Thoughts on a milestone. . .

In 1974 I was a student in my junior year of college worried about what was happening to the church body in which I had hoped to serve.  A convention had exposed deep conflict and division.  The premier seminary of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod was a shell of its former self after an exile took students and faculty away.  There was a cloud over everything.  There were enough personality conflicts to fill a stadium and enough bold speeches to fill it with more hot air than anything else.  People were angry, confused, bitter, and suspicious and in the midst of it all I was going to have to choose a seminary.

Underneath the surface were simmering issues that had been kicked like a can down the road and a theological debate that had been hinted at in the past but never fully engaged.  The Synod had grown exponentially during the 1940s-1960s, turning it from a largely Midwestern and rural church body into one increasingly urban and suburban.  The impact of the social movements, racial tumults, a looming presidential crisis, and youth rebellions within the nation had not quite crept into the mainstream of Missouri but they were there.  The slow awakening of a sleepy little church onto a world stage was bringing with it issues and challenges that were only now being realized.  The theological arena across Europe was moving away from an inerrant Scripture and toward a more skeptical view of Bible facts and history.  The Gospel was fast becoming a principle applied to injustice and missions in ways that went beyond the proclamation of the cross and empty tomb.  Some of this was threatening and some was welcome and some was suspect and some was condemned outright.  But not everyone could agree on what was good and what was bad.

Like the Reformation before it, this conflict was over authority and over the authoritative Scripture.  It was the modern challenge of idea that lives outside of fact, the fruit of a Jesus of history largely unknown and the Christ of Scripture somewhat suspect.  It was a battle for the soul of a church body.  Somehow or other I and those like me entering seminary, had to choose sides.  Choose wrongly and it might mean that everything you had prepared for would disappear and even if you chose rightly it would mean the church body in which you served would be deeply affected and somewhat crippled following the outcome.  It did not matter what choice you made, it would cost you friends.  Nobody I knew was outside the fray.  Everyone I knew was stressed to the hilt.  No matter what side you were on, it was a most painful of moments.  

About two hundred of the LCMS’s six thousand congregations left with the 90% of the St. Louis faculty and many of them ended up forming the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.  Others tried for years to live in the never never land between the AELC and the LCMS.  Still others, both parishes and pastors, simply retreated from anything larger than the local needs and concerns of the parish.  Our loss was not simply in those who departed but the climate of the church body that was left.  In the midst of this, the Charismatic Movement was rising up.  The liturgical movement was preparing for new worship forms and hymnals.  Photocopiers were making it possible to depart from anything officially printed.  I wish I could say that we had a happily ever after ending.  We did not.  The battle was won but only that battle.  More battles were to come if we had the stomach for them.

In the end, we did not.  We won the Battle of the Bible and became one of the very few denominations to turn back a liberal tide but we also lost some battles.  Worship became more and more influenced by Evangelicalism and less and less by official hymnals.  Congregations learned how to live under the radar and to practice what they wanted in everything from open communion to catechetical instruction.  We ended up being united in principle over the Scriptures but we continue to be divided over everything from the role of women to liturgical ceremonies to communion practice.  In fact, we are a shell of our former self in size, have closed some of our colleges, struggle to recruit men and women for church work vocations, and struggle to find money to pay for Synod's corporate budget.  Our Synod remains one identity in convention and another in local practice.  Nearly everyone now sees the Synod as a confederation of Districts and congregations rather than the way our life together is codified in our governing documents.  And we act like that as well.  

Of course it was worth it.  No matter the cost, it was worth it to stand for Scripture, for the facts of the faith that inform our doctrine and practice.  But we learned a lesson few of us wanted to learn.  There is no peacetime for the Church Militant.  We are always engaged in one conflict or another.  The gift of our digital age is that the pace of everything moves faster than it did in 1974 and in 1874 and in 474 but you never win the war and must always fight the battle for faithfulness.  The battle lines change but not the cause.  We preserve the faith and must resist the temptation to improve it or adapt it.  We proclaim the Gospel but do not use it as a principle or a core value.  We are always in the crosshairs of a world which has little stomach for a yesterday, today, and forever the same Gospel.  That is why we must have the stomach for it and for the battles that must be fought until Christ comes again in His glory.  Lest we think this is peculiar to us, just look across the landscape of Christianity.  Even Rome finds itself exactly where we were and are.  There is no safe haven or refuge from the constant battles to be faithful.  This much I have learned.