side note on that. I've been struggling with that for about a year now. I'm going through autoimmune therapy where they're giving the shots and it's actually helping, but they're saying it's kind of a long haul or it might take a couple of years to get the full benefit of it. I'm noticing a benefit from it, so I'm praising Jesus for that and just staying the course and keeping going. I saw you had a little spray bottle there. Have you used?
Speaker 2:AstroPro? No, I never heard of that. This is one that just came, Not that.
Speaker 1:I'm giving medical advice.
Speaker 3:We started the lead time here.
Speaker 2:But this is For those of us that live in the Valley that have allergies. This is a non-steroid type of, and it's really great.
Speaker 2:So for those of us that speak a lot. My biggest issue with using any kind of nasal steroid to kind of dry you up is it also hurts your vocal cords, and so this one is not doing that. So AstroPro, to the rescue. With that, we have Nick Graff back with us today. Nick has been on a number of times in the past. He served nine years as a sergeant in the Marine Corps, followed by 16 years in special forces. As a civilian, he is a layman in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and he is a deep thinker. We're going to have a lot of fun today. So background Nick recently. From time to time he hears things and he's like hey, tim, have you thought about this? And he recently sent me an email with a lot of great talking points and so sent the email back saying let's have a conversation and that's how it works. And here we go. So you talked a lot about the win. Let's just go right into the deep end here, nick, before we get going. How you doing, brother?
Speaker 4:Man I'm doing great, Glad to be here, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Nick is a is a country rural. He's a man's man If I could be half the man that Nick is. He's clearing a huge field right now for he and his wife in their rural abode in Alabama. That's where he's coming to us from, so praise be to God. But in his spare time he likes to talk about stuff that's going on in the history of the LCMS, and so that's where we're going to start talking about the light topic of Seminex, seminex. So you talk about the win of Seminex, the win. Did we really win, nick, as you look at it historically?
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, I mean, first of all, I think arriving out of Semenex having reconfirmed our commitment to biblical inerrancy is absolutely a win, there's no question about it. And then, you know, the fact that we arrived out of Semenex with a church body that was uniformly confessional and I use that in the best of terms uniformly confessional is definitely a win. But the question that we have to ask ourselves is what left with the people who departed at Semenex? And so, you know, I think we came out of Semenex with a church body, particularly a clergy, that was far less interested in you know, the political engagements of the time, which may be a good thing. In fact, if you think about what was happening in the late in the 60s, late 60s, early 70s, that might have actually been a good thing, but the question still remains that when you have a church body that separates, you did lose something. And what is that thing? And so, you know, I like to think about it from the perspective of the people who left during Seminax. And so, I think, as the victors, as the quote unquote victors the people who remained in the LCMS after Seminax, I think we like to paint this as just a matter of rejecting higher critical view towards Holy Scripture and saying like, look, this is about biblical inerrancy.
Speaker 4:But if you think about the people who left, imagine that you were. You know, I think you could imagine if you were in a synodical body that was going toward higher criticism and you were somebody who subscribed to biblical inerrancy, I think you could imagine leaving right Because that's a matter of faith, that's a faith question, that's an issue, I think, when you take it from the perspective of the people who subscribe to what is an academic philosophy and you imagine, would I leave a synodical body over disagreement of an academic philosophy? Probably not. So while we may, and they may, make it about higher criticism, I think it's probably more about the politics that higher criticism allowed for. It allowed for well, and then I think it was also a little bit of fealty or loyalty towards particularly popular professors at Concordia, st Louis, who are teaching these things Right. I think it was less about really an academic philosophy than it was about politics and then personal loyalty.
Speaker 3:Nick, let's unpack this real quick.
Speaker 4:When you say higher critical analysis of the Bible, not everybody knows what that means. Can you kind of explain your best understanding of what that means? Yeah, so instead of saying that Holy Scripture is God's word, divinely inspired, written down by man, those sorts of things, you would look at all of Holy Scripture through the prism of the people who wrote it and the context in which it was written. So you might say, paul's basic prohibition on women in the ministry, right. You would say, well, look, paul's a bigot, he's a product of his time. You know, we don't have to listen to that today.
Speaker 4:You might say something like that if you were a higher critical sort of person. Critical sort of person, right, but. But the problem then is like okay, well then, also then maybe the, the account of creation, the biblical narrative of creation, is just a story that we tell kids on the dangers of sin or, you know, on how God created the earth. So then it opens up, you know. And so if you get that wrong, which is really a matter of Christology, if you get that wrong, you get the cross wrong, you get the eschaton wrong, you get everything wrong. So, and we can see it right, I mean, you can see it. In the ELCA I saw a few years ago, you saw the Sparkle Creed, which is just, I mean, clearly demonic, like there's nothing good, I would say an abomination, an abomination.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean it's it's, it's, it's the. It's worse than it's the worst heresy I've ever heard, so so, so, getting back to the people who left at Seminex, what they ended up doing was basically putting their political identity above their baptismal identity, and so, in my estimation, right, and I think that there's some dangers in doing that today in the LCMS, on the other side.
