April 11, 2025 • 50 mins
Tim and Jack welcome back Nick Graff, a former Marine Corps sergeant and special forces member, to discuss the aftermath of Seminex and its implications for the modern Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.
• The aftermath of Seminex resulted in a more confessionally unified LCMS while also creating a spirit of disunity
• Contemporary debates about worship styles often conflate adiaphora (non-essential matters) with doctrine
• "Liturgical pietism" can potentially make the liturgy, rather than Christ, the focus of worship
• Political identities increasingly supersede baptismal identities in church conflicts
• American politics have become more tribal, affecting how Christians relate to one another
• "Backdoor ecumenicism" allows non-Lutheran theological concepts to enter through political associations
• The church tends to focus on power struggles rather than creating hospitable spaces for sinners
• "Sinners belong in church" remains a foundational Lutheran principle
• Only Christ—not human efforts to enforce conformity—can bring order to a fallen world
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack
Kalberg, it is a beautiful dayto be alive, I pray.
The joy of Jesus is yourstrength, jack.
You feeling well, doing well.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Oh man, it is a beautiful day and I am under
absolute assault by allergiesright now.
So, keep me in your prayers as Ibear this thorn in my flesh.
Just a side note on that.
I've been struggling with thatfor about a year now.
I'm going through autoimmunetherapy where they're giving the
(00:33):
shots and it's actually helping, but they're saying it's kind
of a long haul or it might takea couple of years to get the
full benefit of it.
I'm noticing a benefit from it,so I'm praising Jesus for that
and just staying the course andkeeping going.
I saw you had a little spraybottle there.
Have you used?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
AstroPro?
No, I never heard of that.
This is one that just came, Notthat.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I'm giving medical advice.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
We started the lead time here.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
But this is For those of us that live in the Valley
that have allergies.
This is a non-steroid type of,and it's really great.
So for those of us that speak alot.
My biggest issue with using anykind of nasal steroid to kind
of dry you up is it also hurtsyour vocal cords, and so this
(01:19):
one is not doing that.
So AstroPro, to the rescue.
With that, we have Nick Graffback with us today.
Nick has been on a number oftimes in the past.
He served nine years as asergeant in the Marine Corps,
followed by 16 years in specialforces.
As a civilian, he is a laymanin the Lutheran Church Missouri
(01:41):
Synod and he is a deep thinker.
We're going to have a lot offun today.
So background Nick recently.
From time to time he hearsthings and he's like hey, tim,
have you thought about this?
And he recently sent me anemail with a lot of great
talking points and so sent theemail back saying let's have a
conversation and that's how itworks.
And here we go.
So you talked a lot about thewin.
(02:04):
Let's just go right into thedeep end here, nick, before we
get going.
How you doing, brother?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Man I'm doing great, Glad to be here, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah.
So Nick is a is a country rural.
He's a man's man If I could behalf the man that Nick is.
He's clearing a huge fieldright now for he and his wife in
their rural abode in Alabama.
That's where he's coming to usfrom, so praise be to God.
But in his spare time he likesto talk about stuff that's going
(02:34):
on in the history of the LCMS,and so that's where we're going
to start talking about the lighttopic of Seminex, seminex.
So you talk about the win ofSeminex, the win.
Did we really win, nick, as youlook at it historically?
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Yeah Well, I mean, first of all, I think arriving
out of Semenex havingreconfirmed our commitment to
biblical inerrancy is absolutelya win, there's no question
about it.
And then, you know, the factthat we arrived out of Semenex
with a church body that wasuniformly confessional and I use
(03:12):
that in the best of termsuniformly confessional is
definitely a win.
But the question that we haveto ask ourselves is what left
with the people who departed atSemenex?
And so, you know, I think wecame out of Semenex with a
church body, particularly aclergy, that was far less
(03:33):
interested in you know, thepolitical engagements of the
time, which may be a good thing.
In fact, if you think aboutwhat was happening in the late
in the 60s, late 60s, early 70s,that might have actually been a
good thing, but the questionstill remains that when you have
a church body that separates,you did lose something.
And what is that thing?
And so, you know, I like tothink about it from the
(03:53):
perspective of the people wholeft during Seminax.
And so, I think, as the victors, as the quote unquote victors
the people who remained in theLCMS after Seminax, I think we
like to paint this as just amatter of rejecting higher
critical view towards HolyScripture and saying like, look,
this is about biblicalinerrancy.
(04:13):
But if you think about thepeople who left, imagine that
you were.
You know, I think you couldimagine if you were in a
synodical body that was goingtoward higher criticism and you
were somebody who subscribed tobiblical inerrancy, I think you
could imagine leaving rightBecause that's a matter of faith
, that's a faith question,that's an issue, I think, when
(04:34):
you take it from the perspectiveof the people who subscribe to
what is an academic philosophyand you imagine, would I leave a
synodical body overdisagreement of an academic
philosophy?
Probably not.
So while we may, and they may,make it about higher criticism,
I think it's probably more aboutthe politics that higher
(04:55):
criticism allowed for.
It allowed for well, and then Ithink it was also a little bit
of fealty or loyalty towardsparticularly popular professors
at Concordia, st Louis, who areteaching these things Right.
I think it was less aboutreally an academic philosophy
than it was about politics andthen personal loyalty.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Nick, let's unpack this real quick.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
When you say higher critical analysis of the Bible,
not everybody knows what thatmeans.
Can you kind of explain yourbest understanding of what that
means?
Yeah, so instead of saying thatHoly Scripture is God's word,
divinely inspired, written downby man, those sorts of things,
you would look at all of HolyScripture through the prism of
the people who wrote it and thecontext in which it was written.
So you might say, paul's basicprohibition on women in the
ministry, right.
(05:51):
You would say, well, look,paul's a bigot, he's a product
of his time.
You know, we don't have tolisten to that today.
You might say something likethat if you were a higher
critical sort of person.
Critical sort of person, right,but.
But the problem then is likeokay, well then, also then maybe
the, the account of creation,the biblical narrative of
creation, is just a story thatwe tell kids on the dangers of
(06:15):
sin or, you know, on how Godcreated the earth.
So then it opens up, you know.
And so if you get that wrong,which is really a matter of
Christology, if you get thatwrong, you get the cross wrong,
you get the eschaton wrong, youget everything wrong.
So, and we can see it right, Imean, you can see it.
In the ELCA I saw a few yearsago, you saw the Sparkle Creed,
(06:36):
which is just, I mean, clearlydemonic, like there's nothing
good, I would say an abomination, an abomination.
Yeah, I mean it's it's, it's,it's the.
It's worse than it's the worstheresy I've ever heard, so so,
so, getting back to the peoplewho left at Seminex, what they
ended up doing was basicallyputting their political identity
(06:57):
above their baptismal identity,and so, in my estimation, right
, and I think that there's somedangers in doing that today in
(07:20):
the LCMS, on the other side.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
So that that's, that's basically basically my
point.
But yeah, what do we win?
Right, so I think we won a lot,but I think we can't go back.
But what would have happened ifthose that were struggling,
those that had some differenttheological views but I'll tell
you this, like Tijan and anumber of the leaders that were
there, these were not like,these were not heretics in the
church, they were just in themidst of a certain time and
(07:43):
could they have been influencedin a certain direction?
That may have been less thanhelpful, for sure, but what
would have happened if theyhadn't walked?
Could the church have justworked it out over time, over a
long period of conversation,that would have moved us in an
orthodox direction?
And what it actually did is itput a spirit of disunity in the
(08:06):
LCMS and you fight to win, andwhen you win, you lose the
relationship, and we lostrelationship with a number of
strategic leaders that couldhave been led towards seeing
things in a different way.
The biggest question I thinkanytime you're in conflict, it's
never just about the thing.
Biggest question.
I think anytime you're inconflict, it's never just about
(08:27):
the thing, you know, and humanbeings tend to make it about the
thing.
So we look at what Semenex wasand it's obviously a battle over
the Bible.
It's higher critical and we gotto get rid of the heretics and
thankfully they walked, so wedidn't have to really do it, you
know.
But what did we miss?
And there are certainly thingsthat we miss and I think we
could go down the same pathtoday.
For those of us that are saying,hey, there could be some paths
(08:50):
that we're going down that areless than faithful to the
mission of God, the driving whyof God to get all of his kids
back, there's a number ofconcerning things around,
whether it's formation or thingsthat happen behind closed doors
that look like, wow, are weinviting?
Is it filled with integrity andlove and truth and light?
And those of us that want tokind of enter into those spaces.
(09:13):
And if you don't know what I'mtalking about, I'm talking about
formation and prior approval.
Just to be quite clear, thoseare the two big topics right now
.
And for those of us that arejust kind of saying, with love
and care and kindness, we gotsome opportunities for growth.
Do we want to sit and actuallydo the deep work and listen to
one another in our respectivecontext, or do we just want to
put one another into corners?
(09:33):
And why don't it be better ifyou guys just left the whole
host of our church body?
If you guys just left the wholerest of the body would be
better.
If that is your litmus, ifthat's where you go, that is
less than faithful to the prayerof Jesus in John, chapter 17,
jack.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Tim, I mean what you're talking, what you're
describing to me, what I'mhearing from you is a process
whereby we're putting unityabove confession, and what I
mean.
What I mean by that is that, um, that unity is being defined by
style, by culture, by, let'ssay, definitely a confessional
(10:12):
interpretation, but maybe anarrow interpretation of
confessions.
You can agree, you can say amento the confessions and have
really great debates about whatthat means and still say that
you're saying amen to theconfessions, right.
But maybe you're narrowing downand saying only this
interpretation is allowed, right.
So we're now putting unityabove confessional alignment.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Nick any kind of follow up to that?
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Yeah, well, I would say that's definitely true, you
know.
Here's the other thing.
So when you were talking about,you know, could we have earlier
you were talking about, couldwe just maybe try to bring these
guys into the fold?
It's important to remember thatMartin Charlemagne, who was the
one of the inside guys at, uh,Concordia St Louis, was a higher
critic and he was called torepent and he did right and he
(11:00):
became uh, uh, you know, one ofthe one of the stalwarts at
Concordia, St Louis, to bring itback into confessional
alignment.
So, you know, not everyone'sgone.
But then the question is youknow, I sort of talked about
adiaphora and conflating thatwith biblical commands or
(11:22):
biblical ordinances orconfessions or those sorts of
things.
And so you know, I think thatthere's a view currently that,
you know, if we have a praiseband, the next thing we're going
to do is have an openly lesbiandistrict president or something
like there's a, there's a,there's a, there's a slippery
slope, right, yeah, that's theconflation, right.
So so what, what, what?
What there is lacking right nowis a trust that the people who
(11:47):
are in the Senate are actuallyconfessional Right, and then,
and then to leave Adiaphoramatters to the local church, and
they don't want to do that atall.
So, and that goes to pastoralformation, that goes to trust,
right, yeah, well, and I mean,look, I mean, I'm a, I'm a, I'm
a liturgical guy, like a divineservice setting one and three,
my absolute favorite Right, pagefive and 15.
