Bigger than the Church. . .

Curiously, a video produced to announce and give credence to the candidacy of the Rev. Dr. Pat Ferry, lately of Concordia University - Mequon, WI, is making the rounds.  Even more curiously, the good doctor describes the university he ran as a much bigger operation than the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  It has, according to the candidate, a bigger budget, more employees, and a more complex operation.  Are we to conclude then that running the Synod would be a breeze compared to his previous gig?

What is put forth on this video is precisely the problem.  When the individual parts of Synod are esteemed to be bigger than Synod itself, well, we have a problem.  He is certainly not the first nor will he be the last to presume that managing the good fleet Missouri is not as demanding as managing its individual boats.  Perhaps there is truth to this on one level.  Corporate Missouri is a relatively lean operation (its detractors notwithstanding).  Long gone are the days when all the cubicles were filled with people.  The downsizing was part of the goal of the 2010 restructuring and it succeeded in reducing payroll.  I am constantly amazed as how much our small crew actually accomplishes and wish more folks would come to that conclusion.  That said, Synod as a whole is not simply corporate Synod.

What Pat Ferry and so many others seem to miss is that the structure we chose is not an amalgamation of distinct and independent parts or an association of largely autonomous divisions but one Synod.  Now, you may debate the wisdom of this set up but you cannot deny it.  It has been the hallmark of Missouri since its inception.  Districts are not component parts of Synod but Synod in that place.  Congregations are the only units of this body with any degree of independence and even that is the freedom to structure and fund how they choose but not the freedom to remain in Synod and confess differently.  Certainly the colleges and universities are not and were never created to function independently.  We set them up for a specific purpose and even though that purpose, the training of church workers, has been swallowed up by many programs and non-Lutheran students, none of them were envisioned to be independent operations.  If it gets to the point when Synod decides that is how it should be, then Synod will make that decision but the universities are not free to choose for themselves their relationship to Synod.  Furthermore, the agencies we create to aid in our mission (LCEF, LCMS Foundation, Concordia Plans, Lutheran Federal Credit Union, Concordia Publishing House, and everything else) may seem to tower over corporate Synod in size and scope but they are not free and independent agencies to decide how they want to serve those who set them up in the first place.  Sadly, we seem to forget that from time to time.  If the good Synod decides that another relationship or arrangement better suits the Synod, that is a decision for the Synod to make.  Until then, these individual agencies and the divisions we call Districts are bound to live within the existing arrangements and to honor the existing relationship.  

So the problem here is perception.  Apparently there are those vying for leadership in our church body who believe that the leader of Synod is but the leader of an incorporated entity and not the leader of our church, congregations, and all our agencies.  That kind of thinking will surely get us into trouble, more trouble than we are in now.  For what it is worth, it would seem that anyone who desires to be elected to leadership in our Synod should know what that leadership entails.  I would suggest that the ecclesiastical oversight which is the essence of that leadership is more complex and broader in scope than the management of the financial, staff, and properties of a single university or of them all combined.