Embark on a captivating exploration with Reverend Dr. Bob Newton, as he narrates his profound journey from a Napa Valley boy entranced by missionary stories to a missiological maestro with a global footprint. As he chats with us, Bob’s experiences unfurl, revealing the transformational power of faith and mentorship on both individual lives and the larger Lutheran church community. His tale transcends mere biography, standing as a beacon for those seeking to understand the ripple effect that one man's dedication to service can create.
Our conversation takes a sharp turn into the seismic landscape of modern ministry, where the church grapples with its role in a society that's no longer looking to it for cultural direction. This dramatic shift demands a re-examination of how pastors and congregations interact with their communities, especially in urban centers like downtown San Jose. We probe the delicate balance between upholding doctrine and engaging authentically with the realities of today's mission fields. Bob offers a fresh perspective on how American society itself has become a mission field, challenging the church to navigate its identity in a post-Christendom reality.
We wrap up this deep dive with a look at the cutting-edge of seminary education and the innovative paths being carved out by non-residential training programs like DELTO. Bob's insights into the triumphs and challenges of these initiatives shed light on their crucial role in shaping future ministry leaders and serving local congregations. This episode is as much a challenge to the status quo as it is a reaffirmation of the core tenets of the Lutheran faith, emphasizing the universality of atonement and the work of the Holy Spirit. Whether you're a clergy member, a churchgoer, or simply someone intrigued by the evolving intersection of faith and society, you'll find this dialogue both enlightening and thought-provoking.
Visit uniteleadership.org
Embark on a captivating exploration with Reverend Dr. Bob Newton, as he narrates his profound journey from a Napa Valley boy entranced by missionary stories to a missiological maestro with a global footprint. As he chats with us, Bob’s experiences unfurl, revealing the transformational power of faith and mentorship on both individual lives and the larger Lutheran church community. His tale transcends mere biography, standing as a beacon for those seeking to understand the ripple effect that one man's dedication to service can create.
Our conversation takes a sharp turn into the seismic landscape of modern ministry, where the church grapples with its role in a society that's no longer looking to it for cultural direction. This dramatic shift demands a re-examination of how pastors and congregations interact with their communities, especially in urban centers like downtown San Jose. We probe the delicate balance between upholding doctrine and engaging authentically with the realities of today's mission fields. Bob offers a fresh perspective on how American society itself has become a mission field, challenging the church to navigate its identity in a post-Christendom reality.
We wrap up this deep dive with a look at the cutting-edge of seminary education and the innovative paths being carved out by non-residential training programs like DELTO. Bob's insights into the triumphs and challenges of these initiatives shed light on their crucial role in shaping future ministry leaders and serving local congregations. This episode is as much a challenge to the status quo as it is a reaffirmation of the core tenets of the Lutheran faith, emphasizing the universality of atonement and the work of the Holy Spirit. Whether you're a clergy member, a churchgoer, or simply someone intrigued by the evolving intersection of faith and society, you'll find this dialogue both enlightening and thought-provoking.
Visit uniteleadership.org
Lead Time is a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective, hosted by Tim Ullman and Jack Caliber. The ULC envisions a future in which all congregations fully equip the priesthood of all believers through world-class leadership development at the local level. Lead Time taps into biblical wisdom for practical solutions to today's burning issues. Each podcast confronts real-time struggles facing the local church and a post-Christian culture. Step into the action with the ULC at uniteleadershiporg. This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack Kauberg. I pray that the joy of the Lord is your strength and that you're buckled up today for an awesome conversation with Reverend Dr Bob Newton, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about him. But before I do, jack, how are you doing man?
Speaker 3:I'm doing fantastic. It's another beautiful day in Arizona. It's one of those times of year where everybody's jealous of us, and then I get jealous of us when we move into the summer, that's right.
Speaker 2:That's right. The mountains are green here in Phoenix and a lot of rain.
Speaker 2:It's like being in Ireland. It is kind of like Ireland Rolling hills of the desert. It's like being in Ireland. It is kind of like Ireland, rolling hills of the desert. It's awesome.
Speaker 2:Anyway, today we get to hang out with Bob Newton. I've known Bob for gosh the 15, 16 years that I've been a pastor and have gotten to know him better in the more recent past. He currently lives in Northwest Michigan, is still engaged in missional activity, just returning from a couple weeks working with St Peter's Confessional Lutheran Church in South Africa. This man has he is a missiologist. He has a mission-oriented heart, loves our Lutheran theology and spreading it abroad. He had a 15-year run as a district president in the California, nevada, hawaii district. Before that, five years as a pastor. He spent a number of years serving overseas, but also in the middle of his ministry back in the 80s into the 90s, 13 years as a missiologist at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, wayne, working with Robert Preuss, and there's an interesting story there. He has a PhD in international theological education and he wrote a lot about the impact on neocolonialism in theological education. So we're going to delve into a number of awesome topics today, bob. How are you doing brother?
Speaker 4:I'm fine and thanks again for having me on. It's an honor to be here.
Speaker 2:Oh man, the honor is ours. So tell a little bit of of your kind of circuitous journey in ministry and I mean you don't have to take us through the whole journey because it is, it's windy, and but what were some of the key kind of stopping points for you that shaped your heart as a leader? Maybe that's a good good place to start.
Speaker 4:Well, I got to tell you. It started as a 10-year-old kid in Sunday school in Napa California. I grew up in Napa California and our pastor loved world missions, wanted to be a missionary. Health didn't let him, so he brought every missionary he could find on furlough to visit our little Sunday school in Napa. And a man named Hector Ottermiller came to speak, a missionary from Nigeria, to our little Sunday school in Napa California and it was the first time as a small kid that it dawned on me or I understood there were people in the world who didn't know Jesus and I could not honestly imagine going through life and not knowing Christ. I lost my dad when I was about six years old. He was in the Air Force and died suddenly. So Jesus was a big part of my family, especially with a widow who knew the Lord, and so I couldn't imagine anyone not knowing Christ. And so the thought of being a missionary made perfectly good sense. So at 10 years old, that's when I thought made perfectly good sense. So at 10 years old, that's when I thought that's what I want to do and my pastor just nursed me through college and seminary, wanted to join Lutheran Bible translators. He just kept urging me to go, go, go. And then at seminary, a senior year, we had board permissions. People come to talk and a knife went through my heart. You just got to do this, you got to do it. So Priscilla and I went and did church planting work in the Philippines.