(12:11):
However far back you want to go, that's what I want to do, but
there's a lack of contextualhospitality, and so not every
context is the same.
And so if you really thinkabout what empathy is, empathy
is really context-informed grace, and so that's what we're
lacking in our church iscontext-informed grace, and so
that's what we're lacking in ourchurch is context informed
grace, and I think that thatcomes in.
(12:31):
Unfortunately, I think thatcomes into from the political
side.
So I think you know Americanpolitics, that's no secret, have
become pretty tribal, andyou're you know, I can remember
a time where you didn't talkabout your politics openly, and
now you know politics you wearon your sleeve, it actually
becomes part of your identity,and so my concern is that, as I
(12:56):
don't really want to call itconservative thought, we'll call
it right wing populism becomesless empathetic.
Empathy is seen as a weakness.
We incorporate that into ourchurch, and so you might say
those, those politics are fine.
Incorporate that into ourchurch, and so you might say, um
, those, those politics are fine.
And you might say like, hey,look, the two kingdoms doctrine
says the sword is for the stateand you know, the gospels for
the church, and I would agreewith that.
Uh, but a lack of empathydoesn't belong in the church and
(13:20):
it comes in, um, I think,through our political
associations and the way that weview ourselves politically, and
that becomes the bulk of ouridentity.
And I'll give you, I'll give youan example really quickly.
So we were talking about therecent executive order that
removes churches from the listof sanctuary places.
That ICE can't, you know, doimmigration enforcement actions,
(13:45):
and the response from one ofthe nicest little ladies in our
church was good, let them comeRight.
And I thought, wow, that's,that's, that's crazy, because,
you know, just four years ago wewere talking about how we
weren't going to let thegovernment come in and decide
how God was going to distributehis blessings through word and
sacrament to his people in themiddle of covid, and we were
(14:05):
right in doing that, I think.
But now we're like, hey, if youwant to come, enforce some
immigration actions in ourchurch, regardless of what that
does to the church's mission ofexpanding the kingdom, we're
good with that.
And so there's a lack ofempathy, right.
And then how that workscontextually or how that works
inside the church is prettyalarming, right.
So we talked about worshipstyles, we talked about pastoral
(14:27):
formation, we talked about awhole host of things, but that's
what ends up in the church,which is not good at all.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Yeah, so you mentioned worship styles, right,
and there are many Lutheranchurches that do contemporary,
many, probably most, do atraditional form, what we call
traditional, right, right out ofthe hymnal.
But plenty that do both styles,plenty that do only
contemporary style.
Usually they're incorporating,you know, some sort of
(14:56):
liturgical elements.
There's definitely word andsacrament happening in these
expressions we define in ourconfession.
Unity is word and sacrament,right, but what happens in our
culture?
The culture is we define unityas the hymnal right, hey, we've
got a written document.
You have to adhere to that.
If you're not adhering to it,you're quote unquote heretic,
(15:19):
not Lutheran, not confessionalright.
And this seems to be a deepsort of cultural movement in our
church body right now, andthere are plenty, and the reason
I know this is because thosecomments are abundant on social
media.
Yeah, that would be very happyto see churches prohibited from
(15:41):
doing what we would callcontemporary worship or purged
from the body they would be justcontent with that Right.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Or purged from the body.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
They would be just content with that, right, and
that is very, very alarming tome.
I think what's alarming to meis that we've defined the
tradition of Lutheran worship.
We've got 500 years oftradition for Lutheran worship,
but some people think we onlyhave 450 years of tradition for
Lutheran worship, right, andthey've decided that that 450
years is valid in the last 50years is not valid.
(16:09):
Yeah, and I've got.
I'm just very troubled by that.
Like, I'm personally veryconcerned about it, and I'm a
person, tim, I'm a person whocame here because I really
valued the traditionalexperience.
Like to me, I came from thePentecostal background with
tambourines and people speakingin tongues and running down the
(16:29):
aisles and stuff.
It was chaos.
I didn't want chaos.
The thing that first attractedme to Christ Greenfield was the
traditional worship.
I got asked to be part of apraise band here.
I did it reluctantly, knowingthat it was going to help the
mission of the church.
I did it reluctantly andeventually came to fall in love
with it.
But I did it reluctantlybecause I valued the traditional
worship here.
(16:49):
But I also recognized, like,yeah, like the culture of what
we live here in Gilbert, a lotof people when they think about
what worship it is.
Is some people it's very muchthe robes and the choir and some
people it's very much a stageand guitar and drums?
Right, and can we createhospitality for those people and
still give them word andsacrament, right, yeah, yeah,
(17:11):
absolutely, and there seems tobe an inability to think
flexible on that issue and Ithink that's culturally driven
right now and that culture istrying to narrow down what the
definition of adiaphora is.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Well, you know, and to go back and again, I'll
preface this by saying that I ama traditional worship kind of
guy, right.
But when you get into, I don'tknow, I'll just say the
pietistic movement that that iscurrently on the rise, I think,
in certain portions of the upperMidwest, rural portions of the
Midwest, probably not in thesaltwater districts really to a
(17:45):
large extent, but here in theSouthern District it certainly
is in the saltwater districtsreally to a large extent, but
here in the Southern district itcertainly is.
When you look at what they'rereally saying, I mean I watched
a guy do a rubric for divineservice, setting three, and he
said basically, like don't letthe people pray the Lord's
prayer, right, that's thepastors.
So all they get to do is praythe minor doxology at the end.
(18:07):
So that's the people's portion.
So don't give to the people.
What is the pastors to do ispray the minor doxology at the
end.
So that's the people's portion.
So don't give to the people.
What is the pastor's to do?
And all those sorts of things.
And so then you start to askwhat is the object of worship?
And for some of them I thinkthat it actually becomes the
liturgy, not Christ.
I mean at least there's adanger of that.
I'm not suggesting that they'relike worshiping the liturgy.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
I call the trend liturgical pietism.
It is, that's what I call it.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, there's a and and andthat, yeah, I mean, and that has
a, and you can see that in.
You know not to pick on anybody, but there's a.
(18:51):
There's a video out there thatyou can see that's.
That's titled um the primacy ofpiety and Lutheran education.
And so you know, and and whatdoes primacy mean, right?
So these are the, the classical, uh, classically trained people
, right?
So what is what does primacymean?
Words have meanings, right?
It means that peerless, likenumber one.
So piety becomes over Christand salvation and all these
sorts of things.
And so you quickly start to seethe sanctification, like many,
(19:13):
many, many other churches in, uh, american protestantism, uh,
becomes the primary focus ratherthan salvation.
Um, so it does.
It does have theologicalramifications based on, you know
, this piety that that they'reafter.
But, yeah, it's problematic.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
This is astonishing, so I'm just stuck on the Lord's
Prayer piece.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
That's the first I heard of that.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Do they base that on?
Jesus gave the Lord's Prayer tothe apostles, and therefore
pastors, in line with theapostolic kind of office of holy
ministry, and so we're the onlyones that can pray that,
because I don't know where you'deven ground that historically.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
I don't know that it I don't know that it has a
theological grounding.
It has a liturgical groundingfor sure, Like if you look at
divine service, setting three,the petitions of the Lord's
prayer are for the pastor, andthen, and you know, if you look
in the hymnal, and then thatminor doxology at the end, or I
don't know if it's a, yeah, theminor doxology at the end is is
for the people I'm with you nowthe chanted Lord's prayer.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, that's right that the pastor, which I really
actually like to do.
We haven't done that in a while, but yeah, interesting.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Interesting.
Yeah, they wouldn't necessarilysay that the Lord's prayer is
not good for personal devotionor anything like that.
It's just more about theliturgical move.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
I think it's yeah, and I think it's about the
rubric rather than any kind ofargument about what's good for
people and what's not, andthat's that.
That in itself is is isconcerning to me anyway.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
So, yeah, because liturgy actually shapes us.
Liturgy is discipleship.
It's living out the grand storyand then it's telling that
story.
It's interacting with thatstory from baptism all the way
to our sending.
That's why we have the liturgy.
It grounds us in being aconfessing repentant.
People who hear the word areshaped by the word to become a
(21:03):
people of prayer, a people whoconfess who God is and then are
sent out to declare to the world, in our homes and in our
neighborhoods, the goodness andgrace of the triune God.
I mean that's the best part ofour liturgy and I don't think
that we should go away from that.
I think it's a marketdifferentiator in the wider
(21:23):
American Christian landscapetoday that we would be remiss if
we were to just outright getrid of.
And at the same timeinstrumentation is varied in
some of our contexts.
I think we should hold to.
I think we should hold to theguts of the divine service and
show contextual hospitalitytoward instrumentation that
(21:44):
appears to be in the OldTestament and in the new, kind
of what they did?
that appears to be in the OldTestament and in the New, kind
of what they did, make a joyfulnoise to the Lord sing, clap,
shout, you know, bang, et cetera.
The thing with some willconflate the banging of drums
with Babylonian worship.
Like all, music has a meter,for goodness sake.
I don't care if you're using abass drum or whatever.
(22:05):
Jack, you're the musician.
Go ahead, jack Right right?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Well, first of all.
So it's interesting because itseems like we have that
hospitality for other nationalchurch bodies.
Yeah, so if we got an AfricanLutheran church, we don't have
any problem with them havingdrums in there, but not for the
American Lutheran church.
That's inappropriate, right?
So strange, I don't know church.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
That's inappropriate, right?
So strange, I don't know.
I think the argument, um, theargument would be that the
church should be about um, the,um, uh, like the, the, the,
whatever the preeminent art formis right, and that contextually
in that society.
So if it's, if it's western, itshould be classical music.
If it's, if it's uh, you know,africa, it might be drums and
(22:51):
whatever.
So I think that that's the, Ithink that's the argument.
So, and it extends beyond that,it goes to art and all those
sorts of things, and so yeah, um, and in america it's the pre.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
You know jazz, uh, rock and roll, this is the
birthplace of that as an artform.
Sure, which other?
Which others?
You know countries that hasbeen exported to other parts of
the west in rock and roll, thisis the birthplace of that as an
art form.
Sure, which other?
Which others?
You know?
Countries that has beenexported to other parts of the
West and the in the world, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Let me take it in a in a little different direction
here.
Um, how easy is it to offendyou?
And I'm asking, listener, justto be quite honest, like what
another brother does in adifferent context, if I hear
about it and I hear somethingthat's strange about it, like if
it's a friend, if it's someonethat I'm in, a every
(23:37):
organization, from the militaryto healthy churches and
businesses, et cetera.
We're going to work it out.
We're going to build trustbased on relationship.
(23:58):
We're walking right now, nick,through Lent, through the gospel
of Mark.
You cannot offend Jesus, right?
I mean, jesus is so on mission.
He could have been offended ashe's calming this, don't you
care, jesus?
He's like come on, man, don't Icare?
