Lead Time
Lead Time
Why Most Lutheran Congregations Are Stuck at 50 Members
Across the LCMS and beyond, the average congregation hovers around 50 in worship. Why is this the case—and what can be done about it?
In this Lead Time conversation, Tim Ahlman sits down with Rev. David Patterson (Institute of Lutheran Theology) to dig into the deeper issues behind church decline and revitalization. Together they explore:
- The real indicators of a congregation’s health (it’s not money or attendance).
- Why many churches remain “stuck” despite good intentions.
- How Ephesians 4 points to a path forward—knitting the body together in Christ.
- The role of humility, unity, and truth-telling in revitalization.
This is a candid look at the challenges facing Lutheran congregations today—and the hope that still exists for renewal through the Spirit of God.
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This is good time, and Jack is working, doing his executive director stuff, and today I get the privilege of hanging out with a brother that I met about a year ago, a Reverend David Patterson. He is the Dean for the Center of the Word, connected to the Institute for Lutheran Theology, and we'll let him tell a little bit of his ministry story, though. How are you doing, though, david? Thanks for being on Lead Time buddy.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm doing quite well. Thanks, tim for having me. It's great. Yeah, we're going to have a good time.
Speaker 2:So tell folks a little bit of your background. I know you were in the ELCA and I've had a number of guests. Obviously we've been connected to the Luther House of Studies for some time and Chris Krogan and Sarah there at LHOS. But I think you have a little bit of a similar story. To set the context, when I first became a pastor this goes back about 17 years ago or so I had been in for one year when I think it was a really, really poor decision from the ELCA to put culture currents you know the same level, if not above, scripture right, and so I, you, walk through that struggle and honestly, at that time we welcomed many people into church an LCMS church, bethlehem Lutheran in Lakewood, colorado who looked at what was going on and just said I can't, I can't do this anymore. And I think then the ILT story kind of came around the same time as well. So tell that ministry story, david, if you would. What a joy to be with you, sure.
Speaker 3:I had a very roundabout route, if you will, to ministry. I hadn't actually intended to end up there. I was working in developmental education primarily, and after my grant teaching position had ended I had an opportunity to return to school and I went to the Lutheran Bible Institute of Seattle and I did a degree in biblical studies and at that point I was thinking about well, maybe I should go on to seminary, you know, and I entered because I was a member of the ELCA at the time. I started the candidacy process up there and in my first meeting with the candidacy team they in no uncertain terms said that because I'm disabled, I would never have any opportunity to be a pastor and I should just give up. So at that point it was. It felt like kind of a blow. But I had the opportunity. I actually started working in the library there at LBI and it was really. I really enjoyed it. So I applied and was accepted at the University of Washington where I pursued a Master of Library and Information Science. But in the meantime, until the program started, I went ahead and completed a Certificate of Professional Studies in Cross-Cultural Ministries focusing on global evangelism.
Speaker 3:After I finished, my Master of Library and Information Science was right after 9-11. And I had the opportunity to serve as a military librarian a civilian position, I mean, how could someone like me work for the military? But I was given the opportunity. I spent six years working as an Air Force librarian and after that, after my service, with working alongside our men and women in uniform, I spent a couple of years working as a public librarian in Central Oregon and just serving as teaching the adult forum class in my local ELCA congregation. And that was when that big decision in the ELCA came down about gay marriage and gay ordination and my entire congregation was really struggling with it.
Speaker 3:And as I was trying to help them address what they were facing, what we were all facing together, I came to the realization that I needed to continue some more theological education of my own, because it'd been a few years. So I started looking around for an opportunity. Where could I study without necessarily uprooting myself completely which was rather ironic for me but in a way that I could afford, with really, really good theologians that I could trust? And I came across this just emerging school. It was just about to roll out its first Masters of Divinity cohort. It was called the Institute of Lutheran Theology. So I reached out and I had a conversation with their president, dennis Bielfeld, and we spent a little bit talking about the school itself. But we ended up spending a lot of time talking about the library and at the end of the conversation he asked to fly me out to South Dakota to take a look at what they were building, to see if I could give them some advice.
