Join the conversation with Jerry Kieschnick, former President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, as we address the pressing issues confronting our church today. With congregations diminishing in number, Jerry brings a beacon of hope to this tough topic, sharing his storied experiences from establishing the Specific Ministry Pastor program to candid reflections on ministry. Together, we dissect statistics that can no longer be ignored and rally around innovative solutions, like bivocational ministry, to spark revival in our church's community presence and engagement.
This episode isn't just about numbers; it's a heart-to-heart on the twelve reasons our beloved LCMS faces decline. We navigate the complexities of staying relevant in a world where traditional church attendance is evolving and emphasize the need for sermons that resonate with the day-to-day lives of our congregation. There's a candid conversation about the aroma of Christ in our communities, especially in times of crisis, and a reaffirmation of the church's role as a welcoming haven, open-armed and ready to serve.
We wrap up with a critical look at the shifts in LCMS leadership and what this means for church growth. As we highlight the importance of lay members' involvement and the role of women in the church, we call for a spirit-led reformation, grounded in our core mission of gospel dissemination. This is an invitation to all, especially those with differing viewpoints, to join us in a dialogue that aims to rekindle our love for the church and steer the LCMS towards a future of growth and vitality.
Visit uniteleadership.org
Join the conversation with Jerry Kieschnick, former President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, as we address the pressing issues confronting our church today. With congregations diminishing in number, Jerry brings a beacon of hope to this tough topic, sharing his storied experiences from establishing the Specific Ministry Pastor program to candid reflections on ministry. Together, we dissect statistics that can no longer be ignored and rally around innovative solutions, like bivocational ministry, to spark revival in our church's community presence and engagement.
This episode isn't just about numbers; it's a heart-to-heart on the twelve reasons our beloved LCMS faces decline. We navigate the complexities of staying relevant in a world where traditional church attendance is evolving and emphasize the need for sermons that resonate with the day-to-day lives of our congregation. There's a candid conversation about the aroma of Christ in our communities, especially in times of crisis, and a reaffirmation of the church's role as a welcoming haven, open-armed and ready to serve.
We wrap up with a critical look at the shifts in LCMS leadership and what this means for church growth. As we highlight the importance of lay members' involvement and the role of women in the church, we call for a spirit-led reformation, grounded in our core mission of gospel dissemination. This is an invitation to all, especially those with differing viewpoints, to join us in a dialogue that aims to rekindle our love for the church and steer the LCMS towards a future of growth and vitality.
Visit uniteleadership.org
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman here. Jack Calberg is under the weather today, praying you feel better quickly. And today I get the privilege of learning with one of the church fathers in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and a leader, a brother, one that I have gotten to know better over the years, jerry Kieschnick, president of one time when I was ordained. Jerry was the president of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the reason we're chatting today is he presented at the Best Practices Conference on a topic, the main reasons.
Speaker 2:Our church body, the LCMS, is in rapid decline. So we're going to be orienting around that and I also you know we've chatted before, jerry about your story, kind of the struggle of the story. This conversation today and this is where I know your heart is is about the future. We're looking to the future and to look at the future, clearly we got to take an honest assessment of where we are in the present. So one question though, on the past, with that all being said, looking back on your ministry, top three ministry joys that you experienced, jerry, thanks for hanging with me today on Lead Time, brother.
Speaker 3:Well, my pleasure. So the top three joys. It's hard to do three, but I'll try. I'll start maybe with the most recent in terms of working with the LCMS.
Speaker 3:As a Senate president, one of my greatest joys was probably the greatest joys was working with the Council of Presidents, the 35 district presidents and, in those days, five vice presidents. We had a great collegiality. It didn't always start that way and hasn't always been that way. It's not that way now. We had a great, great relationship and I love to meet with the vice presidents individually and also with all 41 of the council. At that time it was just a huge joy. As a district president, it was kind of a similar thing. We had vice presidents, four vice presidents in this big state of Texas and I think 38 or so what we used to call circuit counselors, now circuit visitors and I've always felt that you know, kind of like the story in the Old Testament about Moses who was just driving himself crazy and finally his father-in-law said you need some help, man. So I've taken that to heart and I like to utilize not use but utilize the people who are on the team. So that was a joy for a district presidency.
Speaker 3:As a parish pastor, probably the greatest joy was mission developing. I did that two times. Once, while I was a pastor in East Texas, we started one in a little town called Winnie, texas. We started it in a funeral home. It was just awesome. And then I got a call, full-time call, and moved to Georgetown, where we live now Central Texas, to start a brand new mission, bona fide mission, and that took some doing, but it was fun, it was joyful. It was hard 1981, interest rates were 18%. It was tough but it was fulfilling. We got it going and it's still still going strong as a congregation that's 42 years old now. I guess 43 years old. Anyway, those are the joys. That's one more.
Speaker 3:When I first started, I taught the fourth grade. I taught the fourth grade with a degree in animal science from Texas A&M and that was a jar. That was a kick Love it. I had no idea what I was doing and that was a jar that was a kick, love it.
Speaker 2:I had no idea. And, jerry, what an experience. Yeah, what a life, brother, and more life to live. But that congregation was started. It's kind of interesting to think about the cycles of history but that congregation was started the year I was born there. So, yeah, I'm pushing 43 myself. So, praise God, praise God. You know a lot of people wonder about the SMP program and I've been blessed to come alongside a number of SMP students, specific ministry pastor programs. So tell the origin story of SMP. I know you were at the table when that program got created. Yeah, you bet.
