Embracing the complexities of modern ministry, Pastor Joe Beran joins us to dissect the vibrant landscape of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, specifically the feedback on his provocative book, "The Ends of the LCMS." His insights reveal a ministry striving to stay relevant amidst an ever-evolving culture, as ministers resonate with his candid observations while raising thoughtful critiques. We navigate through the treacherous waters of reactive church strategies and the quest for proactive engagement in a society that seems to be drifting further from traditional Christian values.
Trading the familiarity of the Midwest for the cultural mosaic of Southern California, my own journey echoes the adaptability and resilience required to minister effectively in such a diverse region. Pastor Beran and I explore the surprising spiritual curiosity found in Californians, the necessity of initiating Spanish worship services, and the strategic approaches to bolster biblical literacy. This conversation unveils the profound shifts in church leadership necessary to meet the spiritual needs of a community rich in cultural and linguistic variety.
As we wrap up, the focus shifts to the delicate balance of roles within the church community. We discuss the risks of overemphasizing pastoral roles, advocating for collaborative leadership that leverages the myriad of gifts present in the church body. Pastor Beran and I ponder the merits of fewer, more vibrant congregations over a multitude of struggling ones, and we conclude with a heartfelt invitation for leaders to unite under initiatives like the Unite Leadership Collective. It's a call to forge ahead with innovation, while firmly rooted in biblical doctrine, to face the challenges of ministry with grace and tenacity.
Visit uniteleadership.org
Embracing the complexities of modern ministry, Pastor Joe Beran joins us to dissect the vibrant landscape of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, specifically the feedback on his provocative book, "The Ends of the LCMS." His insights reveal a ministry striving to stay relevant amidst an ever-evolving culture, as ministers resonate with his candid observations while raising thoughtful critiques. We navigate through the treacherous waters of reactive church strategies and the quest for proactive engagement in a society that seems to be drifting further from traditional Christian values.
Trading the familiarity of the Midwest for the cultural mosaic of Southern California, my own journey echoes the adaptability and resilience required to minister effectively in such a diverse region. Pastor Beran and I explore the surprising spiritual curiosity found in Californians, the necessity of initiating Spanish worship services, and the strategic approaches to bolster biblical literacy. This conversation unveils the profound shifts in church leadership necessary to meet the spiritual needs of a community rich in cultural and linguistic variety.
As we wrap up, the focus shifts to the delicate balance of roles within the church community. We discuss the risks of overemphasizing pastoral roles, advocating for collaborative leadership that leverages the myriad of gifts present in the church body. Pastor Beran and I ponder the merits of fewer, more vibrant congregations over a multitude of struggling ones, and we conclude with a heartfelt invitation for leaders to unite under initiatives like the Unite Leadership Collective. It's a call to forge ahead with innovation, while firmly rooted in biblical doctrine, to face the challenges of ministry with grace and tenacity.
Visit uniteleadership.org
This is Lead Time. Welcome to Lead Time. A hot topic Friday. I pray you're buckled up and ready for an awesome conversation with one of my favorite people on planet Earth, pastor Joe Barron, the author of the Ends, not the End, the Ends, the Goals, the Outcomes of the LCMS. So today, here's the drill. We're going to jump right into it. We got three questions and those questions are mostly oriented around that book and we would encourage you to pick it up. We'll talk about that a little bit later, how you can get it, but it's the Ends of the LCMS.
Speaker 1:Three topics. And when we say hot topic, that doesn't necessarily mean it's super salacious or controversial or anything like that. Joe was just telling me I'm grateful you didn't bring up Concordia Ann Arbor. So if you're looking to talk about Concordia Ann Arbor, this is not the podcast for you, maybe another day. So we're talking with Joe around the book and I'm going to start the clock. Three topics, 10 minutes each. Start the clock now. All right, here we go. What are your top three points of feedback, joe, that you've received from the book? Either positive and negative. Anytime you put something out like a book for folks to grab, they can go to Amazon. They can grab it. You can get critiques. So what are those points of feedback you've received, bro, and I'm proud of you for putting it out.