Speaker 3:And so, february, in the middle of an ice storm, I flew out to South Dakota and I spent three days with the team there at ILT and talking about their library, but also talking about their programs and what led to the formation of ILT, which grew out of the Word Alone movement that began years before, right about 2000, with the ELCA's call to common mission, where they began to set aside their notions of the priesthood of all believers in favor of an ecclesiastical hierarchy. So at the end of those the two days with looking over the library and talking with the staff, at the last dinner Dr Bielfeld asked me to walk out into the parking lot with him. It's freezing, it's after dark February in South Dakota, and he says, david, I don't know why I'm telling you this, there's no way we could afford for you to come out here. There is, I have. We have no way to support you, but I know in my heart God is calling you to come and work with ILT. So my wife and I spent a couple of days praying about it, talking with one another, seeking God's will, and called back and said, yeah, we have no idea, but we're headed out there. And it took us a couple of months to close things down in Oregon. But in April we were moving to South Dakota.
Speaker 3:But within a couple months, what was interesting or actually was just a few weeks later we started attending a local LCMC congregation just outside of Brookings, where the school is located, and within a couple months of our starting their pastor resigned and they brought in an interim who only had a limited amount of availability. Because I worked for ILT and I had a degree in biblical studies and a certificate in cross-cultural missions, I volunteered to help out, because you know when you're in a church that's what you're supposed to do. And I started helping out, doing visitation in the nursing home and with shut-ins and whenever the interim pastor wasn't available, I would do pulpit supply. A tiny little rural parish it actually was in the middle of farmland. There is no actual larger community around it. You got to go 10 miles to get to the nearest town.
Speaker 3:Anyway, on two days before Ash Wednesday, that pastor the interim pastor sends an email saying that they would never be back. They were done and I sent a quick email to the president of the congregation. I said I know you've got to be panicking right now. The worst thing you can do is to try to jump into any kind of have a knee-jerk reaction or try to just figure it out. And we're going into Lent. I said I'm here, I'm not going anywhere, I'm a member of the congregation. I'll fill in if you want me to. We'll just get through the process together. Let's get through Lent, let's get through Easter and then we'll start a call process. After we get through that we can think with clearer heads. He agreed, and so I began actually a preaching series through Lent on the nature of the call, because I'm thinking I'm getting the congregation ready to go and begin their call process. We get through the first, we get through Easter and I meet with the council and they tell me that they've been meeting throughout Lent and they've decided God's calling me. Okay, I tried saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And in the end I insisted they go through a six month process, call process and consider other candidates. We got to the end of that six-month process and the congregation called me, so I was ordained on September 11, 2011.
Speaker 3:I served that congregation for five years, at which time I surrendered that call. I returned back full-time. My first parish was entirely bivocational. I continued working at ILT, but we were in the middle of our first accreditation process and the work was continuing to grow at ILT and it was time. So I surrendered that call and I returned to ILT full-time. But I was only there six months full-time when I was asked to do pulpit supply for a yoked parish about 45 minutes away, and it was during the first service that the news broke that the pastor was resigning. This is a trend, david.
Speaker 3:So later that week the presidents of the two congregations came together and asked me to be the interim until they could go through a call process. And these were NALC congregations, they weren't LCMC, and so, yeah, I started, and almost right after they asked me to submit my name as well for consideration. So I did. At the end of the call process they called me, so I was colloquied into the NALC and I served until 2020. And during that same time I completed another master's in theology.
Speaker 3:By the time 2020 came around and the height of the lockdowns I'd been through multiple spine surgeries which left me partially paralyzed, about 60% paralyzed and in a wheelchair and I don't know what you know about rural South Dakota, but being in a wheelchair it's very difficult to parish ministry. So my wife and I figured out that it was really time for my parish ministry to end and to return full-time to ILT, at which point I was given the role of the dean for ILT Center for the Work, because we've just continued to grow through the whole time and I'm overseeing the library, all of our IT services, which is basically everything we do as a fully online institution registrar, learning support, all of our publishing and media productions, including our new journals. We're rolling out a book press, our grant and research writing, video production and our new Center for Congregational Revitalization, which is called now Momentum, a network for church revitalization. But that's kind of my journey.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks for sharing David, and I love your servant heart. That's the heart of Jesus in you to say here I am, send me, I'm eager and ready to serve. So praise be to God. There are a number of folks that have strong opinions regarding different modes of theological formation, and I'm a product of residential seminary education and went straight through, was married at 22, and then three great years in St Louis and a vicarage year in the middle and in Florida, and it was wonderful for me. I'm also a guy that's been able to mentor many, many Vickers over the years that are going through the residential program and I've also then been able to mentor many who have gone through different programs in in the LCMS, certified, certified programs. But there are there are folks that have very, very strong and maybe sometimes incorrect, and I don't and I'm not even going to say what some I type of a model still theologically rigorous, you know, online learning experiences, but coupled with mentoring and learning face to face with mentors who are on the ground, not just pastors but others who are seeking to shape the character and the craft of future ministers of the gospels.
