Territorial Bloggings

Just to show that I haven’t completely forgotten about things in the realm of churchly politics (and that I haven’t totally ceded that arena to others like Frank! ;^) ), here’s a little tidbit that I came across recently that might be of some interest…

One of the perennial hot topics in synodical circles is that of the (take yer pick) past/current/future “shortage of Pastors” afflicting the synod. This “shortage”, and the companion number of congregations in some sort of vacancy, has been the reason that non-Seminary training-tracks for pastors have become increasingly en-vogue in Missouri in recent years (e.g., SMP).

One of the questions that accompanies the topic is that of “CRM” pastors, or “candidate” pastors currently without a call. Over the years, CRM has become somewhat of a “scarlet letter” of sorts, where men go, and are never heard from again. Why? Well, there are stories. Unfit for ministry. Unfit to teach. Needed time away. Etc., et al… It can really be hard to pin down.

In any event, this all becomes of particular interest in light of the synodical statistic that we have 9,164 pastors… of which 5,356 are serving parishes — meaning roughly 40% are not. So, how many are CRM? And is that CRM status really being used against them? I’ve been able to come across some info (in a public forum, so it’s not secret or anything like that – goodness knows I’m not that plugged-in to any circles of power…), and I thought I’d pass it along, since I hadn’t seen it pop up in the blogosphere yet. Here’s the quote:

At long last, an update on the number of pastors on candidate status in the LCMS.

There are several types of candidate status, first of all. Some pastors, although they can be called to service, are on “non-candidate” roster status. This means that they are not seeking a Divine Call, but are in some kind of transition – maybe they’re selling Thrivent, doing something else, not able to consider a Divine Call, a myriad of things. They aren’t considered in the same way as those Pastors who are eligible and desirous of receiving a Divine Call.

The number of those pastors, as of today, is 227 in the LCMS. Inside that group there are a bundle of other descriptors – able to consider a Call but geographically limited, or wife not able to move at this time, etc. etc. But it’s a substantial number, in my opinion.

In addition, there are over 30 pastors who have completed our colloquium but have not received a divine call; they’re in the “placement pool.” Many/most of them are originally from another country – Korean, African nations, etc.

There are currently 436 parishes that are not calling a pastor. Many to most of them are served by retired pastors. The most frequent mode of providing pastoral care to congregations in the LCMS not able to provide full compensation is NOT the SMP student, but the retired pastor.

I can’t say that there’s any deep, deep meaning there, but it is interesting nonetheless.

We do not currently have a shortage of pastors in the LCMS. We do have a surplus of seminary-trained bureaucrats. We do have a broken understanding of the importance & necessity of AC XIV.

Will we have a shortage when current pastors in their 60′s+ start retiring? I don’t know. But I do know that it’s not right to use a “shortage” or a broken understanding of AC XIV as pretense to begin circumventing the OHM & create programs like SMP treat symptoms rather than underlying causes.

But, then, that’s what we do far too often in Missouri these days — attack symptoms rather than causes. It’s easier & more “effective”, isn’t it?

Feh!

-ghp

I know that The Wittenberg Trail is reasonably en vogue as the social networking site of choice in the online Lutheran world. I must confess, however, that it’s always been a bit too much for me. At first, it was largely because I just didn’t like the idea/concept of the whole social networking thing – it was a bit too chummy for my taste & comfort. And I didn’t need the discussion areas & pseudo-blogging spaces that these types of sites give, because I get discussions & blogs at, wait for it… discussion forums and blogs.

Every so often, I would revisit WT to see if it would grab me, or if I would somehow get it now that some time had passed. I never did. If anything, the growth in WT put me off to it even more. I knew that good stuff was going on there, because I knew lots of good folks who were active there (I interacted with them at other sites…).

In the past few weeks, though, one thing has changed – I’m not as dead set against the social networking model anymore. I’ve gotten more involved in Facebook. At first, as is my wont, I was going to segment it off to have FB be just for my “non-lutheran stuff” – i.e., college friends. Then I started getting in contact with some high school friends (something I never thought would happen, but I’m glad it did…). Then I started seeing that many/most of the folks that I have contact with in the Lutheran blogosphere also have a FB presence. So, not only did that knock down my compartmentalization, it also way knocked down any need/desire I might have for getting back on WT.

