All church politics is local. . .

More and more I have come to the belief that the axiom for politics is also true of church politics.  Everything is local.  Issues have a way of manifesting themselves less upon the larger context and more typically on the local.  Take, for example, the issue of worship style.  The point so often made is that worship style is a local choice and, since it is adiaphora, whatever works locally is or ought to be fine for the rest of the body.  I do not know of many advocates of contemporary Christian music and evangelical style worship who would insist that this is the only way it ought to be.  Liturgical types will say that.  The hand clappers won't.  You can stick with your hymnal if you want to but that won't work here.  The freedom sought is the freedom to choose what works locally even over liturgical and confessional identity.  That won't pass muster here.  Again, the point is that Lutherans, especially Missourians, ought to be free to do what works locally while holding officially to the doctrinal standard of our constitution and confessing the creeds (albeit seldom).  In order to meet people and win them over for Jesus, we need the freedom to do what works locally.  Or so it is said.  And done.

Another example is name.  A goodly number of larger contemporary worship and music style congregations have jettisoned the name Lutheran.  For that matter, so have Baptists, Presbyterians, and a host of others but they are not my concern.  My concern is Lutherans and particularly the Missouri ones.  So if local option says identifying as Lutheran is not going to make grade here, then we should be free to call ourselves what we want for the sake of our ministry and our success in that ministry.  Only an ogre would say "no" -- or so it would seem.  It is such a little thing.  Let them do what works for them.  Along with this is the congregational structure.  Some actually have called workers who serve at the discretion of the Senior Pastor.  He can hire and fire pretty much at will.  So let the call be worked out according to local need and want, right?  And if the administrative board is made up of employed people or is self-appointed and people have lost their franchise, well, if it works locally then what is so bad about that.  And if the folks in the pew and who finance the operation with their tithes and offerings have no voice or vote (except to leave) in their own congregation, well, as long as that works, right?  Local option.

This is also true of another issue.  The training of pastors.  One commentator  put it exactly that way.

 “The large churches do not want to send candidates to the residential program right now - and this is what nobody is saying, that the data is saying - they don’t want to send them to the residential seminary program because they don’t believe that the pastor they will get in the end is a pastor that will work for their ministry. And so the only option is [SMP] - and now that’s not an option.”

In other words, if seminary works to form pastors for you, well and good.  It is not working for us.  Therefore the Synod needs to bend to the needs and primacy of the local option.   Non-synodical seminary options, online formation, and local formation work for us.  That seems to be in large measure what this push for the legitimization of non-LCMS seminary formation programs is all about.  The seminary option is not working -- at least for us.  They cite statistics about the need for more pastors, the smaller size of seminary classes in the past decade or so, and the anecdotal evidence that those who you send to seminary come out, well, Lutheran worship style, doctrine, and practice and that is not what we want or need.  Add in there the complaints of those who are stuck in a parish (typically smaller) that does not offer the contemporary options they desire and a chorus of voices is raised up to insist that the way we are doing things is not salutary and exists out of a desire for a small minority to control the Synod.  Ouch.  Nobody wants that, now do they?!

SMP was really never about local option but was about local need.  The need was not the large congregations who want to raise up their own clones but the small, isolated, inner city, geographically remote, or ethnic congregation.  They probably could never afford a full-time guy or pay him well, anyway.  They certainly cannot afford benefits (ala health insurance).  But they deserve to be served, right?  So the idea put forward was to raise up a solid and solidly Lutheran guy from within that community -- somebody mature in years and experience -- and give them incremental training so that they could serve right there.  But then place became context and context became anything we wanted it to mean and so the unwritten rules that were used to explain the program were cast aside for new ways that the SMP guy might fill the gap, bump up the number of pastors as more and more retire, and help the large congregation fill the local need for someone who looks like them.  It was always a train wreck waiting to happen.

My point is this.  Is this really about doctrine or is it the increasingly loud and insistent idea that local option triumphs over the greater institutional need, theological integrity, unity and collegiality of clergy, and the trust that the people have as their pastor someone with the best training money could buy and we could provide.  Only an idiot would suggest that all that stuff in seminary is useless or unnecessary or superfluous.  So the idea that we give a guy 1/3 of what residential seminary guys get is not an equivalence but an exception.  Local option was not our goal but local need required an exception.  Now the exception is clamoring to become the norm.  And it is largely because we think we can do it better locally.  Not even as good but better.  All church politics is local.  Wait for the big pow wow in Phoenix.  

By the way, if you want my take on this.  I figure that if a guy goes to seminary and comes back different that is a good thing.  If he comes back more Lutheran, that is a better thing.  If he comes back prepared to serve wherever God desires him, that is another better thing.