Speaker 2:So that that's, that's basically basically my point. But yeah, what do we win? Right, so I think we won a lot, but I think we can't go back. But what would have happened if those that were struggling, those that had some different theological views but I'll tell you this, like Tijan and a number of the leaders that were there, these were not like, these were not heretics in the church, they were just in the midst of a certain time and could they have been influenced in a certain direction? That may have been less than helpful, for sure, but what would have happened if they hadn't walked?
Speaker 2:Could the church have just worked it out over time, over a long period of conversation, that would have moved us in an orthodox direction? And what it actually did is it put a spirit of disunity in the LCMS and you fight to win, and when you win, you lose the relationship, and we lost relationship with a number of strategic leaders that could have been led towards seeing things in a different way. The biggest question I think anytime you're in conflict, it's never just about the thing. Biggest question.
Speaker 2:I think anytime you're in conflict, it's never just about the thing, you know, and human beings tend to make it about the thing. So we look at what Semenex was and it's obviously a battle over the Bible. It's higher critical and we got to get rid of the heretics and thankfully they walked, so we didn't have to really do it, you know. But what did we miss? And there are certainly things that we miss and I think we could go down the same path today.
Speaker 2:For those of us that are saying, hey, there could be some paths that we're going down that are less than faithful to the mission of God, the driving why of God to get all of his kids back, there's a number of concerning things around, whether it's formation or things that happen behind closed doors that look like, wow, are we inviting? Is it filled with integrity and love and truth and light? And those of us that want to kind of enter into those spaces. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about formation and prior approval. Just to be quite clear, those are the two big topics right now.
Speaker 2:And for those of us that are just kind of saying, with love and care and kindness, we got some opportunities for growth. Do we want to sit and actually do the deep work and listen to one another in our respective context, or do we just want to put one another into corners? And why don't it be better if you guys just left the whole host of our church body? If you guys just left the whole rest of the body would be better. If that is your litmus, if that's where you go, that is less than faithful to the prayer of Jesus in John, chapter 17, jack.
Speaker 3:Tim, I mean what you're talking, what you're describing to me, what I'm hearing from you is a process whereby we're putting unity above confession, and what I mean. What I mean by that is that, um, that unity is being defined by style, by culture, by, let's say, definitely a confessional interpretation, but maybe a narrow interpretation of confessions. You can agree, you can say amen to the confessions and have really great debates about what that means and still say that you're saying amen to the confessions, right. But maybe you're narrowing down and saying only this interpretation is allowed, right. So we're now putting unity above confessional alignment.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Nick any kind of follow up to that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, I would say that's definitely true, you know. Here's the other thing. So when you were talking about, you know, could we have earlier you were talking about, could we just maybe try to bring these guys into the fold? It's important to remember that Martin Charlemagne, who was the one of the inside guys at, uh, Concordia St Louis, was a higher critic and he was called to repent and he did right and he became uh, uh, you know, one of the one of the stalwarts at Concordia, St Louis, to bring it back into confessional alignment. So, you know, not everyone's gone. But then the question is you know, I sort of talked about adiaphora and conflating that with biblical commands or biblical ordinances or confessions or those sorts of things. And so you know, I think that there's a view currently that, you know, if we have a praise band, the next thing we're going to do is have an openly lesbian district president or something like there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a slippery slope, right, yeah, that's the conflation, right.
Speaker 4:So so what, what, what? What there is lacking right now is a trust that the people who are in the Senate are actually confessional Right, and then, and then to leave Adiaphora matters to the local church, and they don't want to do that at all. So, and that goes to pastoral formation, that goes to trust, right, yeah, well, and I mean, look, I mean, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a liturgical guy, like a divine service setting one and three, my absolute favorite Right, page five and 15. However far back you want to go, that's what I want to do, but there's a lack of contextual hospitality, and so not every context is the same. And so if you really think about what empathy is, empathy is really context-informed grace, and so that's what we're lacking in our church is context-informed grace, and so that's what we're lacking in our church is context informed grace, and I think that that comes in.
Speaker 4:Unfortunately, I think that comes into from the political side. So I think you know American politics, that's no secret, have become pretty tribal, and you're you know, I can remember a time where you didn't talk about your politics openly, and now you know politics you wear on your sleeve, it actually becomes part of your identity, and so my concern is that, as I don't really want to call it conservative thought, we'll call it right wing populism becomes less empathetic. Empathy is seen as a weakness. We incorporate that into our church, and so you might say those, those politics are fine. Incorporate that into our church, and so you might say, um, those, those politics are fine. And you might say like, hey, look, the two kingdoms doctrine says the sword is for the state and you know, the gospels for the church, and I would agree with that. Uh, but a lack of empathy doesn't belong in the church and it comes in, um, I think, through our political associations and the way that we view ourselves politically, and that becomes the bulk of our identity.