Speaker 4:And you want a moment in life. You go from a place where you get a degree. You're going to go to a parish. You kind of know what's going to go on. You grew up in a church culture. Everything made sense. Then you go into a world where there's no Christians. You don't matter. What's your degree all about? Who are you? And to flip radically into a world where you have to start all over again in your presuppositions about how you do ministry. That was probably the most profound moment in ministry formation and I've kind of lived off of those realities for some time. And maybe the next big moment in terms of ministry development is, you know, fast forward through the years overseas, the years of being a professor.
Speaker 4:And as a professor. That's where I could really hammer out a missiology, understand a Lutheran missiology. But then going into a parish in California and it making no sense to me, it wasn't church culture like. I grew up in Napa, california, where you know stores close from 12 to 3 this Good Friday. You know, in Napa they put signs in the door this establishment will be closed from 12 to 3 on Good Friday. I mean, we grew up in that world and so I knew that world and I knew the world where no one's a Christian. I didn't understand the world of San Jose. It was neither of those. I couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 4:And so for those five years trying to crack the code, so to speak, of how to be a missionary church in the middle of downtown San Jose, I think I tell people almost every night I fell asleep with tears in my eyes saying Lord, it makes no sense, I can't figure this out.
Speaker 4:And then, being elected district president, my commitment was folks don't know what this is, but I'm sure wanting to figure it out and walk alongside you to sort it out.
Speaker 4:And that's where the whole notion of post-Christendom came up, that the movement is from where the church was in charge to where it is no longer in charge and most of our churches are operating with a map that we're still in charge to where it is no longer in charge, and most of our churches are operating with a map that we're still in charge. On the mission field, we were not in charge and knew how to navigate that. When I grew up in Napa, the church was in charge and knew how to navigate that. Now we're not in charge again and our churches are struggling with who are we and how do we do this thing. And some are pushing back to circling the wagons and let's just be a shrinking church where we stay in charge of everything and control everything, or we launch out into the deep where we have no idea except the spirit leading and that's the tension right now in our church body my church body anyway is which direction you want to go.
Speaker 3:That's so good. Go ahead, Jack. I just have a follow-up question on that, because that is brilliant, by the way, the idea that the church is not in charge but is functioning like it is in charge. You can see how that can create a lot of dysfunction in a certain environment. So how does a church function differently when it knows it's not in charge? What would be some of the key differences somebody might see?
Speaker 4:Okay. The biggest key difference is when the church was culturally mattered. All right, and you still see some glimpses of that, if you remember after 9-11, how many folks showed up in churches the Sunday after right, the church was necessary, it absolutely was necessary. So there were what I'll call cultural bridges or, if you will, first article bridges, meaning Article 1, god, the Father, almighty maker of heaven. There are just natural bridges that led people to church. They were cultural outsiders and the church were the cultural insiders, and cultural outsiders want to permeate the inside culture. I mean, folks that come from overseas will learn our language, learn they want to be part of the community, right, so we're willing to learn. So cultural outsiders tend to permeate cultural insiders. By nature tend to protect their boundaries. It's just, that's just how it is, no matter where. So when we were the insiders, culturally, folks were more than willing to come to us and it wasn't hard to plant a church. In the 50s, especially after World War II, we didn't plant a church by just putting a sign outside saying we're going to start worship services next Sunday. Now we had some natural bridges that still are effective, like parochial schools. That's a first article bridge. People don't come to our schools because they want to learn Jesus. They come because they're wholesome places and we might have good reputations and they think this is a safe place for my kids. That's all natural stuff. The fact they get to learn Jesus is cool, and so schools are a natural bridge. We had lots of natural bridges and when the shift came, we were no longer the cultural insiders, but we still operate as if we are.
Speaker 4:And the biggest thing when you're an outsider, you focus on permeating the culture. When you're an insider, you tend to protect. We're still trying to protect our culture and we look almost at the not-churched world as not so much pre-Christian but as apostate Christians. We look at people as having given up the faith, so they're kind of the enemies to us, rather than they don't know Jesus and they have no idea what they're doing. They're a mission field in the truest sense of the word, so we're busy protecting ourselves from that.
Speaker 4:As a missionary, you permeate, so you learn language. You build the bridges from the church into the community intentionally, rather than having the cultural bridges from the community to the church all right. Those bridges are gone, they're burned down and they're a good example During COVID, when churches were closed all over the place. Supreme Court said can't do that. And in my own area in San Jose, the Santa Clara Valley pushed back and said we did not intentionally close churches. We closed every what was the word they use insignificant ministry or activity. We closed every non-essential business meaning the church was absolutely not significant.
Speaker 4:I mean, that was how large it was. So we're still hoping that folks will come because we're a good idea large it was. So we're still hoping that folks will come because we're a good idea. In many places it's not Now.
Speaker 4:I live up here in Northwest Michigan and Arcadia, michigan, and the old Trinity Lutheran Church, well over 100 years old. It's the centerpiece of town and it matters in the community. That's cool. When I lived in San Jose and you know it didn't matter, it didn't matter. And so for us to shift to one we're not in charge, and that's my all these years of teaching missions. My definition of missions is proclaiming a gospel where the church is not in charge, and it's as simple as it gets. And so how do we intentionally build bridges into the community and meet out there?
