How to get there from here. . .

If you paid any attention to the internet worship wars in the Roman Catholic Church, you might think that the barest hint of Latin and an ad Orientem altar stirs up the worst in priests and parishes alike.  Certainly Pope Francis presumes this to be the case.  He is nothing but urgent in his condemnation of priests (and parishes, we expect) who are traditional -- he calls them rigid.  But the reality is that whether you like the Latin Mass or not, the Extraordinary Form is more likely to manifest a vibrant and stable parish.  Maybe the bishop is not so fond of their politics but you can hardly fault their devotion or their support of the faith and traditional worship.

Oddly enough, the same was once fairly common in Missouri.  It was routine to go to district meetings or church conventions or pastoral conferences and hear your ecclesiastical supervisors rail against rigid congregations and pastors wedding to the hymnal, the catechism, and the Confessions.  Of course, they were careful enough not to smear the hymnal or catechism or Confessions directly but I can recall being told that no congregation will grow with the hymnal, that there is no success which does not cater to the diverse worship preferences, and that doctrinal preaching offends or bores people.  There was a time when it was presumed that the most successful LCMS franchises were those who experimented with anything and everything in pursuit of consumer satisfaction.  

Pope Francis may not get it but after a while many DPs in Missouri understood that the best approach was any one that worked to fill the pews and the coffers.  So they also learned to laud what worked -- no matter what that was that worked.  If liturgy, so be it.  If evangelical style seeker worship, that is fine.  The goal is results and the means to results is not so important.  Missional and traditional wars over everything from liturgy to small groups to the use of technology have died down a bit.  As long as it works.  And as long as there are no conflicts in the parish over it.  Perhaps the Roman bishops will learn the same lesson someday.  Who knows?  One might wish that instead of looking only at results we might be also willing to judge how faithful the means to get them.

Whatever works, however, is its own Pandora's box.  Ends justifies the means has never been good for the Gospel.  The most obvious take on this was the threat of death to encourage baptism and the follow through with death after baptism -- as a merciful act to prevent the baptized from taking back his consent to God and the Church.  The more subtle forms of this parade under the banner of adiaphora -- as if the word mean it does not matter as long as it produces results.  It is this kind of hands off results oriented view of things that has promoted the move to online as the equivalent of in person and virtual Communion as if it was just the same as real.  It is this kind of focus that has created the climate where seminaries and the pastoral formation they provide is suspect, expensive, and optional and the better and more economical choice is online education.  I fear that we are being consumed by the idea of being efficient and effective -- both domains of God and not us.  The call of God is to be faithful.  But faithfulness cannot be counted on producing results as quickly as doing what works.  In the end, we may be very effective at building an organization but abject failures as being the Church.  

In the end, Rome may have something else going on under the guise of worship wars and Lutherans may still be fighting them in other ways.  I have never been fond of the characterization of some as missional and some as not and fear that this is a smokescreen.  What endures, however, is not what we build or what we prefer but what is faithful and true -- what God says and does.  If we ever learn this lesson, a lot of ink or digital ink might be saved and we might find more time and energy to focus on what the Lord has said and done.  We can only hope. . .