Speaker 2:What are some of the rumors, misnomers that you've heard about online education that you're just like oh, I don't know if that's exactly true, maybe not in our experience at ILT. I'll just let you kind of share your heart regarding what I would say. What is the ultimate need? It's more workers for the harvest right. The fields are ripe under the harvest and we need to send out more, more laborers. And the final thing everything that I've said is not against residential education. There's no, I've never said anything against. It's a both and conversation. Can we utilize technology in a helpful way to, to partner with congregations to meet their needs for more word and sacrament laborers in the harvest? So any any misnomers that you'd like to clarify about what ILT?
Speaker 3:does and does not do, david, sure, sure. What's the biggest thing? Ok, we don't make pastors, we don't. We don't form pastors, but neither do brick and mortar, traditional residential programs. They don't. This is the categorical error that people make most often is thinking that seminaries, theological schools, form pastors. They don't, and that's incredibly. That's fundamentally against any Lutheran notion of what it means to be formed as a pastor. The only one who can form a pastor is the word of God himself. Okay, we don't do it. The real question you have to ask yourself is how is that person being formed? Now? Traditionally residential brick and mortar was the way that pastors were educated not formed, educated and it wasn't necessarily because it was best, it was what there was. The only other way you could do theological education would be correspondence. You know letters back and forth, and here's some materials and read it.
Speaker 3:The problem most people have when thinking about online education is in their mind, that's the connection they're making. They're thinking that's what it must be like. It's totally disconnected, people are on their own and there's no serious quality to the education Today. That can't be further from the truth and, in fact, almost every theological school in North America today is, in one form or another doing online education, not at the level we're doing. They began during the lockdowns, and the Association of Theological Schools, which is the foremost accrediting agency and the same agency that accredits not only us but the Concordia schools as well acknowledges the validity of online theological education. The problem is, most of them don't know how to do it well. We've been doing it for over 15 years. How to do it well, and we've been doing it for over 15 years.
Speaker 3:The real issue that people try to make about brick and mortar education is you're right there with your faculty and your fellow students. Well, that's true, but to do that, you have to leave your congregation, and the biggest flaw of the traditional brick and mortar model is it has to create an artificial substitute for the actual congregational bodies that the student is leaving, and to do so dramatically increases the cost of theological education. Typically, a traditional seminary student has to relocate four times during their seminary education in order to complete it. They move from their home to the school, they move from their school to their vicarage, they move from the vicarage back to the school and then they move to their first parish Over four years and they have to absorb the cost for all of it.
Speaker 3:It's huge the way we do theological education at ILT.
Speaker 3:We bring our students from all around the world, while they remain in their congregations with their families, together, everyone face to face with arguably the greatest faculty in North America, who are themselves located all around the world.
Speaker 3:We have faculty all across North America, we have them in Europe, we have students in Asia, in Africa, all over the place, and we all gather at the same time, face-to-face face, and we study together, we share together, we pray together, we worship together, while remaining grounded in our local communities. And here's the interesting thing about that you have to ask where do you want your pastors and leaders planted and taking root? Because a seminary the word seminary actually comes from the Latin seminarium, which means literally seedbed. What we do at ILT is we leave our students planted in the soil in which they need to grow the local church and then we bring the piece that is entrusted to us, that's, the education piece, understanding that the formation isn't done by us or any seminary. It's done by the Word of God Himself to serve in a specific context. We just want to leave them in that context for that to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, I appreciate your work and, for those that are unaware of kind of the reach of ILT right now, and you're partnering with many of us in the LCMS through the Center for Missional Pastoral Leadership and we're producing some, that group is producing some classes and it's going to work and complement one another in a beautiful way. And I think I heard that in LCMS congregations there are 22, 24 students or so set to join ILT through the Center for.
Speaker 2:Missional, pastoral Leadership, and there are numerous places. Kairos University is another place where you know it's an open handed posture to develop partnerships and we can. We all come under the banner of confessional Lutheran theology and we're not going to shy away from that. But we can work together and learn together and and still keep some of our distinctions in each one of our denominations, because there are some distinctions. I think we agree on far more than is our distinctions, but nonetheless I could go women's ordination, things like that but we can still partner and work together in the work of theological.
Speaker 2:I like the distinction, theological education. Who forms us? It's a word of God. It's a word of God in my local context. That's ultimately where I was formed. I had to learn at the feet of, yes, wonderful theologians. But also I was an associate pastor at a large church and school. So, david Languish, he had to teach me, he had to help form me as a young whippersnapper preacher. You know, I had a lot, still have a lot to learn.