Speaker 4:There's four things that go on with communicating the gospel to me who, who's a who in your life? Who has credibility to speak? Important things? Two, when and where do conversations take place? And the last is what's the starting place? That would lead to the gospel, all right, or lead to a conversation about the living Christ, all right. Those four things, what hit me? Those four things are always, always answered by cultural insiders.
Speaker 4:So when I was overseas I didn't get to be a who until I was made a who by the people and they finally let me know I belonged. When and where I got to speak about Christ was their terms, not mine. So it was often at night around the fire. And the starting place I didn't get to choose that. They might want to know why lightning struck their cow and how did we handle that in our country. Or why our children are sick. They had everything and how did we handle that in our country. Or why are children or sick? They had everything. And that's the starting place. You want to take it from there to the gospel, but you have to make that you go from there starting place.
Speaker 4:And if you read the book of Acts, every single sermon starts with the starting place by the people. Every single one Like place by the people. Every single one Like you guys are drunk Pentecost, or why is this guy walking? Or why am I in chains? Or St Stephen's saying let's talk about whether the church, the temple, was destroyed. I mean, the text for the day is given by the audience and the missionary needs to take that text and go to the cross and we're used to deciding who speaks pastor, when and where. Sunday morning, the starting place, let's do justification by grace, through faith alone, all good stuff, but it's an insider's decision and we are having that's the biggest challenge of the church how do we shift to we're not in charge and being comfortable with that reality. It's not new.
Speaker 3:It's not new it's like the difference between thinking like a mayor it's like the difference between thinking like a mayor and thinking like an ambassador right, how you function in that community is really different, absolutely.
Speaker 4:But you know and take heart, because I could be. I'm so jazzed about the Spirit doing what he wants to do. Now you look at the apostles the day our Lord ascended into heaven and their question is profound Shall Lord, will you restore the kingdom Israel? Lord, will you make us cultural insiders again? That's what they're saying. Will you put Israel in charge so the nations come to us the way they did when they came to Solomon?
Speaker 4:And you read 1 Kings 10. It's a blow away in terms of Bathsheba. I mean not Bathsheba, queen of Sheba is showing up and then later on, in that same chapter, it says All the rulers of the earth saw an audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart. I mean that's kind of cool for a megachurch right. They all show up in Jerusalem. So that was the anticipation of the holy apostles. Will you do this again? He said, no, we're doing the other one. The spirit comes on you. You're going to be my witnesses, starting in Jerusalem, but then we're going to cross some boundaries where you are absolutely not in charge. Samaria ends of the earth, and the whole book of Acts is about that process, from moving to in charge to not in charge, as the spirit moved them in, and I think if you did it then you can do it now. So come, lord Jesus. In the best sense of the word, that was a long answer to your short question, no, it's so good.
Speaker 2:Where the rub is right now is we have well, there's a number of opportunities for growth. Let's put the positive spin on it. We need to unlearn Pastors. We have a lot that we've learned, but we also need to unlearn some things to take the humble posture so that we can even have the ears to hear and eyes to see what is going on around us.
Speaker 2:Analogy of the way we view the world as apostate or as pre-Christian, you know, as heretic, far from God. It appears as if we need to take the posture of Jesus today, as he says, the Son of man did not come to condemn the world, but so the world may find life through him. Can the Holy Spirit breathe that life, that sensitivity, that care, that awareness that there are people that are wandering without a shepherd? There are people walking in darkness and neither of the light of Christ, and we'll do whatever it takes. I don't, you know. Let's use the example of our posture toward I just had a really good conversation with Pastor Mark Schultz around LGBTQ plus like the posture of the church toward those that have walked down that path. Do we view them as the enemy, those who are far from God? Or do we view them as those who are sexually broken, just like all of us are, who need the light and love of Christ and the care of a community, the identity of Jesus that's placed upon them before any kind of life transformation can take place? Are we going to lead with love or lead with the law? And we must lead with love and care. They'll know we're followers of Jesus by the way. We love one another.
Speaker 2:But it's such a big shift for the pastor who goes through our whole system, spends a lot of money, gets trained to do the things right of worship and counseling and you know, mary Berry baptized, do all of those kind of religious rituals which are all needed, uh. But he also has to put on this missiologist evangelist kind of hat as well to he can't take people someplace that he's not been. So is he crossing over as the outsider, entering into whatever the space may be, before he invites his people to go on mission in their various vocations to be salt and light? I mean, it's such a wide gap and here's what I know. I'll land it here and get your thoughts on this.
Speaker 2:The way most pastors are wired is toward passivity rather than openness and passivity often leads toward a narrow control. I really want to define things well. So I feel safe rather than man. I've been set free by the gospel of Jesus Christ and I have the learner's posture as I head into the world. But I'm going to move myself, but then also my congregation, and we're going to be held accountable for this in mission for our neighbors. Like that takes a little bit more of an aggressive, you know mission oriented posture, not aggressive negatively, just more expansive. Adventurous is maybe the right adjective we can use.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and as I look at the landscape right now, we need more adventurous, entrepreneurial leaders who are leading the mission beyond the borders of our churches. But unfortunately those two groups you could say you know, the passive, maybe controlling group, and then the entrepreneurial kind of adventurous group. They're not complimenting one another, they're seeing one another as competitors in the gospel and this is damaging the witness of the Lutheran Church, missouri Synod, to be sure. Any thoughts there, bob?
Speaker 4:It's huge. No, you can go. A couple of things. First and foremost, you asked about key spots along the way Going from a world in which everything made sense, growing up in a Christian community, basically going through a system where everything made sense. And, please, we appreciate so deeply our confessional heritage and the fact that we take our theology so seriously. It's so gospel-centered and everything's around it. But a part of our system, not intentionally, and I know great systematicians, like the recent, you know just passed a dear friend, jack Preuss, who passed not long ago. You know he was a systematician in our church body who believed that systematics was a launching pad, you know, for further thought.