It comes down to this, I guess — I now see the utility of the social networking site concept. FB delivers that utility to me in a far greater and richer way than does WT, despite WT’s narrower niche strengths. I don’t need those particular niches met in a social networking site because I get them elsewhere (discussion forums & the blogosphere). Since FB can give me the superset of the WT folks I know and the non-WT folks I want to link up with, it’s the better choice.

Thus, I’m going to kill off my WT account because, 1) I don’t want to leave a loose end hanging out there, and 2) I don’t have the time or the inclination to keep up with WT, for all the reasons listed above.

-ghp

Critiques of The Shack & Alpha — check ‘em out at BJS: http://is.gd/cdgo & http://is.gd/cdgA

-ghp

Long time, no post.

Issues, Etc. has been back for a while now, and it’s better than ever. If you haven’t checked it out yet, do so. Now.

Of particular note is their regular pattern/schedule on Fridays of answering listener email, picking a blog post of the week, and soliciting feedback to determining the Issues, Etc. “Soundbite of the Week”.

I subscribe to the podcast feed via ITunes, and am one of the “on-demand” listeners that they love so much. ;^) I’m at least a week behind, in that I begin each Monday by listening to the past Friday’s email, blog post, & soundbite selections, and then move on to the other good stuff. If/as I have time, I’m then working my way back through the rest of the archives.

Good, good stuff.

-ghp

Well, it seems that the surest sign of summer is here – the blogging doldrums. Lots of posting fodder rattling around in my head, along with all sorts of good intentions about writing witty & insightful posts to pass those pearls of wisdom and entertainment along to you, but darned little follow-through.

Typical.

So, I’ll give you a few things here that are on my mind at this moment, even though they are largely unrelated. Sure, they could, and possibly should, be broken up into separate posts, but…

SYTYCD:4 – Week 2 was predictably enjoyable, and the eliminations were neither surprising, nor problematic. By and large, what transpired merely solidified the opinions I described last week. I did, however, think of another reason why SYTYCD is better than AI – the way they do the voting & eliminations. By letting America determine the bottom 3, and then having the judges pick the contestant eliminated out of that bottom 3, SYTYCD helps ensure that America going stupid doesn’t taint the whole process – IOW, they retain some necessary editorial oversight. America gets input and the professionals get to shepherd the process along – everybody wins!

Sweet Tea – One of the things that I truly loved about living in North Carolina for 12 years was sweet tea. Not iced tea with sweetener in it, like I had grown up with, but honest-to-goodness tea, brewed in such a way that the sugar gets infused into the drink to such a level that your teeth start to rot just by bringing the cup up to your lips. The best sweet tea is usually found in little bbq joints where you get the best chopped pig, hushpuppies, & brunswick stew. Oddly enough, some of the best sweet tea I ever had was from the NIEHS cafeteria in Research Triangle Park, NC. Down South, they know that sweet tea is a proper menu option, and that adding sugar to unsweet tea is neither effective nor holy. Oddly enough, the sweet tea that is now being sold at McDonald’s isn’t all that bad for a mass market, fast food beverage. It’s not quite good enough to make me believe that it’s “real” Southern sweet tea, but it is just good enough for me not to be really torqued off by it. IOW, I like it.

The Brothers of John the Steadfast – This is a new organization of Lutheran laymen, organized “to defend and promote the orthodox Christian faith which is taught in the Lutheran Confessions, provide financial support for Christian new media (e.g. Issues, Etc.), and to support other endeavors selected by its membership that defend and promote the cause of confessional Lutheranism.” I recommend that you check them out at their brand-spanking-new website (they’ve been running out of a blog for a few months, while they got the formal website up & running), because they look like they’ve got some good stuff lined up & in the planning stages. While you’re at it, also check out the Augustana Confraternity…

I’m sitting here at the keyboard thinking there’s more that I’ve been wanting to write about, but my mind just went blank. That’s been happening more often lately. I must be going senile – just because I started kindergarten at 4, does that mean I’m going to start blanking out at 40? Yikes…

-ghp

Long live Pirate Christian Radio!