Speaker 2:And the fact that formation ever ends I think that's a misnomer, that it ends after the four years and then you kind of have figured it out. Oh, my goodness, I feel so bad sometimes for going down a little rabbit trail here, david, but for the young pastor who gets in maybe a rural Midwest congregation and a circuit that may not be as healthy we call our gatherings together a circuit that may not be as healthy. Some may be vacant pulpits and he and maybe his young family are just there and they got to figure it out. Obviously he's going to need wise mentors, elders and other leaders who come alongside him to shape him. How do I understand the budget? What is all this? The fact that formation, we think, kind of concludes at a degree, at the completion of a degree, is very much a misnomer. So I appreciate that distinction between formation and education. Anything else to say on that topic, david?
Speaker 3:Well, it's one of the interesting things about how ILT came into being in the first place. In the midst of all the controversies in the ELCA, the midst of all the controversies in the ELCA, dr Bielfeld was asked to explore the need for what was defined back then as a Lutheran house of studies. And as he looked at the landscape, what he came back with, and which led to the formation of ILT, was there was a need for a place, a big tent, where people from different perspectives, from the most staunchly conservative to the most radically liberal and progressive, can come up against each other, not in polemic, not assaulting one another, not attacking one another, but listening to their ideas. A place where faculty can teach and each have their own perspective, yes, but all having to remain open for the conversations to happen, so that our students can rub up against each other steal upon steal, where these ideas can be put to the test rather than simply being pushed by any denominational party. That was the whole point.
Speaker 3:Ilt needed to be fully independent, fully autonomous and fully accredited, so that we could support LCMS students in the way they need to be supported never judging them, never critiquing them, allowing their ideas to speak for themselves, but having to confront ideas and perspectives that are different from their own. The same way we do with LCMC students and NALC students and free Lutheran students as well, as we have students outside our traditional Lutheran moorings global Methodists, anglicans, evangelicals from across and we bring the ideas together and they have to rub up against each other and their own preconceptions. They have to question those and submit all under the word of God. Yeah, Amen.
Speaker 2:You've heard of CFW Walther right.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've read him widely Right, His a lot of work on church fellowship and his time in the mid and late 19th century. He had this big dream of bringing all confessional Lutherans together from, bringing all confessional Lutherans together from and that was a big dream because you had folks from Germany and England and Sweden and all all different sorts of cultural backgrounds and he had these big, big dreams. Now he he maintained you know he had to write against unionism and syncretism and those types of things, but he had very much an open hand toward other academics beyond Lutheran. I just read today he welcomed DL Moody Moody Bible College. He welcomed DL Moody and called him a really good, really good friend and appreciated a lot of what Moody offered and they had. They were able to rub up some of their theological differences together.
Speaker 2:But it was a model for the students to say, hey, you're going to get out. How do you treat your Catholic neighbor, your evangelical neighbor, Like? And how do you treat your fellow Lutherans who may have some differences in opinion regarding how they look at scripture and some of our practices Like? That's just real life, Like to live in a bubble, like that. Now, there's nothing there, nothing wrong, you know, necessarily, with having all LCMS, you know, educators, I think it's probably really really helpful, Absolutely, and residential is really really helpful. But to say that that's going to be, that's going to be the standard you're always going to be with folks from your tribe, it's just. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 2:And I'm just thinking this past Sunday we have a meet the pastor that we do a couple times a month and we had 12 people that came who have been worshiping with us the last few weeks or so. They wanted to hear a little bit more about who we are and I had to answer, and our team had to answer, Lutheran distinctive questions. You had some folks that were coming out of mainline denominations and evangelical circles and even a couple young ladies who were coming out of the LDS community, the Latter-day Saint community, Mormon community. So I mean, that's just, that's just real life. And how do you speak to them in such a way that they can understand hey, we're Christian, we're gospel people, we just want to tell people about Jesus and we also take the sacraments very seriously and you know things, things like that. So, yeah, what do you think about that, David?
Speaker 3:Can I tell you a little story about the Lutheran, the importance of the Lutheran perspective. I had an evangelical ask me about this. What is this Lutheran thing? I said okay, let me tell you a story.