Speaker 4:Others look at systematics as kind of a box in which we put it with edges, and so we try to nail down doctrine, and that's kind of normal for any insider culture. We don't want any loose ends, and so the world we are having to go into is so untidy and the boundary between the church and not churched is always a permeable boundary. Well, that makes us extremely nervous and we tend to, as a church body, want things nailed down, maybe more than other church bodies. It's a strength, but it's also a challenge. But overseas, going out of that world where I'm used to nailing things down, having it all figured out. I'm operating from a system that makes sense and it's a system everybody else ought to have.
Speaker 4:You get overseas and suddenly blown away and the first year I said I have no clue what's going on here and I would use the word broken in the best sense of the word at that point, and that was transformational. Then I became a theologian in the deepest sense of the word, by looking at the world around me and pouring into Scripture and saying Lord Jesus, how do you make this work? And depending on Him, absolutely, because I was powerless, I didn't have all the stuff that I might have in this culture to make church work, so to speak. None of that was there. It all depended on Him and addressing the world in which they live, which was thoroughly animistic. Well, that transformation, literal conversion in my own person, was profound and, if you will, concentrated. All right, it happened because I'm the only and sometimes if I want to look at a Christian, I look in a mirror. You know it was. It was that kind of dynamic. We're experiencing the same thing over here. The world in which we live is genuine mission field. We're having a hard time even appreciating that because it wasn't once upon a time Very quick vignette.
Speaker 4:You remember the Yankee Stadium thing and how it really separated our church body. It was profound, ok, anyway, I was a new DP district president. Yankee Stadium thing and how it really separated our church body, it was profound, okay. Anyway, I was a new DP district president going to a convention and in one of my seminars with churches in preparation for the convention, someone said, well, are you ready to charge President Kishnick with heresy or whatever? And I said, well, I haven't really talked to him about it. So no, you know, you're talking about Yankee Stadium. No, I think there's other ways of getting at this. But I said, as far as what went on, I said I'm challenged by it personally because I regularly proclaim the gospel in animistic gatherings where all the people were there for an animistic ceremony where they were going to engage false gods, and I'm asked to be there and speak and that was my single opportunity to proclaim the gospel. They weren't going to come to some church service.
Speaker 4:I went into their world with the gospel, not unlike a Mars Hill phenomenon, and one of the men, very strong about this, fascinated tears in his eyes said Dr Newton, you're a hero to us, missionaries are heroes, but you don't understand. America is not a mission field. Now we chuckle at that. But the paradigm? Understand how profound the paradigm is that it's not a mission field. So all these people who don't know Christ or the LGBTQ community, they're a threat to the church If it's apostasy.
Speaker 4:And go back to the Reformation and the woodcuts of the Turks surrounding Wittenberg. You know what a mentality, that it's the gates of heaven that are being prevailed upon rather than the gates of hell. That will not prevail. Everything is upside down and for us to break out of that. So our only response to this is fear. It's profound, it's grief over a lost past, it's tremendous grief over the good old days and we still have grandmas that remember it, you know and fear of the future, in which we're not in control and don't have a clue what to do. And then there's uncertainty about what our role is. So the missiological shift from a pastor having everything managed, where he's an insider and it all happens on Sunday morning, or an extension of Sunday morning in the community to where I'm not in charge.
Speaker 4:What happened to me in an accelerated, concentrated forum in a year where I was broken and reborn with this other spirit we try to do. I think of PLI as an example, trying to do that with all of their great programs and talking with folks like Jock and Gail Ficken when I was on their board of directors, I said here's the bane. I had no choice but pastors bump into these phenomena they don't know what to do with. It's powerful and the temptation to go back to what I know best how to do. I'll go do another shut-in call or I'll get online and chat with my buddies, whatever it is. I know that world and I'm okay and I'm affirmed in that world. But I get into this world. I have no clue what I'm doing and I'm frightened by it. I get that my heart breaks for these brothers On the other side of it.
Speaker 4:When we have maybe almost official church body pushing a very specific idea of what it means to be Lutheran, you sense we're trying to. We're a bounded set and we're trying to strengthen that boundary. Like I said, insiders, insiders protect, outsiders permeate. And as long as we see ourselves as insiders, insiders protect, outsiders permeate. And as long as we see ourselves as insiders, we're going to build that boundary ever thicker and higher, because that's what we and we think. We're protecting God's pure word Right, you're shaking your head in Riley. So, because God's pure word is kept pure by going where it intended to do.
Speaker 4:You know Luther's missiology. He didn't have a missiology as we might think, in terms of mission societies or sending people, but his understanding of the word was. He believed with all his heart that the word intrinsic to it had to go. In fact, I'm summarizing him when I say my favorite phrase. He didn't say it, but it summarizes him. Intrinsic to the word of God are the wings that carry it to the ends of the earth. You can't take the missiological nature of God's word away from God's word. See, it can't be done. So to keep the word pure, you have to maintain its missiological intentionality. You just have to, otherwise it's not pure anymore.
Speaker 4:And you know we're in Holy Week, man and you go. The biggest moment after he rode into Jerusalem, he went into the temple and cleansed it. We always think about the fact he chased out the money grabbers. And you listen to what he said my house should be a house of prayer. And in Matthew's gospel that's where it ends. He's quoting Isaiah.
Speaker 4:The finish of that verse is a house of prayer for the nations. That's what Isaiah said and Matthew just says house of prayer, knowing that a good Jew would finish the Bible verse in his head. That's Jesus's powerful way of teaching. I'm forcing you to say for the nations in your head, but you turn it into a den of thieves. A den is not where you steal, it's where you hoard the treasure. Now understand what he was saying. You have blocked the nations from meeting me. I'm here on this holy week to call you back to myself, but to the covenant. You and I cut on Sinai when I made you priests for the nations, and you have abandoned. You've put a wall around the temple to keep the Gentiles out.