If you would like to receive email notifications regarding the resurrection
of this Christ-Centered, Cross-Focused program, please email
your name and address to IssuesArising@PirateChristianRadio.com

w00t!

[HT: Weedon]

-ghp

Well, now that AI is done, I guess it’s time to find something else to generate at least two posts a week about, eh? There should be some spores that I can cultivate into semi-coherent, quasi-interesting verbiage. If nothing else, I can at at least wax self-indulgent…

I’ve actually been spending more time over at the ALPB Forum discussion board. It’s a pan-Lutheran discussion forum that runs the gamut from far “left” ELCA folks to far “right” LCMS folks, with everyone in between, including a sprinkling of non-Lutheran thought from Canterbury, Rome, Constantinople, & Geneva. It’s quite the fascinating mixture. On the LCMS front, it’s quite interesting to enter into discussions — sometimes substantive, sometimes not — with folks as diverse (politically and theologically) as Atlantic District President Dave Benke, Concordia Publishing House Publisher Rev. Paul McCain, & frequent guest on the late great Issues, Etc., Pastor William Weedon, to name but three names that will probably be recognized by readers here.

The range and tenor of discussions at the ALPB Forum can be wide, disheartening, infuriating, and frustratingly disjointed; however, it can also be refreshing, encouraging, and edifying. The ebb and flow of the discussion threads can be almost addictive, in a way that the blogosphere is hard-pressed to replicate (although certain blogs like Augsburg1530 come close…).

Anyway, if anyone has been wondering why I haven’t been posting quite as much about the theological battles raging within Mother Missouri, this is largely why – I’ve been spending my thought cycles elsewhere. And while folks like Fr. Weedon can double-dip, blogging and posting at ALPB, I just haven’t had that kind of energy or willpower. Now that AI is over, perhaps I’ll find a way…

-ghp

Well, once again Valparaiso University is in the news. And, once again, it’s not for anything that I would say is good.

VU to hire first female pastor

Within the past 6 months, VU has made waves in the Lutheran world, first for the hiring of a new President, and now for this hiring of a female pastor.

The hiring of the President was news because it was the first time since Lutheran folk bought VU in 1925 that the President was neither LCMS nor a pastor. New President Mark Heckler is an ELCA layman. While VU was/is not officially an LCMS entity, it has long been known to have strong LCMS ties, and was known/believed to be within LCMS circles to be the university where LCMS laity could go if they didn’t want to be a church worker (in which case they’d go to one of the Concordias). As a cradle LCMSer, and graduate of LCMS elementary & high schools, I can attest to this belief. In recent years, however, these ties have become increasingly loose, and the hiring of President Heckler only served to make that looseness almost impossible to ignore.

This latest announcement, though, takes things to a whole ‘nother level. While ELCA pastorettes (I’ll behave & not use my preferred term…) have preached in the Chapel of the Resurrection, the “official” pastors called to minister to VU have always been LCMS pastors – i.e., male. This has now, to state the obvious, changed. And it might actually start to get noticed by the rank and file pewsitters in the LCMS who have long believed that what was true in the increasingly distant past was still true today. It ain’t true, and it’ll be interesting to see how these folks react when they hear this latest news.

As usual, when issues like this come up, there’s some interesting discussion going on over at the ALPB Forum. And this issue is no exception…

While it’s possible that the whole Issues, Etc. wildfire will keep this latest VU thing from blowing up as big as it otherwise might have, I think it’ll be interesting nonetheless to see just how it plays out within the court of LCMS public opinion.

-ghp

The abrupt cancellation of the LCMS radio station KFUO’s flagship program, as well as the firing of its host & producer, last Tuesday was bizarre, inexplicable, troubling, and hurtful. But the lack of explanation re: the reasons & rationale, indeed the appearance of corporate stonewalling & information embargo along with an almost Stalin-esqe purge (even now, the once-again-available archives are looking to be bandwidth-throttled), is what is perhaps the most troubling & difficult to fathom. It’s really hard to put a proper 8th Commandment best construction on such acts.

Chris Rosebrough, a fairly regular guest on Issues, Etc., and a dedicated & effective apologist for orthodox Christianity (and thus, Lutheranism) re: American Evangelicalism & the Emergent Church Movement, has put forth what looks to be a very reasonable & well thought out explanation about what might be (and probably is) behind this whole Issues, Etc. debacle.