Speaker 2:Oh thanks, man. The feedback I've got has been overwhelmingly pretty positive. I've had a lot of people that have kind of given me feedback that says, man, this hits close to home or this is something that I've kind of been experiencing or feeling in ministry. But it's good to actually see like concrete data behind it and to actually know, no, this is kind of why this is occurring. So I've gotten some good feedback saying, wow, this hits close to home.
Speaker 2:I've had a few circuits that have actually reached out and that have said our pastors we did it. For our circuit, winkle, we did kind of a book discussion around it. We found it to be really valuable that way and so that that was pretty cool to hear. There's been some feedback of like pastors having good, active discussions, which is really my hope for the book that it could at least start some conversations on what we're comfortable and not comfortable doing. The largest negative feedback that I've gotten for the book has been kind of this mentality that says I agree with your diagnosis, I agree with this whole post-Christian reality that we're in. I just don't like talking about the prescriptions. I'm not comfortable or on the same page with you about the prescriptions. So, for example, one dialogue that really got put in front of me that I hadn't considered as much of in the book is like hey, what about CRM pastors? Right, we have a bunch of CRM pastors. I don't know the number or the stat behind that, but it's like could that fill some?
Speaker 1:of the gap. What is a CRM pastor for folks who don't know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so it's oh, I should know the acronym better Call reserved for ministry or call kind of pending ideas. So sometimes with CRM it's guys who maybe they're going more into studies for a season so they're going to step back from the ministry or maybe they're going into chaplaincy or something like that. But other times it's guys who maybe they've stepped out of a call in the past and they're just kind of waiting for another call that way.
Speaker 1:They're still on the roster, they're still on the roster, right.
Speaker 2:Right, they're still rostered member of Synod that way. Just kind of how many are in that category? I don't know that. I tried to do some quick Googling before this to check, after having some dialogue with people about that. I don't know the full number, but it's something I really hadn't considered. It's totally worth kind of looking into and thinking on.
Speaker 2:The other thing that is pretty important, though, is, like I tried to kind of design the book in such a way where, uh, kind of similar to so like the big if you've ever haven't read the book, the big metaphor I use is my rheumatoid arthritis and like, just like when you get a diagnosis, there's different treatment options. Like, so the same thing, like one of the options that I can do in the diagnosis for my RA is I can say you know what I'm going to just keep doing everything I've always been doing and I'm going to pray that God changes things and makes me well, and that's an option. So is, you know, changing diet and exercise. So is getting on prescriptions. You can go into really heavy prescriptions, you can go into light prescriptions. There's all sorts of options. The question is, just what do we want to choose?
Speaker 1:So so yeah, let's go deeper into that. I think one of the struggles right now is I don't necessarily see a lot of treatment options being tried Like we don't necessarily live in a climate Now. Districts are different. The vision of the district say the Texas district and kind of church planning, and I'm in the PSD and we've got 100, as are you 110 kind of a vision, but I don't necessarily I mean the vision in a Midwest district and again, I'm not there with those district presidents Maybe, hey, we have 100 churches that we need to revitalize. I'm just throwing something out there.
Speaker 1:And we want to see.
Speaker 1:We want to see, you know, congregations that worship 50 kind of move to 80, toward the ability to even afford a full-time.
Speaker 1:I don't know what the vision is, I just don't know that we live in a climate right now I would okay, I'll put it this way we're more, it appears, we're more reactive, and whenever you get on your reactive perspective, that means your defense mechanisms kind of move up your fight flight response and then we end up arguing rather than, rather than releasing and and trusting. That appears to be, and we're not. We're not in a climate right now, joe, where we're running a test, observing the tests, and they could be on a whole host of issues Church worker wellness, it could be on releasing lay leaders for works of many others. We're just not in a culture right now in the LCMS, where we're running a lot of tests, it's more of a fear-based rather than a creativity-based culture, and the fear is not of one another per se, but the fear is we're losing ground collectively and confessional Lutheranism is no longer kind of in vogue. You could have a debate whether it was ever kind of in vogue, but any kind of responses to that.
