American Reformation
Preaching as Poetry with Rev. Steve Zank
Discover how to navigate the delicate balance between legalism and flexibility in worship practices with Reverend Steve Zank, Director of the Center for Worship Leadership at Concordia University, Irvine. Steve shares his profound insights on maintaining theological fidelity while being pastorally attentive. We discuss the critical need for contextualizing worship without compromising biblical truths, and the role emotions, community, and pastoral courage play in fostering unity within the church.
Ever wondered how modern street art can illuminate ancient theological traditions? We explore the power of storytelling in preaching, the significance of confession and absolution in Lutheran liturgy, and how these elements re-story us within God's grand narrative of pursuit and redemption.
Preaching in a postmodern society comes with its own set of challenges, and Reverend Steve Zank sheds light on balancing law and gospel in this context. We examine the importance of addressing hidden guilt and sin, and how to effectively communicate the law's uses in a Christian's life. From understanding the role of shame in contemporary culture to fostering unity through fraternal debates, this episode offers a treasure trove of insights for preachers and believers eager to live out the joy of Jesus. Join us for an enriching conversation that promises to deepen your understanding and practice of faith.
Discover how to navigate the delicate balance between legalism and flexibility in worship practices with Reverend Steve Zank, Director of the Center for Worship Leadership at Concordia University, Irvine. Steve shares his profound insights on maintaining theological fidelity while being pastorally attentive. We discuss the critical need for contextualizing worship without compromising biblical truths, and the role emotions, community, and pastoral courage play in fostering unity within the church.
Ever wondered how modern street art can illuminate ancient theological traditions? We explore the power of storytelling in preaching, the significance of confession and absolution in Lutheran liturgy, and how these elements re-story us within God's grand narrative of pursuit and redemption.
Preaching in a postmodern society comes with its own set of challenges, and Reverend Steve Zank sheds light on balancing law and gospel in this context. We examine the importance of addressing hidden guilt and sin, and how to effectively communicate the law's uses in a Christian's life. From understanding the role of shame in contemporary culture to fostering unity through fraternal debates, this episode offers a treasure trove of insights for preachers and believers eager to live out the joy of Jesus. Join us for an enriching conversation that promises to deepen your understanding and practice of faith.
Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast, tim Allman here. Pray, the joy of Jesus is your strength as you trust in his word, his spirit, to lead you into all truth. And when we're centered in the truth of Jesus, what inevitably flows from that truth is a desire, whether you're a preacher or an everyday follower of Jesus baptized in his name. This conversation today with Reverend Dr Steve Zank is going to and I think you're in the PhD program, but we'll preemptive doctor there, steve, it's all right, it's on the way, you're on the way. This conversation today will point you to the joy of Jesus and a desire to proclaim and maybe even get behind the scenes a little bit on the preaching task. Let me tell you about Steve. He serves as the director of the Center for Worship Leadership and the director of the parish ministry program at Concordia University, irvine. Shout out to is it Golden Eagles now, or is it Eagles? What is it? We're the Golden Eagles nowadays, golden Eagles.
Speaker 1:That was a mild brand change that took place here.
Speaker 2:I think we found out there's another Eagles in our division, or something like this.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so it's the Golden Eagles. Yeah, rock the Eagles, where he hosts. Steve, if you're checking us out on YouTube, he's got the whole podcast set up rolling right now. He's got a weekly podcast. It's weekly, right, steve?
Speaker 2:No, it's supposed to be monthly, but sometimes the duties of what I do make me go a little bit slower than that. But there's a backlog.
Speaker 1:I hear that it's called Theology in Motion. You can check it out. Theology in Motion. Steve also enjoys his work as a teacher, musician, music producer and a PhD student. You're a part of the Songwriters Initiative, steve. Are you a part of that group?
Speaker 2:The Songwriter Initiative is one of the initiatives of the Center for Worship Leadership. Yeah, so that's headed up by Kip Fox, who directs that. But Kip works with our organization and my job is to help support him and encourage the good work he's doing there with the.
Speaker 1:Sutter Initiative. So cool. Well, thanks for hanging out with me today. Standard opening question Steve, how are you praying for reformation in the American Christian Church, brother?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Tim, thanks for having me here and I appreciate you and the work you're doing. And I think that the work you're trying to do, as I see it, as I've encountered it, is the idea of helping people be okay with occupying a measured middle space, and that's, I think, the prayer I have for our church and for the church in America is the ability to not just fall off into one camp or the other, but to be able to hear from both sides and to measure ideas. So I think that once we become kind of entrenched, we dig down a little bit, we start lobbing weapons at each other and then it becomes very hard to hear each other. In my own tradition, for some reason I've become a liturgical scholar, someone who studies worship and the orders of worship, and what happens in our field, sometimes in the Lutheran tradition, is some people read, let's just say, Formula Concord, Article 10, and they say I could do anything with my liturgy, I could do anything with my worship style. Other side, people use Oswald Confession, Article 24, and say no, we have to use certain things in the Mass and unfortunately we kind of miss out on the fact that in my tradition both of those documents, confessional documents are balancing us, but we kind of use them as if they're separating us. So I think we need to find ways to do that, especially in worship.
Speaker 2:In my own tradition there's a phrase that's been used for a long time in the church called Lex Arandi, Lex Credendi, and there's a theologian from the 20th century, Herman Sassa, who actually got into this and he says guys, in Lutheranism we can't keep using Lex Erondi, Lex Credendi, because otherwise we just become historians and then we approach worship as a historian. But we actually need to find the phrase living the other way around Lex Credendi, lex erandi, or let our theology drive our practices, and a lot of practices, to become flexible for the sake of contextualization. So I'll conclude just by saying for Luther and his people, it became this idea of were we biblically faithful and pastorally concerned, and how do you hold those two intentions? So I'm hoping we can hear each other better. That's what I'm hoping.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, it's not easy, bro, Because, like often, we tether ourselves, we're emotive, we're feeling things before we're thinking things, and then we find ourselves. It's not good that man should be alone, so we're communal, and then the struggle is well, what happens when my brother or sister presses up against a line that could fall too far on the legalistic side, or the heretical side, you know, or the creative side, and do we have the courage to lovingly draw them back to ask the question, Not I mean in condemnation, but to ask the question. Did I hear you correctly when you made that statement? You know, even just that is a non-threatening question that allows our brother to, whatever it is, kind of walk back into fellowship with us. You know when we because we could fall off on so many different sides on the gender conversation right, we could go on either of those. I could go down the list. I mean all the different topics that are going on in the world faith in government, church in government, like we can fall off there.