No, he's woken up and he calmsa storm and then, oh, you have a
(24:22):
little faith, I'm here with you.
And then he's going and he'shealing a man possessed by a
legion of demons and sending himout in mission.
He doesn't care about thebusiness owners that he just
drowned all their pigs.
He then heads back to the otherside, starts to preach this is
a crazy story In Mark, chapter 5, he then is on his way to heal
(24:45):
Jairus' daughter, and these arethe scribes and the Pharisees,
and he knows he's not heading ina good direction with that
group of people, and yet hestill goes and in his going he's
arrested, he's stopped by Powergoing out from him.
He cares for the woman with thedischarge of blood, heals her.
Your faith has made you well.
He goes and then this is a wildpart of the story as he says no
(25:06):
, she's just, she's not dead,she's just sleeping.
Everyone laughs in Jesus' face,like if you were Jesus or I
would, I'd be like okay, I guessyou don't want, I guess you
(25:26):
don't want what I'm going to doright now.
Like you guys, you guys don'tget it right.
No, jesus is like oh, okay,fine.
And then he, he brings themother and the father into the
room and raises the young girl.
Right after that, in Markchapter six, he moves into into
Nazareth.
A prophet is not without honorin his hometown.
His family and friendsbasically laugh at him.
They tell they, they are sayinghe, he out of his mind, and the
scribes and Pharisees aresaying he's possessed by a demon
.
And yet Jesus is just so, likeon mission.
(25:48):
So the question for you is likewhat gets you riled up, what
gets you intense?
Like for me, I just get riled upabout the mission of God to get
all of his kids back.
That's what I get fired upabout, and if we're fired, I
think in the LCMS we're justfired up about the wrong stuff.
We're just fired up about, like, critiquing our neighbor in
their context, rather thantrying to listen, love, care for
(26:11):
and then lock arms across avery diverse context in the
United States of America to doeverything we can to get the
gospel into the heart and earsof people, to remind them of
their identity in Jesus and thento kindly, hospitably invite
them into the weirdness which isbeing a Lutheran, a liturgical
Lutheran.
There's a lot of hospitality, alot of conversation that needs
(26:32):
to take place there, but we'remissing the mission if we're
arguing with one another overthings that are obviously
adiaphora.
Nick, anything to respond there?
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Yeah, and that's, that's just it.
I mean, uh, there's nothingmore you know, pharisaic than
you can be than arguing overadiaphora, um, and ignoring the
context of others.
And then, um, yeah, it, it, it.
That's that's exactly what we.
We end up doing.
We spend the vast majority ofour time arguing over, uh, uh,
relatively minor things andignoring the wider mission of
(27:04):
the church.
And then we also introducedthese false dichotomies of
missional versus confessional,as if those two things are
opposed in any respectwhatsoever.
I think if you're confessional,you better be missional.
If you're missional, you'reprobably confessional as well.
So If you're missional, youknow, you're probably
confessional as well.
So I mean, I don't think thatthis again, I mean I think that
(27:26):
they imagine that you know whois it, like Rick Warren or
somebody like that, put out aflyer in his local community and
it said you know what?
What is it that the churchshould be?
And then they said about youknow, making cotton candy
machines and Ferris wheels andwhatever else they put in their
sanctuary.
But that's not what we'retalking about in an LCMS context
(27:47):
as far as being missional, andso I think that that's the idea
right.
So our missional construct issaying you know we're the church
, we're actually going to tellyou what it is that you need
once you get in here.
And that's word and sacrament.
I mean, at the end of the day,it's the sacraments properly
administered and the wordpreached, and that's it.
(28:07):
So, yeah, I mean I think weought to be a little more
gracious to the people who areout there planting churches and
growing the church and thosesorts of things.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Here's a very confessional statement from my
readings of Luther Sinnersbelong in church, sinners belong
in church, and so what does achurch planter or any local
church really which needs tothink of itself as a mission
church in this type of society,what is it doing to create
hospitality, to invite sinnersinto church?
(28:40):
Yeah, so that they can hear theword preached and they could
experience the sacraments.
Right, yeah, that's my view.
So here's a challenge forpeople that are listening right
now.
Pretty soon there'll be anothersynodical convention coming up
and there's a lot of overturesthat are sent to the convention
to consider to vote on.
(29:00):
Count the number of overturesthat have the word heterodox or
heresy in it and then count thenumber of overtures that talk
about mission.
This will be very revealing topeople about what the culture of
our church body is right now.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, it's a protective, fear-based,
power-based culture and that'snot going to have the
multiplying.
It's just not attractive forthose that are outside of our
church.
You know, I talked to manyLutherans.
It's like, man, you guys gotsome stuff, you got to work out.
Man, yeah, and we're trying toengage in the conversation.
(29:38):
It's just not attractive.
We want to win some witness outinto the world, right, nick?
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Yeah, and what's really interesting to me is I
think you'd be hard pressed tofind a church body beyond the
LCMS that's more unified indoctrine from top to bottom,
right, I mean, I just don't.
I don't think it's a problemthat we have, right, so this
idea of heterodoxy and all thesesorts of things that we need to
purge from our Senate, I thinkit's a problem that doesn't
(30:03):
exist.
I think it makes people feelbetter.
I mean, I think it isfear-based.
I think the real threat, ifbeing honest, is something I
call backdoor ecumenicism, andit's because of our external
associations outside of church.
We bring those things intochurch that are from the rest of
evangelical Christianity.
(30:23):
For example, I can't tell youhow many times, since Hamas
invaded Israel, I've heard thatit's my duty as a Christian from
Lutherans, my duty as aChristian, to support Israel,
which is nonsense.
I mean that goes back to poorChristology not understanding
that all the promises and allthose that, that, all the
promises and all this, yeah, allthe promises and all the, all
(30:44):
those things and all theprophecies that were belong to
israel or jacob originally nowbelong to christ, right.
So it's a, it's a poorchristological understanding
what's happening.
And so you know, you get thatand you know because it's out
there on the wind.
It's, it's out there on thewind, it's ubiquitous.
You get this idea of thisdispensational idea, this
(31:07):
millennial idea, a millennialistidea that Christ has to
literally reign for a thousandyears and the temple and all
those sorts of things, leagueand other respects with, with,
uh, evangelical Christians whoare just complete, like that,
literally, uh, uh, uh, therapture has taken the place of
(31:28):
the gospel, it's almost a secondgospel and the rest of
evangelical Christianity.
So that's a litmus test, like,do you believe in a
pre-tribulation rapture or not?
And that's their, theirdefinition of Christianity.
Um, so, uh, it's prettybizarre's pretty bizarre, but we
can catch those things andthose are way more important, I
think, than trying to find thisheresy or heterodox doctrine
(31:52):
within our own church body,which I don't think is actually
a problem right now.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Yeah, nick, this is an interesting observation.
Any church that's great athospitality is going to have to
deal with that, because thatmeans they're bringing people
into the community that havethings in their backpack.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
That are going to have to get unpacked.
They're going to have to beunlearned, and a church that's
really great at mission is alsogoing to have to be really great
at creating a zeal forcatechism and learning what it
means to actually follow anorthodox faith.
Unpacking things like synergyyou know synergism enthusiasm
(32:29):
right the theology of glory, allthat kind of stuff, and be
really good at that and actuallycreate a thirst for continuing
learning amongst its people,while it's being missional to
kind of become aware oh, I'vefallen into this trap of this
thinking and have a really goodprocess for teaching that.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Well, luckily, you know, from an Orthodox view,
orthodox Lutheran view, weunderstand that we all have
things in our backpack.
So you know, those are you know, right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
We like we walk through all that stuff right now
.
I was struggling, nick, whenyou were talking about the
eschatological stuff, like whatgroup?
But I now I think I get, yeah,we have folks that are outside
Lutheranism that enter into our.
They're not leading necessarily, but could some of their, some
of their teaching, kind ofinfiltrate into a prayer
(33:20):
ministry or something like that?
And you got to kind of do sometriage and some react.
I mean, that's what the ApostlePaul is doing.
He's responding to poorteaching in all of his epistles,
Like the church is alreadymoving.
These Christians are alreadyengaging.
Gentiles are bringing theirbackground, their baggage.
Jews are obviously bringingtheir baggage.
Here's the new way of whichwe're going to go about living
(33:41):
and loving one another.
I mean it really, the onlything he ever gets like super
fired up about was like sexualimmorality or someone leading
with power and position, ratherthan the humility of Christ.
Philippians, chapter two right,it was a lot more about
character issues than it wasabout content and doctrine
though we need to correctdoctrine, but we're going to do
(34:01):
it as a family.
You're in the family, You'rebaptized in the name of the
triune God and we got some stuffto work out right.
And that's just going to takesome time.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
Well, and then there's the osmosis that happens
, I think as well.
So think about going back tothe Semenex idea, right?
So I mean, I don't think thathigher criticism was the reason
they left.
I, I don't think that highercriticism was the reason they
left.
I think it was their politicalaffiliation, that they're
(34:29):
putting that political identityover their baptismal identity.
I think the same problem happenswith us today where we say,
okay, well, look, the politicalassociation I've chosen favors
this policy towards Israel,which has a theological
ramification, right, and some oftheir views.
And so, because that has becomemy identity over my baptismal
identity, I'm going to go aheadand just ingest that and make
(34:50):
that part of the way that Ithink, right, and this is
lifelong Lutherans, and so, andthat's problematic, I mean we do
have, in the run-up to theelection we did have the
surrogates of a politician whoare baptizing, literally
baptizing people in his nameinstead of the triune God, right
(35:13):
, and so, so, so that there, so,there, there is this
intentional replacement of ourpolitical identity, replacing
our baptismal identity, and weneed to be careful that that
doesn't happen.
And so that's a real thing,like a physical thing.
And then again, I talked abouton the empathy side, right.
I do think empathy really inthe church is context, informed
(35:36):
grace, right.
And so if your politicalassociation says empathy is
weakness and you hear that,enough right, 24 hour news cycle
, all the things that you ingest, you start to believe that and
then you start to act that wayin the church, which, which,
which is problematic.
So this backdoor ecumenicism,where we've caught a lot of
heresies or whatever you want tocall them, from our evangelical
(36:00):
brethren in the realm ofheterodoxy, I think are
manifesting in the church, notin our pastors, right, not in
our lay leaders per se, but Ithink in lay people it is
happening a bit, and maybe notwhere you are, maybe not in the
saltwater districts, but I knowin the rural Midwest and then my
southern district.
(36:20):
I mean, I just hear thesethings constantly.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
And I think the more isolationist of a posture you
take, the less capable you areof dealing with that when it
enters into your community,because you're not used to
having these types ofconversations.
You're just operating under thepresumption that everybody
agrees, you know, has the sameagreement on these things, and
when they happen, you don't knowhow to deal with it.
Yeah, versus, can we have aculture that, again, fosters
(36:47):
conversation?
So you know these conversationsare going to happen all the
time, so that it's just secondnature to be able to talk about
these issues and give lovinggentle correction to them.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, that's exactly whatwe're called to do.