Speaker 2:We got five more minutes left on this topic, joe, I would say a few different responses. I love the test response because if you think, historically, some of our biggest, like some of our coolest things have been tests that we've ran Right. So I think if you go back to like the 1950s, 60s, when I post World War Two, lutheranism really like the LCMS and Lutheranism really starts to boom. One of the largest reasons behind that is because we said, hey, we're going to run an experiment and it was successful, and we kept on putting more and more into it, of investing in radio waves right, of saying like we're going to invest really heavy as a church body into the Lutheran hour and having people get to hear the message of the gospel that way. I think I don't know that I don't. I think sometimes a fear-based culture thing is. Might be it, but I think I disagree with you a little bit in that I think sometimes as a leader, you just don't know what do I do?
Speaker 3:What would the test even be?
Speaker 2:What can I do? And you have all sorts of different people that you're answering to and it just feels really busy. So I don't know that. It's always a fear-based culture.
Speaker 1:I think sometimes it's.
Speaker 2:What do we do?
Speaker 1:The two base emotions, joe negative, are pride and fear. Everything circles in those buckets and so, even when you are in that place of I don't know what to do, the base emotion locally how are we going to make this happen is fear of things not going right. So I'm not talking. Fear like, oh, someone from on high is going to do something to me if I run a test is going to like, do something to me if I run a test. That is still a fear response that keeps us from running tests when we do not have advisors, people around us who are dreaming with us to identify the problem and offer creative solutions.
Speaker 1:And I've been privileged to walk alongside a number of pastors in smaller churches and it's hard, man, when there's this awareness man, the church used to look like this and can we go back to that? It takes a lot of courage. I'm praying for more elders and, you know, spiritual mothers to come alongside the it could be an older pastor, younger pastor, whatever and just say hey, we're here with you and we would love to be on your team to help dream. Help help dream about how our, our congregation, engages our community in these crazy times in which we live. Thoughts there, joe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I totally agree. I um, so our just, we've talked a little bit with some district people about like cause, revitalization versus planting is one of the conversations right now of why are we putting investments into starting new churches when we have perfectly good churches that maybe we could just focus on revitalization efforts? Toward the phrase that I've heard before and I think there's a little data to bear this out, but I don't, actually I wouldn't fully know where to look is it's easier to start something new than to bring something back to life? Because a lot of times when you're working with an established congregation, the mentality is kind of oh man, look at how it used to be. You have opinion leaders that feel like, man, this is my church you can think of, you know how much we invested into this, that or the other, as opposed to when you were like truly starting something new.
Speaker 2:It's everyone in this very collaborative like all right, you know, we're starting from the beginning, from scratch, let's start something. It's a very different ground that way. But yeah, it's a different sort of a mentality, of a collaboration start. So it's not to say revitalization can't be done. It can be done, it's awesome. But I think the I think there's a little bit out there that points to planting being promising for that reason which sounds weird because you're like don't we have enough churches? Like in some places you see a church on like every street corner. But it's, it's a shift of mentality.
Speaker 1:So and those churches that are in need of revitalization. I've seen this over and over again, not only in my life in ministry but in the life of others. Working with the willing to start a new expression of the body of Christ, while not killing, you know, radically changing the current expression, that has a big impact. If we get up and outside of ourselves, if we go and serve. Because La Mesa in our story was so catalytic for Christ Greenfield being able to dream new dreams.
Speaker 1:What La Mesa did for us as a culture moved us to say, hey, we can dream new dreams about changing our school, helping our school grow, and you got to see some of those early years when you were here as a vicar Joe like La Mesa really really got us to the balcony. That's a good way to think about it. It got us to the balcony so we could look at the lay of the land and use our left prefrontal cortex to dream new dreams about. You know, christ Greenfield doesn't have to remain stuck. The church and the school don't have to stay divided. There's hope and that is the fuel, isn't it? Joy connected to hope for the future. So new things in in current things go ahead.
Speaker 2:If your listeners don't know what La Mesa is, it's an awesome ministry meal with and alongside the poor and working homeless and then worship afterward. And it started a little bit small but really just started to organically grow over the years to the point where it's like, okay, now you pretty much have this congregation of like the church and the poor and working homeless people regularly worshiping together. It's awesome and it's so cool to see it happen.
