Is there something wrong with taking it slow?

As everyone knows, the Church is generally a decade or three behind culture and society as a whole and this is certainly true when it comes to technology.  This is evidenced by the fact that most congregations presume that social media equates to Facebook and the relatively poor state of affairs with most online presences.  Normally this is simply a minor thing.  Lags are not always as bad as we are made to think.  But in one particular area of things, it might seem that the Church is trying to jump the distance and forge ahead of where others are not so sure we should go.  At the very point people are beginning to question the value of online education and its effectiveness as the primary tool of learning, there are so many voices insisting that online is the only way for the Church to go.

I wonder if there is something wrong with taking it slow in this avenue of technology.  According to many across Lutheranism, this is just plain foolish.  I would suggest that it is the path of wisdom.  There are ample reasons for the shift to online education for clergy.  Cost is the big factor, of course.  It is a whole lot cheaper to provide and to participate in online classes.  Both the providers and the students are understandably attracted to anything that would reduce the cost of training to become a pastor.  But money is not the only reason and it should not in and of itself rule the day.  Yet money is the drumbeat of nearly everything in this conversation.  We should not require people to endure the financial burden of residential seminary education and we should not require the people to cover the cost for them when there are less expensive alternatives.

The other thing has to do with the cost of time.  While similar to the cost in dollars, the cost in time is a little different.  There are the factors of moving and uprooting family for he time spent in seminary, the problem of an educational cycle still rooted in an agrarian time frame when summer was off to work in the fields (yes, even for a seminary this applies), and finally the whole idea that you have to wait for four years to do what you are being prepared to do.  The cost to the family is one thing but some suggest there is a cost to the Church to wait so long for those who are being formed for the pastoral ministry to begin practicing that ministry.  Indeed, the SMP option as currently ordered provides for just that -- on the job training as people doing the work from the beginning of their training to do that work.

Finally is the issue of context.  The world is all about context today.  It is as if no one is or should be trained for the pastoral ministry and instead is being trained for a specific pastoral office in a specific place.  It seems that a good segment of the Church does not want the training to be general at all but very specific, as if the congregationally raised up and trained pastor is the best of the best.  An online path to pastoral formation allows the context to continue while the training is being accomplished.  There is no doubt that many think that this is optimal and that too much time is being wasted in preparing people for generic places that do not actually exist.  Context is everything, remember.  Along with this is the whole idea that pastors squander too much time in getting to know the places where they serve and that it would be better if they were already familiar with that context, indeed, the products of those contexts.

It would be foolish for anyone to immediately dismiss these arguments for online pastoral training.  But it would be even more foolish to presume that these are the primary and pivotal factors that should define how we form men to be pastors.  In fact, if what was being conveyed is merely information, online training would be the obvious choice.  There are other things involved here.  Along with the information that is being given to the student, there is also something being conveyed to the Church by the student during the process of pastoral formation.  The students must be judged not simply on their academic prowess but on their suitability to be pastors.  This is a judgment made not by a few but by many -- both the academic concerns and the pastoral suitability.  The whole faculty is given the charge to know the candidate and to as a whole discuss the man's suitability before commending that same man to the Church.  How this happens on a primarily online setting seems to be given little conversation.

One of the things I am most concerned about is the localization of pastoral training and how it leads to a localized judgment regarding the pastor's suitability.  The more we reduce the numbers of those involved in this and the more local those who render this judgment, the less the ministerium belongs to the whole Church and the more it belongs exclusively to the congregation.  While some in Missouri might laud this congregational focus, it makes me entirely uncomfortable.  I am not all that Waltherian and am pretty sure that the more we lean in this direction, the less need or requirement there is for the Synod at all.  Training of pastors and the custody of the roster was and remains one of the most important reasons for the Synod to have been formed and to continue to exist.

Lastly, the obvious thing is that we have not had a deal of time nor concentrated study of how well online education is doing.  The SMP program was purposefully designed not for the man in the early twenties but for those with life experience and congregational experience.  The concerns of the larger educational world about the effectiveness of the screen replacing the classroom remains an issue that needs to be addressed.  I am no expert in this area but I am sure we have such individuals who can help us figure it out.  Along with this, we also need to look at the loss of collegiality that a common experience with common teachers has long provided the Synod.  Again, I am no expert but we already lament the loss of the junior college/senior college and seminary experience has had upon the ministerium so we ought to smart enough to consider that such a change would have untold consequences in a shift to online training.

