Lead Time
Lead Time
LCMS at a Breaking Point? What We Learned at the PSD Convention
In this episode of Lead Time, Tim Ahlman returns from sabbatical with a candid conversation about the changing landscape of ministry in the LCMS. From re-organizing senior staff and shifting governance models, to the biblical case for pastoral sabbaticals, to the urgent realities of pastoral formation, this episode doesn’t shy away from the hard questions.
Tim shares personal reflections from his sabbatical and his upcoming book release, while Jack dives into the tough realities facing small congregations, bivocational ministry, and the need for fresh approaches to leadership. Together they recap the Pacific Southwest District convention, explore resolutions around SMP pastors and Lutheran identity, and call the church to unity rooted in Scripture and Confession.
👉 Topics include:
Why Christ Greenfield restructured its leadership model.
The benefits of sabbaticals for pastors (and congregations).
Governance models that help or hinder ministry.
Urgent challenges in pastoral formation and SMP pathways.
What really defines Lutheran identity.
How property development and mission innovation can shape the future.
This is a hopeful yet challenging look at where we are and where we’re headed as the LCMS seeks to unite for the sake of the gospel.
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Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time, Tim Allman here with Jack Kalberg. This is our first podcast back from sabbatical and I am so excited, Jack. How was your summer, man? Let's just start there. It's been a minute since folks kind of reconnected with us. It was not a slow summer around here in Christ Greenfield.
Speaker 3:Not even remotely slow and for those of you who might not be as tightly connected to Christ Greenfield, in our story we've been going through a season of change. Over the summer we did something that I probably would not recommend for people, but it was probably the right call in our specific situation. We did an entire reorg of our senior staff. On the day that Tim left for sabbatical he gave the staff a PowerPoint presentation and said here's the new org chart. Have fun.
Speaker 2:Peace out Now to be fair, that was following like 90 days of consultation and stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the way it played out was interesting.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I don't the way we, where we ended up, was good, you know we'll just start there. I mean, but yeah, I don't the way we, where we ended up was, was good, you know, we'll just start there. I mean, anytime you're in a, in a ministry and we have a pretty strict policy governance. Not many churches probably have as strict of a policy governance kind of policy base, probably for a number of churches our size. But we have the permission and really the expectation from our board and therefore the congregation. As the congregation grows, evolves, the family ministry grows and evolves.
Speaker 2:You got to take a look at how you're operating consistently. Who's in the room to make what decisions, and we are our senior executive staff had gotten kind of larger and it let us. You know there's there's just social dynamics in a room when you have about 13 to 20 people, you're going to have 2 to maybe 3 voices that are louder and not everybody feels like they can speak. So that was one of the reasons. But our consultant said we were maybe becoming at that level, a little bit more finance focused maybe a little bit to systems. And I've been in the last two staff meetings and it's been entirely ministry and then we got to talk money, we got to talk systems, but the right people need to be in the room to talk that and future vision.
Speaker 2:Yeah, future vision, and we'd lose half the staff a lot of times with the conversations we were having and we'd lose half the staff a lot of times with the conversations we were having. So, yeah, I mean it was kind of tough, because you never want to do things that kind of disappoint people, but full transparency. I wrote a letter to each one of our teammates and said, hey, we need you on the team. You're very, very valuable. Thanks for playing your role and understanding this need to get tighter.
Speaker 2:So we went from about 15 or so in the senior executive down to eight and then kind of a different rhythm of meetings. We have about an hour and a half meeting and then we bring the rest of our team in for kind of an overview Q&A and anybody from our staff can come on to that meeting just to make sure that there's a good flow of information. And we also this may be, this may be something that folks are like whoa, that's kind of wild. Everybody on our team now and the executive staff reports to Jack and Jack is my one direct report and then we're going to have to do a podcast, just honestly, on our board governance. I think there's a lot to share there.
Speaker 3:So yeah, any kind of takeaways over how it went? Yeah, because that's a very interesting observation. Like you and I have been teaching some with some some other classes on some school systems about leadership and mission, and one of the themes that comes up with people who are preparing for ministry or pastoral roles like a lot of times these problems go back to the governance model that they're working in, and there's a lot of times these problems go back to the governance model that they're working in and there's a lot of churches that if they're operating in the old council style model, it's good for certain things and but it also creates a lid on the organization. Eventually, what do you think it's good?
Speaker 2:for Just pause right there. What do you think the old council model is good for?
Speaker 3:I think it's good for small churches that really want to put a focus on inclusion and volunteerism, so like that. That's the original thought of the council model. So you know, think about back in the day when, when this is like back in the day when the LCMS was partnering with the ELCA to do church planting, and they would say, ok, we're planting a church here and you're planting a church here, and when they're thinking about planting a church in the area, their expectation is going to grow to about 250 people and that's about as much as that church is ever going to grow to, because that's how much one pastor can handle, probably for a congregation. And they're not thinking about really big churches, right. They're thinking about local. You know smaller community churches, more of what you might see in the typical. You know Midwest right, that maybe seats 150, something like that, right, and if you got two services full, you know that's probably what they're planting and so the council model handles that totally fine.