Speaker 4:And I'll give you, I'll give you an example really quickly. So we were talking about the recent executive order that removes churches from the list of sanctuary places. That ICE can't, you know, do immigration enforcement actions, and the response from one of the nicest little ladies in our church was good, let them come Right. And I thought, wow, that's, that's, that's crazy, because, you know, just four years ago we were talking about how we weren't going to let the government come in and decide how God was going to distribute his blessings through word and sacrament to his people in the middle of covid, and we were right in doing that, I think.
Speaker 4:But now we're like, hey, if you want to come, enforce some immigration actions in our church, regardless of what that does to the church's mission of expanding the kingdom, we're good with that. And so there's a lack of empathy, right. And then how that works contextually or how that works inside the church is pretty alarming, right. So we talked about worship styles, we talked about pastoral formation, we talked about a whole host of things, but that's what ends up in the church, which is not good at all.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you mentioned worship styles, right, and there are many Lutheran churches that do contemporary, many, probably most, do a traditional form, what we call traditional, right, right out of the hymnal. But plenty that do both styles, plenty that do only contemporary style. Usually they're incorporating, you know, some sort of liturgical elements. There's definitely word and sacrament happening in these expressions we define in our confession. Unity is word and sacrament, right, but what happens in our culture? The culture is we define unity as the hymnal right, hey, we've got a written document.
Speaker 3:You have to adhere to that. If you're not adhering to it, you're quote unquote heretic, not Lutheran, not confessional right. And this seems to be a deep sort of cultural movement in our church body right now, and there are plenty, and the reason I know this is because those comments are abundant on social media. Yeah, that would be very happy to see churches prohibited from doing what we would call contemporary worship or purged from the body they would be just content with that Right.
Speaker 1:Or purged from the body.
Speaker 3:They would be just content with that, right, and that is very, very alarming to me. I think what's alarming to me is that we've defined the tradition of Lutheran worship. We've got 500 years of tradition for Lutheran worship, but some people think we only have 450 years of tradition for Lutheran worship, right, and they've decided that that 450 years is valid in the last 50 years is not valid. Yeah, and I've got. I'm just very troubled by that. Like, I'm personally very concerned about it, and I'm a person, tim, I'm a person who came here because I really valued the traditional experience. Like to me, I came from the Pentecostal background with tambourines and people speaking in tongues and running down the aisles and stuff. It was chaos. I didn't want chaos.
Speaker 3:The thing that first attracted me to Christ Greenfield was the traditional worship. I got asked to be part of a praise band here. I did it reluctantly, knowing that it was going to help the mission of the church. I did it reluctantly and eventually came to fall in love with it. But I did it reluctantly because I valued the traditional worship here. But I also recognized, like, yeah, like the culture of what we live here in Gilbert, a lot of people when they think about what worship it is. Is some people it's very much the robes and the choir and some people it's very much a stage and guitar and drums?
Speaker 3:Right, and can we create hospitality for those people and still give them word and sacrament, right, yeah, yeah, absolutely, and there seems to be an inability to think flexible on that issue and I think that's culturally driven right now and that culture is trying to narrow down what the definition of adiaphora is.
Speaker 4:Well, you know, and to go back and again, I'll preface this by saying that I am a traditional worship kind of guy, right. But when you get into, I don't know, I'll just say the pietistic movement that that is currently on the rise, I think, in certain portions of the upper Midwest, rural portions of the Midwest, probably not in the saltwater districts really to a large extent, but here in the Southern District it certainly is in the saltwater districts really to a large extent, but here in the Southern district it certainly is. When you look at what they're really saying, I mean I watched a guy do a rubric for divine service, setting three, and he said basically, like don't let the people pray the Lord's prayer, right, that's the pastors. So all they get to do is pray the minor doxology at the end. So that's the people's portion. So don't give to the people.
Speaker 4:What is the pastors to do is pray the minor doxology at the end. So that's the people's portion. So don't give to the people. What is the pastor's to do? And all those sorts of things. And so then you start to ask what is the object of worship? And for some of them I think that it actually becomes the liturgy, not Christ. I mean at least there's a danger of that. I'm not suggesting that they're like worshiping the liturgy.