Speaker 3:That could be my major legacy. Actually the deal was in the Senate in those days. We had a whole number of different number of alternate routes to the pastoral ministry. We had DELTO, distance Education Leading Toward Ordination. We had SOTEX, which was an alliance between the Southern District and the Texas District to get some stuff going for non-seminary graduates. We had EIIT, ethnic Immigrant Institute of Technology. We had the Licensed Late Deacon Program.
Speaker 3:All those things were different routes to ministry and some of our brothers were very concerned and I won't judge whether that was right concern or wrong concern, but they're very concerned about how Article 14 of the Augsburg Confession fits in there, which says that nobody should preach or teach without a regular call rete vocatus, it's called in Latin. So we got our heads together with everybody I mean everybody was around the table. That was both seminary faculties, both seminary boards of regents, the Board for Higher Education In those days it was divided into a Board for Higher Education and Board for Pastoral Education. We got the board directors of the Synod, we got the vice presidents of the Synod. We got the council of presidents of the Synod. We got the vice presidents of the Synod. We got the council of presidents of the Synod.
Speaker 3:We got did I say, the faculties of both seminaries. We got the Commission on Constitutional Matters Commission on Theology and Church Relations. We got everybody that we could think of who might have a feeling or an opinion about this. We got them all together and we talked about it and that's how SMP, pacific Ministry of Pastoralism, was born. And when we presented to the convention I'm pretty sure it was in 2004, we got representatives from all those organizations on the podium. They were all up there and they were all ready to go.
Speaker 3:They all said thumbs up and as we debated it or as we heard debate on the floor. I'd just call on anybody that I thought could answer the question or the objection that somebody was raising. And when it was put to a vote I don't remember the exact vote, but it was overwhelming majority Everybody was happy. It was one of those things we said seriously, seriously, and the key was we figured out that nowhere in the confessions or in the scripture for sure, is it required that a person has to go through four years of the seminary before he's ordained. So we just did early ordination, true, after a review, an interview, a legitimate interview test, all that kind of stuff, and once that person was passed he was ordained and put into ministry and he was regularly called. So everybody was happy. That's how it happened.
Speaker 2:And it still goes on. I love that story.
Speaker 3:It's kind of morphed a little bit and it's. You know, some of our brothers are not all that crazy about the idea and they're trying to make some put some strictures around it that were not really called for necessary. But I pray that it continues to be a blessing to the church, because I think there are as many smp students now preparing for ministry as there are regular full-time students and this is not at all bashing our seminaries. May God's name be praised if people just flood to the seminaries and become regular pastors. That's not happening. They're not selling their cow and burning their plow and moving to Fort Wayne or St Louis. So we tried to figure out a way to get some pastors out there to church.
Speaker 2:Still need it badly, pastors out there in the church still need it badly. I want to comment and go down this path with that. Maybe we'll touch it as we get into your presentation. The church needs pastors. Churches need to take greater responsibility for identifying 2 Timothy 2 to their pastors. And then the wider church needs to take greater responsibility for providing and this is not compromising theology adaptive means to train up pastors. And I'll leave it here as it relates to SMP. I think we're in need of SMP 2.0 and not reverting, but maybe responding to some of the tiered structures that we have right now among the pastorate. That leads SMP to be seen as second rate. And yeah, there's a number of different ideas and I've spoken about some of those in the past.
Speaker 2:If you want to go deeper into this, listener, you can send me an email at talman, at cglchurchorg. You can go to our uniteleadershiporg. There's a white paper that says a LCMS pastor for every congregation that's been put together. No, the ULC was not primarily responsible for this. This was a joint. 13 district presidents came together and put this paper together and I'm praying that President Harrison and others in the Council of Presidents will recognize the need for pulpits being filled and with that we'll get to get to the topic today, and not just pulpits being filled, but new churches being planted in this day and age for sure. So tell us the origin story of your presentation. Why is the LCMS in such rapid decline, jerry?
Speaker 3:Well, last summer one of our former district presidents two of them who live in the big state of Michigan got together and formed, invited a number of has-beens, a number of former district presidents and has-been Senate president, to come for a funvention. To come for a funvention which was right before the convention which was going on in Milwaukee. One of the people who was there, terry and I, went to that. It was a wonderful time, a great time. Collegiality is a beautiful thing. So one of the guys who was there was a retired president from the New Jersey district, tony Steinbron, and I became aware of a summary that he put together of LCMS statistics and I wrote him a note when we got back home after the convention following the funvention and I said, tony, I need a copy of what you had done. So he sent to me a copy. I looked at that copy and I said, my, I need a copy of what you had done. So he sent to me a copy. I looked at that copy and I said, my goodness gracious, I knew that our synod was declining in terms of average worship attendance. That was the basic statistic that caught my eye. I knew we had been declining for a long time, but I didn't know the actual numbers. So when I saw the numbers, the summary, I thought well, goodness gracious, somehow or other, that kind of information needs to be somehow or other communicated. So that's what really stimulated the idea.
Speaker 3:It was also time to submit for best practices consideration. You know, and most of our listeners probably know, how that works 500 people say I'd like to give a speech, and the people who attended last year get to vote on whether you get to give your speech or not. And enough people maybe four or five I guess said we'd like to hear your speech, keith, or five I guess, said we'd like your speech, kieschnick. So I put.