Speaker 3:Imagine you went to visit the Grand Canyon for the first time never been there before, drive and you get to the Grand Canyon for the first time never been there before, drive. And you get to the Grand Canyon, you go and you go to the visitor center. You go into the visitor center to the person at the desk and you say listen, I've never been to the Grand Canyon before. I want to take in the glory that is the Grand Canyon In all its splendor. Where do I go? And that person pulls out a map and says well, you can go here and you can go here, you, all of these looking, uh, lookout spots. So you, you leave and you're going, scratching your head, going, I don't have a clue. And as you're walking back to your car, uh, the janitor walks up to you and says do you want to know a secret? And he opens up that little map and he takes out a pen and he marks a little spot there, if you drive to that spot, and you get out and look, that's the one spot where you can see the entire Grand Canyon in all its glory. It doesn't mean that all these other spots aren't great and they have wonderful perspectives, but there's only one spot where you can see the whole thing. So go there, so the you get back in your car, you drive to that one spot, you get out and there are people mulling around there and you look out and you just see everything.
Speaker 3:That is the Lutheran perspective in Lutheran denominations today. Though and I'm not picking out any one, it's all of them, those other people mulling around at that lookout point. They're all staring at their feet. They're all enamored with the place from which they're looking rather than looking out at the splendor of the entire classical Christian tradition. This is what the Lutheran perspective brings. It presents the Christian message in all of its glory and splendor, but we all spend too much time staring at our feet rather than looking out at the glory in front of us. That's the great thing about the Lutheran perspective and the fundamental problem with most Lutheran denominational bodies today. All of them, I'm not picking out any one of them. We are so enamored with having the best position that we spend all our time staring at our feet.
Speaker 2:Well, I kind of agree, and let's take it out. The message is in the hand of a sower.
Speaker 2:the seed is meant to be the seed of the gospel save your faith through the life, death, resurrection, ascension work of Jesus, his love, how deeply loved we are and how we're reminded of that love through the cross, through our baptism, and that we're reminded of the forgiveness of sins through the Lord's Supper, and that we deeply love the Word of God. And we take the Word of God very, very, very seriously today. And we have some wonderful handles for understanding the Word of God law, gospel, saint-sinner, two kinds of righteousness from Luther, I mean all sorts of wonderful theological principles that I think we ought to share with the wider evangelical world, Catholic world. It's very, very helpful. I get to be the chaplain at a kind of interdenominational school, gilbert Christian High School, for our football team. And a little side note, I've never been invited to speak at their chapel because they think I'm going to talk about infant baptism or something like that, which I may if the scripture is talking about it. But anyway, I've never been invited to chapel.
Speaker 2:But I get to do the weekly devotional for the young man and I'll tell you what. It's kind of covert Lutheranism. It's just like oh, how should we understand this? Well, this is the law, this is the gospel. It's super, super fun. All right, I wanted to get. Let's shift gears here a little bit. Could hang there for the rest of our time. We've got about 30 minutes. I wanted to give you the opportunity to share about your Lilly Grants and some of your work in church revitalization.
Speaker 3:So tell us about your pursuit of two wonderful Lilly Grants for ILT. Well, sure, well, almost a year ago, we began developing two distinct proposals for Lilly grants. The first one was a concept paper for the Lilly Foundation on developing a large scale collaboration grant for a Center for Congregational Revitalization. The idea was to create an entity that could work with a variety of other bodies and bring them together, each carrying part of the solution for struggling congregations, and that ILT and its undergraduate college, christ College, and its graduate school, the Christ School of Theology, would provide education opportunities, opportunities to equip lay leaders and pastors for a variety of contexts, while providing a whole assortment of services with other organizations who will help work with congregations to build a strong network of congregations supporting one another, encouraging one another, holding one another accountable and helping them identify for themselves what are the issues that they are confronting and how to most effectively address them. Confronting and how to most effectively address them. And then, at the same time, we applied for an individual implementation grant with Lilly that would allow us to pursue specifically the the elements of this very large project that ILT itself would be taking on. Now what I can tell you is that the first grant, which is the most difficult grant to receive from Lilly. It's the most challenging. We weren't invited in the end to pursue the formal proposal and I haven't heard back yet on the second grant, so that's still out there. But here's the thing whether we get the grant or not and this is something a lot of people don't understand the vast majority of grant proposals you submit will fail always. If you receive one in every 10 grants that you submit for, you're considered an incredibly successful grant writing operation. You will, in fact. Success is found most often in how you fail in grant writing, and for us, this process allowed us to take what were some theoretical ideas that Dr Bielfeld and I and a few members of our board were playing around with, and it forced us to get serious and say how would we actually make this happen? Let's put a plan that could actually work. Now, whether we get the grants or not is far less relevant, because we've done the work and we now have a plan that could actually work, that could have real impacts in congregations.