Speaker 3:And if you're in a region where, let's say, it's a good Christendom model where people see themselves as part of the priesthood of all believers and active participants in the church, but what it does, is it kind of, you know, at least in the version that we walked through, you know the version that I saw, it kind of divorced the pastor from the business of the church and that was intentional. And I guess really the question is is that the right call? Should you? And that was intentional? And I guess really the question is is that the right call? Should you say that the pastor only does ministry and he's not involved in any of the business, that say, kind of divorced from some of the strategic, analytical, operational parts of the church? Or is it more important to build a ministry model where all of those things are thought of as ministry really Right, and then ultimately supervised by a pastor? So I would say, for a church the size of the churches that they were intending to plant, the governance was a good model.
Speaker 3:You can sustain a church that big and you can create, buy in and when you think about like a serve team we talk about serve teams and a leadership pathway, like you have a version of that like a church with a school board right, has people serving and leading and in its healthiest version there's a pathway and a pipeline to get people into those board and committee roles right, but it doesn't scale.
Speaker 3:At a certain point in time you end up having a council and that council becomes like your de facto executive team. But they're all at putting together social events and cooking hot dogs and getting you know and it's very difficult for that person to be making really tough staffing decisions and really hard budgeting decisions and really difficult decisions about the debt of the organization. Right, they like they were there to cook hot dogs and invite people to. You know what I mean. That was their expertise, right. And so, yeah, I would say for the smaller church, where some of those business decisions are lower stakes decisions, that's fine. But when you get into a big, complicated church with multi-million dollar budgets, then it gets really difficult for that and there is a shift into a more professional church model.
Speaker 2:Well, let me pause and give a shout out to the book of Acts, the deacon model. So the apostle says it's not good. They started to build a team right To handle a lot of the business of the church, the care of orphans and widows and the marginalized, and obviously that obviously included financial oversight. And I don't think, though, we would be wise to think the deacons were completely divorced from the apostles as the ministry went out. There's no way they were intimately connected to all of the ministry but their primary focus was Word and Sacrament.
Speaker 2:Now, what happens, I think, jack, as you get to a certain size say past 250, and we're just moving right into our governance. Hold on, we're going to actually be talking about the Pacific Southwest District Conference convention coming up here really soon.
Speaker 3:Sometimes we go on a rabbit trail and we have to talk it out. So we have to figure it out. So, what can?
Speaker 2:happen if a congregation grows. You probably have and I'm going to paint with a broad brush here. You probably have one of two types of pastor a pastor who says you know what?
Speaker 3:I'm okay being passive, kind of on the sideline and letting the church just kind of visitations.
Speaker 2:I'll preach, yeah, that's it yeah, exactly, and other people can worry about it, right, yeah, and I guess that can kind of work, I think. I think the congregation is probably going to hit a lid if that's the pastor's approach. The second is the pastor probably starts to maneuver behind the council's back, maybe in partnership with some of the council, but he's kind of ex officio at that meeting. If he's driven, he's probably going to figure out other ways to build social capital and trust and be able to move forward with consensus, maybe with and without some of the people that are on that council. And that gets very, very messy. That obviously leads to parking lot conversations and maybe we got some pastors right now who are in that situation and I pray for you, man.
Speaker 2:It's a tough spot to be and I remember one story being in a council meeting. So we moved from a council model to a policy-based governance model. Ish, when I first got here and you and I were working, I remember going into one of our board meetings and and having having a member of the board want to go line by line through you know hundreds of line items to say why did this line item overspend by maybe a hundred or a thousand, I don't know, and this they didn't spend and so they wanted to. I mean it was exhausting, jack, wasn't it? I mean I look back, I almost have PTSD from some of those meetings. I mean they were long.
Speaker 2:Me too, and we met monthly, so monthly equals management. Anytime a group of people meet monthly, they're going to want to get it under the hood to an extraordinary degree. But it was like who gets to really make what decisions at the end of the day? It was very, very complex and so we made the choice shout out to Paul Zills to go down. We've been last seven years or so down the policy, strict Carver policy governance model where the board knows their roles. They speak for the owners of the congregation, speak for the entire congregation. One point of accountability through myself. And then I and our team treat the members of the congregation and I don't let some people bristle at this. It is what it is and it fits actually in our Lutheran understanding as customers or consumers of word and sacrament Right.
Speaker 3:All for the sake of right. What's that? Beneficiaries? Of beneficiaries, beneficiaries, right and they're benefiting from this service, right, but they also they have two roles, both to be a beneficiary and an owner.
Speaker 2:So the board is going to engage with them as owners. They're going to see if the policies that we've set, the ends that we've set, we really the goals that we've set for the ministry are still the accurate goals, and then they're going to monitor. The board will monitor am I staying within the said policy-based or strict policy, not just policy-based strict policies that limit what I'm supposed to do or not do? Right, and that's very, very pointed. And we then developed these monitor reports that we give to the board on a quarterly basis that show where we're in compliance and where we're honestly out of out of compliance and by what date we'll be in compliance. That's a very, very broad, high brush of what our, our model is.