Speaker 3:Now, all of a sudden I got to put a speech together because I had not really given a significant systematic thought to what that would be like. So I just started writing, started thinking, and that's what ended up being the presentation which took an hour and a half at the actual conference. And then people after the conference started asking for a copy and I thought I'm not going to give you 17 pages, typewritten pages of manuscript. So I redacted, summarized the slides, which is what I sent to you and I sent it to pretty much anybody who has asked for it and I added some commentary which kind of set the stage and explained what my position is, what my thoughts are, my feelings are and my love for our church body and my care and concern for our church body.
Speaker 2:So that's what the origin was. Let's get into the data. Yeah, no, thank you, jerry, that's wonderful. You mentioned the Steinbron summary of LCMS statistics which have been circulating. I don't know that they've been circulated in many or any official LCMS publications or any official LCMS publications, which I find troubling. So what LCMS decline stats?
Speaker 3:are the most startling to you, jerry? Well, probably two. One of them is the median average worship attendance of our congregations. Average worship attendance of our congregations and the number of congregations that reported for this particular report was 5,776. I've always said we had roughly 6,000 congregations in our church body. We had 6,000 for a long time. So the median, which means that half are larger and half are smaller, the median average worship attendance of congregations of our church body is 55. Five five. That means half of our churches have more than 55 people in church every Sunday. Half have less fewer than 55 per Sunday. That was a startling revelation. First Sunday. That was a startling revelation. The other one is the summary.
Speaker 3:In my presentation, as you've seen, I've shared the actual tables, the actual numbers of the average worship attendance of our churches between 2002, which, by the way, was my second year as president of the Synod. So I want to say right here, right now, that this is a systemic problem. It's been going on for a long time. I'm not throwing darts at any one person by putting out this report. Half of this report was on my watch, so from 2002 to 2022, the statistic that really grabbed me is that the number of congregations out of 5,776, the number of churches that had 99 or fewer people in church every Sunday. It increased from 2,629 in 2002, 2,629, to 4,291 in 2022. So when you sum that whole thing up, 4,291 is 75% of the 5,776. So 75% of the churches in our denomination have fewer than 100 people in worship every Sunday. Those were startling statistics.
Speaker 2:It is startling. And a church that worships 55 cannot afford a full-time pastor. Church that worships 55 cannot afford a full-time pastor. 75% and declining. Maybe some of a certain percentage of them can afford one staff but certainly not multiple pastors and staff. So we are a declining church body with many, many small churches.
Speaker 2:Now this is not to downgrade, if we think creatively, not compromising theology. If we think creatively, this can be a massive strength for us. Small church is not bad, I think. Small church ready to go on mission with arms open wide. We can know everybody.
Speaker 2:I just don't know that all of the churches that are in those categories are thinking creatively about community engagement, getting the gospel into as many ears and hearts so that the lost would be found. We must, and this is why we've been talking about bivocational ministry. Could you identify an elder in that congregation, a man who's respected, loved and able to teach 2 Timothy, right, able to teach, and can you cast a vision and can there be pathways for that man to be trained in good Lutheran theology and have the heart of Christ centered in the Lutheran confessions and the word of God Like? Can that be a reality for us? I would like to think it would be, but I don't know that we're having all of the conversations that are leading us toward toward that end. Bivocational and co-vocational ministry must be on our radar because of these statistics.
Speaker 3:Anything more to add to that. Jerry is designed, frankly, almost to present and prepare seminary professors, not parish pastors. We need to focus our seminary preparation, and that means it probably needs to be tweaked significantly to focus on preparing parish pastors. Let me just get out on the edge here. I've said for years that I don't believe parish pastors today need to take the foreign languages that you needed to take and that I needed to take in order to graduate from the seminary. We have so many tools available to us on the internet today. We can translate any Greek or Hebrew word with an internet program, and I know there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people who would have been great parish pastors who either tried and failed the language and got kicked out of the seminary or never even went for fear of failing the language. They're just not linguistically gifted, but they could have been great parish pastors and they're not. So that's my final thought on that topic for today.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I've talked about this a lot and I appreciate your courage to engage the conversation. We need to be honest about the decline and we need a season of running tests in formation to try to stem the decline, and orthodox confessional community hospitable Lutheranism is needed today.
Speaker 1:Desperately.
Speaker 2:Tension filled law, gospel filled, all of our theology that we agree on. This is what the world needs and it's going to take LCMS leaders being honest about the decline. Here's my one of my biggest struggles, and I've written about this as well. Faithful local pastors must deal honestly with problems and test solutions within the body of Christ, and it's almost as if synodical leadership doesn't think we need to address the decline and if we don't address it, clearly it doesn't exist. Or we blame it on demographics, which is one of the reasons for our decline, to be sure. What are your thoughts on that? I just don't see a lot of honesty around where we are as a church body. Any thoughts there?
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, one of the reasons I made this presentation, at some risk to personal reputation, is that I always remember it. I can't remember where I heard it, but I heard a long time ago that one of the greatest responsibilities of the leader is to define reality. And I'm not sure all leaders understand that, because it's not fun to define reality if reality is not exciting and positive and future focused. If it's a declining reality, nobody really wants to talk about that. That's an overstatement. Not all leaders want to talk about it. So we have to say this is what's going on, folks, and what can we do to stem the tide? Do we just say tsk, tsk and throw our hands up in despair and say, well, I guess it's beyond our control, there's nothing we can do about it? I don't think so. I don't think so, I believe.
