Obviously I have hit a nerve. Let me begin by saying (as I thought was clear in the first post) that I do not have a personal beef with Dr. Dale Meyer. What I do have a beef with is the changing way our Lutheran Church seems to be viewing Lutheran Pastors. I found the fact that a Lutheran seminary faculty was abuzz about a rather nondescript and routine issue of The Lutheran Witness that highlighted Lutheran Pastors to be telling indeed. Clearly, the Office of the Pastoral Ministry is in play in our church body. Witness what I have said before about such things as
- the Wichita recension of Article XVI of the Augsburg Confession which normalized (at least for us) non-ordained serving regularly as ordained...
- the SMP program and the entire view that residential seminary education and the extensive seminary preparation which is our history is too much, too costly, and out of touch with what we want and need in Lutheran Pastors...
- the deacon program(s) in which 6-10 on line courses are enough to set a lay person into the job of Lutheran Pastor -- seemingly permanently in those smaller parishes which are deemed unable to support full-time clergy...
- the fact that we have cheapened up the way we fund seminary education, shifting the whole burden to the Seminaries for fund-raising and the seminarians to bear too much of the burden of its cost...
- the impossible demands placed upon Lutheran Pastors to act more as CEOs, vision casters, program directors, street evangelists, Sunday entertainment hosts, and so many other jobs, callings, duties, and responsibilities that have not a thing to do with Word and Sacrament or the responsibilities conferred upon Pastors by the ordination rite, the rite of installation, and the call documents themselves...
- the open disdain that some DPs in our church have for one seminary as being too rigid, too Lutheran, and too liturgical and that fact that they are on the look out for candidates for the ministry who listen to and do what people desire and want (namely, entertainment worship, progressive practice, loosening of the altar rail, "missional" focus, weak catechesis, non-doctrinal preaching, etc...)...
- who believe that writing and reading an orthodox sermon is just about all they need to do as clergy in a parish...
- or those who make every hill of conflict a hill to die on...
- or those who practice open disdain for the people they have been called to serve...
- or those who always seem themselves as the righteous ones and those who disagree as the unrighteous...
- or those who do a better job of running a purity cult that proclaiming the Gospel...
- or those who treat the ministry as if it were a 9-3 job (the old banker's hours idea)...
- or those who have nothing good to say about their Synod or District or any other Lutheran parish or Lutheran Pastor... And I could go on and on...
Yes, I believe our church body is in the throes of a deep debate and in the midst of a deep divide about whether or not we will remain a distinctively Lutheran Church in preaching, teaching, worship, and practice. Generally, I believe we have a high caliber of people serving us in Synod and District. I do not fault them about intention even when I fault them for direction. I am more positive today than I have been in many years. President Matthew Harrison is doing a very fine job and is the most accessible fellow to occupy the SP Office in a very long time. He has assembled a fine team and the whole transition to a new structure is going much better than I ever imagined. We have District Presidents who are acting as bishops -- that means not only overseeing faithful Lutheran doctrine and practice but modelling it as well. We have two very fine seminaries (though I give the edge to Ft. Wayne)... We have a great publishing house that is putting out new and reprinted resources none of us could have imagined a generation ago... We have people pressing us to be the Lutherans we say we are on every level of the church...
Dale Meyer and Larry Rast are in my prayers. They are in the cross hairs much more than I am -- trying to raise the funds and pay the bills and put faithful Lutheran candidates into places where will serve faithfully. I certainly do not envy them their job. I picked on Dale because I wondered honestly what was going on with the issue of the Concordia Journal and the Meyer Minute. It did not sound like the Dale Meyer I have come to know. I have to believe that these may be the stress cracks in a church whose struggles about what kind of Lutheran Church it will be have put the pressure on the seminaries.
I don't want to repristinate yesterday's Lutheranism. I yearn for no golden age of Lutheranism. I believe that we have great resources in the strong and faithful legacy bequeathed to us. I hope we will have the courage and strength to pass it on to those who come after us. If we spend this much time fussing over a clerical collar, then it shows we are out of sync with our past and in uncharted waters for our future. This is a place we should not be. We have a great history. We have wonderful assets. We have a great future ahead of us. We cannot afford to be isolated or cranky and neither can we afford to be uncertain or embarrassed about our Lutheran identity. This is exactly the time to be faithful to our past and hopeful for our future and to work as hard as we can to re-energize Lutheran parishes and raise up good Lutheran Pastors. If you have a faithful Pastor, let him know it (my own parish humbled me with exactly this only a week ago). If you have a struggling Pastor, encourage him and point him to the resources to help him out. If you have a faithful parish, do not take it for granted but work as hard as you can to keep it faithful and help it prosper. If you have a struggling parish, don't sit on the sidelines and speak against it -- work to make it better.
Wow... I feel better for saying that... I hope you feel better for reading it...
5 comments:
Well said! I agree on every point made here. Especially this statement:"We cannot afford to be isolated or cranky and neither can we afford to be uncertain or embarrassed about our Lutheran identity. This is exactly the time to be faithful to our past and hopeful for our future and to work as hard as we can to re-energize Lutheran parishes and raise up good Lutheran Pastors." It seems that many of our pastors are making light of doctrine and skimming the surface because they don't want to get too deep into it because they are afraid it will be more than the people can understand.
I know one DELTO pastor who is a blessing to the church and an excellent pastor. I also know an SMP pastor that shouldn't be a Lutheran Pastor because he doesn't have a clue what good doctrine is. The SMP route to ordination should be discontinued as soon as possible.
I also believe that President Harrison is doing all he can to call the church back to faithful doctrine and practice. I also think he knows that it cannot be done in a day and it probably cannot be done without some house cleaning. Some of those who are blatantly preaching heresy (Matthew Becker comes to mind) need to be cleaned out to stop the infection (so to speak). We cannot continue to allow pastors to continuously preach and teach against their own ordination vows.
There is no pastoral shortage. District presidents use SMP programs to bypass the synod and the seminaries.
SMP pastors are not learning doctrine. They are learning how to preach from the same worship and study materials promoted by Saddleback and Willow Creek.
How do you shut down the SMP program? Won't the district presidents prevent this from happening?
"How do you shut down the SMP program?"
The SMP program was established by the Synod Convention, and could be "shut down" only by that body. If the votes were there to do so, I don't think the district presidents could stop it; but I think there are more people than the DPs in the LCMS who have an interest in seeing the SMP program (and other "lite" routes to ordination) continue.
Quote: There is no pastoral shortage.
But there will be. A few months ago Pr Peters gave us the stats to show that 40% of all active clergy in the LCMS are over the age of 50 with the highest concentration in 60-65 and 55-60.
Take away the "SMP is much cheaper and therefore the preferred route to ordination" argument. Follow the money trail. IF it were possible to train an LCMS pastor without burying him in $80,000 in student loan debt, then maybe........
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