Speaker 1:So Lamesaministriesorg if you want to check that out. So we went 20 seconds over, Joe. Okay, it's all right, it's such a good topic, it's okay, it's okay. Second topic what does the average person not know about doing ministry in Southern California? And the reason I ask that there can be all these kind of caricatures All the liberals are in Southern California and, oh you know, they're falling into the ocean and all these immigrants everybody's hanging out. It's the land of fruits and nuts right.
Speaker 1:The land of fruits and nuts, to be sure. So what do they not know about doing ministry there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, california is interesting. So the way that I kind of raise it to people is so I grew up in the Midwest, I grew up in Nebraska, lincoln, nebraska, and growing up in Lincoln, nebraska, in you know, the 2000s. If you talk to people about Christianity and Jesus and in kind of an evangelistic way, you usually get three different responses. One is like, oh, I'm a Christian, I go to church every Sunday, I'm already involved, stuff like that. The other is like, oh, yeah, we go to church every Christmas and Easter and you know some opportunity to discuss more there. And then the third is like it was like a lot of like I can't stand the church, like I am tired of being surrounded by this. I can't stand this Shut up about the Jesus stuff in telling me what to do.
Speaker 2:What's interesting about California is I did not get. I expected that I was going to get a lot, because I grew up with, when you talk with people about Jesus or am going to be pastor stuff like that, that you get some of that Like I can't stand the church and I'm tired of hearing about people talk about the church thing. But there's a lot of, I would say, spiritual curiosity and people are open to spiritual conversations here until you start to get very specific about the gospel and Jesus. Right, it's like very spiritual.
Speaker 3:Oh, you're a pastor. That's really interesting.
Speaker 2:Tell me about that. Um, until you really get like specific to to Jesus and things like that. So that was really interesting to me. Uh, coming out here, um, there's a lot of pluralism out here, tons of different cultures and people like, just as a reminder, I said this on blog posts or, if you guys want, in LA County, where I live, the population is bigger than 40 of the States in the United States. That's just LA County, okay.
Speaker 2:And the reason I read that, like there's, just a lot of people, a lot of cultures and with that like like don't don't get me wrong the Lutherans out here, a lot of the Lutherans we have out here, like they're still Lutheran through and through man, like they host a great potluck.
Speaker 2:They don't like change. You know all the all the Lutheran through and through stereotypes. But you have to recognize, I think, as a pastor out here and you're preaching and teaching and what you do, you can't take things for granted. You can't just kind of allude to David and assume that people are going to know who David is. You can't allude to kind of like Christian jargon without unpacking like no, no, no, this is what grace is, this is what faith is, this is what sin is, because it's not always kind of fully understood by people and so it affects the way you kind of preach and teach and talk about things that way. And then the other thing that's been really interesting out here is the amount of people that I've run into that are like wait, you're just a pastor, like you're not like a pastor and an Uber driver, or like a just you know like a pastor and like something else Like you.
Speaker 2:just what do you do? What does it mean that you're a pastor that way? And so there's a lot of times to people I'm just kind of explaining like what a pastor is, what a pastor does. So those are the other three things.
Speaker 1:What do you tell them? I'd love to hear your inform us here what do you tell them, Because I think that's a regular question. I don't care if you're in SoCal or Phoenix or wherever, but yeah, how I talked to my Mormon brothers, right, and they're like you, what Like we don't pay anybody to do any of those things, which their leadership development model is quite fascinating. So yeah, what's your kind of little elevator pitch when someone asks you that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the way I like to think of it is the church, like any organization, has to run right and so, like the pastor had me is doing a lot. I'm gonna be preaching on the word, I'm gonna be teaching people about Jesus, I'm gonna be having, you know, a lot of discipleship opportunities, and then you know you have a lot of shut ins that you're going to be visiting and working with others to make sure those things happen. So there's like that aspect of it, but then the other aspect of it, the church, like any other organization like, has to run, which means that, like, you are leading an organization, but that organization is pretty much entirely volunteers, and so you are trying to work with people's schedules, you're trying to figure out how to like manage all sorts of those things, and so, like any organization, there's a lot of kind of people interaction that way as well, combined with all sorts of counseling and things like that as well. So that's kind of the short end of how I talk to them about it.