Speaker 3:Matter of fact, some things are going on in one of the districts of our synod that are just mind-boggling and it happens to be the district in which I'm living. I can't take any credit for this whatsoever. And what we can do as leaders, what churches can do as leaders, to replicate themselves, to start new churches with bona fide gospel-focused, confessionally-based, scripturally sound leadership. To start new churches among different cultures. We've got a lot of Hispanic work going on and, lord knows, we've got a lot of Hispanic people in Texas, and so do you in Arizona, and a lot of Hispanic people all around, and other cultures as well. So I think we just need to say the facts and we need to say now, what are we going to do with these facts? We're going to just sit there and let them continue to go down the tube, or we're going to do something to try to say we don't need to let this happen. There are people out there who want, who want, who need what we have to offer. We need to provide it for them.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen. All right, let's get into the facts your 12 reasons for the decline of the LCMS. I'd love to dig into a few and, if you don't mind, listener for those. This may be one of those conversations you're like I could maybe take some notes and learn something from Jerry today, unless you're driving. If you're driving, don't take notes, focus on what's going on. So here's the 12. I'm going to list them in the order that you presented them and then we'll walk through them.
Speaker 2:Demographics, to be sure, I love that. That was your number one, by the way. Failure of the church to impact the lives of people, romanization of the clergy, centralization of power, sinful pride, worshiping worship, failure to recognize the body of Christ, failure to honor and utilize the priesthood of all believers, a reticence and a reluctance to recognize the service of women we're at 10 right now. A policy on sacramental hospitality, and we often 11, we often act like we don't really believe there is hell, a place called hell, and 12, we seem to have forgotten our mission. So anything to say on I love that list. It's very straightforward. Anything to say on I love that list. It's very straightforward. Anything to say on demographics.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I started off this presentation by addressing COVID, because a lot of people say, well, the reason for our decline is all related to COVID. Well, that's part of it, but the decline was going on before COVID hit and there are other factors. That's why I talked about the factors, and the first one is a demographic. It's just a fact that all mainline denominations are other factors. That's why I have talked about the factors, and the first one is the demographic. It's just a fact that all mainline denominations are facing decline. The only church bodies that seem to not be facing a decline are the non-denominational folks, and those really aren't church bodies. They're just individual, isolated congregations. Maybe they have some relationships with each other, but they're not officially a church body.
Speaker 3:It's the deal that there's a lot of stuff going on and in a time when there's not a crisis, the church just seems to take a back seat. I think, for example, with 9-11. Man, when 9-11 hit, the churches were packed. They were packed. I'm not asking for another crisis, I'm just saying when times are good, people tend to just take for granted the blessings that fall into our lap, and arguably times are not all that great in our country with respect to lots of challenges that we face and in our world, which faces lots of challenges. But basically the issue that I was talking about here is that it's just a fact that in the United States, the phenomenon that everybody goes to church, or the idea that everybody goes to church, is just not realistic. So we're not alone in that regard.
Speaker 2:So I would love no, we're not, no, we're not but I would love, as we're honest about the demographics, if and when there is another crisis, we could be. You know, some people say we're on the precipice of some sort of maybe an economic, you know, cultural crisis. Is the LCMS there ready to open our doors wide and will people find churches that are filled with hospitality and love and care? That is the big question. So, first off, demographics, and I think that leads nicely into your point number two the failure of the church to impact the lives of people. The failure of the church to impact the lives of people.
Speaker 2:Well, people say, when the inevitable crisis comes, my goodness, the local church cares about the community, has open arms, is here to meet felt needs, is the aroma of Christ, is on the people of God. When I come in and I don't have to look exactly like them, I'm a train wreck and they're just going to throw their arms wide open with hospitality. That we would be thought well of by outsiders. Anything more to add to that our impact in the lives of people, jerry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, actually, in the presentation itself, I picked on one particular aspect which is a huge, huge part of our church and that's the sermonic time. The sermon, the message. I'm hearing reports from people who travel around and visit churches and who belong to churches where the sermon is basically a theological monologue that's read by the pastor and it's doctrinally pure and correct, but it has no impact, no relationship, no reference to life that people are actually living. You contrast that with a sermon like I heard from our pastor just this past Sunday on Mother's Day, which was so pragmatic, so personal, so practical, so down to earth. Talked about all of the circumstances that women face today. Some are mothers, some are not mothers, would love to be mothers but never have been given that blessing. Some were mothers of children who lived only moments or hours or days.
Speaker 3:Some are mothers of children at any age who have pre-deceased their mother. So our pastor got everybody's attention out of the chute and went on just to talk about the blessing of our mothers and of our families and the challenges that we face. And he did so scripturally, straight out of the Holy Scriptures. So that kind of message which is scripturally focused and based but also has to do with life. You could have heard a pin drop in that sanctuary and there are four other people in the sanctuary Could have heard a pin drop because the pastor was talking to the needs and the lives and the hearts of people. That's what draws folks.
Speaker 3:You've heard the saying I can't remember who said it Henry Wadsworth, longfellow or somebody like that said if a man can build a better mousetrap or preach a better sermon, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his doorstep. So one of the ways to turn around the rapid decline of our church body is just to have some excellent preaching that touches the lives of people and doesn't just base its format on being sure that we have the right theology that is proclaimed.