Speaker 3:So we're not waiting around. We know the Lord. He put this together, so he's going to provide the means one way or another, you know, and it might be through some grant. We're undertaking a full year of grant writing this year to support the work that we're taking on. We're not stopping. But it may not just be that We've got board members who are coming in saying you know, I'm not waiting, I'm cutting a significant check. We've got other larger donors who are looking at supporting this. There may be people listening today who are going yeah, I need to be a part of what they're doing. I'm going to come and support it. We don't know. All we know is that the Lord has given this piece to us and we're going to move forward with it.
Speaker 3:And as we have continued to do that work, we have met with many different passionate individuals who want to be part of this work, including you guys there. You guys there, you have been doing some phenomenal work on your own with Unite Leadership Collective and we have just had so many other partners that want to come out and be a part of this, groups like Church Doctor Ministries, the Merrill Center, the League of Rural Churches, dirt Roads Network, pastoral Leadership Institute. We've had large congregations.
Speaker 3:There's the Shepherd of the Desert out in Scottsdale, lutheran Church of the Master in Omaha. We've got the Center for Missional and Pastoral Leadership, the Center for Wesleyan Studies. We've just had all of these groups who say, yeah, we've got to do this and we want to be a part of it. Groups who say, yeah, we've got to do this and we want to be a part of it, and so we can't wait for someone to just write us a million dollar check. We have to be good stewards of what God has given us now and trust that he will provide the means. So it's been just a phenomenal experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so fun. Love your passion for it. So let's get into the details in revitalization. Tell us about the Center for Congregational Revitalization and how does it serve as a type of clearinghouse for the Institute for Lutheran Theology? Ilt work for church revitalization.
Speaker 3:I actually really like that name is to equip and connect congregations for forward movement, guiding them to face current realities with courage, renew their spiritual and missional vitality and multiply disciples who impact their communities with the gospel in the context of their unique denominational identity. We've got Tim has five core objectives. Number one is to face the facts with faith. If you are in a struggling congregation, well, there's reasons for that. There are reasons that things that are going on in your congregation and in your community that's got you in the position you're in. You've got to face those. You've got to deal with them. You've got to honestly assess the spiritual health of your community and of your congregation and the leadership capacity that you have. You need to face the brutal facts in a safe environment. We want to do that. We want to help build a sustainable outreach where we can equip churches with the tools and training for engaging their local communities in culturally relevant, gospel-centered ways. We want to help develop community profiles and mission field maps to focus outreach efforts where they'll do the most good. We want to share proven models and have congregations network together to share proven models of outreach with one another.
Speaker 3:We want to help renew congregational life. We want to provide revitalization roadmaps tailored to each congregation's context. We want to help them strengthen their worship life, their leadership, health and their member engagement. We want to encourage spiritual renewal through prayer, through catechesis and through mission-focused preaching. We want to work with congregations to multiply their disciples and their leaders. We want to do this by helping them train leaders to lead small groups, to teach the faith and provide pastoral care wherever it's needed. We want to be able to foster thriving networks between congregations and we want to help them measure and share the impact within their congregations and all across North America. So well, I mean, hey, this is that's the organizational pieces. So it's just, it's an exciting. It's an exciting thing to be a part of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you? You say it's grounded in the fourth chapter of Ephesians. Yes, and are we talking the apest model here? Are you into apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher?
Speaker 3:I absolutely am, but it goes beyond that. It goes beyond that because when a lot of people, when they focus on the apest, they take verses 11 and 12 and they put in isolation of everything else or they take it out of its context. It's incredibly important. But the key piece to understand when we look at the fourth chapter of Ephesians is we are dedicated to equipping congregations to grow and act as one whole body and to send that body, joined, into the community, to speak the truth in love and build itself up in that love by joining new members onto it. Here's the when we, when you're looking at the APEST, if you will, those four critical roles. What most people are so focused on is the apest and most of them lose sight of what, in many ways, is the most critical word in that passage. It's actually translated in most English translations today as equip. Problem is it doesn't mean equip. Okay, the he and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of christ.
Speaker 3:That word equip doesn't occur anywhere else in all of scripture. The word is catartismon and the closest word you'll find to it in Scripture is in the Gospel of Matthew, where the disciples are sitting beside the shore of Galilee mending their nets. But if you look outside of Scripture, it's actually a very common word in ancient Greek. It is used most commonly in medical texts, which is interesting because Ephesians 4, what is it dealing with? The body.