Speaker 1:It's definitely a full-time job for those who want to do it well, for those who want to discover, develop and deploy lay leaders who are actively caring about the vision of the congregation in that area. So that's so, so good. Let's go a little bit deeper in terms of what you think it's going to take. You know what is. What is the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod footprint? Look like in LA County, for instance, if we're going to start, if we're going to start to grow and have a community impact and I'm thinking here specifically- cross-culturally.
Speaker 2:It's going to be very challenging if you use um, like, just very like, gringo, white, well-educated guys because you like, the reality is it's very, very diverse in terms of population and, uh, especially because you have a lot of you know, first, second generation immigrants here who, by and large, will generally speak, uh, the, the language of you know, or whatever country they're from, whether it be you know they're speaking Spanish or Vietnamese or Korean. And so if you want to reach LA County, you're going to need to, in mass, start to really empower people that can speak and teach and are well theologically educated, that are from those cultures, right. So, just for something that's been on my heart right now is over, like, I will often kind of pray, walk around in the neighborhoods and, you know, sometimes we'll come across people and I'll talk with them. You know, hey, how can I be praying for you?
Speaker 2:And over the years here I've had a few different times where I'll talk with people and they speak Spanish. I speak like a dangerously small amount of Spanish, like just enough to fake it, but almost every time this has happened like two or three times. This way, after we're done talking, the first question out of their mouth is do you have a Spanish speaking worship service? And I, no, I don't, right. And and this has happened a few different times now and over the years, and then finally post COVID, I had a workshop here it happened again, where we had two of our deacons that were out kind of in the community praying and prayed for some people that way. And it's happened again of, like man, do you guys have a Spanish speaking worship service? Just kind of opened my eyes to like, all right, I got to start something I can't like. How many times have you ever had people beg you for a worship service? You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:It's like it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a rare thing, but yeah, there's, so there's the need is there? The question is just how do we empower people that know the culture, know the language and are part of the community that?
Speaker 1:way. So listeners want to know have you started the Spanish service, joe I?
Speaker 2:listen, I, I, I'm, uh, I'm actually gathering the launch team. I preached on it, just like this last week, where I'm like, hey, I want to start a launch team, so I'm getting a team together and uh yeah.
Speaker 1:Proud of you, dude. That's awesome. Um, you talked about biblical literacy being low. I think this is something many of us are struggling with. In the last couple minutes here of this segment, um, talk about what you're doing to increase biblical literacy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, uh, part of it is a catechesis thing. So it's like in studies and things that we do, like we're going to go slow and make sure we're unpacking the wider story of scripture as we're doing it Like it's it's so, like on our kind of weekly Bible study nights, we've been walking the ones I'm leading we're walking through the book of Acts and like we've been doing it for months. Why? Because we want to actually make sure that every time we're referencing something, we're saying like hey, this goes back to this old Testament story, let's look at it. Hey, this goes back to the life of Jesus here, let's look at it to make sure people get the whole narrative of scripture.
Speaker 2:But even in preaching as well, I'm never going to take anything for granted. So almost every time I preach if I'm, you know, especially like preaching out of the lectionary, right, so if I'm preaching, you know, ascension, okay, where is this? Oh, this is an ax. Okay, where is this an ax? Oh, it's in ax one. Well, why is that significant? Well, ax is the follow up to Luke's God. Right, you're kind of making sure that people know this isn't just a random, you know, fragment. This is where this is in the context of scripture, and this is why this is important. This is why you should understand the book this way. So, uh, yeah, I think that is really helpful, because even even in our Christian culture, there's a lot of Christians that, um, treat the Bible kind of like a holy book, just written for me personally, instead of recognizing that there's 66 books, word of God that all point to Jesus. Right, it's not just for you, it's all pointing to Jesus, and so the more you can frame things around that light, the better. When you mentioned story.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, how do you tell? How do you tell the biblical story to someone who just says make sense of the 66 books for me. What do you say? 30 seconds. You got 30 seconds.