Speaker 2:That's so good. There's so much going on in our world today, and does the hearer find the pastor to be a normal human who's engaging the struggles and or the opportunities in this world? And Mother's Day is a beautiful opportunity. If it's a theological excursus, I believe that brother may be operating from a sense of fear of getting all of the words absolutely right, rather than maybe we dust off Luther's freedom of a Christian, rather than living in the freedom that the gospel has given to us to say you know what I'm going to respond, maybe creatively, to what is going on, hopefully engagingly for sure, to what is going on in the lives of my hearers, absolutely. Point number three kind of piggybacks on that as well the Romanization of the clergy.
Speaker 3:You like that term. I think it's a new one. I don't believe it's in the Thessalonians or Webster's Dictionary or anybody else.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I don't know that it is. Let me respond. I actually was reading a book by and I'm going to have Dr Aaron on hopefully Testing the Boundaries to Lutheran Identity. Some of you are like, wow, that sounds amazing. Others of you are like there's no way I'm reading that book. It's fantastic, by the way. And Romanization the statement of Lutherans about other Lutherans who have maybe a higher view of the office of holy ministry than even the Lutheran confessions do that often. The term there is often used you're a Romanist or Romanization. So yes, it is a creative word, but it has been in our dictionary as Lutherans here in the United States. So go ahead, jerry.
Speaker 3:Well, I kind of feel vindicated then. So my thoughts about that are these, and again, I don't experience this personally as much as I do anecdotally, but I've talked to a lot of people. A lot of people talk to me and I've heard the complaint. It's not just an observation, it's a complaint that particularly many of our recent seminary graduates but not only recent, I don't know how you define recent, but our seminary graduates do a lot of things that have a Roman flair to them, a Roman flavor like chanting, and I don't have anything inherently against chanting, I don't. It's okay. It can be beautiful if done properly. Not all of our pastors who think they're great chanters really are great chanters. I'm just saying Genuflecting, prostrating before the altar.
Speaker 1:I went to a church.
Speaker 3:I went to a church with a pastor. I looked around, he was flat on the ground. He was on the ground prostrating before the altar, venerating the host, requiring private confession and absolution not just suggesting it and, I've noticed, also adding the corpus christi, the body of christ, to our otherwise typically generally vacant crosses. And that's one of the things that that we've done a lot for a year, for decades, for centuries. Well, for decades. And our crosses are empty, symbolizing the resurrection Jesus isn't on the cross anymore but adding the body of Christ back, pastors in some cases, choosing to be called Father. Now I'm just saying I'm not going to call a Lutheran pastor Father unless my daddy gets resurrected from the grave and goes to the seminary. Not going to happen.
Speaker 3:So those are some things that cause people who are godly, people in a parish, who extend a call to a seminary graduate or to a pastor with experience who's out of the seminary. They see that and they say what, where did that come from? This feels more like a Roman Catholic church than a Lutheran church and some people just say I'm out of here. That's not what I signed up for. If I want that, I go to the Catholic Church. So that's one of the things I think, and the whole idea, the whole mentality. We've got one district president now who chances around, branches around with a miter, wearing one of these miters on his head, and a staff like a Roman Catholic bishop. It's there in our seminary too. That's where they're learning it.
Speaker 2:It comes from our seminary, particularly one of them has become all the more secular and, you could say, pagan, neo-pagan. One of the knee-jerk responses of many who are within organized Lutheran religion they're in the system, they're being trained at the seminaries is we must distinguish ourselves by more external means, and so we're grabbing onto some of these traditions too. I don't, I'm not a fan of a number of those things, because I think it leads well into your point number four, the centralization of power, and we can talk about this from a number of perspectives. Maybe the LCMS kind of leadership. You could go, council of presidents, but there there is the use of, I would say, undue power in the pastoral office. Where the pastor is, there is ministry.
Speaker 2:I have heard that there is a thought among some on the council of presidents today that if a congregation does not have a pastor, they should close as a congregation, they should sell and give them you know everything, because if you can't afford a pastor, then you're not a church. I mean, I've not heard much more of an un-Lutheran thing than that. This is unbelievable, that Lutherans would be saying this and so, yeah, any thoughts, though? There's definitely a Romanization of the clergy taking place in various pockets and various districts, and they're going to have a fun time and he goes well. When you talk about centralization of power, didn't the Blue Ribbon Task Force have a hand in more centralized control at the Synodical Office? So maybe we'll just start with that question. People want to know, jerry, didn't you have a hand in this brother? So go ahead. What was that story like?
Speaker 3:I'm happy to address that, the BRTFSSG no-transcript. The Senate, for a number of years, has had six boards and seven commissions, or it could be seven boards and six commissions. It's been 14 years since I've been in the office and I don't read the handbook as much as I used to. I'm just saying so. Each of those 13 entities, boards and commissions had an executive, an executive director and the executive director of all 13 boards and commissions. Each of those executive directors reported only to his respective board or commission. When they met sometimes four times a year, sometimes some met two times a year, some met six times a year, those folks would fly in from all different parts of the Senate and they would meet for a day or two, hear the report of the executive director of those boards and commissions and everything was hunky-dory and they'd go back home and the executive director could do anything he wanted to do, including going way outside the budget that was approved by the Senate Board of Directors for those respective boards and commissions. There was no accountability whatsoever to anybody in the International Center. Each of those executive directors had his own fiefdom in some respects. So the coordination aspect was very, very difficult and the accountability simply wasn't there. So that was one of the issues but only one of the issues that the BRTFSSG addressed and theoretically I think it was a good decision because we combined all those functions under two different categories one national ministry and the other international ministry.