Speaker 3:That word, kathartismon, is the word that is used to describe the setting and splinting of a broken bone, so the bone can knit together, of a broken bone, so the bone can knit together. So if we were to simply translate that word literally, then it says and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to knit together as one the saints for the work of ministry. And what's that work of ministry? For the building up of the body of Christ. It's taking this saint here and this saint here and not making them super saints or not, setting specific people aside and everyone else just kinds of mulls around and does it. No, it's about knitting them together as one and then that one united body goes out into their community to bring Jesus Christ to them. I mean, the roles are critical for that, but it's that one key concept that's essential to the whole thing.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, in an American culture where we're so, I think people read that and they think it's to equip me. Pastor, come and serve me, equip me like help me find my own spiritual gifts and stuff. And I guess you know it is for you individually but it never stays for you, it's for us. You know we are so hyper individualistic. Scriptures written in a way that out in that communal world I can't, I have no concept of myself as an island unto myself. I only know myself based on my unique gifts that add to the health of the entire body. And obviously 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans, chapter 12, paul doubles down on the need for the body of Christ to move together as one. Where would I be apart from the hands of the faith, etc. Like we have to have all parts of the body working together and is not necessarily, it feels, like for Jesus or for the Apostle. Paul is like a pipe dream, but we know you're going to be divided because you're sinful. No, like this is the number one way that we bring the witness and love of Christ out into the world. Look at how they love one another.
Speaker 2:Yes, this has been one of my big kind of soapboxes, I guess for a while kind of soapboxes, I guess for a while if we can't handle our own stuff and our own denominations and between denominations and disagree agreeably, if we don't have the character and love of Christ that confronts and challenges sin and with a heart that leads to repentance and love and unity for the sake of the mission of God, if we can't start with, like, the basics.
Speaker 2:This is just in baseball terms we learn how to hit, we learn how to field and catch, like, if we don't understand the basics, we're not going to win, and the Holy Spirit wants us that. We need to win more people. That's the ultimate call. God wants all to be saved and come to a knowledge of him. So, yeah, let's, let's work at and I love that we're, we need to be broken together, together. It's a beautiful image because in my brokenness this is the way of the cross, just to kind of, in my brokenness, in my suffering, in my sorrow, in my want, in my need, even in my sin, recognizing that then I come together with other broken sinners, united to bring people, the only one who can make them whole, and that's Jesus, the crucified and risen one.
Speaker 3:That's the key, because nobody, no person, not a pastor, not at the head of a denomination, no person has the answer. The only one who has the answer is Jesus Christ himself, into who is the head and we're to grow into him. And as Ephesians 4, 7 says but grace was given to each one according to the measure of Christ's gift. None of us has the whole thing. We've each been given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift in us, and it is only when we unite together as the body of Christ, with Christ as the head, that we can serve as we are called to serve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so good. So since you've been down this path of revitalization for a while, I have some thoughts. What are some of the main needs of congregations that are looking at revitalizing? In the LCMS we've got the majority of our congregations worship around 50 or less, you know, and I think in many mainline denominations and in many different Lutheran denominations I bet the stats are similar. So what are some of those needs top three needs or so of churches in need of revitalization David.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, you know what I can tell you. All kinds of things they should do, and people have been trying to say that tell people and they're typically people from the ivory tower telling the folks in that little Italy rural congregation, at micro church. This is what you should do and you will be great. And you know what's true about all of them. They're wrong, because the answer isn't what we think it is. We think that we can come in with a solution and we'll fix the problem, and if you just follow our patented eight steps, you will be no.
Speaker 3:No, you wanna know what the three most important things are that churches need? We'd love to hear that. Number one. Number one we need to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called. Ephesians 4.1. That's what we are called. That's what we're called to do.
Speaker 3:We must, together, walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we are called in our community. What is that? We need to walk with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. This is what we have to do. What's God's chosen means for us to do that? That's number two. Well, we were just talking about that. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to knit together the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the son of God. That's number two. Number three what's the purpose? What's the purpose for all of this? Ready Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him. Who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. It says it right there. It's not rocket science. There's no special person who's going to have the answer. The answer is given to all of us in his word. That's it.
Speaker 3:Now, are there things that can be done to help a congregation make use of fulfilling its role as body? Well, sure, sure, but if you don't have this, the rest of it doesn't matter, because we don't revitalize congregations. You want to know what the vitality of a congregation is. It's not in the number of people in the parish. I don't care if it's five or 5,000. A church can be equally dead. It has nothing to do with that. I don't care how much money is in the plate, I don't care if it's five cents or five million dollars. That is not an indicator of the vitality of the congregation. It is in one thing and one thing only. It is in the Holy Spirit that enlivens, that propels us out to live and act as the body of Christ in our community. Remember, remember, I can, I can remember a dinner where there were only 13 people sitting around a table and they changed the world.