Speaker 1:And the best part of, I think, Lutheran theology, Steve, is our ability, it's the Holy Spirit's ability, centered in the word, to walk the middle way, the tension filled way. Unfortunately let's just talk Lutherans in general. Unfortunately, as a historian, one who's studying kind of the origin story of the Book of Concord in general right now reading a work by Dr Arendt We've struggled at that, Steve. It's been epic, and so we've like splintered into these various camps. I'm studying a little bit of the history of the Iowa Synod, kind of a little bit more progressive, open, you could say nothing like the ELCA today, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, but there was a balancing move and then Missouri was a little bit more dogmatic in their interactions and it's just hard bro. So any words of wisdom for how we draw a brother or a group of people back into fellowship?
Speaker 2:That's kind of what the article we're going to talk about today is somewhat about how to preach the law or try to bring about awakening in people, and I think the best way to do that is probably over a meal, if you can get one and to help your brothers and sisters see you as a real person and, I think, also be open to correction. So be open to in the article we're talking about today. Even that, there's some things in conversations I've had that people have helped me see, like, oh, I could have been clearer on this, on this point, and I think that that process is everything, because people will disarm when they see that you're able to take some, receive some criticism, like, oh yeah, like you made some good points. So I think that it begins with us to be able to show that we can receive a correction and criticism as a key.
Speaker 1:So good. Amen. Well, let's dig into your article. What led you to write the Concordia Journal article? I love the Concordia Journal, by the way. So much good content coming through there. Here's the article title Preaching the Law Through Horatian Satire. What led you to do that?
Speaker 2:You know, I was in a seminar in preaching with Professor Schmidt at Concordia Seminary, my doctoral program and the course was Christ and Culture, and we had to analyze a cultural artifact. And this piece of art by Banksy called Love is in the Bin has been on my mind for some time. I don't know if you know the story. It's fairly popular, but I'll just share it quickly. There's a street artist named Banksy, from Bristol in the UK, and he's famous for doing these stencil arts on sides of buildings and just random places. He's a graffiti artist, so no one really knows his true identity. Anyway, he has a very famous painting called Girl with Red Balloon and one of those went up for auction and during the auction the piece sold.
Speaker 2:And then, immediately after the hammer fell on the completion of the auction, the piece of art began to was shredded. It came halfway through the frame and beneath the frame there's shredded pieces and the artist had hidden a shredder in the frame. Oh, he's a, he's a, um's a um. His art is kind of protest art and so um, and then the. The great irony is then oh, no, what does this mean? What's the meaning of this artistic gesture? And then, finally, the piece of art that was created. So girl threatened, the balloon was shredded, half shredded, stopped halfway through the frame, the structure through the frame. It was renamed, love is in the Bin and sold for 10 times more money and that was a new piece of art. And so I was really intrigued by that because I was very interested in to see how things could be remade and be more valuable. I was exploring kind of theologically. I was at first putting it against the Lord's Supper and the idea of the Lord's Supper brings forgiveness of sins through the true body and blood of Christ in my theological tradition. And but I realize we're probably not going to have that same thing in the next recreated world or in heaven or something like this. We're probably not going to have the Lord's Supper there and the old-time people didn't have it either. So anyway, but this cultural artifact I was studying and um, the street artist Banksy uses Horatian satire, a type of communication that's not direct.
Speaker 2:Uh, juvenile alien satire is a very direct condemning approach to protest. But Horace used a type of satire that kind of got under your skin, that kind of was. It started off kind of like a Trojan horse. You kind of brought it in Then once you were in your gates. You're like, oh my gosh, in the Old Testament narrative this is kind of like Nathan the prophet with David, king David.
Speaker 2:So Nathan approached King David about his affair at Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah and he doesn't kind of start by saying David, you really screwed this up. Maybe he did at other times, I don't know, but that's kind of a June alien satire approach. You really screwed this up, finger out, you know, you really made a mess of things. But instead he took an approach where he told this whole story to David, if you recall, and he's like, hey, there's this guy who's got one lamb that he really loves and goes to sleep with it like a beloved part of his family, and the rich guy down the street needed to feed a guest or something like this. And so that guy stole the beloved lamb and killed it and fed his guest, and David is irate, this guy deserves some serious punishment. And then Nathan just kind of says hey, by the way, dude, that's you.
Speaker 2:And so that whole process of bringing about awakening that Banksy exemplified in the seminar is what I explored, and so in so doing I sort of suggested that sound like an Old Testament prophet, you know hey, kind of like an Old Testament prophet like Nathan. And so Banksy was judging the art world for essentially commodifying this thing that should be open to everybody, available to everybody, no-transcript. So he kind of wanted to make a statement about that. So I explored this idea of okay, so are there any scholars working with the idea of Old Testament prophets? Is it true that Banksy is kind of like Old Testament prophet? Is there some overlap? And that's when I found Walter Bruggemann's work. He's an Old Testament scholar and he's especially good at kind of narrative studies. How does the narrative fit together? And he does talk a lot about the Old Testament prophet's role as a prophetic preacher to help unearth the hidden and unaddressed guilt of the community. And that really started to come together for me.
Speaker 2:And then the last thing then is I was studying confession absolution rights and trying to just really understand how those fit in and how the design of confession absolution affected, how it went. And especially if you're in a Lutheran tradition, there's a guy named Walther and Walther CFW, walther and his early worship design flow that was used in my denomination, the LCMS. Uh, confession absolution came after the sermon and so I started figuring out what that means, what. How does that affect the way that we confess our sin? And so, anyway, it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a longer story, but I'm kind of going on about it for you, but for me it was a confluence of studying a few things. And I'll mention one last thing. There's a guy named Dale Meyer who is a wonderful theologian, and after the article came out, a friend talked to him about it and he was like, apparently he gave a talk on Horatian satire and preaching the law. It's the same central concept and we both came about it. Honestly. He came about it through his understanding of Horace and of the classics and I came about it through Banksy. And so I think there's something here to look deeper about this method of preaching that's less direct, that helps people come to an awareness of their hidden and unaddressed guilt.
Speaker 1:I mean to just summarize it's so good, steve, just summarize. It's the power of story in preaching Kind of micro stories to macro God's grand narrative in our rebellion and his pursuit. And it's how do we become re-storied? That's what the liturgy does, right, right, I mean it takes us. It takes us from the broken, fallen, selfish, sin filled stories that we're telling today in our culture around power, control, robust fear, and brings us into God's story.