Speaker 2:I mean the easy one to go through. You know it right. It's talking about the creation, god's making of everything. It was good, right, going into the fall of Genesis 3, man's sin and rebellion against God. That just kind of that continues on from there going to redemption in the life of Jesus, god entering into his creation, taking on flesh, taking our place, dying for the sake of our sins so that we could be forgiven and restoration, looking for the day where things are back to the way that they were in the beginning and perfect and good again. I mean that's. I appreciate you guys have gone over that on the podcast before. You did that.
Speaker 1:You did that, yeah yeah, yeah, I mean you did that in, like we went like five seconds over there, joe, that was so, so good. No, no, no, we almost hit it. I mean I love the story so much that it's on my arm for my golf friends to talk them through. Yeah, creation, rebellion, promise, redemption, christ, christ crucified, risen, the age of the church, the promise that Jesus will come back again and we're called to make him known. Until he does, that is, we must be able to talk about that story in Holy Spirit-inspired segments and it's even, I've found in preaching, really, really helpful to refer to, even if just in passing. The 32nd, just hey, this is why this story matters. Right, this is where this story in the book of Acts sits. Now we've gone way over, joe, but yeah, go ahead. Takeaway from going through.
Speaker 2:Acts is just how often Paul is hyper-intentional based off the audience that he's speaking to, right. So if he's speaking to pagans, you don't see him run to the law in the Old Testament. You see him look to what the pagans are are like talking about, or you see him to like like he's praying for people. So last night we were in, you know, finishing up acts 28 and it's like like his first like act of evangelism is first he's gathering sticks and fireworks for the fire gets bit by a snake, which you think about. That it's crazy that you know god would have to get bit by a snake after the shipwreck and everything else. But ultimately, like God must hate you because you got bit by the snake.
Speaker 2:But his second major act of like evangelism there is like he goes to the head of the tribe's father and prays for him that he would be healed. And it's so interesting that it's like for Paul, sometimes it's just praying with and for people, other times it's proclaiming the gospel in a way that they would understand, given their own kind of context of where they're at. But it's it's interesting to see how, like his tone kind of shifts depending on who he's talking to and what he does right. If he's going somewhere Jewish, he's going to have his guys circumcised, even though we just had a big debate about how they don't need to be circumcised, why he doesn't want to create a stumbling block. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, context matters. I remember in hom classes, homiletics, preaching classes, hearing about context and all that, and it's like, yeah, but no, it really really matters. So good stuff, all right. Final one 10 seconds. Start the clock now. Adam, who's producing this? You're getting frustrated with me and Joe, but it doesn't matter, I wasn't going to cut you off when you're talking about Paul and Axe, give me a break, all right. All in acts Give me a break, all right. Question three this is probably the most provocative. You and I have had a lot of conversation around this. Does the LCMS need more pathways to ordination?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Does the?
Speaker 1:LCMS need more pathways to ordination. Why or why not? And what are the primary arguments you hear from those who say no, we don't need more pathways? Go ahead, joe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll give. I'll give three kind of responses that I think are pretty charitable to people that disagree with me. If you don't think they're charitable, reach out to me. Dude, I'm a human being and I love to hear from you. I actually earlier I don't know if I mentioned I had I've had one or two people that like disagree with my book sent me an email.
Speaker 2:We had a talked about this so much. I honestly don't think we need to beat it over the head with a hammer is how do we make sure the quality of these pastors ensures both confessional fidelity to who we are as Lutherans in our confessions, and also pastors that are theologically, educationally, very robust? It's kind of that question of quality that you literally just had the Kairos leader on recently and, like you know, yeah, we don't need to go down that one as much. The second one that I've heard is if you are not willing to sacrifice and move for the sake of ministry, maybe you're not cut out for ministry, Right? They've got no tuition nowadays, so cost isn't prohibitive, so what more could you want?
Speaker 2:I kind of personally have a couple different responses to that.
Speaker 2:First off, it's just because you're not alternative route doesn't mean you're sacrificing, right, Like we have guys in the LA County area that are better bivocational, going through the SMP process, that are working like two jobs.