So you know.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Hey, I've been going on a kick recently.
Jack, I brought this up lastSunday on Thomas Aquinas' four
idols 13th, 14th and 15thcentury Very, very popular.
The four idols are power, money, pleasure or fame.
Power, money, pleasure or fame.
And you can do a litmus test towalk through those.
Which one would you get rid offirst?
(37:24):
So for me I'll go first.
For me I would get rid of power.
Anything that smacks ofpositional authoritative you do
what I say just because I saidit might makes right.
Anything that smacks of that islike nails on a chalkboard for
me, because I've just seen itdoesn't work over long periods
(37:48):
of time, it doesn't build trust,et cetera.
So I can talk about power isthe first one I'd eliminate.
Nick, what would you eliminate?
Speaker 4 (37:55):
Yeah, I'd probably go with power more like naked
power like you're talking about,you know, just the wielding of
power in a in a nonsensical sortof way, right, um, yeah, we, we
, the the way to lead is not byfiat, um, so, uh, and, and it
never, and it never has has been, especially especially in a
(38:16):
church body that is freelyassociated, um, you know, or
loosely associated, and I meanmany of our conversations over
the years on lead time haveassociated around what we feel
like is a disproportionate useof of hierarchical power to tell
people who gave you theauthority to do X, whatever X,
(38:39):
is Right.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
That's, that's a power question.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Jack, would you versus presuming that the
congregation has the authorityto do X, whatever X is right?
That's a power question, jack.
Would you Versus presuming thatthe congregation has the
authority to do everythingwithin its orthodox confession
right?
Speaker 2 (38:48):
That appears to be what Jesus said as he gave us
the office of the king.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yeah, I would say, probably fame and or power are
probably tied.
For me, I think fame gets intothe narcissism which is also,
like, definitely a majorstruggle of what we're dealing
with in society right now, andof course that ties to pride,
(39:12):
which gets us to like theunnecessary exercise of power,
and that's tough for me.
Coming from a militarybackground, I know, nick, you
might be able to identify somewith it.
You know I'm used to being in astructure where you give orders
and orders are followed, right.
And I've come to learn inchurch life, right, that you
really and, by the way, that'san oversimplification yeah, you
(39:33):
know, because we teach in themilitary that there's different
types of influence that peopleexert.
Right, yeah, right, yeah, thechurch amplifies that the type
of influence you have to exertin the church has.
You have to try and doeverything possible to avoid
using formal power and youreally need to be working
through positive influence morethan anything.
(39:54):
The church only survivesbecause you influence people to
work for free for the mission,right.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
And so I can yeah, I can also get rid of money.
I mean, I didn't go intoministry for money.
I realize I'm not going to takeanything with me as I move into
the new heavens of the newearth.
So that's kind of some somepeople, though in our church
body.
I mean that is the attainment,it's, it's moving up the
corporate ladder.
The American dream of retiringat 60, 65, whatever, and
(40:25):
drinking Mai Tais on the beachbecause you have no concerns
over your financial statusthat's a real idol for many in
our context, especially here inthe West.
I can also get rid of pleasure.
I've walked through a lot ofthings.
I've seen God work throughstruggle, through trial.
This is the way of the cross.
But I would say that the twomain idols in the LCMS, jack,
(40:48):
are just what you articulated.
It is power, it's positionalauthority, but then it's fame or
honor, because none of us arein like who really cares about
fame in the LCMS, like if you'refamous in the.
Speaker 4 (40:59):
LCMS.
Like 0.01% A whole two millionpeople know who.
Like 0.01% famous A whole twomillion people know who.
You are right, oh, great yeahexactly, but I think there's
still an honor culture, and thisis where tribalism kind of
comes in.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
I don't want to do anything that upsets the group
of people who are my friends,that I closely identify with,
whether it's for me in the largechurch network.
I don't want to say anythingthat hurts anybody in the large
church network.
I want all of them to like me.
And then, if you're in a muchmore liturgical you know, if you
have a difference of opinionregarding classical education,
(41:35):
for example, that's going to besomething that could hurt in
your respective.
It could hurt your reputation,because I hear this a lot.
Right, it hurts my.
It hurts my reputation if so,and so says this or that about
me.
And I would say that one of thebiggest reasons why people won't
come on to talk around and we'dbe very collegial, kind, open
(41:56):
around, like serious concerns inthe LCMS is we'd rather not
associate with a group of peoplewho are outside of my, my group
.
That means we have the idol ofof fame or honor.
That needs to be, and and I, I,that's my number one right.
That's why I have to enter in.
Do you?
All these conversations are notlike yay, like super comfortable
(42:19):
?
No, it's like.
Are not like, yay, like supercomfortable.
No, it's like ugh, likechallenging you know a system of
.
It's kind of like ugh.
It's not like woo, I get upevery morning I'm like this is
going to be an awesome.
No, no, no, like we want tomanage and steward these
conversations really, reallywell, and one of the exercises
for me of doing podcasts is Iget to practice in public
(42:40):
speaking how I would hope otherpeople speak in public around me
tension-filled, complexproblems that we're trying to
walk through right now, and todo so in a way with arms open.
Wide vulnerability is a hugething for me and I want to be
kind and charitable to thosewhom I disagree with, because I
(43:04):
may.
Going back to what I saidbefore, I may miss something.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
There may be something to the story that I'm
missing.
Any take on that, though, nick.
Sometimes, when I sit alonewith my thoughts, I really
question whether some of thesepeople would even want me in
their, their Senate, and I and Iassume that you know, and I and
I allow myself to think, oh no,they probably don't.
But you know, that's that's,that's not being charitable,
especially when ascribingmotivations which I don't know
(43:41):
Right, and I do that a lot.
That's, that's one of my,that's my biggest struggle,
actually, in fact.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, we don't know theconversation that people are
having in their head.
We're always talking toourselves, right, our internal
conversation, and we don't knowthe conversations that take
place in rooms that we're not in.
So humility and charity have towin the day.
Maybe one final question hereas we close.
How do you think, nick and Jack, I'd love to get your take Our
(44:10):
struggles are deeply rooted inGenesis three and the power
struggles of the reformation,because the reformation story is
a power struggle story.
Right, are we going to?
How far are we going to go, forthe sake of the soul?
Is winning winning the day?
Anything more to say there,Nick?
Speaker 4 (44:28):
Yeah, yeah.
So again, I mean, I think thatwe have ingested some reformed
theology and some other thingsalong the way, where we kind of
forget that we know that at thefall and until the eschidim,
this creation is hurtlingtowards entropy.
(44:49):
It's chaos, disorder, all thosethings right, and so when we
look at society, we can see that, but for a few blips in the
radar we're on a steady declinemorally, ethically, all of those
sorts of things, and the onlyonly entity in the entire
universe who can put thattogether is the second person of
the Trinity.
That's the only thing thatfixes any of this right, and so
(45:12):
the recreator of all things, theauthor and perfecter of our
faith, is who comes and fixesthese problems.
When we start to imagine thatthrough our own reason or
intellect or power, that we canput these things back together.
If we only voted a certain way,if Tim only listened to me about
pastoral formation, or if Jackonly listened to me about the
way that we should conductworship services or the music we
(45:35):
should have, then everythingwould be fine.
Well, everything's not going tobe fine.
Everything's not going to befine until Christ returns.
This is the promise that wehave, but also we have another
promise is that God will sustainand protect His church until
the end.
Promise is that God willsustain and protect this church
until the end.
So we don't really have to dothese things, particularly when
we do them out of fear.
Completely different thing whenwe're engaging our Holy Spirit,
(45:58):
giving gifts to do kingdomexpanding activities.
Completely different than whenwe're insular, when we're
looking at ourselves and we'retrying to be protective and
we're trying to protect thechurch and we're trying to
protect the church, we're tryingto sustain the church.
Completely differentperspective and it goes back to
not understanding really whathappened, the ramifications of
what happened at the fall, andit's not just on humanity, it's
(46:20):
not just local, it's from whereyou're standing out to the most
distant galaxy, completelycorrupted.
There's nothing we can do aboutit, right?
Speaker 3 (46:28):
completely corrupted.
There's nothing we can do aboutit, Right, Jack?
The church is full of sinnersand we desperately need a savior
to um to die on the cross forus to bring us his own
righteousness, because we havenone of our own.
And, uh, that is true forpeople inside the church and
that's true for people outsidethe church.
That need is desperate there.
And if we think it's up to usto fix the church, if we think
(46:49):
it's up to us to like, we arenot bringing about order in this
world, Christ is bringing aboutorder.
That's his work and we aretrusting in him fully as a gift
to us that he would besuccessful in that role, Amen.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Amen.
This has been a greatconversation.
If you're wondering, listener,what was the main hope?
It's to have a conversationaround the adiaphora in our
church body and to build bridges.
Obviously do.
It's cool.
(47:25):
I'm just going to say this asone who's getting to know you
from afar.
It's wonderful to see the Lordsoftening.
That's what I'm praying for isjust a softening, a humility, a
charity and arms open wide forpeople that have different
contexts and different opinionsaround a whole host of things.
(47:46):
There may be things that we'remissing, their concerns.
I need to be open to listen andI hope that they extend the
same, but I don't.
This is when you're centered inyour identity in Jesus.
I don't need the same sort ofinvitation.
You know I'm not waiting aroundto be invited for people to
listen to me.
(48:07):
Right, you can listen, it'sknow, but but I want, if someone
has a concern for me, this isjust pastoral ministry.
To be quite honest, Nick, like Ihear, I hear people that have
concerns around the ministry, orso-and-so, or this or that, and
we sit and we work it outtogether as brothers and sisters
in Christ, and I'm seeing thatmodeled in you, brother, and I
(48:30):
just wanted to affirm that.
So thank you for your kindness,your partnership in the gospel.
Blessings to you in yourministry.
Clearing fields.
What did you say about Genesis,chapter 3?
What are you doing in the?
Speaker 4 (48:42):
fields right now.
Yeah, I mean, I'm just dealingwith the curse man.
That's what we're doing.
Toil in the fields, deal withthe weeds.
Man, that's, that's what we'redoing.
Yeah, it's the way we're doingit toil in the fields, deal with
the uh, with the weeds and allthose sorts of things, yeah all
those sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
Well, if people want to connect with you, nick, uh,
how can they do so bro?
Speaker 4 (48:58):
yeah, they can send me an email at ingraph79 at
gmailcom or, uh, make a commenton this when it posts to youtube
.
I'll I'll check it out, so yeah, so ingraph, double yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
So ngraff79 at gmailcom to connect with Nick.
This is lead time.
Please like, subscribe, commentwherever it is you take in this
podcast and we pray it'shelpful toward uniting us in
mission in the Lutheran Church,Missouri Synod, to carry the
never-changing gospel of JesusChrist to those who do not know
and desperately need to know andbelieve that Jesus is the way,
(49:33):
the truth and the only source oflife.
It's a good day.