Speaker 1:It kind of I'm having a guy named, I think, rob Kelly, on his book that he wrote with Alan Hirsch called Metanoia.
Speaker 1:He's going to be on here soon Metanoia, but it's the above knowing, seated with Christ, and so we can see, you could use the metaphor of the balcony, we could see the grand story of which we're a part, and then we can as the preacher.
Speaker 1:So the preacher, seated with Christ, then can tell the story about how we're misstepping on the dance floor. If you will tell the story about how we're misstepping on the dance floor, if you will, and tell it in a way that's both personal but also collective for sure, and if we don't become so, speak about this a little bit and the telling of the preaching of the law, as I get to kind of my, the three problems of preaching the law in North America today. What words of wisdom would you give to preachers and even proclaimers out in various vocations to become better at storytelling and really what it leads us to do? Because a preacher is under the law too, and it's me too, and this is my problem and Christ has to lift us up, or Christ has to. He descends to draw us into his presence to remind us of his grand story of love. Anything to say around the three problems of preaching the law today and our need for a deeper story in our preaching, Steve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, tim. I think there's a lot there, and this is actually one of the places that I needed to be more clear in my writing, because I think not everyone. I made some assumptions In the Lutheran tradition, this idea of of having effective preaching, and so it has an important, not foil, but balancing point, which is the theological foundation of the proclaiming the law and the gospel. In preaching, first of all, people like why, why writing an essay on the law? Okay, look, I took it for granted, okay, and preaching the gospel is, is the main message, and the law is like a blacklight. You know, like in my younger days I used to go to a lot of clubs and they had, you know, black music clubs, music places to hear bands and such, and you'd have a blacklight.
Speaker 2:Well, live music music and you, uh, you know black light, you know, and like it would be like looking great the black light. Look at your tie or your shirt and like, oh man, I thought that mustard stayed came out Like black light is all about revealing the things that we don't notice. We've gone on notice for a long time and so this is what the law does for us. It helps, um us see what's real. It's this black light, and then the, the floodlight of the gospel comes and just kind of clears and cleans everything. It's just like this bright, blinding freedom. It just wipes the slate, boom, it's gone. And so, uh, we talk about storytelling and preaching.
Speaker 2:It's important to start by saying that in preaching, preachers do work. They do rhetorical work. It's important and meaningful, but ultimately it's the Holy Spirit that uses the law to put sinners to death. Ultimately, it's the Holy Spirit that helps us disparage of our self-righteousness, that brings about the awareness of sin, and the Holy Spirit that brings us to believe in the good news of the gospel. But, seriously, preachers need to understand that their work matters. I mean, otherwise a pastor would just go and read 1 John. I mean, if you're preaching on 1 John, why say any more words besides what's in the scripture, unless you believe somewhere that the work you're going to add to the sermon is going to do something.
Speaker 2:In his pastoral theology, john Fritz, in my tradition he argues that when you preach you can kind of get in the way and think about hearing the law from preachers. This is part of it too is I've heard a lot of preaching where it didn't bring me to self-awareness. It kind of brought me to frustration, either with the preacher or with other people, people, and the question is how do we tell a story in preaching the law? So again, with all those caveats, uh, we're talking about preaching the law, which is only a subset of preaching and the least important in terms of law and gospel. But in preaching the law, the storytelling, um, we have to know what's going to speak to our audience and we have to be okay with knowing who we're speaking to.
Speaker 2:In some ways of formulating the law, we'll speak to the lifelong Christian in the pew and for those who are a little more on the outskirts of the faith or maybe just visiting the preaching of the law, I might not hit them at all because you can't assume that there's any resonance. My teacher, rod Rosenblatt, who's recently passed away, used to teach that in the human heart the law is a resonance in the human heart, even the non-Christian human heart, like a piano tuner. If you get that tautness, just right that there will be a resonance. And that's not the same with the gospel the gospel hits, it's a thud right, but the law we all kind of resonate with. And so telling those stories, the working on what you're doing, the rhetoric you're doing, is about trying to find that resonance, the law that invites people to self-awareness.
Speaker 2:And really the big hurdle that we're trying to overcome is the fact that what Luther teaches is one of the worst, most insidious things about sin is that it hides itself from the sinner. So sin works really hard I mean we can just pretend it's a person the sin works really hard to stay hidden. And so the Proclamation of the Law, the office of Proclamation of the Law, is to help the hearers remember and blush. This is the words of Brueggemann. Blush before God, to remember, to blush. This is the words of Brueggemann. Blush before God, to remember, to blush, to remember that they are sinners, and not just to leave them there, obviously, but then to welcome, I think, your point into the greater story of faith, into the story of the family of God into what it means to have freedom in the gospel Anyway thank you for the question.
Speaker 1:That's so good. We don't like to blush.
Speaker 2:No one likes to be embarrassed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean shame. Is there something to the role of shame, individual and corporate, and how? And one of your problems with preaching the law today is our postmodern society that's kind of your first one. Our postmodern society that's kind of your first one and how, in a postmodern truth is relative kind of society. I think it's this robust move away from an appropriate use of shame, meaning I've found my shame means I am something right, I mean it's.
Speaker 1:I take an identity statement, and how many identity conversations are we having today? So, yeah, we don't. We don't like to blush, we love to hide and we hide behind a well-formed mast, masks to be to be sure, so that God will not see. The hard thing is like God. This is why our core issue today, all of the divisiveness.
Speaker 1:There are more people I'm listening across the culture, folks saying it is a spiritual problem that we're walking through today, the lies we're believing, the division that we have, the anger that's in our society, which is another point that you make about preaching the law today like it is a spiritual issue. And so it is art and science, but I think it's a little bit more art to find those, to find those kind of cultural points that lead us to blush, and for me, as as a pre, it's, it's around the idols, the idols of our age, where it's just as oh yeah, yep, you got me. I'm looking for, in my context, I'm looking for Trump to be Jesus. Trump's not going to be Jesus. You know that kind of thing. So, yeah, anything more to say about preaching, preaching the law in a postmodern society. That's one of the problems, yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my teacher, robert Kolb, says that it's possible that the United States is, and he's a Latin guy, so he says it's incurvatissimus in say, which is the idea of being bent anywhere on yourself being very selfish, and that when my rights and my neighbor come in conflict, oftentimes my rights win. And I think that this is a big problem we have. But I think the postmodern for me in this thinking, the postmodern thing, is more about the fact that the law is less and less resonant. So what Dave Schmidt would say this, I believe is that our culture is subverting the law that's written in our hearts. Of course it can't overtake it, but it's becoming less and less resonant and so we have to work harder to find ways into the law being heard. Again. The Holy Spirit will do the real work, but obviously the preacher has some kind of craft here and it's the distance that's happened between the biblical message and culture that we're trying to overcome when we ask for a hearing of the law. So I think that that for me, is the biggest thing and it came out the most with confession and absolution in a worship service for me. So, very briefly, in a Lutheran tradition people don't know this, but confession and absolution when it was done in the 16th century, publicly, in a service, which was not all the time, it was most commonly done after the message, absolutely without just a very clear historical fact. And then today, most Lutherans practice it at the beginning of the service, uniformly, basically. But what happens when you so?