Speaker 2:Right, they're driving Ubers so they have enough money, have another job on top of that. They're shepherding a church of like 20 to 30 people and they're taking classes to be a pastor. And it's crazy because, like, compare that to me who, like my sacrifice was after college and one of the most easily flexible seasons of my life, I moved to St Louis. Right, it's like I don't think we need to play the sacrifice comparison game to just see who's going to martyr themselves the most, because you just get to a really weird, maybe unhealthy place. And the other thing that's hard is, a lot of times you kind of can easily pull and rob these pastors from the context where they're doing effective ministry, which can kind of sabotage things, that you need some sort of okay, what are we going to do about that sort of a gap? So for the second one, that's what I would say you have any follow up on that that you would say to hey, maybe if you're not willing to sacrifice, you're not cut out for it.
Speaker 1:Well, when Jesus called the apostles, you know and pick up your cross and fall after me. This was actually after two years. This was a later. This is something that's been hitting me. This is roughly two years into Jesus ministry with the apostles. He's called them to come and follow, learn his ways. They've witnessed the miracles, they've even been sent out, but it's all heading to a point, which is the cross for Jesus. They're all going to leave and then he's going to model for them what sacrificial, servant-oriented leadership looks like.
Speaker 1:But it was a longer go, a longer go, and the call was not. It's not apples to apples here. Like Jesus is a rabbi, a Jewish rabbi. The training is mentorship, it's apprenticeship, it's not institutional sending. So it's not one to one here. And the call then is this is probably the more provocative question Do you think Jesus only called the apostles so that they would be the doers of ministry, or do you think he called them in such a way that they would go and develop other people, who would develop other people who, based on their varying gifts, would all follow after Jesus and pick up their cross and follow after him? I think we can have this overemphasis on the office of pastor. Unless pastor does it, says it. Pastor, you go, pick up your cross and die. I'm here to watch you die. That's not the call of Jesus. It's for all of the baptized in their various vocations to follow after Christ and discipleship. So any thoughts to that, joe?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree that we kind of have a precedent for more pastors as doers within the church and I just talking with pastors, I think sometimes that can easily lead to places of frustration or burnout or just overwhelm of like man. I feel like I don't have enough hours in the week. I'm away from my family because a lot of times when I can, you know, meet with people to counsel, visit, do those sorts of things, are times when my family's actually home. So there's. I think that can be a difficult thing and that's where empowering and figuring out kind of giftedness within the body of Christ is really important for us as followers of Jesus. For going back to the, if you're not willing to sacrifice and move for the sake of ministry. It's interesting because you look at Paul's model of starting and planting churches and like those guys weren't called to move for the sake of ministry. It was no, you're the shepherd of this church, man, you're the guy.
Speaker 1:So I mean, yeah, it was very different. The book of Acts is not prescriptive, it's descriptive of what God did.
Speaker 2:right, I literally would have everyone in my Bible study say this every single week, because when you treat it as prescription, you get to really weird places. And that's not when Luke is writing this. He's not saying oh, here, theophilus, is how the church should act. It's hey. Here's an account of all that was going on with the early church.
Speaker 1:And one model that could be worth exploring are having, I would say, apostolic bent, and I use this very loosely those that are blessed to train up other pastors. They've been in the trenches and they're sent out with the calling 2 Timothy 2, 2, to identify other men who can identify other men who can teach. But let's be honest, in that story most of them were found locally. And then Paul and Barnabas, paul and Silas would move after a certain period of time, after investing in the church, and naturally some leaders start to rise up over time and then they need move, they need move on.
Speaker 1:We haven't had like the pastor circuit rider model engaged in the Western church, and I'm not saying we should, again, it's it's descriptive, it's not prescriptive. It could be something that you start to test. I'm just getting super practical here here. Could we look at the mission executives in all of our districts and have them have a stronger role in identifying the pockets of grace and movement and kind of the culture of a respective circuit and then be connected to them more as they start to, yes, work toward revitalization and work toward starting new churches? It's something we could explore. There are so many tests.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's one last one that gets put in front of me, we got three minutes, three minutes.