Go and make it a great day.
Thanks so much, Nick, Greatwork.
Speaker 4 (49:37):
Jack, all right, thanks Tim.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Take care guys.
God bless.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the
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The ULC's mission is tocollaborate with the local
church to discover, develop anddeploy leaders through biblical
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Subscribe to our channel, thengo to theuniteleadershiporg to
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(50:03):
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Thanks for listening and staytuned for next week's episode.
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack
Kalberg, it is a beautiful dayto be alive, I pray.
The joy of Jesus is yourstrength, jack.
You feeling well, doing well.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Oh man, it is a beautiful day and I am under
absolute assault by allergiesright now.
So, keep me in your prayers as Ibear this thorn in my flesh.
Just a side note on that.
I've been struggling with thatfor about a year now.
I'm going through autoimmunetherapy where they're giving the
(00:33):
shots and it's actually helping, but they're saying it's kind
of a long haul or it might takea couple of years to get the
full benefit of it.
I'm noticing a benefit from it,so I'm praising Jesus for that
and just staying the course andkeeping going.
I saw you had a little spraybottle there.
Have you used?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
AstroPro?
No, I never heard of that.
This is one that just came, Notthat.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I'm giving medical advice.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
We started the lead time here.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
But this is For those of us that live in the Valley
that have allergies.
This is a non-steroid type of,and it's really great.
So for those of us that speak alot.
My biggest issue with using anykind of nasal steroid to kind
of dry you up is it also hurtsyour vocal cords, and so this
(01:19):
one is not doing that.
So AstroPro, to the rescue.
With that, we have Nick Graffback with us today.
Nick has been on a number oftimes in the past.
He served nine years as asergeant in the Marine Corps,
followed by 16 years in specialforces.
As a civilian, he is a laymanin the Lutheran Church Missouri
(01:41):
Synod and he is a deep thinker.
We're going to have a lot offun today.
So background Nick recently.
From time to time he hearsthings and he's like hey, tim,
have you thought about this?
And he recently sent me anemail with a lot of great
talking points and so sent theemail back saying let's have a
conversation and that's how itworks.
And here we go.
So you talked a lot about thewin.
(02:04):
Let's just go right into thedeep end here, nick, before we
get going.
How you doing, brother?
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Man I'm doing great, Glad to be here, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah.
So Nick is a is a country rural.
He's a man's man If I could behalf the man that Nick is.
He's clearing a huge fieldright now for he and his wife in
their rural abode in Alabama.
That's where he's coming to usfrom, so praise be to God.
But in his spare time he likesto talk about stuff that's going
(02:34):
on in the history of the LCMS,and so that's where we're going
to start talking about the lighttopic of Seminex, seminex.
So you talk about the win ofSeminex, the win.
Did we really win, nick, as youlook at it historically?
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Yeah Well, I mean, first of all, I think arriving
out of Semenex havingreconfirmed our commitment to
biblical inerrancy is absolutelya win, there's no question
about it.
And then, you know, the factthat we arrived out of Semenex
with a church body that wasuniformly confessional and I use
(03:12):
that in the best of termsuniformly confessional is
definitely a win.
But the question that we haveto ask ourselves is what left
with the people who departed atSemenex?
And so, you know, I think wecame out of Semenex with a
church body, particularly aclergy, that was far less
(03:33):
interested in you know, thepolitical engagements of the
time, which may be a good thing.
In fact, if you think aboutwhat was happening in the late
in the 60s, late 60s, early 70s,that might have actually been a
good thing, but the questionstill remains that when you have
a church body that separates,you did lose something.
And what is that thing?
And so, you know, I like tothink about it from the
(03:53):
perspective of the people wholeft during Seminax.
And so, I think, as the victors, as the quote unquote victors
the people who remained in theLCMS after Seminax, I think we
like to paint this as just amatter of rejecting higher
critical view towards HolyScripture and saying like, look,
this is about biblicalinerrancy.
(04:13):
But if you think about thepeople who left, imagine that
you were.
You know, I think you couldimagine if you were in a
synodical body that was goingtoward higher criticism and you
were somebody who subscribed tobiblical inerrancy, I think you
could imagine leaving rightBecause that's a matter of faith
, that's a faith question,that's an issue, I think, when
(04:34):
you take it from the perspectiveof the people who subscribe to
what is an academic philosophyand you imagine, would I leave a
synodical body overdisagreement of an academic
philosophy?
Probably not.
So while we may, and they may,make it about higher criticism,
I think it's probably more aboutthe politics that higher
(04:55):
criticism allowed for.
It allowed for well, and then Ithink it was also a little bit
of fealty or loyalty towardsparticularly popular professors
at Concordia, st Louis, who areteaching these things Right.
I think it was less aboutreally an academic philosophy
than it was about politics andthen personal loyalty.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Nick, let's unpack this real quick.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
When you say higher critical analysis of the Bible,
not everybody knows what thatmeans.
Can you kind of explain yourbest understanding of what that
means?
Yeah, so instead of saying thatHoly Scripture is God's word,
divinely inspired, written downby man, those sorts of things,
you would look at all of HolyScripture through the prism of
the people who wrote it and thecontext in which it was written.
So you might say, paul's basicprohibition on women in the
ministry, right.
(05:51):
You would say, well, look,paul's a bigot, he's a product
of his time.
You know, we don't have tolisten to that today.
You might say something likethat if you were a higher
critical sort of person.
Critical sort of person, right,but.
But the problem then is likeokay, well then, also then maybe
the, the account of creation,the biblical narrative of
creation, is just a story thatwe tell kids on the dangers of
(06:15):
sin or, you know, on how Godcreated the earth.
So then it opens up, you know.
And so if you get that wrong,which is really a matter of
Christology, if you get thatwrong, you get the cross wrong,
you get the eschaton wrong, youget everything wrong.
So, and we can see it right, Imean, you can see it.
In the ELCA I saw a few yearsago, you saw the Sparkle Creed,
(06:36):
which is just, I mean, clearlydemonic, like there's nothing
good, I would say an abomination, an abomination.
Yeah, I mean it's it's, it's,it's the.
It's worse than it's the worstheresy I've ever heard, so so,
so, getting back to the peoplewho left at Seminex, what they
ended up doing was basicallyputting their political identity
(06:57):
above their baptismal identity,and so, in my estimation, right
, and I think that there's somedangers in doing that today in
(07:20):
the LCMS, on the other side.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
So that that's, that's basically basically my
point.
But yeah, what do we win?
Right, so I think we won a lot,but I think we can't go back.
But what would have happened ifthose that were struggling,
those that had some differenttheological views but I'll tell
you this, like Tijan and anumber of the leaders that were
there, these were not like,these were not heretics in the
church, they were just in themidst of a certain time and
(07:43):
could they have been influencedin a certain direction?
That may have been less thanhelpful, for sure, but what
would have happened if theyhadn't walked?
Could the church have justworked it out over time, over a
long period of conversation,that would have moved us in an
orthodox direction?
And what it actually did is itput a spirit of disunity in the
(08:06):
LCMS and you fight to win, andwhen you win, you lose the
relationship, and we lostrelationship with a number of
strategic leaders that couldhave been led towards seeing
things in a different way.
The biggest question I thinkanytime you're in conflict, it's
never just about the thing.
Biggest question.
I think anytime you're inconflict, it's never just about
(08:27):
the thing, you know, and humanbeings tend to make it about the
thing.
So we look at what Semenex wasand it's obviously a battle over
the Bible.
It's higher critical and we gotto get rid of the heretics and
thankfully they walked, so wedidn't have to really do it, you
know.
But what did we miss?
And there are certainly thingsthat we miss and I think we
could go down the same pathtoday.
For those of us that are saying,hey, there could be some paths
(08:50):
that we're going down that areless than faithful to the
mission of God, the driving whyof God to get all of his kids
back, there's a number ofconcerning things around,
whether it's formation or thingsthat happen behind closed doors
that look like, wow, are weinviting?
Is it filled with integrity andlove and truth and light?
And those of us that want tokind of enter into those spaces.
(09:13):
And if you don't know what I'mtalking about, I'm talking about
formation and prior approval.
Just to be quite clear, thoseare the two big topics right now
.
And for those of us that arejust kind of saying, with love
and care and kindness, we gotsome opportunities for growth.
Do we want to sit and actuallydo the deep work and listen to
one another in our respectivecontext, or do we just want to
put one another into corners?
(09:33):
And why don't it be better ifyou guys just left the whole
host of our church body?
If you guys just left the wholerest of the body would be
better.
If that is your litmus, ifthat's where you go, that is
less than faithful to the prayerof Jesus in John, chapter 17,
jack.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Tim, I mean what you're talking, what you're
describing to me, what I'mhearing from you is a process
whereby we're putting unityabove confession, and what I
mean.
What I mean by that is that, um, that unity is being defined by
style, by culture, by, let'ssay, definitely a confessional
(10:12):
interpretation, but maybe anarrow interpretation of
confessions.
You can agree, you can say amento the confessions and have
really great debates about whatthat means and still say that
you're saying amen to theconfessions, right.
But maybe you're narrowing downand saying only this
interpretation is allowed, right.
So we're now putting unityabove confessional alignment.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Nick any kind of follow up to that?
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Yeah, well, I would say that's definitely true, you
know.
Here's the other thing.
So when you were talking about,you know, could we have earlier
you were talking about, couldwe just maybe try to bring these
guys into the fold?
It's important to remember thatMartin Charlemagne, who was the
one of the inside guys at, uh,Concordia St Louis, was a higher
critic and he was called torepent and he did right and he
(11:00):
became uh, uh, you know, one ofthe one of the stalwarts at
Concordia, St Louis, to bring itback into confessional
alignment.
So, you know, not everyone'sgone.
But then the question is youknow, I sort of talked about
adiaphora and conflating thatwith biblical commands or
(11:22):
biblical ordinances orconfessions or those sorts of
things.
And so you know, I think thatthere's a view currently that,
you know, if we have a praiseband, the next thing we're going
to do is have an openly lesbiandistrict president or something
like there's a, there's a,there's a, there's a slippery
slope, right, yeah, that's theconflation, right.
So so what, what, what?
What there is lacking right nowis a trust that the people who
(11:47):
are in the Senate are actuallyconfessional Right, and then,
and then to leave Adiaphoramatters to the local church, and
they don't want to do that atall.
So, and that goes to pastoralformation, that goes to trust,
right, yeah, well, and I mean,look, I mean, I'm a, I'm a, I'm
a liturgical guy, like a divineservice setting one and three,
my absolute favorite Right, pagefive and 15.
(12:11):
However far back you want to go, that's what I want to do, but
there's a lack of contextualhospitality, and so not every
context is the same.
And so if you really thinkabout what empathy is, empathy
is really context-informed grace, and so that's what we're
lacking in our church iscontext-informed grace, and so
that's what we're lacking in ourchurch is context informed
grace, and I think that thatcomes in.
(12:31):
Unfortunately, I think thatcomes into from the political
side.