Speaker 2:If you want to have a conversation with us uniteleadershiporg, just reach out. We'll give you honest opinion. There's, uh, jim galvin is also doing governance consulting. Right now he's in the LCMS and Jim and then Paul Zills is also another consultant that we've been with for a number of years. Anything more to say there, jack, and I would say you know better system for us.
Speaker 3:What's the right governance for you. It has to do a little bit with what stage of growth and what your long term ministry ambitions are. Right, yeah, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend going to a strict policy model right off the bat. If you, as your first jump again, that's all contextual. It may depend on the type of team you built, but I think it actually was kind of a logical step of what we did, moving into policy ish government governance and then going into the full one, because it got us a chance to, it, did improve certain things. So it solved a bunch of problems and it created other problems.
Speaker 3:And I guess the other thing is like, no matter what governance system you're in, it's going to be hard. Like there's there's difficulty, I agree, and this is this is I call this the X, the XP slash executive director motto is you pick your problems Right. Call this the XP slash executive director motto is you pick your problems right. So every set of governance has benefits to it and problems associated with it. And as you pick a path, you know you're owning those benefits and you're also owning the problems that go along with that.
Speaker 2:And the problem for policy governance is man.
Speaker 3:You have to have like a really great administrative team to be able to put these reports together, because they are thick and stout. And you have to have like a really great administrative team to be able to put these reports together, because they are thick and stout. And you also have to be, you know, have to be confident that you can recruit the right people to serve in that board.
Speaker 2:Exactly yeah. So it's getting the right competencies of board members. That's one thing you need to make sure of. And then your administrative, your ability to gather data, because it can't just be well, I'm a good guy Like people, like me, you know. No, show me the dollars, show me the money, jerry I mean I'm going back to Jerry Maguire Like it has to be based in facts, in hard data, right, jack? And for the first five years or so, we felt like we were failing, because there was a certain percentage of the policy, of the governance policies, we're like we're going to get there. We're not there yet.
Speaker 3:in there, yeah, and you know it's never 100 percent. You know, I would say like if you get under the hood of even your healthiest ministries, you're going to find at least 20 percent of something that's dysfunctional, right, yeah, so that's, that's just like the truth. And what you're reporting does, is it like, blatantly exposes what that is.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Which is good, it's accountability and we need to be working on those things, and so you know what we do. Our culture here is we embrace continuous improvement, challenge Right. We have hard conversations, we receive hard, hard feedback and we commit to get one percent better every day. That's a culture that we try to build here, amen, amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, let's. We didn't really talk about my sabbatical. It was fun. Yeah, a lot of time with family and national parks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what was your favorite?
Speaker 2:part of it. I mean just life goes so fast, jack, yeah, it's astonishing Been here 12 years and my kids were six and four. You know six, five and four when we moved here, and now they're 18, 17 and 16. And to have all of them driving by the way, pray for me to have those those sweet moments with them, having more adult kind of future focused conversations not all of it, a lot of it's just fun and hanging out and the. The cool thing is they still like to be. I mean, they like to be with their friends, don't get me wrong, but they still like to hang out with mom and dad and, um, those days go so fast.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, our trip to the national parks were amazing. A yellowstone god's creation in the west here is is unbelievable. The state of arizona has, in utah, have some amazing park, zion and Bryce Canyon, and so Yellowstone, grand Tetons. It was just a really, really sweet time. And and then the only kind of work I did was working on finishing my book, which is now in kind of formatting, some final editing, and we we had thought we were going to release it in the fall because it's kind of kind of ready, but we're going to be ramping up uh for february 2 release. February 2nd is going to be the date, um, and I I hope, I hope you guys buy it and find it, find it useful and it'll be published through the ulc.
Speaker 3:Yeah it's our first ulp.
Speaker 2:Actually, you know, leadership, publishing our first book of god willing many. We got some others in the hopper. I think you're going to be working on some and other other team members here are going to be working on some, and I got a fictional project that I'm working on, this, pastor Paul. I won't say a whole lot about that and so just kind of fun. I think a lot of our writing is going to be honest. The tone we wanted to be honest, straightforward, accessible, but also a little bit of levity.
Speaker 2:We take ourselves so seriously and the mission of God is advancing and it's the Holy Spirit's work, and so I hope it's a book speaking of Confessing Jesus' Mission that people will read. And even if you disagree with some of our conclusions, we agree on word and sacrament going forth forth that more and more people need the gospel of Jesus Christ. So on the front end of the book it's kind of a quasi academic missiology from a missiological work from a Lutheran perspective and kind of standing on the shoulders on some others who have done some some great work. So yeah, and then then we teach some of our principles. At the very end of the book it's kind of a cliff notes version of some of our teaching, just to kind of wet people's whistle a little bit and get them, get them pumped to go deeper with us. What are you gonna say, jack?
Speaker 3:So kind of as you, as you're coming back now, what would you say like what would be the benefit for a church to adopt a sabbatical policy for its pastors or its all of its staff, its directors? What would be your thoughts on the benefits, on that, why they should consider that?
Speaker 2:so ridiculously connected in our culture today and pastors, you know, there's always another meeting, another problem, another, you know, person who needs help and it can just become and I wasn't at this point I could, could have gotten to that point just becomes overwhelming.