So what is the rush?  Take it slow.  We once sang in mocking the Church, Like a herd of turtles, moves the Church of God; brothers we are treading, where we've always trod....  Is that so bad?  More and more I am learning the wisdom of taking things slow.  I hope and pray the Church is listening to these concerns. 

Loving the idea of God. . .

I am certainly no judge of the hearts of others and I have no desire to be.  That said, it is hard sometimes to figure out what is going on in Christianity.  There are those in media who openly talk of faith and their church but whose faith and whose church seems without much doctrinal foundation.  It is as if many are in love with the idea of God but are not so sure they love the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Peter, and Paul.  We live in a non-binary world in which all choices are equal so that nothing is left to two simple choices.  Except that is exactly what the Scriptures offer to us -- a binary world that extends far beyond the confines of gender.

The Scripture offer us a reality that appears rather stark to the modern world.  Jesus insists that no man can serve two masters and, while the context says God and mammon, it is clear here that it is between Christ and the devil. In the Bible there are not seven kingdoms but only two.  It is either the the kingdom of God or the kingdom of Satan.  The images of light and darkness do not offer a middle ground of almost light or almost darkness.  The paths are either the narrow way that leads to life or the broad boulevard that leads to destruction. There is only heaven and hell and nothing in between.  There is life and death.  It is shockingly binary to a non-binary world.  It is even more stark in the fact that there are only the saved and the lost and you belong to one or the other no matter what you might imagine in your mind.

Living in a post-modern world in which everything is by degree and choice can never be as simple as yes or no, right or wrong, the Scriptures do not offer us another version of how this Christianity goes.  The task before us is to preach this impossibly offensive binary shape to a world which refuses to know this kind of faith or this kind of God.  The world has not yet abandoned the idea of God exactly but they have no interest in the real God spoken of the real Scriptures.  Instead, they prefer an imagined God without any sharp or blunt edges and a faith that stands for everything and so it ends up standing for nothing at all.  This Christian world loves to talk about talking about God but they cannot quite bring themselves to speaking creedally or confessionally the words God has said to us about Himself.

Lately I am realizing that this is less a worship war than it is a basic battle over the God of the Scriptures and the God we create for ourselves.  It does not matter if the God we have imagined for ourselves is powerful or not or real or not.  This God only has to be real enough for us to know in the moment.  But He must be a God who learns what we want and how we think and is willing to meet us on those terms and not a God who lives by the Word that endures forever.  This is the struggle before us.  How do we battle an idea of God who is all so appealing to us because this God looks like us in the mirror?  I suspect that it begins with renewal of a binary world and the binary shape to things.  Adam had not realized this until he was sent out to name it all.  Then all of a sudden he discovered that he was not simply alone but that there was no one and nothing like him.  Only then would he be able to receive from God the gifts that God had always intended to give.  In the same way, in order for us to receive real gifts we have to have a real God giving them and this real God is known through the voice of His Word.

This real God gives us real water that is so much more, real bread that tastes of Christ's flesh, and real wine that tastes of His blood.  This real God is met not on the ground of what we would like to do for Him but on the real ground of what He has done for us.  We speak back to Him what He has first said to us and this is our highest worship.  We speak them not as ritual words or formula but as the efficacious words that actually bestow that which they speak and deliver what they talk about.  The concrete that in our world had been replaced with feelings and whims which have a lifespan of a moment is met in the God who is yesterday, today, and forever the same.  He is the merciful Father who sent His Son in flesh and blood of the Virgin by the Spirit and whose Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies us as His own.  The goal is not to gain a friend but to live under Him in His kingdom now and forever.  When the world meets this binary God they presume that it means giving up something but does not realize what is gained.  The gifts God freely gives come not from our imagination or to our imagination so that they might live there.  These gifts are as concrete as God's yes and no, His truth that endures forever, and the mercy that is the most real thing of all.  Thanks be to God!   

Not persuaded. . .

Reason is supposed to be the servant of the Word for Christians and we presume it is an aid to apologetics, the confessing and arguing of Christ into the unbelieving hearts of the world.  At least that is the idea.  We have come to the point in which we seem to frame the faith into debate points rather than faith propositions.  At least that is how it sounds sometimes on the internet.  The problem is that the ground of the faith is Scripture and, well, Scripture just does not seem to have the power or punch it once had.  It just does not persuade people like it once appeared to convince.  It is time we admit this and consider the reasons for it.