Speaker 2:It really blind spotted me which is people that have said, hey, we don't need more pastors, we need fewer churches, and not from a mentality of like you know, I hope churches die, but from a mentality of and this is, like, I think, part of the reason why it surprised me. I'll explain it this way. It's like between where I'm at and where the nearest LCMS church is in LA County, there is like tens and tens and tens and tens and tens of thousands of people. Right, there's a lot of people that don't know Jesus.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people that you know like there's a lot of opportunity there, but where you go to a lot of places kind of maybe more rural, midwest-y, smaller towns that are getting a little bit smaller, and you know, or even sometimes, driving around, you know urban St Louis, and it's like you go every, you know every block, every other block, and you see an LCMS church and there's, you know, maybe potentially an oversaturation. So it's one of those, like, because of my context, I didn't really see that as much I'm grateful for the brothers who pointed that out to me. I would say this I would say, just because it might be the case that we need more collaboration or we need churches to work together or partner together or to unify or something, doesn't mean we need fewer pastors, right. I don't think the opposite is the case that way, and the reason why is because, okay, so right now we're at a point where you know about 10% of our churches don't have a pastor. You have like another 10% on top of that. That it's. You know, maybe somebody's retired by vocation or whatever.
Speaker 2:If it's one in 10 that way, right, we already have this gap that we don't have enough guys that we're supplying to fill that gap.
Speaker 2:And then, on top of that, if you do have people that are like man I'm like my church is growing to the point where I'm praying about starting something new, or I want to start a church plant or do something creative. That way, like I got an email from a guy the other day who's like man I am struggling a little bit because if you want to be a church planter, church starter guy, you need to be pretty entrepreneurial but very theologically astute and robust, and finding somebody like that is really really hard. And they're just like what do I do? Because I'm having trouble finding somebody like that. And so it's like I don't think that just because we need more collaboration and unity among churches and we need churches to work together or to try and unify, doesn't mean we are fine where we're at in terms of how many pastors we have, especially because we're failing to see the opportunity right. As humans, we're like hardwired for threat detection. We fail to see opportunity in front of us a lot of times.
Speaker 1:Remarkably diverse. So I don't know. I don't know and I'm going to make a general statement here I don't know that a lot of our Midwest district presidents understand the great need that is present amongst so many different populations and cultures and contexts on the coast. We need to run more tests on the coast in partnership with faithful district presidents and, obviously, faithful circuit visitors and pastors. To be sure and I can give you in your context in St Louis, maybe, yeah, you don't need more pastors because you need to reposition the assets. That's the real conversation. Are those assets going to stay in that area and do creative things to raise up leaders, to start new ministries, to reach people with the gospel? Because still in St Louis I've talked to those that live in St Louis there's still ample opportunity there to reach people with the gospel, like, oh my goodness, it's quite fascinating. I've talked to those that live in St Louis. There's still ample opportunity there to reach people with the gospel, like, oh my goodness, it's quite fascinating. So this has been so much fun, joe.
Speaker 1:I could have gone down a number of different rabbit trails. We stayed mostly within our limits. I think we went over to Stisk. It's okay, we live under grace, not under the law. We just yeah, this is a beautiful thing. We have freedom. We have freedom to have podcasts that go a couple three minutes over. It's just fine. If people want to connect with you, joe, how can they do so?
Speaker 2:uh, just joebarron at gmailcom be the easiest way. Connect that way, joebarron. A lot of social media stuff. I don't know how productive it is so me neither.
Speaker 1:Let's go. Let's go face to face and again, if we've said something you're like, hey, I take issue with that, we'll move you right to the top of the podcast list If you want to come on and have Jesus centered conversations with us. We need one another, we need diverse perspectives, we need to have iron, sharpening iron. That's not a pleasant thing, it is a hard thing. It is a hard thing, but I pray for more courageous leaders who can say based on scripture and the confessions this is where I see there's some opportunity for growth and we will speak to one another with kindness and charity, putting the best construction, not wanting to do anything that would demean the name of Christ or the Christian church. As people watch us, may they see a people who love and care and show kindness to one another and disagree agreeably. This is one of the main reasons this Lead Time podcast exists. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. You rock, joe. Proud of you, bro.
Speaker 3:Thank you. 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.