Speaker 2:Right, I need a sabbatical during this season because of some of the stuff we've talked about on this podcast, right, and just kind of setting it aside and letting it go, releasing it to Jesus. So I think every congregation should have a rhythm of sabbatical for their pastor, for other executive directors, and whether it's a full, I took 10 weeks. You know that may be toward the longer end of getting away, even if it's just a month, like Michael Pastor, michael or other associates like, take June off, go hang out, and then I'll be here and I'll take a little bit more. I think a lot of times we need because we're so connected, I don't think a week is enough. A lot of times, just a week here, a week there, I think if we can push to two weeks cause you've had that experience, jack, where you're like it really takes maybe three days or so to really unplug Before your brain is in vacation mode, even right, Right and and then you know so.
Speaker 2:so then hopefully get 10, 10 more days. I'd love to see our summer Summer's a different rhythm here and we work really hard kind of during the school year and we work on summers, are for projects et cetera. But yeah, I think, I think churches need to write in their policy, especially for their, their soul or senior or whatever pastor like hey, every seven years, it's biblical right. Every seven days we rest. Every seven years we kind of let the ground go a little fallow and you come back fired up and ready new ideas and honestly, it was like drinking from a fire hose because you guys were after it. This was great. You did a great job this summer leading. I hope you got some good, good rest as well. So, yeah, yeah, it'll be coming.
Speaker 3:I had a surgery over that break so I had actually kind of was forced into about approximately two weeks of rest against my will. Well, I would say another thing. Tim is like a benefit to the congregation is not is well. First there's the wellness of the worker, right Right off the bat. The worker benefits, but the congregation benefits from well healthy workers, right. But in addition to that is it teaches the community to be less personality oriented in its dependence on ministry. It's like can we shift to a way that we're not 100 percent dependent on this personality being the person that runs the ministry? Other people have to fill in the gap and it helps to. It helps to build a culture to realize like, hey, we're not, we're, we're, we're a community here. You know we are, we are a collective working in ministry and we are not entirely dependent on a single person as the linchpin for every single thing that we're doing in ministry.
Speaker 2:If that's right is that, that mindset, right, kind of humbling. You know. It's like, yeah, well, things kind of move forward and right, well, um, I say it this way it's like while I'm wanted and called here, yes, I'm not needed here. You know, there's a difference I am called, I am wanted, I'm a part of the team, but I'm not the whole body. And the whole body can start to operate when a part of the body takes a little bit of a break and you come back and you're just refreshed, refired up and ready to go working from a place of rest rather than being worn down. Yeah, working from a place of rest rather than being being worn down. Yeah, amen, all right, well, let's get into. Let's get into the Pacific Southwest District Convention. That was the one kind of I popped out of my sabbatical to come and hang out in Palm Springs and it was I mean my general observations it was a really healthy, good, good convention.
Speaker 2:Me too Shout out to President Gibson and his reelection as our leader here in the Pacific Southwest District. He's a magnificent, magnificent follower of Jesus and a leader for our district. He really in Colcates. I was listening to my dad the other day. He used that word. Who uses that word, dad. Anyway, he manifests by the Spirit's power such a kind, calm but courageous posture for us and he strikes that balance really, really well.
Speaker 2:He also is an advocate at the synodical level for a number of the topics that our district kind of talked about that are going to move on to the National Synodical Convention coming up here in Phoenix in July, which is wild. Looking forward to seeing many of you here next, next summer. So, yeah, let's go through the recap of what we learned. Jack, you put together a few observations.
Speaker 3:Hit it, yeah, I mean one really, really big. Well, let me, I'm going to talk about the quirkiness first. So something that struck me as kind of funny and a little goofy is that we had some very what I call harmless resolutions and there's people that vote no against it, right. So there was a resolution about just thanking prior presidents for their service, right, and you have like a dozen people that vote no for that. So it's like, okay, I get it. Now there's some people here that will vote no for everything. That's, their reason to be here is to vote no against every single resolution. I just get 100 percent on.
Speaker 2:Jesus is Lord.
Speaker 3:Could we get 100?
Speaker 2:percent. I think we would. I'd like to think we would.
Speaker 3:Yes, so I just thought that was a little, a little quirky. Another thing that I thought was really quirky had a real I mean so our president, the nautical president Harrison, was there. First of all, I'm you know, there's many ways I'm really impressed with this guy and he's got a job that I certainly wouldn't want to have. It's really tough. I can tell that he's looking forward to retirement soon, but he got up and his job was to give a statement of the state of the synod. He did give some of a state of a synod.
Speaker 3:There was a video that kind of did some of that, especially talking about the state of our schools, and then he gave a very, very long talk about the Augsburg Confession, which is his prerogative to do that. It was actually a really, really good and engaging one. It was excellent. But I think people are maybe expecting to hear more about some of the challenges that we were dealing with as a national church body and what we're doing about that, and I think that was something that was probably struck people is that we didn't get quite that depth, that maybe that we were expecting Any thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I liked the presentation.
Speaker 3:I thought it was great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I actually got up. I was one of the first, if not the first, I think to the mic and said hey, president Harrison, there was nothing that you said that I disagree with. I mean, he went right down the middle, which is where Lutherans should be, on topics like well.