Speaker 3:It's turned out that since that decision was made to approve most of the recommendations, the people who have been chosen to serve as leaders of those two areas national and international missions unfortunately have not stayed. I have no idea how many different leaders of international missions and national missions have come and gone in the last 14 years. Several way too many. For this to get any traction, the people who lead those two departments need to be people with mission experience, particularly the international mission department. You can't ask somebody who's got no international mission experience to lead international missions. That's crazy. Experience to lead international missions that's crazy. So the fallacy with the implementation of the recommendations of the BRTFSSG is not with respect to the recommendations but with respect to the implementation of those decisions that the Senate and Convention made.
Speaker 3:And oh, by the way, the Senate Inconvention expressed their appreciation to me for that recommendation but for creating that task force by voting me out of office. So that was one of those deals. Where the church body is represented in convention, assembled by whoever is elected collectively as delegates to the convention from around the church body, that's a whole different topic. Anyway, that's my response to your question about the centralization of power.
Speaker 2:It seems like a reasonable thing to do, as long as and I'm just kind of parroting and summarizing what I heard as long as those who are placed in those roles are the right type of mission oriented, healthy, function, team oriented types of because you're going to have to work with a lot of respective teams it's going to require a high level of executive functional skills. And I'll say this I've written about this too the synod president has a lot of authority in who he puts into those respective roles, because the synod president is the one that places those are not voted on roles, right? This is his cabinet, if you will. Right? Yeah, the Synod president has a fair amount of his primary, the way he kind of manages the culture and the structures, the health of the church body at large, is who he puts on respective lists, who gets by his desk onto a number of different teams. And I will say this the list of folks within the wider body of Christ has narrowed in the last 13, 14, 15, 16 years, jerry, and I don't know that we have adequate representation of all of the respective leaders that are within our church body. And again, this is more sociology those that have the more maybe, team-oriented, high, high EQ skills and a mission orientation with a Lutheran foundation. A number and I'm painting with a broad brush here, a number of those brothers and sisters have been systematically removed from lists, and so it's no surprise and I'm just speaking for Tim right here it's no surprise that you I'm just speaking for Tim right here it's no surprise that you're going to have a revolving door of folks at the highest levels until we get the right type of Lutheran into those roles.
Speaker 2:And what has actually happened then is those leaders aren't challenging not necessarily President Harrison per se, but they're not challenging. Hey, we've got, I would hope, let me just. We've got, I would, I would hope, let me just paint it right here. I would hope that our national and international leaders, specifically around the topic of of the national decline, would be like the chief ones who understand where we're at and and what needs to be done, that they're championing, you know, innovation in education and pastoral formation, and I don't, I don't know that that's respectively happening today. So, again, this is a system thing. It's not about one person, but a system of slightly more centralized power has taken place and the lists have become more and more concentrated over time here. So anything more to add on point four.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the point that I really picked in the presentation is the authority that's basically now vested in essentially one person to choose the list from which boards of regents of our Concordia universities must pick their president, the board of reg.
Speaker 3:In a number of cases in the past 10 years the Board of Regents and the faculty and staff and everybody else who's got the authority to nominate people to be president the list with which they've come up has basically been set aside and replaced with a list of people who are favored by what's called the prior approval panel, which is headed by and influenced by the president of the Senate. So basically, boards of regents say these are experienced, smart, intelligent, generous people who volunteer to serve on these boards of regents. But when they're told no, the people that you want to consider for this job are not the right people. You've got to pick from these three, those boards of regents members say why am I serving? Why am I bothering? I'm out of here. So that just dilutes the power, the blessing, the strength of our church body if they're told what to do by one person.
Speaker 2:What would be a better way than centralizing, than having that, because you want the synod president to have a say on who are on those lists. It just doesn't seem to be as collaborative as it could be. Is there anything structurally that you think ought to change to bring more people to the table to generate a broader list? I'm kind of at a loss here, jerry. What do you think you bet?
Speaker 3:Two things. Number one, that prior approval panel should either be required to have a unanimous vote to submit names, because one of the people who's on that panel in every case is the local district president. His vote is basically mooted. So if you make that, you require a unanimous vote of those three. That would help. Or add a fourth person to that list and say you got to have three of those four, but if you don't have three, you really just need two votes, and that's easily accomplished in today's world.
Speaker 2:So this is. You don't hear much about the prior approval panel. This is like one of the first times I've heard about that. I knew there was a list. So who? You're listing three people the president of Senate. Who else is on the prior approval panel?
Speaker 3:The chairman or executive director. I think it's the chairman of the Concordia University system and the local district president. That's the three.
Speaker 2:But there's no respective vote per se when that list kind of comes out. So something happens in a room between them three and there's something that comes out of that we don't know exactly who is supporting or not supporting of those three. Is that fair Theoretically, or is it the Senate office that said sending it on right? The Senate office is the primary one. Who's responsible? The president's office for the prior approval panel? Is that correct?
Speaker 3:I really don't know the answer to that question. I just know that the prior approval panel is supposed to meet and consider the names that are presented to it by the Board of Regents and the faculty and the staff and the congregations who have nominated. All those folks can nominate staff and the congregations who have nominated.