Speaker 2:Again, this is about tools. I'm not saying right or wrong, you shouldn't or shouldn't, should, but in terms of confession, absolution is a tool. When you put it after the sermon, all of a sudden, what do you say? Is when I preach the law in the sermon, it's going to unearth hidden and undressed guilt? You say is when I preach the law in the sermon, it's going to unearth hidden and undressed guilt. And when it does that, don't be afraid of that, don't put it back down again, don't hide it again, because after the sermon we're all going to confess what came up and you're going to hear the words about the thing that came up, that you're forgiven and free in account of Christ. And so those tools for me.
Speaker 2:So to bring it back to your original question, when you put confession and absolution at the beginning of the service, one of the challenges of that is that the law is not going to do work to unearth anything. It sort of becomes a rite and ritual that everyone kind of knows is coming and that's one of the downsides of it being in the front. You could do a whole other podcast on the pros and cons of this. I won't go any further. But that to me is that that distance between participation in a liturgy or service because of the, the formation that's happened culturally, that subverts the law in our hearts, that makes sense. We come further and further away from the biblical narrative, so the biblical narrative speaking to us is harder and harder to hear for us to hear.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to send an email to Matt Preston right after this to say, hey, let's explore confession. I don't know. Yeah, Matt, we'll have a good chat.
Speaker 2:We'll talk separately. That's something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, there is something, there is something there, but I'm not. Yeah, I'm going to invite you back and we'll go into that. So you talk about the three problems I've kind of talked around it here, the three problems preaching the law today, postmodern society, the intransigence of sin and the profoundly angry culture. So any of those three that you'd like to go.
Speaker 2:You're a great host, by the way. Thanks for putting me back to the topic. The intransigence of sin is something that's studied by Simeon Zoll in his book the Holy Spirit and Christian Experience, but also that's the idea that blind spot we talked about, that sin itself works against being recognized. The third point is we live in a very angry culture and so what happens in that is that sometimes we conflate anger, the idea of standing against something, with anger, like that's how you do it. So if you're going to confront something I confront sin or if you're going to try to bring about awareness of wrongdoing, anger is the tool to use. We live in a profoundly angry culture.
Speaker 2:Jeff gibbs writes a great article about the myth of righteous anger really worth looking at and um eric herriman uh, had a whole, had a whole great um chapel message at Concordia Cemetery in St Louis, where he uses letter and suite to talk about the idea that we've gone post-scale in our weapons, that we have against each other. Post-scale means you go from fists to bow and arrow. That's scaling up. Then you go from bow and arrow to musket. Then you eventually go to nuclear weapon and now it's just a push of a button and you can wipe people out. It scaling up, then you go from bow and arrow to musket, then you eventually go to nuclear weapon and now it's just like a push of a button and you can wipe people out.
Speaker 2:It's the same thing with our own anger and conflict in the way is we can actually end up in social media just typing a few words, pushing enter, never seeing our opponent, quote, unquote and just fire away. And so I think one of the challenges we have in preaching is that preachers can accidentally conflate the preaching of the law as if it's supposed to be done in an angry manner, and I've seen that many times. Maybe it's not just people in the wrong churches, but I've seen people preach the law angrily and that's that juvenile satire approach that I think that could work. I don't want to say you shouldn't ever attempt that. Obviously there's examples of people in the Bible using the law in a more angry way Maybe a way to nuance the word anger there, but maybe that's not always going to work. Sometimes that further entrenches people who you want to hear the message further entrances, people who you want to hear the message.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I think anger triggers the brain in a negative direction to fight flight freeze. Anger does not establish allies per se and maybe that's not always the goal. The prophetic role of the preacher often is I don't have friends. I'm not preaching necessarily to friends. They're sheep that I care for. That I love.
Speaker 1:Now I'm being facetious here, I'm just playing with this a little bit, but I'm speaking God's word. That is my primary task. The ultimate aim is that the sinner would be convicted, crushed by the law, and that the new man and woman in Christ would be raised up, forgiven of sin, reminded of their new identity and mobilized for love and good deeds for their neighbor, and that I would preach the full counsel of God. But I agree with you Anger does not produce the righteousness of God and should be wielded in the preaching task. I would say rarely and with great, great wisdom. Because, again, I guess as a preacher I'm both above, but I'm certainly not Jesus. I can't play in that category. So I'm way more like with the people and if I'm going to get like, yeah, so say more about the preaching task, both above and with Steve, yeah, so the preacher doesn't stand against the hearer.
Speaker 2:And preachers work to bring about resonance, the law written in the hearts of the hearers. So the law of God is written on your hearer's heart, the law of God is written on your hearer's heart, and so that when the preacher preaches the law, he knows that there's something, there's going to be a sounding board that comes back and the laws preach that way. Mentioned the piano tuner before that Rod Rosenblatt taught about. But the truth is the feeling of contrition. What you're looking for, right, you want people to feel like the awakening of sin and feel kind of like it was a mistake that to be put to death as a sinner, just to say, hey, I, I'm not going to be able to be a righteous person, I can't use the law to get to life. Okay, the law is being used on me to reveal that I'm dead and so, uh, we don't need to use the laws. Preachers like the second great awakening finger out, you know you're all going to be going to hell because you don't need to create the terror. That's the thing that I think we need to. I'm trying to bring about in this angry ideas is the preacher doesn't create the terror by his rhetoric, but the law results in terrors of conscience when just we're aware of it. The awareness of sin, Langton taught, brought about that feeling. Luther says this when the law shows us our sin, our past life immediately comes to mind. Then the sinner, in his great anguish of mind, groans and says to himself oh, how damnably I have lived. And the terror of this unearthed guilt is done by the Holy Spirit. And the preacher then is trying to help the fellow sinner. Come to the awareness of sin and its impact and the conviction of sin leave it to the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:David Schmidt, who taught the seminar from which this essay came, he put me on to a work by Troger and Tisdale in something called the Sermon Workbook. Is their work, and that's what they say. They say when preachers stand with the people under the word of God. So when preachers stand with the people under the word of God, rather than opposite the people armed with the word of God, the whole tone of the sermon shifts. The preacher no longer stands in an accusatory role, bringing a word of judgment from God upon a recalcitrant people. Rather, the preacher places himself or herself on the same level as the people as we wrestle together with God, God's word that judges everybody. So that way the law can't be leveraged against the hearer unless it's leveraged against the pastor, and hopefully that will disarm that kind of power of condemnation. Yeah, so that's why I think about the idea of bringing about the unearthing guilt and thinking about that.