Speaker 2:Worship, style, worship style, yeah, the role of women. I think he talked even in church. Yeah, worship style the role of women, I think he talked even in church, and it was very balanced and very fair and very, I think, confessional Lutheran, rooted in long gospel. Yeah, really, really great. So I said there was nothing that you said that I disagree with, but we still have some things I think we need to work on, and one of those areas I think for growth is building a bridge of trust with a number of our larger churches.
Speaker 2:In the LCMS he attended about a decade ago, sat next to my wife, and they had a great conversation actually over dinner, and he was very cordial and kind at what was then the megachurch conference and unfortunately I don't know what happened. That was the first megachurch conference that I've been to, so I thought it was fine, but I think he felt maybe disrespected by some of the pastors, some of the leaders, and maybe there was things that were said that were not charitable post his gathering there and he's not been back to that conference since. And it's all about relationship, right. If we don't spend time with one another, then we can develop caricatures of one another on all ends of every topic and I think it's time to build some bridges of love and care and trust. And I asked what do you think we should do about that? And he said we should work on it, and so I'm hopeful that we can start to work on that.
Speaker 2:And there's a number of in that group in our large church network, like as you'd imagine, pastors come and a lot of the pastors that maybe had some struggles they've retired and I'm hopeful he can re-engage with that group. And I also said, hey, if there's been times that I or we have been uncharitable in our podcast on topics that we're really passionate about, would you please forgive me. I'd try to put the best construction on everything and he offered forgiveness and asked for it from me and in the same way, and so I thought that was healthy and and, uh, hopeful for us and I got a sense in the room that they were very happy.
Speaker 3:A lot of people were very happy to see that.
Speaker 2:Right yeah, so yeah, and I was grateful to see that, you know, maybe, while we're on this check, I think because of our passionate response on topics like prior approval, the state of our concordia is, you know, pastoral formation. Obviously that people can kind of develop a caricature of us that we want to see, you know, maybe a new path or a new synod. For goodness sake, I mean, nothing could be further from the truth. This is Unite Leadership Collective. We actually believe. I was just reading, I was just reading CFW Walther. In the 1850s, 60s, 70s. He was working so hard to unite Lutherans. There was a predestination controversy that took place that unfortunately led to schism in the church. But I mean, that is so far from the heart of Jesus and we should do whatever it takes to work toward unity and care. If we can't, if we can't model it within the LCMS for goodness. And that includes it's not a soft unity, it's a hard unity on the truths of scripture and dealing with hard truths about what it means to be the church here in a post-Christian reality. But we got to get into the room and people that have difference of opinion, we got to get into the room and so we're actually going to be.
Speaker 2:While we're on this topic, you know the pastoral formation conversation is still taking place in many different places. There were some gatherings over the summer. Joe Barron represented us at one of the gatherings. Well, we're going to be going down the formal descent process and I'll just throw this date out. We'll be talking about a little bit more, but mark your calendar for January 6 and 7 in Las Vegas, and Jack, you'll be there. I'll be there just in noon to noon, january 6 through 7.
Speaker 2:Faith Lutheran is hosting us and we're going to have we're going to gather hopefully our goal is a hundred people and this was in partnership with President Gibson. The formal dissent process is found in our constitution and bylaws. We're hoping to gather a hundred people who have difference of opinion regarding how we do pastoral formation. You know from residential only to those of us who think it needs to be residential and whatever it looks like into the future. And we're going to have biblical confessional conversation.
Speaker 2:I in debate, but we're going to. We're going to take the mask off and bring real people in real context to have a real conversation and I'm excited about it. So hope you can be there January six and seven. In in in more more information to sign up. We'll be coming out here in the in probably a couple months or so. So yeah, that was good. That was good. I think that was healing and helpful. I honestly don't know President Gibson. I know President Gibson, president Harrison, well, I'm sure he's listened to some of our perspectives, but I would love to just meet with him at some point and I'm hoping that President Gibson can kind of organize that in the Lord's time. And we know we're all super, super busy.
Speaker 3:So, that being said, the theme of pastoral formation was presented as an urgency in our convention, our district convention. There were several resolutions around that, especially tied to the SMP program. So some of the things that I felt well the urgency was revealed in the data right. So the data is now showing and we've talked about this in prior episodes that the number of congregations has not shrunk much in the LCMS but the number of small congregations has grown and what that means is you've had a lot of large and medium-sized congregations now become small, maybe even micro-sized congregations, to the point where you know if you get to under 75 people in a congregation, average weekly attendance, there's a good chance you're struggling to afford one full-time worker on staff and you probably have about greater than half now of LCMS congregations that are seeing themselves in that situation. So there's larger than half of LCMS congregations that if they have a vacancy now or in the future, they're going to really struggle financially to pay for a full time role and attract somebody that would want to serve in that type of context, knowing the types of challenges that they would have to afford to support that person Right. So now we have kind of a bit of a limited supply of pastors to begin with, and a large number of churches that would struggle to afford to pay those pastors. That's kind of the situation we're finding ourselves in. So the urgency of raising up pastors is either through some future pathways that don't exist right now, or through the current pathways.