Speaker 3:I call the trend liturgical pietism. It is, that's what I call it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is. Yeah, there's a and and and that, yeah, I mean, and that has a, and you can see that in. You know not to pick on anybody, but there's a. There's a video out there that you can see that's. That's titled um the primacy of piety and Lutheran education. And so you know, and and what does primacy mean, right? So these are the, the classical, uh, classically trained people, right? So what is what does primacy mean? Words have meanings, right? It means that peerless, like number one. So piety becomes over Christ and salvation and all these sorts of things. And so you quickly start to see the sanctification, like many, many, many other churches in, uh, american protestantism, uh, becomes the primary focus rather than salvation. Um, so it does. It does have theological ramifications based on, you know, this piety that that they're after. But, yeah, it's problematic.
Speaker 2:This is astonishing, so I'm just stuck on the Lord's Prayer piece.
Speaker 1:That's the first I heard of that.
Speaker 2:Do they base that on? Jesus gave the Lord's Prayer to the apostles, and therefore pastors, in line with the apostolic kind of office of holy ministry, and so we're the only ones that can pray that, because I don't know where you'd even ground that historically.
Speaker 4:I don't know that it I don't know that it has a theological grounding. It has a liturgical grounding for sure, Like if you look at divine service, setting three, the petitions of the Lord's prayer are for the pastor, and then, and you know, if you look in the hymnal, and then that minor doxology at the end, or I don't know if it's a, yeah, the minor doxology at the end is is for the people I'm with you now the chanted Lord's prayer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right that the pastor, which I really actually like to do. We haven't done that in a while, but yeah, interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Yeah, they wouldn't necessarily say that the Lord's prayer is not good for personal devotion or anything like that. It's just more about the liturgical move.
Speaker 4:I think it's yeah, and I think it's about the rubric rather than any kind of argument about what's good for people and what's not, and that's that. That in itself is is is concerning to me anyway.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, because liturgy actually shapes us. Liturgy is discipleship. It's living out the grand story and then it's telling that story. It's interacting with that story from baptism all the way to our sending. That's why we have the liturgy. It grounds us in being a confessing repentant. People who hear the word are shaped by the word to become a people of prayer, a people who confess who God is and then are sent out to declare to the world, in our homes and in our neighborhoods, the goodness and grace of the triune God. I mean that's the best part of our liturgy and I don't think that we should go away from that. I think it's a market differentiator in the wider American Christian landscape today that we would be remiss if we were to just outright get rid of. And at the same time instrumentation is varied in some of our contexts. I think we should hold to. I think we should hold to the guts of the divine service and show contextual hospitality toward instrumentation that appears to be in the Old Testament and in the new, kind of what they did?
Speaker 2:that appears to be in the Old Testament and in the New, kind of what they did, make a joyful noise to the Lord sing, clap, shout, you know, bang, et cetera. The thing with some will conflate the banging of drums with Babylonian worship. Like all, music has a meter, for goodness sake. I don't care if you're using a bass drum or whatever. Jack, you're the musician. Go ahead, jack Right right?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all. So it's interesting because it seems like we have that hospitality for other national church bodies. Yeah, so if we got an African Lutheran church, we don't have any problem with them having drums in there, but not for the American Lutheran church. That's inappropriate, right? So strange, I don't know church.
Speaker 4:That's inappropriate, right? So strange, I don't know. I think the argument, um, the argument would be that the church should be about um, the, um, uh, like the, the, the, whatever the preeminent art form is right, and that contextually in that society. So if it's, if it's western, it should be classical music. If it's, if it's uh, you know, africa, it might be drums and whatever. So I think that that's the, I think that's the argument. So, and it extends beyond that, it goes to art and all those sorts of things, and so yeah, um, and in america it's the pre.
Speaker 3:You know jazz, uh, rock and roll, this is the birthplace of that as an art form. Sure, which other? Which others? You know countries that has been exported to other parts of the west in rock and roll, this is the birthplace of that as an art form. Sure, which other? Which others? You know? Countries that has been exported to other parts of the West and the in the world, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Let me take it in a in a little different direction here. Um, how easy is it to offend you? And I'm asking, listener, just to be quite honest, like what another brother does in a different context, if I hear about it and I hear something that's strange about it, like if it's a friend, if it's someone that I'm in, a every organization, from the military to healthy churches and businesses, et cetera. We're going to work it out. We're going to build trust based on relationship. We're walking right now, nick, through Lent, through the gospel of Mark. You cannot offend Jesus, right? I mean, jesus is so on mission. He could have been offended as he's calming this, don't you care, jesus? He's like come on, man, don't I care? No, he's woken up and he calms a storm and then, oh, you have a little faith, I'm here with you. And then he's going and he's healing a man possessed by a legion of demons and sending him out in mission. He doesn't care about the business owners that he just drowned all their pigs. He then heads back to the other side, starts to preach this is a crazy story In Mark, chapter 5, he then is on his way to heal Jairus' daughter, and these are the scribes and the Pharisees, and he knows he's not heading in a good direction with that group of people, and yet he still goes and in his going he's arrested, he's stopped by Power going out from him.