So I think you know Americanpolitics, that's no secret, have
become pretty tribal, andyou're you know, I can remember
a time where you didn't talkabout your politics openly, and
now you know politics you wearon your sleeve, it actually
becomes part of your identity,and so my concern is that, as I
(12:56):
don't really want to call itconservative thought, we'll call
it right wing populism becomesless empathetic.
Empathy is seen as a weakness.
We incorporate that into ourchurch, and so you might say
those, those politics are fine.
Incorporate that into ourchurch, and so you might say, um
, those, those politics are fine.
And you might say like, hey,look, the two kingdoms doctrine
says the sword is for the stateand you know, the gospels for
the church, and I would agreewith that.
Uh, but a lack of empathydoesn't belong in the church and
(13:20):
it comes in, um, I think,through our political
associations and the way that weview ourselves politically, and
that becomes the bulk of ouridentity.
And I'll give you, I'll give youan example really quickly.
So we were talking about therecent executive order that
removes churches from the listof sanctuary places.
That ICE can't, you know, doimmigration enforcement actions,
(13:45):
and the response from one ofthe nicest little ladies in our
church was good, let them comeRight.
And I thought, wow, that's,that's, that's crazy, because,
you know, just four years ago wewere talking about how we
weren't going to let thegovernment come in and decide
how God was going to distributehis blessings through word and
sacrament to his people in themiddle of covid, and we were
(14:05):
right in doing that, I think.
But now we're like, hey, if youwant to come, enforce some
immigration actions in ourchurch, regardless of what that
does to the church's mission ofexpanding the kingdom, we're
good with that.
And so there's a lack ofempathy, right.
And then how that workscontextually or how that works
inside the church is prettyalarming, right.
So we talked about worshipstyles, we talked about pastoral
(14:27):
formation, we talked about awhole host of things, but that's
what ends up in the church,which is not good at all.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Yeah, so you mentioned worship styles, right,
and there are many Lutheranchurches that do contemporary,
many, probably most, do atraditional form, what we call
traditional, right, right out ofthe hymnal.
But plenty that do both styles,plenty that do only
contemporary style.
Usually they're incorporating,you know, some sort of
(14:56):
liturgical elements.
There's definitely word andsacrament happening in these
expressions we define in ourconfession.
Unity is word and sacrament,right, but what happens in our
culture?
The culture is we define unityas the hymnal right, hey, we've
got a written document.
You have to adhere to that.
If you're not adhering to it,you're quote unquote heretic,
(15:19):
not Lutheran, not confessionalright.
And this seems to be a deepsort of cultural movement in our
church body right now, andthere are plenty, and the reason
I know this is because thosecomments are abundant on social
media.
Yeah, that would be very happyto see churches prohibited from
(15:41):
doing what we would callcontemporary worship or purged
from the body they would be justcontent with that Right.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Or purged from the body.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
They would be just content with that, right, and
that is very, very alarming tome.
I think what's alarming to meis that we've defined the
tradition of Lutheran worship.
We've got 500 years oftradition for Lutheran worship,
but some people think we onlyhave 450 years of tradition for
Lutheran worship, right, andthey've decided that that 450
years is valid in the last 50years is not valid.
(16:09):
Yeah, and I've got.
I'm just very troubled by that.
Like, I'm personally veryconcerned about it, and I'm a
person, tim, I'm a person whocame here because I really
valued the traditionalexperience.
Like to me, I came from thePentecostal background with
tambourines and people speakingin tongues and running down the
(16:29):
aisles and stuff.
It was chaos.
I didn't want chaos.
The thing that first attractedme to Christ Greenfield was the
traditional worship.
I got asked to be part of apraise band here.
I did it reluctantly, knowingthat it was going to help the
mission of the church.
I did it reluctantly andeventually came to fall in love
with it.
But I did it reluctantlybecause I valued the traditional
worship here.
(16:49):
But I also recognized, like,yeah, like the culture of what
we live here in Gilbert, a lotof people when they think about
what worship it is.
Is some people it's very muchthe robes and the choir and some
people it's very much a stageand guitar and drums?
Right, and can we createhospitality for those people and
still give them word andsacrament, right, yeah, yeah,
(17:11):
absolutely, and there seems tobe an inability to think
flexible on that issue and Ithink that's culturally driven
right now and that culture istrying to narrow down what the
definition of adiaphora is.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Well, you know, and to go back and again, I'll
preface this by saying that I ama traditional worship kind of
guy, right.
But when you get into, I don'tknow, I'll just say the
pietistic movement that that iscurrently on the rise, I think,
in certain portions of the upperMidwest, rural portions of the
Midwest, probably not in thesaltwater districts really to a
(17:45):
large extent, but here in theSouthern District it certainly
is in the saltwater districtsreally to a large extent, but
here in the Southern district itcertainly is.
When you look at what they'rereally saying, I mean I watched
a guy do a rubric for divineservice, setting three, and he
said basically, like don't letthe people pray the Lord's
prayer, right, that's thepastors.
So all they get to do is praythe minor doxology at the end.
(18:07):
So that's the people's portion.
So don't give to the people.
What is the pastors to do ispray the minor doxology at the
end.
So that's the people's portion.
So don't give to the people.
What is the pastor's to do?
And all those sorts of things.
And so then you start to askwhat is the object of worship?
And for some of them I thinkthat it actually becomes the
liturgy, not Christ.
I mean at least there's adanger of that.
I'm not suggesting that they'relike worshiping the liturgy.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
I call the trend liturgical pietism.
It is, that's what I call it.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, there's a and and andthat, yeah, I mean, and that has
a, and you can see that in.
You know not to pick on anybody, but there's a.
(18:51):
There's a video out there thatyou can see that's.
That's titled um the primacy ofpiety and Lutheran education.
And so you know, and and whatdoes primacy mean, right?
So these are the, the classical, uh, classically trained people
, right?
So what is what does primacymean?
Words have meanings, right?
It means that peerless, likenumber one.
So piety becomes over Christand salvation and all these
sorts of things.
And so you quickly start to seethe sanctification, like many,
(19:13):
many, many other churches in, uh, american protestantism, uh,
becomes the primary focus ratherthan salvation.
Um, so it does.
It does have theologicalramifications based on, you know
, this piety that that they'reafter.
But, yeah, it's problematic.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
This is astonishing, so I'm just stuck on the Lord's
Prayer piece.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
That's the first I heard of that.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Do they base that on?
Jesus gave the Lord's Prayer tothe apostles, and therefore
pastors, in line with theapostolic kind of office of holy
ministry, and so we're the onlyones that can pray that,
because I don't know where you'deven ground that historically.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
I don't know that it I don't know that it has a
theological grounding.
It has a liturgical groundingfor sure, Like if you look at
divine service, setting three,the petitions of the Lord's
prayer are for the pastor, andthen, and you know, if you look
in the hymnal, and then thatminor doxology at the end, or I
don't know if it's a, yeah, theminor doxology at the end is is
for the people I'm with you nowthe chanted Lord's prayer.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, that's right that the pastor, which I really
actually like to do.
We haven't done that in a while, but yeah, interesting.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Interesting.
Yeah, they wouldn't necessarilysay that the Lord's prayer is
not good for personal devotionor anything like that.
It's just more about theliturgical move.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
I think it's yeah, and I think it's about the
rubric rather than any kind ofargument about what's good for
people and what's not, andthat's that.
That in itself is is isconcerning to me anyway.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
So, yeah, because liturgy actually shapes us.
Liturgy is discipleship.
It's living out the grand storyand then it's telling that
story.
It's interacting with thatstory from baptism all the way
to our sending.
That's why we have the liturgy.
It grounds us in being aconfessing repentant.
People who hear the word areshaped by the word to become a
(21:03):
people of prayer, a people whoconfess who God is and then are
sent out to declare to the world, in our homes and in our
neighborhoods, the goodness andgrace of the triune God.
I mean that's the best part ofour liturgy and I don't think
that we should go away from that.
I think it's a marketdifferentiator in the wider
(21:23):
American Christian landscapetoday that we would be remiss if
we were to just outright getrid of.
And at the same timeinstrumentation is varied in
some of our contexts.
I think we should hold to.
I think we should hold to theguts of the divine service and
show contextual hospitalitytoward instrumentation that
(21:44):
appears to be in the OldTestament and in the new, kind
of what they did?
that appears to be in the OldTestament and in the New, kind
of what they did, make a joyfulnoise to the Lord sing, clap,
shout, you know, bang, et cetera.
The thing with some willconflate the banging of drums
with Babylonian worship.
Like all, music has a meter,for goodness sake.
I don't care if you're using abass drum or whatever.
(22:05):
Jack, you're the musician.
Go ahead, jack Right right?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Well, first of all.
So it's interesting because itseems like we have that
hospitality for other nationalchurch bodies.
Yeah, so if we got an AfricanLutheran church, we don't have
any problem with them havingdrums in there, but not for the
American Lutheran church.
That's inappropriate, right?
So strange, I don't know church.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
That's inappropriate, right?
So strange, I don't know.
I think the argument, um, theargument would be that the
church should be about um, the,um, uh, like the, the, the,
whatever the preeminent art formis right, and that contextually
in that society.
So if it's, if it's western, itshould be classical music.
If it's, if it's uh, you know,africa, it might be drums and
(22:51):
whatever.
So I think that that's the, Ithink that's the argument.
So, and it extends beyond that,it goes to art and all those
sorts of things, and so yeah, um, and in america it's the pre.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
You know jazz, uh, rock and roll, this is the
birthplace of that as an artform.
Sure, which other?
Which others?
You know countries that hasbeen exported to other parts of
the west in rock and roll, thisis the birthplace of that as an
art form.
Sure, which other?
Which others?
You know?
Countries that has beenexported to other parts of the
West and the in the world, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Let me take it in a in a little different direction
here.
Um, how easy is it to offendyou?
And I'm asking, listener, justto be quite honest, like what
another brother does in adifferent context, if I hear
about it and I hear somethingthat's strange about it, like if
it's a friend, if it's someonethat I'm in, a every
(23:37):
organization, from the militaryto healthy churches and
businesses, et cetera.
We're going to work it out.
We're going to build trustbased on relationship.
(23:58):
We're walking right now, nick,through Lent, through the gospel
of Mark.
You cannot offend Jesus, right?
I mean, jesus is so on mission.
He could have been offended ashe's calming this, don't you
care, jesus?
He's like come on, man, don't Icare?
No, he's woken up and he calmsa storm and then, oh, you have a
(24:22):
little faith, I'm here with you.
And then he's going and he'shealing a man possessed by a
legion of demons and sending himout in mission.
He doesn't care about thebusiness owners that he just
drowned all their pigs.
He then heads back to the otherside, starts to preach this is
a crazy story In Mark, chapter 5, he then is on his way to heal
(24:45):
Jairus' daughter, and these arethe scribes and the Pharisees,
and he knows he's not heading ina good direction with that
group of people, and yet hestill goes and in his going he's
arrested, he's stopped by Powergoing out from him.