Is the LCMS Being “Transitioned” into a Seeker-Sensitive Denomination?

At first glance, this might look to be alarmist — a conspiracy theory even — to the point of not being charitable. However, I would offer this analysis: Such an explanation is not necessarily pejorative, in that this type of “transitional” strategy has been viewed by many as good, right, and proper. I, and many others, would disagree vehemently with that assessment; however, disagreeing with a strategy & set of tactics is not unkind or sinful in and of itself.

It is recognizing something for what it is.

Such recognition is good.

And it certainly helps bring some of the strangeness of the past week (and beyond) in to a little more understandable focus.

-ghp

Recently, I’ve read two very good postings by Pr. Beisel (post 1 & post 2) over at One Lutheran…Ablogâ„¢. Both of these postings engage a larger battle currently raging in the LCMS under the general umbrella of the official synodical Ablaze! program/initiative, particularly as it pertains to missions. I recommend that you read both posts & the resulting comment threads, as they are interesting, informative, & nicely illustrative of the false dichotomy that some (not Pr. Beisel!) have created between doctrine & mission.

After reading these posts, a though occurred to me regarding what seems to be a foundational tenet of the missional movement: Relevance.

More specifically, my thought was about the juxtaposition of relevance with reverence.

Reverence, as an operational underpinning of the Divine Service, has been primary modus operandi of the Apostolic/post-Apostolic Church for the first 2000 years of its existence. I.e., reverence in worship is key. Reverence for God and the gifts He bestows upon us in the Divine Service.

Relevance, on the other hand, is a more recent innovation, at least as the main/primary focus of worship. The thinking seems to go along the lines of “If we make things familiar, approachable, and “relevant” to the unchurched, then we can/will have greater success in reaching them…”

Thus, reverence is pitted against relevance.

A recent article in Newsday illustrates this ginned-up conflict through the prism of the whole LCMS Ablaze! project/movement. Even keeping in mind the fact that press write-ups are simplistic & lean towards attention-grabbing quotes, it’s still disheartening to read references made about being “…more in tune with what people are hearing today…” & churches being “populated by people who are not just old white guys.” Please note that preaching Christ crucified to all people is meet, right, & proper — I’m more concerned about the dismissive attitude towards the souls you’ve already “got”. “Get ‘em & forget ‘em” (at the risk of hyperbole) is not a Lutheran approach to shepherding the faithful.

Music & the (lack of) liturgy are on the very front-lines of the battle raging between relevance & reverence, as is the question of whether or not the Divine/Worship Service is an outreach/mission tool. One side hurls the epithets of “boring” & “dead orthodoxy”, while the other responds with “tradition” & “confessional/doctrinal integrity”. They very often talk past each other, even as they use the same words, albeit with different definitions.

I decry the sacrifice of reverence on the altar of relevance. What could be more “relevant” than a joyous reverence as shown in the ancient liturgies of the Church handed down from the saints who preceded us in the Faith? “Relevant” needs to be properly understood as that which God reveals to us for our own good, rather than that which seems/feels good or right to us.

Why are “entertaining,” “moving,” and “new & different” automatically viewed as “better” and/or more “effective”? Why are numbers & measurables held in such high esteem? Why is aping the prevalent culture viewed as the best course of action? How is all of that somehow more “relevant” than hewing to what the Church has held near & dear?

The Church is, and always has been, different than the culture that surrounded it (Romans 12:1-2). That’s a good thing. To try and preach the Gospel by making that Gospel conform to what is worldly appealing is not Scriptural. The Gospel does its work by transforming us – we merely preach it & get out of the way. We don’t do the work by transforming & repackaging the Gospel to make it more “acceptable” and thus “effective”.

Our goal in worship ought to be a joyous reverence or to be reverently joyful, in response to the gifts bestowed on us by our loving & gracious God – He is the focus. If we seek to be relevant, even if it be joyous, entertaining, & “successful” (by worldly measures), we seek the wrong thing.

May our gracious Lord & Savior protect us, keep us, and watch over us, so that we may be ever vigilant and faithful as we live out our God-given vocations!

-ghp