Speaker 2:He cares for the woman with the discharge of blood, heals her. Your faith has made you well. He goes and then this is a wild part of the story as he says no, she's just, she's not dead, she's just sleeping. Everyone laughs in Jesus' face, like if you were Jesus or I would, I'd be like okay, I guess you don't want, I guess you don't want what I'm going to do right now. Like you guys, you guys don't get it right. No, jesus is like oh, okay, fine. And then he, he brings the mother and the father into the room and raises the young girl. Right after that, in Mark chapter six, he moves into into Nazareth.
Speaker 2:A prophet is not without honor in his hometown. His family and friends basically laugh at him. They tell they, they are saying he, he out of his mind, and the scribes and Pharisees are saying he's possessed by a demon. And yet Jesus is just so, like on mission. So the question for you is like what gets you riled up, what gets you intense?
Speaker 2:Like for me, I just get riled up about the mission of God to get all of his kids back. That's what I get fired up about, and if we're fired, I think in the LCMS we're just fired up about the wrong stuff. We're just fired up about, like, critiquing our neighbor in their context, rather than trying to listen, love, care for and then lock arms across a very diverse context in the United States of America to do everything we can to get the gospel into the heart and ears of people, to remind them of their identity in Jesus and then to kindly, hospitably invite them into the weirdness which is being a Lutheran, a liturgical Lutheran. There's a lot of hospitality, a lot of conversation that needs to take place there, but we're missing the mission if we're arguing with one another over things that are obviously adiaphora. Nick, anything to respond there?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's, that's just it. I mean, uh, there's nothing more you know, pharisaic than you can be than arguing over adiaphora, um, and ignoring the context of others. And then, um, yeah, it, it, it. That's that's exactly what we. We end up doing. We spend the vast majority of our time arguing over, uh, uh, relatively minor things and ignoring the wider mission of the church.
Speaker 4:And then we also introduced these false dichotomies of missional versus confessional, as if those two things are opposed in any respect whatsoever. I think if you're confessional, you better be missional. If you're missional, you're probably confessional as well. So If you're missional, you know, you're probably confessional as well. So I mean, I don't think that this again, I mean I think that they imagine that you know who is it, like Rick Warren or somebody like that, put out a flyer in his local community and it said you know what?
Speaker 4:What is it that the church should be? And then they said about you know, making cotton candy machines and Ferris wheels and whatever else they put in their sanctuary. But that's not what we're talking about in an LCMS context as far as being missional, and so I think that that's the idea right. So our missional construct is saying you know we're the church, we're actually going to tell you what it is that you need once you get in here. And that's word and sacrament. I mean, at the end of the day, it's the sacraments properly administered and the word preached, and that's it. So, yeah, I mean I think we ought to be a little more gracious to the people who are out there planting churches and growing the church and those sorts of things.
Speaker 3:Here's a very confessional statement from my readings of Luther Sinners belong in church, sinners belong in church, and so what does a church planter or any local church really which needs to think of itself as a mission church in this type of society, what is it doing to create hospitality, to invite sinners into church?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that they can hear the word preached and they could experience the sacraments. Right, yeah, that's my view. So here's a challenge for people that are listening right now. Pretty soon there'll be another synodical convention coming up and there's a lot of overtures that are sent to the convention to consider to vote on. Count the number of overtures that have the word heterodox or heresy in it and then count the number of overtures that talk about mission. This will be very revealing to people about what the culture of our church body is right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a protective, fear-based, power-based culture and that's not going to have the multiplying. It's just not attractive for those that are outside of our church. You know, I talked to many Lutherans. It's like, man, you guys got some stuff, you got to work out. Man, yeah, and we're trying to engage in the conversation. It's just not attractive. We want to win some witness out into the world, right, nick?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and what's really interesting to me is I think you'd be hard pressed to find a church body beyond the LCMS that's more unified in doctrine from top to bottom, right, I mean, I just don't. I don't think it's a problem that we have, right, so this idea of heterodoxy and all these sorts of things that we need to purge from our Senate, I think it's a problem that doesn't exist. I think it makes people feel better. I mean, I think it is fear-based. I think the real threat, if being honest, is something I call backdoor ecumenicism, and it's because of our external associations outside of church. We bring those things into church that are from the rest of evangelical Christianity. For example, I can't tell you how many times, since Hamas invaded Israel, I've heard that it's my duty as a Christian from Lutherans, my duty as a Christian, to support Israel, which is nonsense.
Speaker 4:I mean that goes back to poor Christology not understanding that all the promises and all those that, that, all the promises and all this, yeah, all the promises and all the, all those things and all the prophecies that were belong to israel or jacob originally now belong to christ, right. So it's a, it's a poor christological understanding what's happening. And so you know, you get that and you know because it's out there on the wind. It's, it's out there on the wind, it's ubiquitous.