First of all is the rise of Biblical illiteracy among those outside of the faith.  It is hard for us to recall that there was a time when our American culture, in particular, but all of the West, in general, had a basic knowledge of Scripture and its teachings.  This was due to several things.  One was the fact that the Bible was likely the one book guaranteed to be in the family library growing up.  As books became more readily available, the Bible faded a bit into the background and as alternates to the printed page took over, it receded even more.  In addition to this, Scripture was embedded in the fabric of the culture and education.  Even if the Bible was not explicitly taught, it was there in the background of great literature, history, morality, and even media.  Perhaps the old movies like Going My Way and The Bells of St. Marys were examples of just how connected was religion, Scripture, and the entertainment industry.  And then it was not simply absent but the enemy of everything in culture, education, and the media.

Second is the loss of a sense of truth common to all people and the erosion of truth into individual perception, feeling, and choice.  How can the Scriptures fit into this schematic?  When the Bible itself is subject to individual whim, choice, and desire, it no longer has any power to persuade or truth to under gird any conversation much less shape it.  As sad as we are to admit this, it is better to know and confess that you cannot begin or end a conversation with the world by simply quoting a Bible passage.  It is not enough now and it was not enough for a while.  The longer we hold onto the images of a past in which the Bible was held in high esteem and had the power to engage the world in the great debate over who we are, our purpose, why things are the way they are, and what is left for us when death comes, the harder it is for us to hold a conversation with the world that truly does need to be held.

The great temptation is to resort to natural law alone as if this is the only way to regain any influence upon the world around us or to engage those outside the faith into a religious conversation.  But natural law is neither a replacement for the Scriptures nor is it able to stand without the voice of God' Word.  The truth is that natural law never stood alone and away from the revelation of God in His Word.  It is precisely the Scriptures which were the source of much, if not all, that built the West and is still at work building so many parts of the underdeveloped world.  The Scriptures are first and foremost the revelation of God's own Son, of the plan of salvation laid long before the foundations of the world were planted, and the means by which this unknowable God has made Him known.  In fact, the Bible has generated those basic ethical and societal concepts that have been the ground of Western ideas and ideals.  The example of this is just about everywhere -- the sacredness of life, the dignity of man, compassion for the weak, the need to to protect the poor and the underprivileged, the appreciation for women, the power to choose mercy over  vengeance, the power to choose duty over self-interest, the reason for charity, and the possibility and need for moral improvement.

Perhaps natural law needs to rediscover the voice of God's Word for both to impact again the great conversation between those who contend for the faith and those who do not know it yet or need to know it again. 

Marriage the teacher. . .

When the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner” (Genesis 2:18), He was not speaking of someone to make a man happy or to make the woman happy.   He was addressing the need of man (and woman).  Without marriage there is an inherent loneliness and solitude that makes a person vulnerable as well as empty.  Adam's state before the creation of Eve was of an unfulfilled and empty man but this man was not someone Adam recognized until God sent him out to name all that God had made.  Only then was it apparent that Adam was unlike them in one profound sense.  He was alone.  To answer this loneliness and emptiness, God gives him Eve to be his wife. From this loneliness, Adam exclaimed "Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh."  But there was more to this that both Adam and Eve would learn and marriage would be the teacher.

It is still loneliness that calls a man out of himself and it is still emptiness that begs to be filled.  Without marriage, life is tempted too greatly to selfishness, without someone to instruct the soul and bring them out of the prison of self, the person struggles to know self and purpose and place.  The unmarried have no one who depends upon them, no one who needs them, and no one with whom they must find compromise and accommodation.  The unmarried have no one to teach them that the highest love is sacrifice.  Of course, one learns this as a child for whom the parents have sacrificed but the person does not know what it means to surrender self for the sake of another and to delight in this privileged duty of love.  

As true as this is for women, it is particularly true of men.  As the student complains about the teacher who demands a great deal from the student, so do we find ourselves complaining about this duty.  Freedom seems to be so great and love robs us of that freedom.  Solitude often seems to be such bliss in our hectic world of schedules and duty but the duty of love for the man is to yield not to desire but to his wife when that is the least convenient.  The limitations marriage imposes upon a man, especially, are the lessons that teach boys to be men.  While sin has robbed us of the perfect life in which every man finds a wife and every wife a husband and they live together until death parts them, the choice not to be married is dangerous indeed.  The loneliness and emptiness is consuming.