Speaker 1:Ah, man, there's so much resonance here with leadership, pastoral leadership, and if I because what an angry preacher would symbolize for me, because I'm always Tim, I mean I'm preaching Tim, but then I'm just Tim with God's people, on mission with them, and if I live with that kind of anger I'll move into the meeting and my voice I'll start to believe. Man, my voice is like I can't.
Speaker 1:I can't disconnect the environments for me, just just mentally, as a leader, so I I must choose, by the spirit's power, to be with my people and this elevates the role of Christ in all of us, to release the priesthood of all believers, of which I am. I am one of many, one of hundreds in my context Right, and we're all going on mission together, all killed by the law raised up again by the gospel. Anything more to say on the preaching? I didn't write this in any of the notes, but I think there's. We need to just land here this, this in any of the notes but I think we need to just land here.
Speaker 2:This is a leadership podcast, right? So the connection between preaching and then the way I lead with my people, with God's people, well, yeah, I think that when you realize the law isn't your tool as a preacher, it's God's tool and, first of all, it's not a tool to earn righteousness, it's a tool to be reminded of our guilt that the pastor needs to be not just. It's not just that you know the law wants to do work and it's really good to have the law done. It's that we need the law, and preachers and pastors need the law to help them see their guilt, because they are guilty. Every leader of any church is guilty of something. Every leader of any church is guilty of something, and the more entrenched you become in that guilt, the more your culture suffers and the more, all sudden, you, instead of having an issue of leadership in terms of, uh, seeing yourself as like always having the answers, let's say, and so you go into a team meeting. You're always the guy with the answers. If that, maybe, you have some good answers, by the way, but if you always have every answer, there's a problem. So what you need is you need God to unearth that guilt before it becomes a culture, and so you want the law to do its work.
Speaker 2:People think the law is bad. A lot of times. They say that the law is bad, like we want to get to the gospel. Let's, let's, preach the gospel. The law is like just a thing that we use to get to the gospel, and this is something that that happens in conversations around what the law does.
Speaker 2:Many people in my tradition will say the law only condemns us and it only use is to bring us to the gospel. But I think that we overlook the fact that the new in Christ part of me because I always believe I struggle with at the same time I'm a sinner and the same time I'm a saint. My real identity is in Christ as a saint, but it doesn't mean I will ever be able to overcome the sinner in me, and so in that way, I need the law to even help the new in Christ in me know its mistakes, and the new in Christ in me will respond differently to the awareness of sin than the old Adam will. So I think anyway, the leadership needs to be open to the law doing work and not just seeing it as a way to the gospel, but see that it reminds us of the problems we have so we can face them. It can be unearthed. We can receive forgiveness. Be aware of that when we go and lead our people so we don't get great cultures that are unhelpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's. That's so good. There's a part of me that really wants to get into the debate. Debate over the second and third function of the law.
Speaker 2:I know we could do it. It's fun though it's fun. Well, okay, if it's fun to you, then it'd be fun to me, so let's just pass it for a second.
Speaker 1:What would you say to someone who says that there's no third function of the law? And I mean, I'm a beer man guy, I'd love to get beer man on here.
Speaker 2:I think he actually is on soon.
Speaker 1:He is on the slate to join us. But yeah, because he's a third function and I think you're teasing that out a little bit, say more about the distinction between first, second, third function of the law.
Speaker 2:There's so much there, but I think the critical thing to start with is to say, like Gerhard Ferdi, who's one of the guys who really helped, in more recent years, pioneer the idea that the law's true function isn't about our living out our life, but the law's true functions that bring us to death. And it was, I think I think it may have been Jim Nest again who said that the law is always like a wild wolf dog that you try to tame. So hey, like the law's not attacking me right now, so this is great, I'm using the law to you know God's teaching me about my life, but that dog, at any time, is a wild wolf dog. It could like bite you at any time. And so to me, you want to start by saying I kind of get first of all where, like you heard Ferdy, I think it was in Starbuck, minnesota, where he was having such a big problem with the church using the law to try to achieve their own righteousness. And whenever, in a context that a church or people are together trying to use the law to obtain their own righteousness, then we got a big problem. And so it's sometimes that you know, in my view, when you say there is no third use. The law can't instruct, that's a pendulum swinging against the problem. And so I want to first start by saying I understand the problem and I want to start with that. But then I think the way that I'm doing this rhetorically just have fun for a second.
Speaker 2:Rhetorically, what I like to do is, if someone says there's no third use of the law, I like to start and this is not a dogmatic answer, this is just like a Socratic Horatian answer. I can say like okay, let's just say that there isn't for a second. What happens in the second use? The law kills the sinner. It brings about the awareness of sin and the disparagement of the sinner. And I say, fine, there's no third use. For a second, let's play the game and let's say this what happens when the law confronts us?
Speaker 2:What does the new in Christ do when it looks in the mirror? Because the second use is a mirror. So I'm just taking for granted the law historically has these three uses that Lucius has talked about. The first use curbs all of society. So it helps society live in harmony with each other because the law is written in our hearts. We all kind of know generally, like going on a rampage of some kind is bad. Sometimes people are malformed and they do that anyway, but we all kind of know societally. The second use then is as a mirror, which then the person looks in the mirror and it's like when you wake up in the morning you think, oh, it's a great day, I'm ready to go, you know. And you wake up and you turn the light on and you're like, whoa, I gotta get some work done here.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize.
Speaker 2:And so if there's no third use then is to actually guide our life as Christians and to be a guide to how to live. And people are concerned that if that becomes that, that it slowly and quickly becomes I'm using the law to obtain my righteousness. But so now back to what I was going to say is, when the mirror of the law faces the sinner, the sinner disparages of his righteousness and leans on the gospel. That's good. But the question I want to ask then, for those who say there's no third use to the law, I'll just say fine, no third use. But what happens when the new in Christ in you looks in the mirror? I'll just say, fine, an altered use. But what happens when the new in Christ in you looks in the mirror? That's right.