Speaker 4:You get this idea of this dispensational idea, this millennial idea, a millennialist idea that Christ has to literally reign for a thousand years and the temple and all those sorts of things, league and other respects with, with, uh, evangelical Christians who are just complete, like that, literally, uh, uh, uh, the rapture has taken the place of the gospel, it's almost a second gospel and the rest of evangelical Christianity. So that's a litmus test, like, do you believe in a pre-tribulation rapture or not? And that's their, their definition of Christianity. Um, so, uh, it's pretty bizarre's pretty bizarre, but we can catch those things and those are way more important, I think, than trying to find this heresy or heterodox doctrine within our own church body, which I don't think is actually a problem right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, nick, this is an interesting observation. Any church that's great at hospitality is going to have to deal with that, because that means they're bringing people into the community that have things in their backpack.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:That are going to have to get unpacked. They're going to have to be unlearned, and a church that's really great at mission is also going to have to be really great at creating a zeal for catechism and learning what it means to actually follow an orthodox faith.
Speaker 3:Unpacking things like synergy you know synergism enthusiasm right the theology of glory, all that kind of stuff, and be really good at that and actually create a thirst for continuing learning amongst its people, while it's being missional to kind of become aware oh, I've fallen into this trap of this thinking and have a really good process for teaching that.
Speaker 4:Well, luckily, you know, from an Orthodox view, orthodox Lutheran view, we understand that we all have things in our backpack. So you know, those are you know, right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:We like we walk through all that stuff right now. I was struggling, nick, when you were talking about the eschatological stuff, like what group? But I now I think I get, yeah, we have folks that are outside Lutheranism that enter into our. They're not leading necessarily, but could some of their, some of their teaching, kind of infiltrate into a prayer ministry or something like that? And you got to kind of do some triage and some react. I mean, that's what the Apostle Paul is doing. He's responding to poor teaching in all of his epistles, Like the church is already moving.
Speaker 2:These Christians are already engaging. Gentiles are bringing their background, their baggage. Jews are obviously bringing their baggage. Here's the new way of which we're going to go about living and loving one another. I mean it really, the only thing he ever gets like super fired up about was like sexual immorality or someone leading with power and position, rather than the humility of Christ.
Speaker 2:Philippians, chapter two right, it was a lot more about character issues than it was about content and doctrine though we need to correct doctrine, but we're going to do it as a family. You're in the family, You're baptized in the name of the triune God and we got some stuff to work out right. And that's just going to take some time.
Speaker 4:Well, and then there's the osmosis that happens, I think as well. So think about going back to the Semenex idea, right? So I mean, I don't think that higher criticism was the reason they left. I, I don't think that higher criticism was the reason they left. I think it was their political affiliation, that they're putting that political identity over their baptismal identity.
Speaker 4:I think the same problem happens with us today where we say, okay, well, look, the political association I've chosen favors this policy towards Israel, which has a theological ramification, right, and some of their views. And so, because that has become my identity over my baptismal identity, I'm going to go ahead and just ingest that and make that part of the way that I think, right, and this is lifelong Lutherans, and so, and that's problematic, I mean we do have, in the run-up to the election we did have the surrogates of a politician who are baptizing, literally baptizing people in his name instead of the triune God, right, and so, so, so that there, so, there, there is this intentional replacement of our political identity, replacing our baptismal identity, and we need to be careful that that doesn't happen. And so that's a real thing, like a physical thing. And then again, I talked about on the empathy side, right. I do think empathy really in the church is context, informed grace, right.
Speaker 4:And so if your political association says empathy is weakness and you hear that, enough right, 24 hour news cycle, all the things that you ingest, you start to believe that and then you start to act that way in the church, which, which, which is problematic. So this backdoor ecumenicism, where we've caught a lot of heresies or whatever you want to call them, from our evangelical brethren in the realm of heterodoxy, I think are manifesting in the church, not in our pastors, right, not in our lay leaders per se, but I think in lay people it is happening a bit, and maybe not where you are, maybe not in the saltwater districts, but I know in the rural Midwest and then my southern district. I mean, I just hear these things constantly.
Speaker 3:And I think the more isolationist of a posture you take, the less capable you are of dealing with that when it enters into your community, because you're not used to having these types of conversations. You're just operating under the presumption that everybody agrees, you know, has the same agreement on these things, and when they happen, you don't know how to deal with it. Yeah, versus, can we have a culture that, again, fosters conversation? So you know these conversations are going to happen all the time, so that it's just second nature to be able to talk about these issues and give loving gentle correction to them.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's exactly what we're called to do. So you know.