Speaker 3:It's extremely urgent, and so we had some votes that reflected those urgencies. First of all, a vote to give thanks for alternative pathways. Now, what I mean by alternative pathways, I'm talking about recognized alternative pathways right now. So this includes, you know, includes, uh, smp, um, you know, uh, the cm, cmc, smp, right, uh, there's a hispanic uh pathway, um.
Speaker 3:So we gave thanks as and that was not a controversial vote there's nobody got up and spoke against that, uh, that I would say that you know, given the quirkiness that there's going to be about 10 to 15 people that vote no against everything. That certainly was reflected on a lot of these, but nobody was getting up and arguing against it. It was pretty much what I would consider to be a very united vote in favor of that general license to SMP pastors who have served faithfully in their local context for 10 or more years, without the necessity to do additional schooling. So what are your thoughts on that? Tim that passed with. There was not a single person that got up and spoke against that, so what are your thoughts on that and what the potential might be for that?
Speaker 2:I think it's helpful. There's nothing in the book We'll talk about this more. There's really nothing biblically or confessionally that gives kind of a rationale for a different type of a pastor or a lower grade of pastor. And I get why we did SMP because it was for a specific ministry and their requirements for their education are about 40% of an MDiv. I get that. But if a guy's been serving faithfully and the district president, circuit visitor and the pastor that they've been supervised by, say man, this guy's been wonderful, he's shown the character of Christ, and the district president and the congregations are saying he's needed in this different context, why would we not give him general ordination status? So I'm hoping at the synodical convention that this can be a topic that we unite on because there's a number of guys that have been serving faithfully that could serve in various contexts and I don't see biblically what would be the struggle there.
Speaker 2:Back to your point about the need in a lot of our smaller congregations. What would be the struggle there? Back to your point about the need in a lot of our smaller congregations. You know, bivocational is also going to be a definite, a definite need and if I could, you know, snap my fingers. I've not talked about this for a while and I think that that was appropriate and this is I don't think this is controversial. If I could snap my fingers, we would. We would move the SMP to an MDF of some sort, with restrictions, age, stage, the context and and I'm hopeful that more district presidents can get get closer connected to this kind of conversation, because our districts are in different, very different contexts. I mean the needs of President Gibson here in the PSD are different than a lot of our Midwest needs, and maybe that's too broad of a brush, but, man, I mean we're a much more urban and suburban context here in the PSD than a number of our Midwest congregations.
Speaker 3:So anyway, and the reality Tim is. The reality is the future of the LCMS will be depending on like whether we like it or not. This is just a matter of practicality. It will be depending on like whether we like it or not. This is just a matter of practicality. It will be staffed by more bivocational, co-vocational workers. It's going to just have to do that, given that there's so many small congregations, unless you're comfortable with the idea of shutting these congregations down and that's like. I mean that's the other alternative. Like you know, there is a chance that you may see an exodus in some of these churches that says, ok, well, if this system is not going to give us a pastor, then we may have to join another system that gives us that. That's a. That's a harsh reality and I don't want to see that happen. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but that's kind of a reality that we're dealing with. I think President Gibson recognizes us. That's something we recognize in our own research on this issue and recognizes us.
Speaker 3:That's something we recognize in our own research on this issue, one of the things I recommended to the floor committee this wasn't something that was voted on but the seminaries are offering the residential program tuition free. Can we do something similar with SMP? Can we bring the tuition cost down so that it's more comparable to other online programs that are out there that might be competing with it? Right? So it's certainly. It certainly seems that districts could do that, even if the national body doesn't want to do that, and I think that's something that should be explored to make it, especially when you think about the churches that need to depend on that. They may struggle to afford, you know, eleven to twelve thousand dollars a year to get somebody through that program, thousand dollars a year to get somebody through that program.
Speaker 2:Well, shout out to President Harrison. He gave one of the messages at the National Youth Gathering, of which all three of my kids all in high school were at the National Youth Gathering, had just a marvelous time, and he my son actually told me yeah, President Harrison said we need a thousand church workers, I need a thousand of you to get. So it's definitely something he and other leaders are recognizing. We need leaders at all different levels in the LCMS for our current realities and our future needs as well. And also a shout out to Set Apart to Serve.
Speaker 2:I know that SAS is Set Apart to Serve, is moving in that direction, trying to raise up the next generation of leaders, and we strongly promote that as well. There's just going to be a liminal space right now where there's we're going to need to rely on guys you know our age and older, Jack, to help our churches stabilize and kind of start to grow into a new season so that we have pulpits and schools for the next generation of leaders in the LCMS. So that's all I have to say about pastoral formation. I don't think I said anything remarkably controversial there. We're going to be talking about it, though, at the national, national convention, and that should be, that should be fun. What else?
Speaker 3:And everything we're saying is things being openly spoke about at conventions. We're not exactly yeah, we're not going off any paths here. I don't think. The other item that came up was the conversation around Lutheran identity. Yeah, what is Lutheran identity? So we had a resolution on that topic. We approved a resolution that defines Lutheran identity keyly around scripture and confession right, and being clear. That also means other external things are not what defines Lutheran identity, namely worship style, vestments, stuff like that. Right, they can be beneficial, they can be great, but this was done.