Speaker 2:And so what happens when the second use of the mirror of the awareness of sin hits the new in Christ in us? In that case I think the new in Christ in us doesn't imagine condemnation, because we know there's no condemnation of those in Christ Jesus. So what do we do? We become aware of the places where our lives are out of step with the will of God for the world. We don't need to disparage of our. We don't need to say, well, it's being able to die because we were in Christ. But what do we do? And that's the question I would ask. Someone who says no third use, I would just say fine, let's just say there's only a second for a second use. What does a new in Christ in me do when faced with awareness of sin? And that's a question I'm waiting for a great answer from, and I can't wait to have the conversation with someone who disagrees with me and see what they say and move the conversation forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amen. Well, the way I kind of use in your mirror analogy, when I have been crucified with Christ, it's now by the gospel, by faith, that it's Christ in me. So the image now is Christ. If anything good happens, it's Christ. If any love comes to my neighbor, if I live in humility and charity and generosity, if I live in humility and charity and generosity like it's all the Holy Spirit, like I had, there's no grounds for the Christian, because the big concern right is that it moves back into self-righteousness, that we start to notice I'm carried along when the new man and woman in me, I'm carried along. And there's almost this because Jesus speaks about don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. It's almost like I'm in the zone I think Bierman has talked about that. You're in the Jesus zone and it's just a beautiful place to be. I would love man if we just lived here consistently Because there's this honest recognition. I am going to make mistakes, that's right.
Speaker 1:And when I make mistakes, when I fall, when pride rears its ugly head, I will confess because I know who I am. I know who I am on my own, my fleshy side, and I know who I am in Christ. And so it's this continual. I think the analogy, or the two different types of ways that I like to talk about it is there's always, every single day, really moment by moment. It's confession and it's absolution. Confession, absolution, that's roots me in my identity.
Speaker 1:And then there's and I don't like going up with the analogy it's really going down, it's a downward journey, second half of life less of me, more of Christ, and it's almost just like becoming more and more. And there's almost this like lack of awareness or lack of I don't even care, like anybody comes up to me and says, wow, tim, you're really, you're really like. You used to be a jerk in this department and now I see more of a willing like I don't really care because I'm in, I'm in Christ. So I think there's an olive branch between the two and the three there, because the the biggest concern with the second function folks that are kind of against it is that it would be self-righteousness. No, no, no, no, as it's Christ in me. It's always for my neighbor, it's never to earn it's always for my neighbor.
Speaker 2:Anything more to add there, steve? Yeah, I mean, it's great. The little quippy thing is that there's a Latin saying that says Lex semper accusat the law always accuses. And I think that sometimes we accidentally change that to say lex solomoto accusat, which means the law only accuses. The law will always accuse. You will never say the law won't accuse me. I'm going to use it to become a better person. No, the law will always accuse you, but we can't act like that's. The only thing the law will ever do is accuse us. So I think, if you're interested in learning more about this or exploring it more, there's a great set of articles in Lutheran Quarterly. Dr Stephen Paulson writes the no, third use side, dr Robert Kolb writes the yes, third use side, and it's in the same edition. So if you Google that, you'll be able to read both sides of this argument.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, we're going to have that conversation continue because there's a lot of people that like to know and young theologians. They really get I can't tell you how many times, because it's a faith that works just kind of tension. How many times we just wrestle and the wrestle is a beautiful thing and we're not going to stop wrestling with this, and I think we ought to be more charitable to one another in this conversation, because no one's arguing that we desperately need Christ and the mirror is showing us our sin that leads us to our Savior. Go ahead, steve.
Speaker 2:And preachers, you can never preach the third use of the law. In other words, we might intend I'm preaching the law of third use guys, you can't control that.
Speaker 2:You see someone run out of the room in tears like no, you just preached the second. The law's impact is the work of the Holy Spirit. You can't determine how it's going to be received, so just know every time you preach the law. The second use, that is, the awareness of sin and what that brings, is always going to be separate. Let's separate use that. It's always going to be there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, so good. Let's pivot a touch. Talk about the preacher as the church's poetic artist. I don't think we live there too much and I love that section of your article. Preacher is the church's poetic artist Evoking meaning rather than exerting it Rather than exerting it.
Speaker 2:There's something there that really interests me, especially with the work of Dorothy Sayers. Dorothy Sayers has this beautiful little pamphlet called Toward a Christian Aesthetic and she says this. And she says this recognize your experience in my own. But edifying art may only too often be this pseudo artist corruptly saying this is what you're supposed to believe and feel and do. And I propose to work you into a state of mind in which you believe and feel and do as you're told. And this pseudo art does not really communicate power to us, it merely exerts power over us.
Speaker 2:And I think that when the preacher thinks of the task more poetically and less exertingly, I'm not saying you know, you don't preach the law. I'm not saying don't allow the law to speak full-throatedly. I'm not saying those things. But what I am saying is that repentance is made up of a personal experience of the law with the Holy Spirit. Speak full-throatedly. I'm not saying those things. But what I am saying is that repentance is made up of a personal experience of the law with the Holy Spirit, not a coercive one by the power of the preacher. The Holy Spirit will do the work in each person's heart. I know you might say that way, but each person's life, their mind, their awareness of what's going on. The preacher cannot coerce the person into believing their sin by his own or her own power. I think that's the thing that the poetic art I kind of want to help people realize is that the preacher's role is to help evoke meaning and not impose it, and this leaves space for the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the hearers.
Speaker 2:And the last thing I want you know, having studied in my experience, having seen some of the documentaries about cultural Christianity and the way how coercive cults can be, if you go on Netflix, you can watch a number of documentaries about a number of things. I actually had a friend. I asked my friend, I said what are you watching? Recently and they said we're watching cult documentaries. I was like that's how ubiquitous they are.
Speaker 2:It's a genre and I'm not saying, I'm not trying to say any particular Christians are cult people right now. But what I'm saying is this we have enough data to see what happens to the personality when the church uses coercive power to form the person. It's not, doesn't stay, it's not lasting work, it's not true Holy Spirit fruit. It's coercive, it's destructive. People don't know how to think for themselves anymore, and so I think we want to be careful, when we preach the law or the gospel or anything or doctrines, that we do it in a way that allows for people to maintain their own agency and trust the Holy Spirit to be doing work in their life, and we do our best, then, to communicate the word of God winsomely, trusting God to do his work, but doing our best to that we might win a real, genuine hearing of it, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Wow, yes, there's so much there Is this happening in? So we're both in Lutheran Church, missouri Synod. I don't know that this. Does this happen from Lutheran pulpits where we evoke rather I'm exert meaning rather than evoke it? Are you, are you speaking mostly to, to the power dynamics that are the preacher above the people? Is that the direction this could go? Or just say a little bit more there to draw it out a little bit more practically?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the question is how do I know I'm guilty? Because the pastor told me I am.