Speaker 3:all those folks can nominate and that list is kind of weaned and narrowed somewhat and presented to the prior approval panel. That panel has to approve the names that are given to it for consideration by the electors, but that prior. So the prior approval panel doesn't do the final election of the president. It simply narrows the field from which the Board of Regents can choose to select a new president Provided for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, that is a recipe. That is a recipe for trust not being built between entities of our synod, to be sure. So that's great. We're going to have to for the sake of time here. This has been a lot of fun and I think a lot of folks wanted to know more detail about those topics, jerry, so thank you for speaking so candidly about them. You list sinful pride. Pride is the root of a lot of our struggle today, but we're going to go past that one. We talked a little bit about six kind of worshiping worship pastors. Unless it's done like this, okay, I'll pause on that one. Any brief comment on worshiping worship, jerry?
Speaker 3:Well, just the idea that some pastors are saying you can't have a worship service without using one of the services that are printed in Lutheran service book as the divine service. Where is that written? In scripture or the confessions? It's not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep, good, we're going to skip over to eight here. Failure to honor and utilize the priesthood of all believers. This is very significant in Lutheran theology and I don't know that we're talking about it as much effectively and that only a pastor, an ordained pastor, can can speak the word effectively.
Speaker 3:And so that's one thing. Second thing is that that our publications, our sentence, are highly focused on ordained clergy. You can't open the Lutheran Witness or the Reporter without seeing a bunch of guys in clerical collars. I used to wear a clerical collar all the time. I'm not against clerical collars. I have many of them.
Speaker 2:I can see it.
Speaker 3:Flood our publications with clerical collars and not focus on some of the other things that the great lay people are doing. I think we just sometimes just ignore the fact that we've got some smart, successful, intelligent people in our churches. I am blown away when I see the vitae of some of these people sitting in the pew whose talents are going unused. My heavenly days. The Lutheran Church in Ethiopia has 11 million people now. Why? Because they're using lay people for crying out loud. They only have a few pastors. They don't have nearly enough pastors to serve all those congregations, but they are doing it and they're doing it faithfully. For God's sake, the lay people need to take over this church body again.
Speaker 2:Tell me how you really think, jerry. I love it. I love it. Yeah, it's so, so true.
Speaker 2:And there's cases in Scripture. For goodness sake, I've heard some seminarians coming out with this hard line in the church there are proclaimers and hearers. They should not be confused. Well, goodness sakes, mary Magdalene at the, go and tell, that's it. Go and tell the apostles. Hold up in fear. They don't listen to her, by the way.
Speaker 2:The spirit starts to flood in the early church and then the first, one of the first proclaimers, after Peter the apostle proclaims, is Stephen, a deacon. For goodness sake, we got rid of them in the synod, though. Right, he's a deacon, he's called to wait on tables and yet he's heard the word. And in the midst of opposition and persecution, he feels compelled to share the word of God. We need the office of holy ministry, but Ephesians 4 has to be centered. Why are we here? Do you equip the saints for love and good deeds? And we've got a number of different types of pastors with a variety of different gifts, and it takes all of them to reach all different types of people. But our primary response, our primary call as pastors, is to equip and release, discover, develop, deploy to send out, to be connected to the release of leaders, to start other churches, et cetera. Like this is our call. We are not called to simply tell people to come and sit and get. We're called to say you've received, now go, as you've heard, so proclaim. So I love that. Obviously, we agree on that one.
Speaker 2:You talk about the reticence and reluctance to recognize the service of women. There are some things going on in Synod which are some trends around women in head coverings. There are some churches and I think they're pretty small. They they may be in different pockets I've not been to one of these churches but where men and women are even being encouraged to kind of separate within, within the congregation, our churches be, jerry, apart from women stepping up and saying not on my watch, is this church going to have this struggle or close or whatever? Not on my watch. Is this part of the ministry that's been about community engagement going to stop? Women have a huge role today in helping our churches be healthy and yet their voice, their voice, is not necessarily heard and maybe even discouraged from being heard in some pockets of synod. Anything else to say around women in service?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I make reference to the prophetess office, the office of prophetess Old Testament, New Testament. Right there, folks, why are we afraid to investigate, to dig into what a prophetess would look like, what a prophetess would do or not do in today's world? What would a prophetess be called? Maybe a different term, but prophetesses were blessed by God in the Old and New Testament. That's one way we could elevate the role of women in our church body appropriately.
Speaker 2:Can you go deeper? So where in the New Testament would you find a prophetess and or a conversation around that office? Anna was a prophetess.
Speaker 3:Deborah was a prophetess, you know. If you want me to go into greater detail, Anna, who's in the temple waiting Yep. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:It'd be more to share. That's good stuff 's right. It'd be more, more to more to share. That's good stuff, all right. Last question We've got a Paul. The three remaining are a policy on sacramental hospitality. I'm going to give you a choice. Which of these three you'd like to close with? We often act like we don't believe there's hell and we've forgotten our mission.
Speaker 3:Which of those which of gotten our mission? Which of those three would you like to close on, jerry? You're hurting me here, man, you're hurting me. We need to talk about all three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let me just say this about Sacramento hospitality. Luther was strong on this, and so was Holy Scripture.
Speaker 3:Let a man examine himself Period. Let a man examine himself period. Rather than giving the pastor the authority to say I'm sorry, you can't go to communion. Today, there are only rare circumstances where a person is living in open and manifest sin that the pastor should exercise that pastoral authority. Other than that, let a man examine himself. A pastor needs to explain to people what's going on in the sacrament during the time that the sacrament is fixing to be celebrated. But the bottom line is it's up to the person to make that decision.