Speaker 2:Hey, I've been going on a kick recently. Jack, I brought this up last Sunday on Thomas Aquinas' four idols 13th, 14th and 15th century Very, very popular. The four idols are power, money, pleasure or fame. Power, money, pleasure or fame. And you can do a litmus test to walk through those. Which one would you get rid of first? So for me I'll go first. For me I would get rid of power. Anything that smacks of positional authoritative you do what I say just because I said it might makes right. Anything that smacks of that is like nails on a chalkboard for me, because I've just seen it doesn't work over long periods of time, it doesn't build trust, et cetera. So I can talk about power is the first one I'd eliminate. Nick, what would you eliminate?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'd probably go with power more like naked power like you're talking about, you know, just the wielding of power in a in a nonsensical sort of way, right, um, yeah, we, we, the the way to lead is not by fiat, um, so, uh, and, and it never, and it never has has been, especially especially in a church body that is freely associated, um, you know, or loosely associated, and I mean many of our conversations over the years on lead time have associated around what we feel like is a disproportionate use of of hierarchical power to tell people who gave you the authority to do X, whatever X, is Right.
Speaker 2:That's, that's a power question.
Speaker 3:Jack, would you versus presuming that the congregation has the authority to do X, whatever X is right? That's a power question, jack. Would you Versus presuming that the congregation has the authority to do everything within its orthodox confession right?
Speaker 2:That appears to be what Jesus said as he gave us the office of the king.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say, probably fame and or power are probably tied. For me, I think fame gets into the narcissism which is also, like, definitely a major struggle of what we're dealing with in society right now, and of course that ties to pride, which gets us to like the unnecessary exercise of power, and that's tough for me. Coming from a military background, I know, nick, you might be able to identify some with it. You know I'm used to being in a structure where you give orders and orders are followed, right. And I've come to learn in church life, right, that you really and, by the way, that's an oversimplification yeah, you know, because we teach in the military that there's different types of influence that people exert. Right, yeah, right, yeah, the church amplifies that the type of influence you have to exert in the church has. You have to try and do everything possible to avoid using formal power and you really need to be working through positive influence more than anything. The church only survives because you influence people to work for free for the mission, right.
Speaker 2:And so I can yeah, I can also get rid of money. I mean, I didn't go into ministry for money. I realize I'm not going to take anything with me as I move into the new heavens of the new earth. So that's kind of some some people, though in our church body. I mean that is the attainment, it's, it's moving up the corporate ladder. The American dream of retiring at 60, 65, whatever, and drinking Mai Tais on the beach because you have no concerns over your financial status that's a real idol for many in our context, especially here in the West. I can also get rid of pleasure. I've walked through a lot of things. I've seen God work through struggle, through trial. This is the way of the cross. But I would say that the two main idols in the LCMS, jack, are just what you articulated. It is power, it's positional authority, but then it's fame or honor, because none of us are in like who really cares about fame in the LCMS, like if you're famous in the.
Speaker 4:LCMS. Like 0.01% A whole two million people know who. Like 0.01% famous A whole two million people know who. You are right, oh, great yeah exactly, but I think there's still an honor culture, and this is where tribalism kind of comes in.
Speaker 2:I don't want to do anything that upsets the group of people who are my friends, that I closely identify with, whether it's for me in the large church network. I don't want to say anything that hurts anybody in the large church network. I want all of them to like me. And then, if you're in a much more liturgical you know, if you have a difference of opinion regarding classical education, for example, that's going to be something that could hurt in your respective. It could hurt your reputation, because I hear this a lot. Right, it hurts my. It hurts my reputation if so, and so says this or that about me.
Speaker 2:And I would say that one of the biggest reasons why people won't come on to talk around and we'd be very collegial, kind, open around, like serious concerns in the LCMS is we'd rather not associate with a group of people who are outside of my, my group. That means we have the idol of of fame or honor. That needs to be, and and I, I, that's my number one right. That's why I have to enter in. Do you?
Speaker 2:All these conversations are not like yay, like super comfortable? No, it's like. Are not like, yay, like super comfortable. No, it's like ugh, like challenging you know a system of. It's kind of like ugh. It's not like woo, I get up every morning I'm like this is going to be an awesome. No, no, no, like we want to manage and steward these conversations really, really well, and one of the exercises for me of doing podcasts is I get to practice in public speaking how I would hope other people speak in public around me tension-filled, complex problems that we're trying to walk through right now, and to do so in a way with arms open. Wide vulnerability is a huge thing for me and I want to be kind and charitable to those whom I disagree with, because I may. Going back to what I said before, I may miss something.