Speaker 2:Facts that he's talking about the Lord's Supper. If you miss out, that's so good, david. Well, I couldn't agree more, man. It was about because I was about a revitalization work here and there was never one silver bullet outside of Jesus and love, yes, listening to one another, weeping with those who weep. There were tears of past hurts and loss and trust that needed to be rekindled. And then there was hope, something that felt like a new day.
Speaker 2:The place we're at doesn't have to be the place we always are. We don't have to be stuck, and here's why the Holy Spirit is here and we get to play a small part in God's big mission to go reach and save people, young and old, and he's given us his means, obviously word and sacraments and each other and the gifts that we have, and so let's embrace the adventure of going on this wonderful journey with Jesus as our head. There's not much else. We teach at the ULC, a lot of different tactics and principles and strategies and things like that, but those tactics and strategies, they're constantly evolving. You can't be any one of those things. Right, it's got to be keeping Jesus at the center and love at the center Can.
Speaker 3:I tell you a little story. This totally changed the way I understand the life in a congregation and what ministry was, and it was my first deathbed visit, and a lot of people don't believe me when I tell them this. By my nature, I am an extreme introvert, ok, bordering on agoraphobia. My nature is to be terrified to be around other people, ok. And so as such, visitation has always been incredibly difficult for me. But my first deathbed visit I got a call two in the morning. A member of the congregation was in a nursing home, had a heart attack, was being rushed to the hospital and was not not going to make it hospital and was not going to make it. And I get in the car and I'm headed out to the hospital and all of a sudden I have to pull over. I'm so terrified that I'm getting violently ill on the side of the road and I closed the door and I'm sitting there and I heard I kid you not I heard a voice say drive, that's all it said drive. And so I drove and I found myself at the emergency room door and I heard that voice say get out. So I got out and my legs were like lead. I couldn't move. And the voice said walk. Voice said walk. And I began to walk and step by step by step, and all of a sudden it wasn't me anymore. There was someone else at work and it was Jesus Christ. And it was the most incredible privilege of my life to watch Jesus minister to that family in that time of need, and it has never left me.
Speaker 3:Pastors don't do the work of ministry. Neither does anyone in the congregation. The work is done by Jesus Christ himself, and anyone who thinks that's a metaphor doesn't know what they're talking about. I don't care how many people are in that congregation, because it says wherever two or more are gathered in my name, I'm there with them. That's not a metaphor, that's not some sort of image. That's the truth. And who could? Who among us would think that Jesus couldn't do it? He can do whatever he wants to do, and if he wants to change the world with two people, he's going to change the world with two people. And for congregations to understand that and to realize that when they are serving, as God has given them that little thing that he's equipped them with, he will do incredible things. All they have to do is come along with him, because he's the one who's doing it. He's the one who's there.
Speaker 2:Hey, david, this has been such a joy. I think we're just going to land it right there. I got other things, we'll have you back. We can talk about other things, but your love and your sacrificial servant heart to say here am I send me and we didn't, we didn't? You mentioned your disability and things like that. The Lord uses it all, doesn't he? And and you're, you're a bright light and praying for the work of ILT, the Center for Missional Pastoral Leadership. We have people want to connect with you, david, and your ministry. How can they do so?
Speaker 3:If they want to reach out to me, just they can give me an email me at dpatterson, at IOT, dot. Edu and if they're interested in taking some classes with us, I'll connect them to all the people they need to talk to. I'm happy to talk with them about anything we're doing that way. If they'd like to learn more about momentum and our work there, I'm happy to talk with them about that. If they just want to talk with someone and pray with someone, it doesn't matter, I'm here for them. Whatever they need, I'm here for them.
Speaker 2:I love it. This is lead time. Please like and subscribe, if you would do me the favor and send this to a friend who needs some encouragement and maybe I'm going to listen to some of your stuff. But then when you go on the pastoral formation stuff and education stuff, I'm going to maybe skip that because you're like, but then move to the final like 20 minutes of this conversation, deep work in the word, connected to Ephesians, chapter four. It was a lot of fun. I'm going to take a quip. Doesn't necessarily just mean discipleship one on one. It means being broken and binded back together by by Jesus himself as the united body of Christ. It was so good. It's a good day. Go make it a great day. We'll be back next week with another fresh episode of Lead Time. Thanks so much, reverend David Patterson. Thank you.
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