Speaker 4:His heart's breaking because of a church that was so concerned about protecting itself. It had lost its missiological heart and he was calling her to. The sign of Jonah is in about just three days and three nights in the belly of the whale. It's why he's three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, because he wouldn't. He wanted to hoard the gospel. It was Israel's God, not anybody else.
Speaker 4:We don't read the scriptures from our Lord's missiological heart. If we did, it would transform not only the way we read the Word, but the way it would be applied. Every day, we read the Word constantly as if it was given specifically to the church and for the church, rather than given to the church for the world. These are radical transformations and I heard from our brothers because it's a tremendous time and we depend on the Spirit. It's a tremendous time in terms of the history of the church over 2,000 years. This is an incredible time, but we are being caught flat-footed. Huh. 1,700 years of Christendom that's a long time to be in charge and suddenly not to be so. I'm sorry, I'm going on.
Speaker 2:I apologize, I love it, bob. I recently Jack turned me on to I think it's Klaus Schultz, the missiologist from Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, still on faculty.
Speaker 4:He's going to be a guest, detloff.
Speaker 2:Detloff.
Speaker 1:Detloff, detloff.
Speaker 2:Schultz, thank you. Thank you, and he's going to be a guest here on Lead Time here soon. But he wrote the Mission from the Cross and I'm about halfway through it. I mean, it is thick and we need more Lutheran-oriented, justification-by-faith-oriented missiologists today who build the bridge. And it's all about the word, right, but the word has to be brought into our respective culture so that we can see with the new eyes.
Speaker 2:And there has to be this sense of some of us who are in the LCMS, bob insiders, having, you know, a stronger voice to call us to the mission of Christ, while not compromising the purity of doctrine. Like we can speak the language of Lutheran theology word and sacrament, ministry, law and gospel None of these things are discarded. They're the tools by which we go on mission to bring people in baptism and remind them of the forgiveness of sins won by Christ and the cross through the Lord's Supper. Like all the tools, all the guts are there in our theology, but we've missed it. What Dr Schultz does is he spends about the first third of the book kind of justifying how Lutherans should be mission oriented, by looking at the story of Luther and the Turks and his care for the Jews, etc. You know, but we're just yeah, you're insider, outsider, majority, minority kind of summary is really really helpful for us and I think it should lead us toward much more humility and talking to one another in our various contexts.
Speaker 2:This is one of the things that the ULC is kind of around. Is there an awareness that being a pastor in the CNH or the PSD district is remarkably different than being in the majority position in the upper Midwest, in Michigan, in Minnesota, like it's remarkably different? So can we just have some sensitivity and humility with one another and therefore compromising theology is not a thing, but the methods by which we engage, the felt needs of our community better be different as we engage cross-culturally, interculturally et cetera. So I just don't see in the wider conversation a sensitivity toward the diverse context that we find ourselves in in the Missouri Synod today. But maybe reclaiming a Lutheran missiology could be something that bridges the gap between our various contexts, anything to say around the need for a Lutheran missiology, bob.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. First of all, lutherans are forced. Whether you like it or not. I used to say Lutherans have no choice but to be missional. Here's why it's number one we believe in the second article of the Augsburg Confession that man is sinner, plain, stuck, can't do anything about it, right? Okay? So those churches that believe we can come to Christ on our own, we say nah, not going to happen. So we know that people who don't know Christ can't get there on their own. Granted, all right. We also know that God would have all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. So we don't believe in a Reformed or the deep Calvinist where there is a what do they call that? A limited atonement. We believe in a universal atonement. So Lutherans say one, god would have all to be saved and come to the knowledge of truth. Two, they can't do it themselves, so the word has to come to them. That's Lutheran, it has to come. So if we were reformed we'd say, eh, he'll save those he's supposed to save and those that are damned.
Speaker 3:If they're predestined. That's what it is and we don't need to think about it.
Speaker 4:People by their own reason and strength can come to the Lord. So we're good, we're stuck. We're stuck with our Lutheran priorities. But what's important for us, and the biggest radical shift, that would be more Luther than what is Lutheran, if you can say that is. He really believed that God worked in the word period, so that's why the royal priesthood could matter to him.
Speaker 4:We have shifted gears and part of the protection of insiders. We have shifted gears and part of the protection of insiders. Whenever there is a threat to a community or to my body, my body will naturally move all of its reserves or resources to its vital organs. All right, that feels threatened. What you oftentimes do has an elevation of a handful of so-called experts that then control, and you opt for being controlled. If that's how you can be protected, all right.
Speaker 4:So I've watched, especially over the last 12 or a third since about 2010,. I've watched this hierarchy of the clergy emerging and even being pushed off around the world among our brothers and sisters. That all has to happen by the pastor. I mean this is really being pushed strongly and I meet a number of graduates who've been taught this. Fine guys, but they've been taught this. Luther would never have bought that because it was the word in dear friend of mine who was a district president and then, because of term limitation, had to step down, stepped into the role of a mission executive for the Synod and came and spoke to us about the new missiology that we were going to have around the world. It's called ecclesial missiology. You have to have a church in order to do mission work and, if you really dissected it, you have to have a pastor in order to do mission work.
Speaker 4:And back and forth. I said these are the things. We've confused word and sacrament with altar and pulpit. So we use those synonymously. So over and over again you get the sense that that's where word and sacrament locates. And even the word.
Speaker 4:I'm writing an article right now for Lutheran Mission Matters on the divine service, quote unquote in the mission of God, because we're using that phrase. In January Lutheran Witness was all about so-called the divine service. I won't go down too far that track, but the point is is we think it all happens in the worship service. That's where God's going to work. So I'm talking to this friend about you have to have a church in order to do missions. I said missions, by nature, is where the church isn't. You know, it's kind of an Article 5 thing. God speaks, speaks his word, and the sacraments are ministered and then a church is born out of that. So the word precedes the church, the church doesn't precede the word. I said it's Luther. And then, back and forth, I finally said heree the word. I said it's Luther, and then he, back and forth. I finally said here's the deal.