Speaker 3:I mean, some of the things that we talked about is like we've got multi-ethnic, we have many multi-ethnic congregations in the Southwest District. We've got Korean churches. We've got Hispanic churches. Not all of them share the same connection to a more Germanic style of worship and yet at the same time, they are confessionally Lutheran, they adhere to the Lutheran confessions, they preach the word, they administer the sacraments. So that was passed overwhelmingly. There were a couple people that spoke out and said, no, it should also include worship style, liturgy, right, but by and large, for every person that was speaking against it, which was just a couple, there was many more people speaking in favor and it passed overwhelmingly. Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:No, I mean, this is what the Augsburg Confession says. You know that we're not going to define ourselves by external, external things.
Speaker 2:It was one of the major struggles with the Catholic church 500 years ago, jack that we were organizing around things that were, you know, counter to or maybe even against the gospel, putting people back under their weight and curse of the law.
Speaker 2:And it can be. It can be anything, it can, you know, it can be a worship style or or it can be a certain way in which we exercise our Lutheran reality in our, because we all got quirks in our congregations. But I think the major part in so one of our quirks is God is good or we hold hands. You know, when we give the post-communion dismissal, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, strength and preserve, we take it like I'm not going to go to another Lutheran congregation and say you've got to take, you've got to take that person. They may think it's weird, you know, in one hand maybe kind of this is what Christ Greenfield does, right, and every congregation has these kind of Adiaphora ways that kind of bring a heightened sense of this is who we are and there's nothing wrong with that in our local congregations. But to mandate those things and that includes vestments or even a very, very narrow understanding, of all of these elements in the liturgy have to be included in this way.
Speaker 3:You know divine service in a specific order, exactly as it's laid out in the hymnal Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no the early Lutheran reformers were adamantly against putting. Because we're putting ourselves back under the law If we subscribe to these things that scripture and confessions do not say are mandatory.
Speaker 3:The reason for that vote is that there is a movement within the LCMS of people that define confessional Lutheranism as also adherence to the hymnal right. So I've seen this actually posted online where it's like a Venn diagram and says, okay, this is the definition of a confessional Lutheran is scriptural inerrancy, adherence to the Lutheran confessions and hymnal Right. So that was like the third thing that was added and unless you overlap those three things and you're not considered a confessional Lutheran, which I took major, major objection to when I saw.
Speaker 2:So I think that's kind of where this vote was coming into, is addressing that thought. Is our hymnal fantastic? Yes, I love our hymnal fantastic. Yes, I love our hymnal, yeah, love, love the songs. But but to say it has to, has to be this way is disrespectful to how the liturgy has evolved over the centuries. I mean, there's been massive evolution right um in in the divine service and. But we can't agree. It is the divine service where the word is preached and the sacraments are rightly administered, that that is God serving us, right and so, and it can take a variety of different forms. I love the divine service, one through four Vespers Matins. I mean it's great, it's great. But to put ourselves back under this is this has to be in all contexts, is is inappropriate, it's not Lutheran.
Speaker 3:So, tim, let's let's maybe give some final thoughts about what we were thankful for. One of the things that came up in the convention is Gibson gave a report that there are 50 men right now in our district that are going through some sort of recognized pathway towards ordination. I thought that was an outstanding number. I give praise and thanks to Jesus for that and I'm really proud. I'm really proud of that effort. The other things that came up I really loved Mike's, president Gibson's vision on land and property development.
Speaker 3:They're being very innovative with that. I think they are really trailblazers and what they're doing with you know, this is this is true, and in every case that the district ends up with land for maybe a ministry that goes, goes under, is no longer feasible. What do they do with that land? Is it sold and turn into a trust fund or do they redevelop it for ministry purposes? Right, and they've been trying to be very creative with redeveloping it for ministry purposes. They're also starting to. I love this. He's starting to think like the old school district where it's like can we buy land in places that are being developed so that 10 years from now, a church is planted in that land? That's amazing. And, president Gibson, if you'd like anybody to partner with you in that, let us know. We would be more than happy to partner in that process, because the place that we're living in is the exact definition of that type of growth that we need to try and get ahead of.
Speaker 2:Any more thoughts on that, any other kind of things that just came out of the reporting that you were giving. I get the hesitancy to do that because if you don't have a viable congregation in a respective area and or planters who have proven themselves as faithful to start and sustain and grow a local church, like that's risky for the district to get into a land game Right. And at the same time there are, with the urbanization of America, like it or dislike it, it just is what it is. Like we're booming here in Maricopa County, a thousand people new coming in every single week. That it makes a lot of sense in some of our areas growing maybe San Diego areas and things like that. But you just got to find viable partners to execute on that and I think we're one of them here at Christ Greenfield, one of many in our district. And so, yeah, I'm hopeful and I like the way we're thinking about revenue generation connected to the property as well. Like you buy 30 acres, you develop 15 acres for a church and a school School ministry will boom here in Arizona. It is booming here in Arizona and then you develop some sort of a mixed use maybe lower income or senior adult living space and you have some revenue generation.