He cares for the woman with thedischarge of blood, heals her.
Your faith has made you well.
He goes and then this is a wildpart of the story as he says no
(25:06):
, she's just, she's not dead,she's just sleeping.
Everyone laughs in Jesus' face,like if you were Jesus or I
would, I'd be like okay, I guessyou don't want, I guess you
(25:26):
don't want what I'm going to doright now.
Like you guys, you guys don'tget it right.
No, jesus is like oh, okay,fine.
And then he, he brings themother and the father into the
room and raises the young girl.
Right after that, in Markchapter six, he moves into into
Nazareth.
A prophet is not without honorin his hometown.
His family and friendsbasically laugh at him.
They tell they, they are sayinghe, he out of his mind, and the
scribes and Pharisees aresaying he's possessed by a demon
.
And yet Jesus is just so, likeon mission.
(25:48):
So the question for you is likewhat gets you riled up, what
gets you intense?
Like for me, I just get riled upabout the mission of God to get
all of his kids back.
That's what I get fired upabout, and if we're fired, I
think in the LCMS we're justfired up about the wrong stuff.
We're just fired up about, like, critiquing our neighbor in
their context, rather thantrying to listen, love, care for
(26:11):
and then lock arms across avery diverse context in the
United States of America to doeverything we can to get the
gospel into the heart and earsof people, to remind them of
their identity in Jesus and thento kindly, hospitably invite
them into the weirdness which isbeing a Lutheran, a liturgical
Lutheran.
There's a lot of hospitality, alot of conversation that needs
(26:32):
to take place there, but we'remissing the mission if we're
arguing with one another overthings that are obviously
adiaphora.
Nick, anything to respond there?
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Yeah, and that's, that's just it.
I mean, uh, there's nothingmore you know, pharisaic than
you can be than arguing overadiaphora, um, and ignoring the
context of others.
And then, um, yeah, it, it, it.
That's that's exactly what we.
We end up doing.
We spend the vast majority ofour time arguing over, uh, uh,
relatively minor things andignoring the wider mission of
(27:04):
the church.
And then we also introducedthese false dichotomies of
missional versus confessional,as if those two things are
opposed in any respectwhatsoever.
I think if you're confessional,you better be missional.
If you're missional, you'reprobably confessional as well.
So If you're missional, youknow, you're probably
confessional as well.
So I mean, I don't think thatthis again, I mean I think that
(27:26):
they imagine that you know whois it, like Rick Warren or
somebody like that, put out aflyer in his local community and
it said you know what?
What is it that the churchshould be?
And then they said about youknow, making cotton candy
machines and Ferris wheels andwhatever else they put in their
sanctuary.
But that's not what we'retalking about in an LCMS context
(27:47):
as far as being missional, andso I think that that's the idea
right.
So our missional construct issaying you know we're the church
, we're actually going to tellyou what it is that you need
once you get in here.
And that's word and sacrament.
I mean, at the end of the day,it's the sacraments properly
administered and the wordpreached, and that's it.
(28:07):
So, yeah, I mean I think weought to be a little more
gracious to the people who areout there planting churches and
growing the church and thosesorts of things.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Here's a very confessional statement from my
readings of Luther Sinnersbelong in church, sinners belong
in church, and so what does achurch planter or any local
church really which needs tothink of itself as a mission
church in this type of society,what is it doing to create
hospitality, to invite sinnersinto church?
(28:40):
Yeah, so that they can hear theword preached and they could
experience the sacraments.
Right, yeah, that's my view.
So here's a challenge forpeople that are listening right
now.
Pretty soon there'll be anothersynodical convention coming up
and there's a lot of overturesthat are sent to the convention
to consider to vote on.
(29:00):
Count the number of overturesthat have the word heterodox or
heresy in it and then count thenumber of overtures that talk
about mission.
This will be very revealing topeople about what the culture of
our church body is right now.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, it's a protective, fear-based,
power-based culture and that'snot going to have the
multiplying.
It's just not attractive forthose that are outside of our
church.
You know, I talked to manyLutherans.
It's like, man, you guys gotsome stuff, you got to work out.
Man, yeah, and we're trying toengage in the conversation.
(29:38):
It's just not attractive.
We want to win some witness outinto the world, right, nick?
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Yeah, and what's really interesting to me is I
think you'd be hard pressed tofind a church body beyond the
LCMS that's more unified indoctrine from top to bottom,
right, I mean, I just don't.
I don't think it's a problemthat we have, right, so this
idea of heterodoxy and all thesesorts of things that we need to
purge from our Senate, I thinkit's a problem that doesn't
(30:03):
exist.
I think it makes people feelbetter.
I mean, I think it isfear-based.
I think the real threat, ifbeing honest, is something I
call backdoor ecumenicism, andit's because of our external
associations outside of church.
We bring those things intochurch that are from the rest of
evangelical Christianity.
(30:23):
For example, I can't tell youhow many times, since Hamas
invaded Israel, I've heard thatit's my duty as a Christian from
Lutherans, my duty as aChristian, to support Israel,
which is nonsense.
I mean that goes back to poorChristology not understanding
that all the promises and allthose that, that, all the
promises and all this, yeah, allthe promises and all the, all
(30:44):
those things and all theprophecies that were belong to
israel or jacob originally nowbelong to christ, right.
So it's a, it's a poorchristological understanding
what's happening.
And so you know, you get thatand you know because it's out
there on the wind.
It's, it's out there on thewind, it's ubiquitous.
You get this idea of thisdispensational idea, this
(31:07):
millennial idea, a millennialistidea that Christ has to
literally reign for a thousandyears and the temple and all
those sorts of things, leagueand other respects with, with,
uh, evangelical Christians whoare just complete, like that,
literally, uh, uh, uh, therapture has taken the place of
(31:28):
the gospel, it's almost a secondgospel and the rest of
evangelical Christianity.
So that's a litmus test, like,do you believe in a
pre-tribulation rapture or not?
And that's their, theirdefinition of Christianity.
Um, so, uh, it's prettybizarre's pretty bizarre, but we
can catch those things andthose are way more important, I
think, than trying to find thisheresy or heterodox doctrine
(31:52):
within our own church body,which I don't think is actually
a problem right now.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Yeah, nick, this is an interesting observation.
Any church that's great athospitality is going to have to
deal with that, because thatmeans they're bringing people
into the community that havethings in their backpack.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
That are going to have to get unpacked.
They're going to have to beunlearned, and a church that's
really great at mission is alsogoing to have to be really great
at creating a zeal forcatechism and learning what it
means to actually follow anorthodox faith.
Unpacking things like synergyyou know synergism enthusiasm
(32:29):
right the theology of glory, allthat kind of stuff, and be
really good at that and actuallycreate a thirst for continuing
learning amongst its people,while it's being missional to
kind of become aware oh, I'vefallen into this trap of this
thinking and have a really goodprocess for teaching that.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Well, luckily, you know, from an Orthodox view,
orthodox Lutheran view, weunderstand that we all have
things in our backpack.
So you know, those are you know, right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
We like we walk through all that stuff right now
.
I was struggling, nick, whenyou were talking about the
eschatological stuff, like whatgroup?
But I now I think I get, yeah,we have folks that are outside
Lutheranism that enter into our.
They're not leading necessarily, but could some of their, some
of their teaching, kind ofinfiltrate into a prayer
(33:20):
ministry or something like that?
And you got to kind of do sometriage and some react.
I mean, that's what the ApostlePaul is doing.
He's responding to poorteaching in all of his epistles,
Like the church is alreadymoving.
These Christians are alreadyengaging.
Gentiles are bringing theirbackground, their baggage.
Jews are obviously bringingtheir baggage.
Here's the new way of whichwe're going to go about living
(33:41):
and loving one another.
I mean it really, the onlything he ever gets like super
fired up about was like sexualimmorality or someone leading
with power and position, ratherthan the humility of Christ.
Philippians, chapter two right,it was a lot more about
character issues than it wasabout content and doctrine
though we need to correctdoctrine, but we're going to do
(34:01):
it as a family.
You're in the family, You'rebaptized in the name of the
triune God and we got some stuffto work out right.
And that's just going to takesome time.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
Well, and then there's the osmosis that happens
, I think as well.
So think about going back tothe Semenex idea, right?
So I mean, I don't think thathigher criticism was the reason
they left.
I, I don't think that highercriticism was the reason they
left.
I think it was their politicalaffiliation, that they're
(34:29):
putting that political identityover their baptismal identity.
I think the same problem happenswith us today where we say,
okay, well, look, the politicalassociation I've chosen favors
this policy towards Israel,which has a theological
ramification, right, and some oftheir views.
And so, because that has becomemy identity over my baptismal
identity, I'm going to go aheadand just ingest that and make
(34:50):
that part of the way that Ithink, right, and this is
lifelong Lutherans, and so, andthat's problematic, I mean we do
have, in the run-up to theelection we did have the
surrogates of a politician whoare baptizing, literally
baptizing people in his nameinstead of the triune God, right
(35:13):
, and so, so, so that there, so,there, there is this
intentional replacement of ourpolitical identity, replacing
our baptismal identity, and weneed to be careful that that
doesn't happen.
And so that's a real thing,like a physical thing.
And then again, I talked abouton the empathy side, right.
I do think empathy really inthe church is context, informed
(35:36):
grace, right.
And so if your politicalassociation says empathy is
weakness and you hear that,enough right, 24 hour news cycle
, all the things that you ingest, you start to believe that and
then you start to act that wayin the church, which, which,
which is problematic.
So this backdoor ecumenicism,where we've caught a lot of
heresies or whatever you want tocall them, from our evangelical
(36:00):
brethren in the realm ofheterodoxy, I think are
manifesting in the church, notin our pastors, right, not in
our lay leaders per se, but Ithink in lay people it is
happening a bit, and maybe notwhere you are, maybe not in the
saltwater districts, but I knowin the rural Midwest and then my
southern district.
(36:20):
I mean, I just hear thesethings constantly.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
And I think the more isolationist of a posture you
take, the less capable you areof dealing with that when it
enters into your community,because you're not used to
having these types ofconversations.
You're just operating under thepresumption that everybody
agrees, you know, has the sameagreement on these things, and
when they happen, you don't knowhow to deal with it.
Yeah, versus, can we have aculture that, again, fosters
(36:47):
conversation?
So you know these conversationsare going to happen all the
time, so that it's just secondnature to be able to talk about
these issues and give lovinggentle correction to them.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, that's exactly whatwe're called to do.
So you know.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Hey, I've been going on a kick recently.
Jack, I brought this up lastSunday on Thomas Aquinas' four
idols 13th, 14th and 15thcentury Very, very popular.
The four idols are power, money, pleasure or fame.
Power, money, pleasure or fame.
And you can do a litmus test towalk through those.
Which one would you get rid offirst?
(37:24):
So for me I'll go first.
For me I would get rid of power.