Speaker 4:How did Rahab? How did Rahab come to faith? Because she met the two spies at Jericho's gates and invited them into her home. And she said this we have heard. And then she articulated the whole story of Israel, from Egypt until the moment they were on the other side of the Jordan. She knew that story by heart and believed that Yahweh was her God. So I said to my friend who told her Because she said we have heard he said that's not fair, robert, and I said that is the Bible, friend, the word can't be owned or corralled by the church. And we're doing that right now by claiming it's all done by the pastor via Sunday morning. And so the argument of who has the great commission I mean we have that argument. It's a better question who has the Holy Spirit? Because the Lord promised his missionary spirit. These are things that we just need to grab hold of as Lutherans.
Speaker 4:So Peter says when they ask how can we be saved? In Acts 2, peter says well, repent and be baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of sins, and you'll receive the Holy Spirit for the promises for you and your little ones and those far off, as many as the Lord calls himself Okay. So that word, the promise, is for you. You have to unpack that word. In the original it's the same word that Luke uses. You wait in Jerusalem, boys, until you receive the promise from my Father which will be sent in my name, or Acts 1,. You wait in Jerusalem from the promise For John baptized with water, and not too many days you'll be baptized with the Spirit.
Speaker 4:Peter says when he ascended into heaven, he received from his Father the promise which he has poured out, which you see in here. The promised Spirit is not the Spirit that leads us to faith. It's not the spirit that leads us to faith, it's not the spirit that keeps us in faith. Those are all parts of the spirit, but the specific promise is the missionary spirit of Christ. And upon whom is it poured out? Who's given the missionary spirit? We almost are collapsing it to the pastor and everything else is auxiliary. So we're sending lay people overseas and they're instructed you are not allowed to teach the word, you're not allowed to do this or that. Only the pastor can do this. We were all given the missionary spirit in baptism and we need to start teaching the fullness of that reality to our people and release them. It's kind of like the Babylonian captivity of the church all over again, and while I think it's well-meaning. It's taken this stallion of the gospel and hobbled it lest it trip somewhere along the way.
Speaker 3:Is it well-meaning, though?
Speaker 4:Well, best construction. I have to say it is On my less pious days I probably could go somewhere else, but in the end, because there'll always be that struggle, you go to Acts 15, the church almost blew up, right why? Because one Gentile probably asked one, st Paul, a question do I have to be circumcised in order to receive the Lord's Supper? I mean, those are the questions you always get when you interface with a non-Christian world or a young Christian world and the church. They're going to be questions that we've not asked and we have to answer them. Not asked and we have to answer them. That, by the way, is why I think non-residential theological education has some merit, and I'm all for residential seminary. I mean, I taught for years and loved it and I believe in the strength of a residential seminary.
Speaker 4:But the non-residential components, where you have to do ministry simultaneously with study, you're going to bump into people that are asking questions we tend not to ask in a seminary setting. It forces you back into the Word. I mean we have to wrestle, as you said, tim, with the LGBTQ phenomenon. How do we minister to men and women, people that God made and God loves, for whom Christ died, who are struggling with gender issues, or maybe not but are intentionally confused by the world in which we live. Now the kids have to wonder what gender they are.
Speaker 4:We didn't think that stuff years ago, but now the thoughts in our head, the opportunity to think, we have to think that way is real. How do you minister to that way is real. How do you minister to that? Is it a threat or is it an opportunity for us to involve ourselves in the lives of these human beings and help them understand who they are in Christ and who their identity is, rather than having to try to figure it out for themselves? As long as we see this stuff as threat rather than just, people are broken and they, as you said, tim, sheep without a shepherd. They're harassed and helpless, they don't know where to turn and they can't help themselves. This is Lutheran theology at its best. But to dislocate the preaching or the speaking of the gospel from simply the pastoral office We've joined those two so tightly together. We've hobbled what the Lord intended as his church speaking the gospel in the world.
Speaker 3:We don't tend to actually think of everybody as a priest.
Speaker 4:And we do, but we truncate it to, and rightly so. A mother nursing her baby is doing a priestly thing the first article phenomenon. I agree with all of the above, that's true. But Luther wasn't simply thinking that. He thought brothers and sisters absolving themselves or bringing the gospel to a broken heart. That was Luther. I was just reading his sermon out of John in I think it's volume 24 of the American edition, and he's talking about, in a sense, the divine service, where it's not the past. Jesus' hands are bringing the Lord separate. Jesus's hands are bad. It's God thing, that's. Lutheran worship is wonderful, but he he didn't locate it simply with pastors. He talked about all God's people being the hands and feet of God to bring his, his grace, to other human beings.
Speaker 4:So it's more than just first article, it's second article, stuff too.
Speaker 3:And this is his writing and Freedom of a Christian right, where he says all priests can share the gospel and all priests can pray in intercession for each other, Absolutely.
Speaker 4:Absolutely and I think we have to wrestle that one right now. If there's any real challenge theologically in our church body it's to get that thing right again and recover. And Luther was. You know, it's almost like an either or If you emphasize a priesthood, you're de-emphasizing the pastoral office. Those paradigms don't help us.
Speaker 4:First of all, you've got several word gifts in the New Testament that are given by the Spirit, depending on the audience. So there's an, you know, he gave apostles, prophets. Apostles there is small a missionaries. In other words, he gave folks word gifts for the not yet reached. He gave pastors and teachers for the already gathered. He gave prophets and evangelists. These are all the same word who belongs to Jesus. That's why missions belongs to Christ, not to the church. He's still the missionary of God.