Speaker 2:We know there are our partners across our synod who have, within four years or so, developed revenue generation that helps go right back into the ministry. It makes a lot of sense and I'm looking forward to partnering with our district in that effort, god willing. So anything more there, jack. I mean it was my final takeaway from our gathering. It's collegial, it's kind, and I think I was reading some reports from other district conventions. I know not all of them probably are as collegial and kind in their discussion. I mean there are other resolutions you know to to really speak against maybe what the ULC has done in in lay leadership development, and no, I'm serious about that that's true.
Speaker 2:I know that there are some resolutions that are speaking against a center for missional pastoral leadership, you know, and so those, those kind of probably got a little bit more heated in those days. But I'm hoping that as we move into the national convention, that our rhetoric just softens and that we enter in listening. If you come in with a respective idea, could you hold that idea with an open hand and say, god, I could be wrong on this and I want to be like that. Some of my maybe assumptions about a person or a group of people, you know, I think generally we all want the same thing. We want a healthy, thriving, confessional, conservative Lutheran synod. And we're in the canoeing. The mountain space, right.
Speaker 2:The need for adaptive leadership we don't know exactly how to get there. To the Pacific Ocean, right. We don't know, it's going to require some change, it's going to be hard and we're going to need to be kind and respectful and we're going to need courageous leaders to move us toward that unknown, unknown future. And here's the thing, jack, I mean it's eternities. I'm sorry to get so like you know, this is.
Speaker 2:We do this because eternity is at stake. Right, if we don't, if we don't start new churches and help churches grow and thrive and revitalize and do those things and start more schools to reach the next gen with. Like people are not going to hear the gospel and and come to the saving knowledge of who Jesus is and spend eternity with them, new heavens and new earth on the last day, like. That's why we do what we do and I believe the LCMS in particular. We have the pure gospel in our understanding of scripture and the confessions. I don't shy away from that. It's so good. So let's figure out our stuff internally and mobilize for mission collectively. Anything more there, jack?
Speaker 3:I mean the way I like to think it through and the way I would encourage kind of our national body to be thinking this through, is kind of two questions Like Jesus talks about the posture of leaving behind the 99 found sheep to reach the one sheep Right, and he talks about it multiple times in different contexts in scripture, right, so what do we as the LCMS, what are we willing to sacrifice to reach lost sheep? What are we not willing to sacrifice to reach lost sheep right? These are very, very, very valid questions that need to be asked as a collective national body and as local congregations. For me, like that answer, like I'm willing to sacrifice a lot. There's a lot of things that I love, that I'd be willing to sacrifice to reach a lot.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of things that I love that I'd be willing to sacrifice to reach lost sheep. There's some things that can't be sacrificed. Biblical truth is not something we can sacrifice to do that Right, but that should be the thing that drives our heart is reaching lost sheep, and that's what I care about and I think that's what a lot of people who we I know, who we collaborate collaborate with. That's what's informing their heart, and so I think if we come together with that posture we can. We can come up with really great answers to those questions, but it's a messy process right, yeah, yeah, definitely In this world you will have trouble, take heart and overcome the world on the way to, on the way to eternity, until the trumpet sounds and Jesus comes back.
Speaker 2:It's, it's messy. There's some good signs, though, I think, for us in the LCMS and I think, just generally in the church, I think I'm seeing a lot of young people that are on fire, that are eager to grow, that want depth, theological depth, that would love to be about our confessional Lutheran identity today. It's a historic. What we have is historic. It's not a Johnny-come-lately, it's not dependent on any one personality, it's dependent upon Christ, and the Reformation just kind of re-centered us on the gospel of Jesus Christ and God's work for us. Passive faith, extra nos, all of it, man, it's what the world needs. It moves people.
Speaker 2:I get to be a chaplain at an evangelical school because I'm a coach. So every Thursday, a football coach right Every Thursday, before games, I get to bring a devotion Gosh. I use all of our gospel handles and I don't shy away from it. The appropriate distinction between law and gospel, uh. Alien and proper righteousness, like these, uh, two kinds of righteousness, uh, you know. Or alien and proper work of of God, right To kill and to make alive, and so I get to bring a lot of these kinds of distinctions. I just took them through lament, you know, and the the great. But the turn of of god is against me. But no, I god is still faithful, he's for me and so, yeah, I think there's a lot of us that want, and even when I bring those teachings, baptism, lord, supper, the real presence of christ, into an evangelical like we're going to be interviewing, uh, brian wolfmuller.
Speaker 2:You know he came out of a charismatic evangelical background. There is a hunger for the way we articulate the faith and hopefully we can figure out our sociological and very practical struggles today and unite to reach more people with the gospel and not just to make you know non-denom people Lutheran though I think I would love to see that take place but to reach the lost with the saving gospel of Jesus. So this is lead time. Please like, subscribe, comment wherever it is you take of Jesus. So this is lead time. Please like, subscribe, comment wherever it is you take this in. Hopefully this was a helpful conversation. It was obviously very, very practical, started out with some governance, moved into the convention and we pray that it was helpful and that the joy of Jesus is your strength as you unite to reach people with the gospel this day, it's a good day. Go make it a great day. Your strength as you unite to reach people with the gospel. This day, it's a good day.
Speaker 1:Go, make it a great day. Wonderful work, Jack. 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.