Speaker 4:There may be something to the story that I'm missing. Any take on that, though, nick. Sometimes, when I sit alone with my thoughts, I really question whether some of these people would even want me in their, their Senate, and I and I assume that you know, and I and I allow myself to think, oh no, they probably don't. But you know, that's that's, that's not being charitable, especially when ascribing motivations which I don't know Right, and I do that a lot. That's, that's one of my, that's my biggest struggle, actually, in fact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, we don't know the conversation that people are having in their head. We're always talking to ourselves, right, our internal conversation, and we don't know the conversations that take place in rooms that we're not in. So humility and charity have to win the day. Maybe one final question here as we close. How do you think, nick and Jack, I'd love to get your take Our struggles are deeply rooted in Genesis three and the power struggles of the reformation, because the reformation story is a power struggle story. Right, are we going to? How far are we going to go, for the sake of the soul? Is winning winning the day? Anything more to say there, Nick?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. So again, I mean, I think that we have ingested some reformed theology and some other things along the way, where we kind of forget that we know that at the fall and until the eschidim, this creation is hurtling towards entropy. It's chaos, disorder, all those things right, and so when we look at society, we can see that, but for a few blips in the radar we're on a steady decline morally, ethically, all of those sorts of things, and the only only entity in the entire universe who can put that together is the second person of the Trinity. That's the only thing that fixes any of this right, and so the recreator of all things, the author and perfecter of our faith, is who comes and fixes these problems. When we start to imagine that through our own reason or intellect or power, that we can put these things back together.
Speaker 4:If we only voted a certain way, if Tim only listened to me about pastoral formation, or if Jack only listened to me about the way that we should conduct worship services or the music we should have, then everything would be fine. Well, everything's not going to be fine. Everything's not going to be fine until Christ returns. This is the promise that we have, but also we have another promise is that God will sustain and protect His church until the end. Promise is that God will sustain and protect this church until the end.
Speaker 4:So we don't really have to do these things, particularly when we do them out of fear. Completely different thing when we're engaging our Holy Spirit, giving gifts to do kingdom expanding activities. Completely different than when we're insular, when we're looking at ourselves and we're trying to be protective and we're trying to protect the church and we're trying to protect the church, we're trying to sustain the church. Completely different perspective and it goes back to not understanding really what happened, the ramifications of what happened at the fall, and it's not just on humanity, it's not just local, it's from where you're standing out to the most distant galaxy, completely corrupted. There's nothing we can do about it, right?
Speaker 3:completely corrupted. There's nothing we can do about it, Right, Jack? The church is full of sinners and we desperately need a savior to um to die on the cross for us to bring us his own righteousness, because we have none of our own. And, uh, that is true for people inside the church and that's true for people outside the church. That need is desperate there. And if we think it's up to us to fix the church, if we think it's up to us to like, we are not bringing about order in this world, Christ is bringing about order. That's his work and we are trusting in him fully as a gift to us that he would be successful in that role, Amen.
Speaker 2:Amen. This has been a great conversation. If you're wondering, listener, what was the main hope? It's to have a conversation around the adiaphora in our church body and to build bridges. Obviously do. It's cool.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to say this as one who's getting to know you from afar. It's wonderful to see the Lord softening. That's what I'm praying for is just a softening, a humility, a charity and arms open wide for people that have different contexts and different opinions around a whole host of things. There may be things that we're missing, their concerns. I need to be open to listen and I hope that they extend the same, but I don't. This is when you're centered in your identity in Jesus. I don't need the same sort of invitation. You know I'm not waiting around to be invited for people to listen to me. Right, you can listen, it's know, but but I want, if someone has a concern for me, this is just pastoral ministry.
Speaker 2:To be quite honest, Nick, like I hear, I hear people that have concerns around the ministry, or so-and-so, or this or that, and we sit and we work it out together as brothers and sisters in Christ, and I'm seeing that modeled in you, brother, and I just wanted to affirm that. So thank you for your kindness, your partnership in the gospel. Blessings to you in your ministry. Clearing fields. What did you say about Genesis, chapter 3? What are you doing in the?
Speaker 4:fields right now. Yeah, I mean, I'm just dealing with the curse man. That's what we're doing. Toil in the fields, deal with the weeds. Man, that's, that's what we're doing. Yeah, it's the way we're doing it toil in the fields, deal with the uh, with the weeds and all those sorts of things, yeah all those sorts of things.
Speaker 2:Well, if people want to connect with you, nick, uh, how can they do so bro?
Speaker 4:yeah, they can send me an email at ingraph79 at gmailcom or, uh, make a comment on this when it posts to youtube. I'll I'll check it out, so yeah, so ingraph, double yeah.
Speaker 2:So ngraff79 at gmailcom to connect with Nick. This is lead time. Please like, subscribe, comment wherever it is you take in this podcast and we pray it's helpful toward uniting us in mission in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, to carry the never-changing gospel of Jesus Christ to those who do not know and desperately need to know and believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the only source of life. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Thanks so much, Nick, Great work.
Speaker 4:Jack, all right, thanks Tim.
Speaker 2:Take care guys. God bless.
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.