Looking for blame. . .

There are probably many reasons for some of the problems facing the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod today but it has become rather fashionable to look as much for someone to blame as it has for real solutions.  It is tiresome to me that some of the typical culprits in these scenarios have been overplayed to the point where too many actually believe that these are the real reasons for our lack of growth or the problem of filling pulpits.

I am tired of hearing the blame placed upon small congregations.  I am weary of those who spill ink and vitriol against congregations they believe should be closed or merged because they are consuming too much of Synod's resources of both money and pastors and serving too few people.  How odd it is that we have made these small congregations the bane of our existence as if the Word and Sacrament was deserved more by large communities of people than small!  Sure, we have lots of small parishes and so do many denominations these days.  While I suppose there are those who can and maybe should close, the reality is that they are not the reason for a pastor shortage nor are they taking pastors away from places where they might better serve.  Most of these very small congregations do not depend upon full-time pastors but have tapped into the market of retired pastors and those on candidate status or those who are serving in non-parish situations.  You could close them all and it would not free up a ton of pastors to fill the vacant pulpits we have.

Furthermore, many of these congregations are not simply small but isolated and do not have close or reasonably close options for their people if they were to close.  The rural landscape of America has seen an overall decline in people and this is part of the reason these parishes are small.  It is not that they have failed to keep their people or win new converts but the pool of people is diminishing every year as the towns in which they have been planted grow ever smaller.  My own hometown is one such example.  The school is small, main street is deserted, and the population is aging.  This is not due to bad people or bad planning but mechanized agriculture, the fruits of technology, and less need for boots on the ground, so to speak.  The small congregations are surviving because they are serving the population that remains and working hard and creatively struggling to find solutions.  While some dual or triple or even quadruple congregation share a pastor, that presents its own particular need for a certain kind of pastor and sharing arrangements not always possible or beneficial.  God bless them when they work but these are not the end all solutions for every circumstance.

Some think that merging congregations is the answer to all the problems.  Is it wrong to expect that people's loyalties to congregations where they have worshiped for many generations, have multi-generations of family members buried in the parish cemeteries attached to these congregations, or have been taught and believed that this was their church where they belonged for many years could be transferred to other places?  Should we be punishing them for their loyalty and devotion?  Is such loyalty and devotion to buildings or is it to the heritage and history of people who have taught them the faith and and passed on the sacred deposit to another generation?  Should we expect that loyalty is easily shifted to a new place and that all the history and legacy they felt for one identity should be quickly surrendered to be attached to another place?  Ask the legions of Roman Catholic parishes which have merged over the years only to find that the merged parish was empty of the fierce loyalties and associations that were not so suddenly transferred because administrative reasons justified it.  We want our people to be loyal and devoted to the places where they receive God's gifts so should we treat those places as mere access points for such grace?  Merging may work in some places and may not work in others.  It can be useful but will not fix all the problems.

Pastors are sometimes blamed for being unwilling to go where they are needed or for expecting fair compensation as they support their families.  Are those pastors the problem because they have familial ties to certain regions or concerns for the places where they must raise their children?  I am writing as someone who has never served any a congregation closer than a two day drive to my family or a one day drive to my wife's family.  It was a sacrifice to be that far away from parents and grandparents, siblings and extended family and not to be free on the holidays when others would travel home.  There is no denying that it costs the pastor and his family something.  If I had gotten a call closer, who knows if I would have taken it.  But I didn't and yet I am not quite ready to blame every pastor who considers the family factor in their decision to accept or decline a call.  Neither am I willing to condemn pastors who take into the consideration the availability and cost of housing in the calls they receive.  It is a real factor of life for a church body in which parsonages are probably now more the exception than the rule and areas in need of pastors which have housing costs beyond what typical pastors can afford will need to find creative solutions to that problem.

What I am saying is this.  Don't blame small congregations or the pastors and their families for the problems of decline or the pastoral shortage in the LCMS.  Instead of looking for someone to blame, we need to look for answers and solutions to serve all the places where we have parishes and to help them grow as much as they are able.  Along with convenient scapegoats mentioned above, we would be wise not to blame doctrine or the liturgy as the reasons for our lack of growth, shortage of pastors, or struggles as a church body.  For what it is worth, I do not believe all the statistics that say that non-denominational evangelical congregations are the only ones doing better.  In a culture of people looking for transcendency, it is hardly logical to conclude that churches that give people what they say they want over truth are going to win any of the battles before us.  But some of these are probably fodder for another post on another day.