Speaker 4:The best text for that is when St Paul sits in front of King Agrippa with chains on and he says I've done nothing, but be faithful to what my fathers said, the forefathers, that the Christ must suffer and being the first to rise from the dead, he will proclaim light to our people and the Gentiles he will proclaim. So our Lord is still the guy doing the mission of his father, still very active through his spirit, which he pours out on his people, all of his people, and then we're free to organize how we need to do, but not at the expense of taking away the spirit given right, privilege and responsibility of the saints to proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness. I mean you go back to Moses when Joshua said should we forbid those two guys prophesying at their tents? And he says are you jealous for my sake? Oh, that all God's people prophesied and were filled with the Holy Spirit. I mean what Moses said thousands of years before comes to pass on Pentecost, and is ours, believe it or not, the water is a holy baptism.
Speaker 4:It doesn't get better than that. It doesn't get more Lutheran than that. I just think we need to unpack the treasures that we've been given. So I could go on and on. You guys.
Speaker 1:So I gotta remember your hour.
Speaker 4:I gotta remember your hour.
Speaker 2:No, no, you don't. This is so much fun. I want to talk about two topics coming down the homestretch the need for pastors, because I think the argument always goes back to AC 14, Augsburg, Confession 14, and rightly called, overseeing word and sacraments. In this post-Christian context, where there are pre-Christians all around, how are we to rightly understand rightly called I'll give my bias, I guess, is that the church, local, rightly calls men been kind of sidelined in the training and certification of pastors right now and it's led to a major gap. We've basically outsourced that to our seminaries, which are fantastic and this is not to disparage our seminaries at all but pastors aren't involved in the certification process and we're not even talking necessarily about bivocational or co-vocational leaders needed to fill 700 plus pulpits today, with aging congregations that are dwindling and many of them will die here soon.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and I have been in a number of circles where I'm very positive about the mission of God, but I'm also skeptical about the motivation of those who are making decisions at the highest level today. Decisions at the highest level today, and here's why I don't see them bridging the gap toward churches who are looking to start ministries and sustain ministries. Nor do I hear generally a posture of openness, to listen to district presidents like yourself and Mike Gibson you know my current district president to say, hey, I got all of these cross-cultural places and we just need more workers. So help us, help us seminary, help us pastoral formation committee and there is some movement going on there, but we'll see what the coming months bring, Because it's it's, it's the gap is widening between what we need and what our system, our synod, is allowing for for ministers be raised up locally. So any thoughts around rightly called and and the pastoral gap right now in the SMS.
Speaker 4:Well, we need another several podcasts to unpack this, because again I cut my teeth overseas. Because again I cut my teeth overseas. I started with five congregations. After our season there we had 10, and one so-called ordained shepherd. I had 25 men I was training in to care for these churches and start new churches.
Speaker 4:After we left and came home some years later, we went to New Guinea for a year and on the way back, went to our station, spent a couple of weeks with our old friends up there and they planted five or six more congregations without an ordained guy. Why? Because the Word works. The Word works. Were they well-trained? Yes, could they be ordained? No, why? Because they didn't speak English. So they couldn't go to the residential seminary in Baguio City, which was a fine seminary. It just they couldn't go because they didn't speak English. Did we train them? Yes, it was non-residential. I was privileged to write the first non-residential program for the Synod. It was called at the time SOTEX. I did it with Ken Hennings and a man named Jan Case Dr Jan Case who was then the mission exec of the Southern District. So we put the SOTEX program together.
Speaker 4:As a pilot under board for higher ed, I went to New Guinea for a year, came back and it became so instantly popular that they adjusted and called it DELTO. You probably remember DELTO. They adjusted and called it DELTO. You probably remember DELTO Distance Education, learning to Ordination and it became so instantly popular with the district presidents they all wanted it. The Tussauds got spooked that it would take away from residential possibilities, not realizing it wasn't going to do that at all.
Speaker 4:There were men God was raising up locally who he would put the heart of being a shepherd in or of proclaiming the gospel, either as a church planter or as a rigor pastor, who would never, for one reason or another, go to the sem.
Speaker 4:And this was an opportunity to raise up harvesters, but they saw it as a threat. This is where institutional drift becomes profound and again this sense of protection I mean it's profound and I think the doubling down on residential as the so-called gold standard and almost the mental or theological gymnastics we go to try to prove it. The Synod's administration put out that the Bible supported residential seminaries and I wrote a paper back to him and I basically said as kindly as I could you're kidding me right, because Peter and John are standing in front of the Sanhedrin and the Greek is clear these are agramata, these are men without letters and idioti, provincial people, in other words. They didn't go to a residential seminary. They have no right to speak because they didn't go to a residential seminary. That's basically the Sanhedrin statement, but the Lord Jesus said otherwise.
Speaker 3:Maybe it's residential that they lived with Jesus. I don't know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's the point.
Speaker 4:I love the residential seminary. It's powerful and the machinery behind it, incredible. I'm just now starting as an SMP mentor for a man who's 50 years old, loved up in this community, he's got 10 children. Incredible man, 50 years old, highly respected, and I almost was teary-eyed I mean literally when I went down to St Louis to do the orientation and saw the amount of work the St Louis Seminary has put into its SMP program and taking it seriously, I was blown away. I mean, this was a 30-year battle when I started the SEM as a prof to try to get non-residential as just an extension of a residential seminary for the sake of the gospel and you mentioned Mike Gibson, you know, when they crushed the deacon program, I still had to have deacons because I had a choice either in a way to disobey the Synod or not provide word and sacrament ministry for several congregations that were isolated and would never call a pastor. I decided to err on the side of. I got to get the gospel to these people and so I've got to continue to license these guys and continue to train them because the gospel to them matters.