Speaker 1:Rather than the word.
Speaker 2:Or we preach in a way that leaves very little room for the hearer to meditate on the words and to really soak them in. I think it comes across when pastors preach the law in a very direct way, where it's like our society today doesn't know Jesus at all. Our society today doesn't know Jesus at all and when we have a situation where they go through death, how can they manage that? They have no way through it. Or you guys really need to start stepping it up more. How do you know the Holy Spirit's in you at all? You're not doing anything. That's good. I think each preacher needs to examine their own preaching style, but I think that the more we act like we are the authority in the room I'm not saying you're not, I'm not saying you don't stand for scripture, I'm not saying that scripture's not an authority but the more and more we take on that position of power of I'm the authority this is the way it is, because the Bible says it and I'm telling you the Bible says it the less people are drawn in the conclusion for themselves to be better is. I get the impression that we all need to stop doing so directly and everything we do needs to be satire from now on. No, this is another tool in your belt, okay, but I do believe in my experience and preaching the law can come across in an authoritarian kind of way and that the way we preach it doesn't always bring about hero reflection, but it brings. It skips a step. So the pastor said I'm this, so I'm this. The step I'm advocating for is the pastor said this that made me reflect on my life in this way and oh my gosh, yes, it's that. Oh my gosh, yes, that's the work of the Holy Spirit, where the person really owns that for themselves. And I think if we're too authoritarian about the way we preach the law, we might skip that step.
Speaker 2:For faithful people and by faithful people I mean people with faith to believe the message, and for people who are on the outskirts, who came visiting on Easter morning, they didn't hear anything you said when you preached about how homosexuality is a horrible sin and everyone's going to die of that sin. I'm not trying to get into doctrine now or belief. I'm just saying for some people, when they hear that type of message, they just say another pastor doesn't know anything about our culture and society, he's heads in the sand. Again, I'm not trying to take a stance on those issues. I'm just saying the rhetoric we use affects the way people hear what we say and for some people, uh, they needed to be uh awakened slowly to the sin and not thrust uh as a as an authority, on the pastor, on the I'm the authority. Here you go. So I don't know if that resonates with you or not, but that's kind of behind it.
Speaker 1:It does. My pre-preaching prayer has evolved over the years. It used to be dear Jesus. I don't really know how this is going to go? Please give me wisdom and take care of my youthful vigor.
Speaker 2:It transformed.
Speaker 1:It transformed and maybe a few years ago it was joy. Just give me joy, joy for your word, joy as I proclaim it, joy for your people as they hear it and are shaped by it. And now it's now it's evolved because you do anything for any number of years, like pride is on your doorstep, like any, like nobody's business. Um, so now it's I. I keep with joy. But, Lord Jesus, please, please, Holy Spirit, work in a beautiful way and keep me, keep me humble, Keep me curious, Keep me innocent Innocent I've been reflecting on that word today. Keep me innocent and, I guess, soft. May this experience of people hearing being convicted of sin and hearing the gospel be like it's touching their ears for the first time. And may the way I the gospel be like it's touching their ears for the first time. And may the way I preach it be like it's touching my heart and through my lips for the first time, not to lose kind of my first love. Anything more to add on kind of the pre-preaching prayer and a prayer for kind of joyful innocence.
Speaker 2:No, and I love the way you conclude, with the gospel being heard, and I think that it's always difficult to write an essay on preaching the law, because it's like you're writing an essay on the thing that matters less. So I think that emphasis on the gospel is always something we need to maintain and remember, and I think that the idea of keeping me innocent is very interesting. That takes seriously the preaching task and the dynamics of preaching that are hard to properly foresee the effects of our preaching. No one that hurt somebody through religious power did it. So Many people who've hurt people through religious power didn't start by wanting to hurt somebody. They started by trying to be faithful. Who've hurt people through religious power didn't start by wanting to hurt somebody.
Speaker 2:They started by trying to be faithful and you know, I think it's really wise to say, as a preacher how do I, how do I preach in a way that helps people and doesn't bring them more issues in their life?
Speaker 2:That's really, really important and and you know how hard it can be because you can preach a gospel oriented sermon, you feel like really landed on the freedom of Christ and afterwards someone could come to you and say, like man, I really thank you for helping me in my life today, like what steps I should take next in my life. You're like no, like that wasn't. The sermon wasn't about how you could become a better person through the long. Like what happened, like something happened here. So preaching is such a hard, hard thing and I appreciate the time to talk to you about my ideas here and I know that there are many people who have spent a lot more time on preaching than I have, so I just I appreciate the chance to try to have one part of the conversation. It's such a dynamic, difficult task and I appreciate all the people who are working on it and encouraging preachers to do it well.
Speaker 1:It's a holy task, brother, to be sure. So necessary and hopefully we have a bunch of listeners today that, just no matter what your context is, maybe if you've never preached before, like I, got a number of folks that are exploring the task for the first time and later in life. It's such a fun experience to see the gospel come alive in their, in their life, and to get to the top of the diving board. I use a high dive kind of analogy and say, okay, holy Spirit, we're going to jump. There's water, but man, let's land, let's land well and keep the main thing, the main thing which is which is Christ? So kind of closing, there's so many more to it, we'll have you back on Steve. Is Christ? So kind of closing, there's so many more to it, we'll have you back on Steve. This has been so good.
Speaker 1:So how do you pray? We haven't talked around kind of the divisiveness, the current, the tidal waves that can be present in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and we. Those waves just wash over one another and sometimes people even get drowned by those waves. So how do you pray that this approach to preaching might go a long way in changing the nature of fraternal debates between pastors in the LCMS. I mean, you even spoke about different leaders saying different things online and I've really appreciated how careful you've been with a lot of your words here today. We need more careful speech in the Missouri Synod, to be sure. So how do you pray? This approach to preaching goes a long way in kind of uniting us, I guess in the LCMS.