Speaker 3:I want to get to number 12. We seem to have forgotten our mission, and I'll kind of summarize it this way the Constitution of our church body used to have as its number one objective something that's been replaced by what was number two and promote the unity of the true faith, work through its official structure toward fellowship with other Christian church bodies and provide a united defense against schism, sectarianism and heresy. That's number one now. What's number two now that used to be number one is strengthen congregations and their members in giving bold witness by word and deed to the love and work of God, the Father, son and Holy Spirit, and extend that gospel witness into all the world. Which one of those has a mission flavor? It's obvious. It's an offensive not offensive but offensive one. And the one that's number two now, and the other one is defensive we're going to defend the word is used there a united defense against schism, sectarianism and heresy.
Speaker 3:So our church body needs to understand that we are a great commission church we are. Our first reason for existence ought to be to witness to the love and work of God, the Father, son and Holy Spirit to all the world, rather than defending our church. And that's one of the reasons that I'm saying well, I think we've really forgotten our mission and sometimes we believe that there is no hell. Because if we did believe there was a hell, we'd be doing something more than just talking about the Augsburg Confession or talking about well, how can we be sure that our pastors are totally theologically trained with four years of the seminary? And again, I went to the seminary, you went to the seminary. It was a great experience. I wish everybody who becomes a pastor in the Lutheran Church go to the seminary. It's not going to happen in today's culture, so that's it.
Speaker 2:Hey, how did that get flipped? You say LCMS leadership flipped from kind of the strengthening congregations going on bold witness, extending the gospel witness into all the world. And now that's number two. How did that take place? Was that synod leadership? Who made that choice? Or was that in synod and convention?
Speaker 3:That was an amendment to the constitution of the synod, because that's a constitutional article and the constitution was amended. I don't know which convention it was, but it was after I left, it wasn't in 2010. It was after that. And just reverse the order of those top two reasons for the existence of the Synod and that says a lot.
Speaker 2:I don't think I was at. I've been. It does say a lot. I wasn't. I wasn't at that one, I don't think I've been at the last three, but that that is a different flavor to different flavor, to be sure. Are we here for defense or offense? The gates of hell will not stand against the mission of making Christ known through word and sacrament, forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, preaching the gospel so that as many as the Lord will will by the power of the Spirit, would come to saving faith in Jesus. Because the day is short. Jesus is going to come. He's going to separate the sheep and the goats, the wheat from the chaff. And will he find churches and leaders who said we did everything we possibly could by the Spirit's power, to share the gospel winsomely with as many people as possible before that day came? That is our primary focus, especially in a secular, post-christian day and age, a neo-pagan day and age in which people are spiritual but not religious, open to these conversations. Will they find pastors and leaders, lay leaders within the church, eager to have conversations, to be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have? I pray the answer is yes.
Speaker 2:I know this was a provocative. Anytime you kind of. You know, because I write some straightforward things too. Anytime you do that, I know you're taking a relational risk, jerry. I applaud the risk.
Speaker 2:I think we need more honest and frank conversations in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. We need to disagree If there's someone you're like, wow, I listened to this and I don't like what you said, or maybe how you said it. The Lord made me quite quite frank and I know he gave that to you. So if we were overly frank or uncharitable and whatever we said, if someone would like to come and speak in and provide nuance to any of these 12 topics, I know you're eager to have one-on-one, collegial, brother-to-brother conversation, as am I, and I think more of these conversations need to take place in the light rather than in the dark, which is why I welcome anyone that disagrees to reach out to me.
Speaker 2:Tallman, at cjlchurchorg, and would love to have you on as a guest. As we grow up, we grow up, we recognize the reality that is and, uh, we're going up into jesus. This is his church and we're we're just a part of it and trying to be faithful stewards of it in anticipation of his return. Jerry, if people want to reach out to you. How can they do so, brother?
Speaker 3:oh, probably g b k-S at gmailcom, but don't expect a quick answer. I'm still full-time employed with Legacy Deo, helping people make gifts to their church, their school. Contact me at gbjkandlegacydeoorg for help If you really want to help your church open your pocketbook. Do some estate planning, make some significant legacy gifts for your family. To help your church open your pocketbook. Do some estate planning, make some significant legacy gifts for your family and for your church. So the summary I have three slides in that presentation I share with you. Summary slides prayer that this presentation will stimulate prayerful discussion, honest introspection and spirit-led reformation among pastors, church leaders and church members. That leads to renewed growth, health and vitality of the body of Christ in our congregations, institutions and organizations. And I said a few other things about my position. This church body is the church body of my lifetime, baptized in it, confirmed in it, married in it, ordained in it, probably will be buried from it.
Speaker 1:And it's a church body.
Speaker 3:I love and I hate to see it in a state of rapid decline, but that's the reality that we have to identify.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, jerry. I echo all of those sentiments, and this is lead time. Please share this conversation with those who need to be lovingly challenged and encouraged. Anytime there's a problem, jesus is the solution. Getting his gospel into the hearts and ears of people, that's the solution and the spirit lives within us. He's going to give us wisdom as we work together toward this end. It's a good day going Make it a great day. We promise to have other provocative conversations, jesus-centered conversations, just like this one with the one and only Jerry Kieschnick. Thanks so much, brother, it was a good time.
Speaker 3:You're welcome. God bless you, Tim.
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.