Speaker 4:Ac 14 at that point is being misused. It was meant to guarantee the gospel got to people and it was the real gospel and you didn't have fly-by nights. That's all it was. It wasn't saying a congregation can't rightly raise up people, train them well and put them to work. That would have never been a thought. In fact, wittenberg is cranking out unordained guys, right and left, to go back and share the gospel with their. You know, wittenberg had become this university for all over Europe and none of them were ordained. They went back and proclaimed the Word. They proclaimed it rightly. That's what AC 14 is about, Not who can do it, but how it get done rightly and to hold it up as a straitjacket, if you will.
Speaker 4:For the gospel is profound, one of the biggest problems and I don't know if you guys, when you went through Sam, whether they use the words in abstraction and in concreto, you know a couple of words that Augsburg, confession 5, this is how faith is born, by the preaching of the word and administration of sacraments. Okay, that's the gospel in abstract, the ministry of the gospel, and then concrete. So we say that's the only concrete form. As I've thought about it and I'd love to write on it, there's no such thing as an abstract ministry of the gospel. Wherever the gospel goes, with or without a pastor, it's concrete. As the day is long.
Speaker 4:I could give you story after story after story of the mission field where the word of God without a pastor, read by 10 or 11-year-old unbaptized children in their community, brought villages to Christ. Why? Because the Word works. The Word works. So AC 14 has to be understood through the lens of the Word and the intention. It goes to the ends of the earth, rightly, and the way we're using it right now is simply I don't believe it was in the heart of the reformers. Good example there is in the St Louis chapel. In the chapel there is a replica of a three I don't know call it tripartite or whatever they call it of of pictures that are in Wittenberg, I think in the chapel and I think the panel on the left has a large baptismal pool and it's Melanchthon, the layman doing the baptizing.
Speaker 4:It was not ordained. That's the point Luther was making, or they're making the point, and it isn't about who gets to do it. As soon as you get to do that, you've lost the covenant. It's not about who gets to, it's who needs to hear it. It's not who gets to speak it, it's who needs to hear it. That's what motivates for ministry. Who needs to hear it? The world, every human being, needs to hear it. The world, every human being, needs to hear it. So how do you organize the gospel ministry so every ear can hear?
Speaker 4:That's an important point.
Speaker 3:The author of the Augsburg Confession was a man who was not ordained.
Speaker 4:Yeah, most of the confessions were written. My son-in-law, adam Francisco, whom you might enjoy having on, you know, is unordained and he taught for a few years at the Fort Wayne SAM and he had ordained colleagues that just struggled with him teaching there, unordained, and he was big enough board to say it's about the word, it's just about the word, you know, and education. He probably could have walked circles around a number of them, but that wasn't his concern. It concerns how to get the word out and how do you teach people to get the word out. But again, if the argument is who gets to do Sunday morning, huh, then you're already starting in the wrong place. Sunday morning isn't, but again, it's a church culture thinking the word was for the church. No, the word was for the world and the church is essential to it. So it's not who gets to do Sunday morning. Who gets to proclaim the gospel to a broken world. We have to ask different questions and I think that will inform our understanding of AC 14 and maybe start helping us with the preparation of pastors. This fight that still may be going on about residential versus something, in some ways it's a moot point because our two residential seminaries in the end are unsustainable, they're not going to get the work done. They can't, they can't, they can't. And I think eventually, just circumstance will allow our church to rethink some of these things in not only a creative way, but a very conservative, in the best sense of the word. How do we do this? Well, and I just believe that when we're put in a corner, we come out and do things well, and I think that corner is quickly approaching and I look forward to how the Lord will move In the meantime.
Speaker 4:What you said, tim, in your church and others, that pastors are raising up and saying, hey, we have these needs. We need to raise up men and women of God in their various vocations and women of God in their various vocations. Males, obviously, for, if you will, the pastoral office I fully agree with 1 Timothy but you've got women, proclaimers of the gospel in specific vocations. How do we raise up these men and women for the ministry needs that are around us? Let's figure this thing out where the seminaries can help us, amen, amen, amen. Where they're not able to help us, don't feel that okay, we'll just remain hamstrung. No, we'll get creative. This church was always creative. Seminaries were put together to reach folks. Fort Wayne Seminary was a missionary school that's what it was for, you know and it started in the living room, and in, I think, winnikin's living room. They were creating let's get this done, let's do this. Lutherans are good at it and I just think that day is fast approaching, but we sort of had to be squeezed into it, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:There's definitely squeezing going on right now, bob. The facts are squeezing us and the Holy Spirit is with us and will give us wisdom to take the right next steps. So let's keep Christology at the center, the mission of God, missiology led from the cross and empty tomb of Christ, and then may appropriate Christology and missiology shape ecclesiology and our work together as people of.
Speaker 4:God sent into the world. We can talk on that one too for some time.
Speaker 3:I know we can, I know we can, we get that confused.
Speaker 2:It doesn't start with ecclesiology. Yeah, this has been excellent, Bob. If people want to connect with you, if people want to connect with you, how can they do so?
Speaker 4:Probably email is the best thing. I'll give you an email. R as in Robert, d as in David, n-e-w-t-o-n. So rdnewton461 at gmailcom. All right, rd Newton. 461 at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:Bob, keep engaged. We need your mind, we need the Holy Spirit that is alive in you, praying for many, many more years for you to mentor the next generation of leaders, to care for churches, to model what it looks like to go on mission both nationally and internationally. We're better because you're a part of Lutheran Church Missouri Synod brother, and I thank you for your churchman attitude and for the appropriate amount of stress that needs to come to an internally focused church body to once again reclaim our missiology, the missional heart of God. God is out, he is at work, the Holy Spirit is alive and well. The word must go forth so that all of God's children he came to seek and to save all. He died for all so that all of his children would be brought back into a right relationship with God by grace, through faith in Jesus.
Speaker 2:It's a good day. Go and make it a great day, jack. Wonderful work, as always. We'll be back later this week for another fresh episode of Lead Time. Thanks so much, Jack, thanks Bob, thank you. Thank you, god bless you guys.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theuniteleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.