Anything that smacks ofpositional authoritative you do
what I say just because I saidit might makes right.
Anything that smacks of that islike nails on a chalkboard for
me, because I've just seen itdoesn't work over long periods
(37:48):
of time, it doesn't build trust,et cetera.
So I can talk about power isthe first one I'd eliminate.
Nick, what would you eliminate?
Speaker 4 (37:55):
Yeah, I'd probably go with power more like naked
power like you're talking about,you know, just the wielding of
power in a in a nonsensical sortof way, right, um, yeah, we, we
, the the way to lead is not byfiat, um, so, uh, and, and it
never, and it never has has been, especially especially in a
(38:16):
church body that is freelyassociated, um, you know, or
loosely associated, and I meanmany of our conversations over
the years on lead time haveassociated around what we feel
like is a disproportionate useof of hierarchical power to tell
people who gave you theauthority to do X, whatever X,
(38:39):
is Right.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
That's, that's a power question.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Jack, would you versus presuming that the
congregation has the authorityto do X, whatever X is right?
That's a power question, jack.
Would you Versus presuming thatthe congregation has the
authority to do everythingwithin its orthodox confession
right?
Speaker 2 (38:48):
That appears to be what Jesus said as he gave us
the office of the king.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yeah, I would say, probably fame and or power are
probably tied.
For me, I think fame gets intothe narcissism which is also,
like, definitely a majorstruggle of what we're dealing
with in society right now, andof course that ties to pride,
(39:12):
which gets us to like theunnecessary exercise of power,
and that's tough for me.
Coming from a militarybackground, I know, nick, you
might be able to identify somewith it.
You know I'm used to being in astructure where you give orders
and orders are followed, right.
And I've come to learn inchurch life, right, that you
really and, by the way, that'san oversimplification yeah, you
(39:33):
know, because we teach in themilitary that there's different
types of influence that peopleexert.
Right, yeah, right, yeah, thechurch amplifies that the type
of influence you have to exertin the church has.
You have to try and doeverything possible to avoid
using formal power and youreally need to be working
through positive influence morethan anything.
(39:54):
The church only survivesbecause you influence people to
work for free for the mission,right.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
And so I can yeah, I can also get rid of money.
I mean, I didn't go intoministry for money.
I realize I'm not going to takeanything with me as I move into
the new heavens of the newearth.
So that's kind of some somepeople, though in our church
body.
I mean that is the attainment,it's, it's moving up the
corporate ladder.
The American dream of retiringat 60, 65, whatever, and
(40:25):
drinking Mai Tais on the beachbecause you have no concerns
over your financial statusthat's a real idol for many in
our context, especially here inthe West.
I can also get rid of pleasure.
I've walked through a lot ofthings.
I've seen God work throughstruggle, through trial.
This is the way of the cross.
But I would say that the twomain idols in the LCMS, jack,
(40:48):
are just what you articulated.
It is power, it's positionalauthority, but then it's fame or
honor, because none of us arein like who really cares about
fame in the LCMS, like if you'refamous in the.
Speaker 4 (40:59):
LCMS.
Like 0.01% A whole two millionpeople know who.
Like 0.01% famous A whole twomillion people know who.
You are right, oh, great yeahexactly, but I think there's
still an honor culture, and thisis where tribalism kind of
comes in.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
I don't want to do anything that upsets the group
of people who are my friends,that I closely identify with,
whether it's for me in the largechurch network.
I don't want to say anythingthat hurts anybody in the large
church network.
I want all of them to like me.
And then, if you're in a muchmore liturgical you know, if you
have a difference of opinionregarding classical education,
(41:35):
for example, that's going to besomething that could hurt in
your respective.
It could hurt your reputation,because I hear this a lot.
Right, it hurts my.
It hurts my reputation if so,and so says this or that about
me.
And I would say that one of thebiggest reasons why people won't
come on to talk around and we'dbe very collegial, kind, open
(41:56):
around, like serious concerns inthe LCMS is we'd rather not
associate with a group of peoplewho are outside of my, my group
.
That means we have the idol ofof fame or honor.
That needs to be, and and I, I,that's my number one right.
That's why I have to enter in.
Do you?
All these conversations are notlike yay, like super comfortable
(42:19):
?
No, it's like.
Are not like, yay, like supercomfortable.
No, it's like ugh, likechallenging you know a system of
.
It's kind of like ugh.
It's not like woo, I get upevery morning I'm like this is
going to be an awesome.
No, no, no, like we want tomanage and steward these
conversations really, reallywell, and one of the exercises
for me of doing podcasts is Iget to practice in public
(42:40):
speaking how I would hope otherpeople speak in public around me
tension-filled, complexproblems that we're trying to
walk through right now, and todo so in a way with arms open.
Wide vulnerability is a hugething for me and I want to be
kind and charitable to thosewhom I disagree with, because I
(43:04):
may.
Going back to what I saidbefore, I may miss something.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
There may be something to the story that I'm
missing.
Any take on that, though, nick.
Sometimes, when I sit alonewith my thoughts, I really
question whether some of thesepeople would even want me in
their, their Senate, and I and Iassume that you know, and I and
I allow myself to think, oh no,they probably don't.
But you know, that's that's,that's not being charitable,
especially when ascribingmotivations which I don't know
(43:41):
Right, and I do that a lot.
That's, that's one of my,that's my biggest struggle,
actually, in fact.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, we don't know theconversation that people are
having in their head.
We're always talking toourselves, right, our internal
conversation, and we don't knowthe conversations that take
place in rooms that we're not in.
So humility and charity have towin the day.
Maybe one final question hereas we close.
How do you think, nick and Jack, I'd love to get your take Our
(44:10):
struggles are deeply rooted inGenesis three and the power
struggles of the reformation,because the reformation story is
a power struggle story.
Right, are we going to?
How far are we going to go, forthe sake of the soul?
Is winning winning the day?
Anything more to say there,Nick?
Speaker 4 (44:28):
Yeah, yeah.
So again, I mean, I think thatwe have ingested some reformed
theology and some other thingsalong the way, where we kind of
forget that we know that at thefall and until the eschidim,
this creation is hurtlingtowards entropy.
(44:49):
It's chaos, disorder, all thosethings right, and so when we
look at society, we can see that, but for a few blips in the
radar we're on a steady declinemorally, ethically, all of those
sorts of things, and the onlyonly entity in the entire
universe who can put thattogether is the second person of
the Trinity.
That's the only thing thatfixes any of this right, and so
(45:12):
the recreator of all things, theauthor and perfecter of our
faith, is who comes and fixesthese problems.
When we start to imagine thatthrough our own reason or
intellect or power, that we canput these things back together.
If we only voted a certain way,if Tim only listened to me about
pastoral formation, or if Jackonly listened to me about the
way that we should conductworship services or the music we
(45:35):
should have, then everythingwould be fine.
Well, everything's not going tobe fine.
Everything's not going to befine until Christ returns.
This is the promise that wehave, but also we have another
promise is that God will sustainand protect His church until
the end.
Promise is that God willsustain and protect this church
until the end.
So we don't really have to dothese things, particularly when
we do them out of fear.
Completely different thing whenwe're engaging our Holy Spirit,
(45:58):
giving gifts to do kingdomexpanding activities.
Completely different than whenwe're insular, when we're
looking at ourselves and we'retrying to be protective and
we're trying to protect thechurch and we're trying to
protect the church, we're tryingto sustain the church.
Completely differentperspective and it goes back to
not understanding really whathappened, the ramifications of
what happened at the fall, andit's not just on humanity, it's
(46:20):
not just local, it's from whereyou're standing out to the most
distant galaxy, completelycorrupted.
There's nothing we can do aboutit, right?
Speaker 3 (46:28):
completely corrupted.
There's nothing we can do aboutit, Right, Jack?
The church is full of sinnersand we desperately need a savior
to um to die on the cross forus to bring us his own
righteousness, because we havenone of our own.
And, uh, that is true forpeople inside the church and
that's true for people outsidethe church.
That need is desperate there.
And if we think it's up to usto fix the church, if we think
(46:49):
it's up to us to like, we arenot bringing about order in this
world, Christ is bringing aboutorder.
That's his work and we aretrusting in him fully as a gift
to us that he would besuccessful in that role, Amen.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Amen.
This has been a greatconversation.
If you're wondering, listener,what was the main hope?
It's to have a conversationaround the adiaphora in our
church body and to build bridges.
Obviously do.
It's cool.
(47:25):
I'm just going to say this asone who's getting to know you
from afar.
It's wonderful to see the Lordsoftening.
That's what I'm praying for isjust a softening, a humility, a
charity and arms open wide forpeople that have different
contexts and different opinionsaround a whole host of things.
(47:46):
There may be things that we'remissing, their concerns.
I need to be open to listen andI hope that they extend the
same, but I don't.
This is when you're centered inyour identity in Jesus.
I don't need the same sort ofinvitation.
You know I'm not waiting aroundto be invited for people to
listen to me.
(48:07):
Right, you can listen, it'sknow, but but I want, if someone
has a concern for me, this isjust pastoral ministry.
To be quite honest, Nick, like Ihear, I hear people that have
concerns around the ministry, orso-and-so, or this or that, and
we sit and we work it outtogether as brothers and sisters
in Christ, and I'm seeing thatmodeled in you, brother, and I
(48:30):
just wanted to affirm that.
So thank you for your kindness,your partnership in the gospel.
Blessings to you in yourministry.
Clearing fields.
What did you say about Genesis,chapter 3?
What are you doing in the?
Speaker 4 (48:42):
fields right now.
Yeah, I mean, I'm just dealingwith the curse man.
That's what we're doing.
Toil in the fields, deal withthe weeds.
Man, that's, that's what we'redoing.
Yeah, it's the way we're doingit toil in the fields, deal with
the uh, with the weeds and allthose sorts of things, yeah all
those sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
Well, if people want to connect with you, nick, uh,
how can they do so bro?
Speaker 4 (48:58):
yeah, they can send me an email at ingraph79 at
gmailcom or, uh, make a commenton this when it posts to youtube
.
I'll I'll check it out, so yeah, so ingraph, double yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
So ngraff79 at gmailcom to connect with Nick.
This is lead time.
Please like, subscribe, commentwherever it is you take in this
podcast and we pray it'shelpful toward uniting us in
mission in the Lutheran Church,Missouri Synod, to carry the
never-changing gospel of JesusChrist to those who do not know
and desperately need to know andbelieve that Jesus is the way,
(49:33):
the truth and the only source oflife.
It's a good day.
Go and make it a great day.
Thanks so much, Nick, Greatwork.
Speaker 4 (49:37):
Jack, all right, thanks Tim.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Take care guys.
God bless.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the
Unite Leadership Collective.
The ULC's mission is tocollaborate with the local
church to discover, develop anddeploy leaders through biblical
Lutheran doctrine and innovativemethods To partner with us in
this gospel message.
Subscribe to our channel, thengo to theuniteleadershiporg to
create your free login forexclusive material and resources
(50:03):
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.
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