Speaker 2:I think it's good to start with your family. Whoever your closest family is, think about your life with them and think about all the times that you wanted to convince them of something and to think back how successful you were in convincing them when you were sort of like aggressive about it. In my experience of people in my family, the best way to make any headway in disagreement is to slow the conversation down to talk about and hear each other's positions well, and then try to bring in analogies to help bring about awareness. We can't force awareness on somebody, and in examples of a relationship when I've got my way, another person didn't quite agree with me yet never goes well. It always comes back again around a second time. They're like wait, wait, why are you grumbling about this? It's like, well, we never really agreed. It's like, oh, you're right about that. And I think that relational example of life helps us remember that the people with whom we disagree are part of our family and that's the key that we need to guard ourselves against that we can't think of the people with whom we disagree as if they're the enemy or something. We have to think about them as part of our family and we're committed to these conversations and we're going to use the techniques we can use to try to bring about awareness, and that's really what it is right. So, if we really believe one thing, we came to it logically, we came to it through a faithful method. We're trying to help other people have that same awareness that we experienced and they're hopefully trying to do the same thing for us. And if that's your goal, if awareness is your goal, then Horatian satire might be one approach by which you might help people have awareness.
Speaker 2:And often what that means instead of being more direct, instead of being, you're really sitting on this, instead of making a big deal about it up front it's that telling a story and inviting them into it. It's like hey, in my experience, you're like this person in the story or, um, often, relationally, you flip, you flip it right. You say like if someone had this thing against you that really bothered you, you asked them to imagine them being in your own shoes, right, okay? So imagine you were me and I came and said this how would you feel? Oh, it'd feel kind of crummy, okay, cool, like we just had an awakening. So I think, slowing it down enough fraternally among brothers and sisters of an organization like the LCMS or any other organization.
Speaker 2:It's the ability to slow down and say we're part of the same family here and how do I help bring about awareness in you? And it's you know what the hardest thing, tim, is. It's that dogged, not willing to give up the family, which, for so many people that I know, the hurt that has come along throughout the process of trying to figure things out together has just just kind of gave up on it, and I can understand how the hurt can lead to that for some people. But I want to try to keep committing to the relationship with others and not give up on it. Have that optimism. That dogged optimism says no, like I know, this person's so far never agreed with me on this issue ever, but maybe this time I could say the thing that will help them have an awareness, um. So may that never be knocked out of us. I think.
Speaker 1:Pardon me. Yeah, no, that's so good. The family metaphor is the underlying. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. We are one body. Like we still look at Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 as a real thing. 12, 1 Corinthians 12, as a real thing, as Christ is intimately connected to the Father, the Son and the Spirit has been sent among all of the baptized, uniting us to Christ and then uniting us to one another. Communion it's our common union with God, confession of sins, receiving forgiveness, and then it's our walking with our brother and our sister and the way we correct one another. I think there's an awakening right now to kind of land this plane.
Speaker 1:In a postmodern society, or you could say a post-Christian society, we're still feeling things and we're storied things, and so let's use the way of Jesus, which is story, steve, and many of the stories are quite, quite humorous. You know, it's like this lady who's like sweeping through her whole house. Can you just see her? She's just frantically sweeping and until she finds out, you know, lost coin or whatever. Like Jesus tells all these amazing stories. The prodigal son story, I think, even has Luke 15, has some kind of humorous, humorous things. This dude, this dude went out and messed up his life and is eating. He wants to eat what pigs eat. For goodness sake, how far from a Jewish concept community. They're laughing at this, at this foolish young young man. So there is. We didn't really talk about the role of humor. Whenever I think of satire, there's this like that's right, gut punch, let's close with this. There's this like gut punch of humor, this like explosion of exuberance that says, yeah, that's me, I've been that kid with the pigs for sure. Yeah, say something there, steve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's right and that's the power of satire as one tool in your tool bag is that you can help people bring about an awareness of their sin, an awakening that brings people together with joy. You know, it's like hey, like, oh yeah, I was that Like it saves face. You know, that's right. If someone comes to an awakening through your power, it's very hard to save face, but if you do it together and it's a mutual thing, you can. And I think that in that process, the thing we should be praying for most is for our own awakening, to pray for the Holy Spirit to help us. Just as we want to try to convince others of our position. Pray for that. The Holy Spirit will also be bring us to an awakening for the places that we're entrenched in, and we need someone to that hand to come and pull us out. It's like, oh my gosh, thank you for helping me see. So I think that humor saves face among brothers and sisters. I think that's really powerful.
Speaker 1:Facts, facts. So this is American Reformation. We're trying to have conversations, on this podcast in particular, that kind of elevate the conversation and we have a lot to learn in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. You and I happen to be brothers in the same tribe, but we're having lots of hosts, lots of guests, I guess, that are coming on here from outside and do we honestly believe every person has gifts to give and gifts to receive? I truly believe that that's not a liberal thing. That's just like God is at work in the world, in our church and in the wider One, holy Christian and Apostolic Church, and I pray that.
Speaker 1:If we can't live well now I'm coming back to the LCMS if we can't live well in our small tribe, which we call Missouri meaning disagreeing, agreeably going to our brother, I'm seeing I'm getting a lot more emails these days from folks who say one of two things like you should talk to this person, let me build a bridge of relationship. For you to talk to this person, right, great, great, great. Or a brother saying you know what? I'm ready to come on. I've thought deeply about these topics. I've got a difference of opinion.
Speaker 1:I got a guest coming on lead time who is on floor committee six, steve, which is all about past pastoral formation Great, and I've said things publicly around around that that process and he's probably going to bring a change of perspective and that's great. Like I remain open, open to that, Do we have that posture of openness rather than being closed off to our brother, brother or our sister? And that's what this conversation has contributed to today and I'm grateful for it. Steve, if people want to connect with you, how can they do so? And or any other closing comments, bro, gift cards.
Speaker 2:Just send me gift cards. Just kidding. To where? Where would the gift cards go? If you really want to reach out to me, go talk to someone first and find out why, because that's a little strange, but just kidding. I'm happy to talk to anybody on anything. If you need to email me, it's stevenzank at cuiedu.
Speaker 1:I'm happy to have a conversation with you if you'd like, but I'm not a person with authority or power in any of these areas, so you know I'm not going to have much to say about some things for you You're very well read, Like if people were taking notes on how many authors and theologians did this guy just refer to in an hour long podcast? I think it was at least a half dozen to a dozen man. It's so good and this has been so much fun. That's stevenzank Z-A-N-K at C-U-I dot E-D-U. Isn't that right? Yeah, that's right. Okay, this is the American Reformation Podcast. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. Please like, subscribe, comment. Youtube channel you can find us at Unite Leadership Collective. Uniteleadershiporg is where you can get all of our content. Jesus loves you so much. Go and live with joy, innocence and curiosity, especially in the preaching task. Thanks so much, Steve. Yeah, Thank you.