The world teaches us to be selfish and to be ruled by desires, to have the freedom to abandon whatever we find too constraining, and to choose taking more than giving.  Only the Church can teach us the opposite.  So the man is told to be like Christ, who for us and for our salvation grasped nothing of what was rightfully His and emptied Himself into our death to give us life none of us deserved.  Absent marriage, the Scriptures rightfully commend to us a life of service and selflessness directed to another bride, to the Church.  But there is no other choice -- no opportunity to surrender to desire, to the pursuit of self alone, to the freedom from duty and responsibility, and to the choice to be alone when you seek it.  When there is no one to give up your life for, the temptation is to squander it.  Family not only brings balance but the essential domain in which love is given so that it may be received.  Sadly, it seems that more and more the world misses this and the Church is reluctant to say it.

Shepherding sheep. . .

Often we refuse to admit the obvious.  The obvious is that all of us will die.  As shepherds of the flock of God, we are shepherding the sheep to their death.  None of us wants to think about his but all of us should think about this.  Yes, as Christians, death is not the ultimate end but it is not avoidable.  We will all die even though we will pass through death to life everlasting.  Those who shepherd the flock of God must shepherd them to death so that they may pass through it.  As a pastor who has shepherded the people of God through tears of death and preached them the resurrection, I confess it is easier to talk about the life than it is about the death. 

Every shepherd has the unpleasant and unenviable task of warning the people of God that they will die.  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust is not mere metaphor.  Death will come.  It will come for the young, the middle-aged, and the elderly.  It will come for those who welcome an end to suffering and to those who have a whole future they are planning.  It will come for those who are prepared for it and for those who have their lives stolen when they least expect it.  Death will come and steal away every soul including the people of God so the faithful shepherd will help his sheep prepare for that day whether they can see it coming or have no thought of its arrival. What we are talking about is not simple honesty about the inevitability of death but how to meet death.

We are so shy about talking of death.  At times I have asked the dying point blank if they are ready to die -- while their families shuddered at the thought of mentioning the unmentionable.  But no pastor is faithful who refuses to speak death's name or prepare the people of God to meet it.  Indeed, the whole goal of our pastoral work is to prepare our people so that they may die well, a good death not defined by a lack of pain or death waiting until we are ready for it but by the faith to endure this last sting before receiving the victory.  The goal of the pastor is to help the people of God lay the foundation in life for the reality of death. 

We think that the job of religion is to help us live a good life but none of that has any meaning unless we are prepared for death.  We think that faith helps make life better and I suppose it does in some ways but the chief end of faith is to prepare us for death and to be found worthy of eternal life in Christ.  This is why the Christian faith is such a novelty to some.  They have forgotten about death or chosen to ignore it and they concentrate instead on the present moment as if that was all there was or needed to be.  The Bible tells us to "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” (Hebrews 13:17).

Lent is a whole season seemingly devoted to the subject of death.  It treats death within the context of repentance, within the arena of confession and absolution, and within the framework of the Word and Sacraments.  Those who live only within the confines of the world and this moment are never really ready to die no matter what they might say.  Death is most comforting to them when it offers nothing except an end to what they desire to have ended.  But the heavenly-minded and those headed to the life that death cannot overcome are prepared for death.  In sorrow, they have joy.  In pain, they have comfort.  In loss, they have hope.  Christ gives to us all that we need to meet death and He brings us through the valley of the shadow and raises us up on eagle's wings to rise to meet the dawn of the eternal day.  Those who are “faithful unto death… [Christ] will give the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).   Death is the ship on which we must sail if we are to brought to the shore of everlasting life.  But Christ is at the helm, the only One who has made this journey and the only One who can lead us through it.  This is the center of Lent -- every bit as much as sin and the atonement of the cross.  For those who live in Christ by baptism and faith, death is merely the boat that brings us to everlasting life.  And once the boat is full and all those who live in Christ have been brought safely to the shore, the boat will be destroyed so that there is no connection anymore between what was and what is.

The more the shepherd can help the sheep find this confidence and joy in Jesus, the more they will be prepared to follow Him in life through death to everlasting life.  This is why the feast is a foretaste, the glimpse and promise of the fullness of what is to come.  Preach this.  Teach this.  Help the people sing of this in their hymns and pray this in their prayers.  It is for this you have been set apart.