June 24, 2025 • 56 mins
What happens when the traditional path to ministry isn't an option? For Pastor Eli Thomas, the journey to becoming an LCMS pastor meant navigating uncharted waters through the colloquy process while balancing family responsibilities, work, and education over eleven challenging years.
What began as a winding path through different denominations ultimately led him back to Lutheran theology through his rediscovery of the real presence of Christ in the sacraments.
• Taking 11 years to complete undergraduate and seminary education while working and raising a family
• Navigating the challenging colloquy process to become an LCMS pastor
• Finding joy in interactive Bible study that transforms both teacher and students
• Serving two congregations simultaneously, including one with an average age of 80
• Moving from lecture-style teaching to dialogue that helps people experience Scripture
• Reflecting on convention experiences and hopes for the future of pastoral formation
• Discovering God's faithfulness when facing unexpected challenges
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
this is lead time welcome to lead time, tim allman
, here with jack cowberg.
It's a beautiful day to bealive and, uh, we've been doing.
We've been bunching a number ofrecordings.
I'm heading on sabbatical herein about a month and so spending
some good time with jack.
It seems like I see your mug,which is just across the hall on
a screen so frequently it's agood yeah, and you've got a
(00:24):
special treat for those.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
You got a special treat for those joining on video
.
You're wearing your collartoday.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Monday, Thursday right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
So very, very good.
Today we get to hang out withPastor Eli Thomas.
Let me tell you about him.
He's an LCMS pastor, husband,father of two college students,
sweet, both going to Concordia.
Pastor husband, father of twocollege students, sweet, both
going to Concordia.
Now let's see One's going toIrvine here and then another one
going to Seward.
In the fall, is that right?
Your 22-year-old is starting atSeward.
(00:53):
Tell that story.
You've got two Concordias, wow.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I have two Concordias .
I never imagined we'd be there,actually really excited for
that Goes fast.
My daughter started off withthe.
She didn't really have a place.
She wanted to go.
She wanted to go to Californiabecause she grew up in the
Northwest.
She doesn't like the rain, shedoesn't like being cold, so she
wanted Southern California.
So we kind of directed her toIrvine and it worked out and it
(01:17):
was great.
My son's been working for alocal elementary school for the
last three years as a para,working with life skills kids
trying to figure out hisdirection, finally decided hey,
education sounds good.
We had a DCE who is a ferventevangelist for Seward Nebraska
and that kind of sold him he was.
(01:39):
He didn't want to go toCalifornia.
It was either Mequon or Seward.
He decided Concordia would begood and we settled on Nebraska.
So I don't know.
I mean, when we go empty nest,apparently we go empty nest.
All in, quick man, it comesreally quick.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I'm just a couple years behind you, so let me tell
you a little bit more about EliGrew up in Seattle.
Majority of his family stilllives in the greater Seattle
area.
He did his undergrad work atNorthwest University in Kirkland
, washington, studying biblicallit, and he did his seminary
studies at Faith EvangelicalSeminary in Tacoma, washington.
(02:16):
Your son was born halfwaythrough your freshman year of
college and his daughter acouple of years before seminary.
So his wife is a formerChristian school teacher, turned
public school teacher when heaccepted his first call.
He came to pastoring a littlelater on in life, 35 years old,
when he graduated from seminary.
And then he went through andthis is going to form some of
our conversation today.
He went through colloquy andhe's serving faithfully up dual
(02:39):
parish pastor at ChristCommunity Church in Ridgefield,
washington, and Grace LutheranChurch in Longview, washington.
So well, welcome Eli.
We're going to have some fun.
Just tell us your colloquystory.
Let's just start there.
If we need to back up in yourstory at all, feel free to do so
, okay?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Yeah, colloquy, I'll be honest, colloquy is not what
I would have chosen, but I grewup in a Lutheran church I think
I called it the other side ofthe aisle, right.
I was an ELCA guy.
When I was growing up I was theonly one in my family going to
church and so the ELCAcongregations where I went to
preschool they were local to usand that's kind of where I
(03:20):
started out.
So I was steeped in theliturgical church growing up of
where I started out.
So I was steeped in, you know,the liturgical church growing up
.
But when I hit 16, and we movedout of the area, I kind of lost
touch, you know, and so it waswhen I met my wife that I got
back into church and she grew upAssembly of God, which was a
serious shock to my system.
That was a very, very differentworld than anything.
(03:42):
I mean, I grew up doing thewhole you know acolyte thing
processional cross, I carry theprocessional cross, light the
candles, eating, server, allthat sort of stuff as a teenager
and stuff.
And move into that world was awhole different spot, but it was
great because it got me backinto church and got me going
with her and really kind ofshaped, I think, the moment when
(04:03):
I really discovered my faith.
I mean, I grew up with it but Ididn't really acknowledge it.
It wasn't until my early 20sthat it really kind of connected
.
And that's when I discoveredthrough.
You know, I'd love to say I hadan old voice moment that said,
hey, thou shalt go into ministry.
But it was really the I triedeverything else and nothing
(04:26):
worked sort of route.
And my wife had graduated fromNorthwest University.
She was a private schoolteacher at the time, and that
was just one day.
I kind of woke up and said, hey, I think I'm supposed to be a
pastor and so I didn't knowwhere to go.
So I followed her route and Iwent to Northwest.
And it was while I was therethat I discovered that that that
(04:47):
was not the right place for me.
My, you know, my Lutheranheritage was trying to get
through and I didn't know what Iwent through.
We went through everything.
I mean we went, we went throughall kinds of churches, trying
to figure out where we landed,until we found St Luke's
Lutheran Church, federal Way,washington Shout out to my home
congregation.
That's where we landed and fromthere on that's where we headed
(05:11):
.
My problem was it took me along time to get there.
I mean, I often laugh it tookme 11 years to get through my
undergrad and through seminary.
Yeah, halfway through myfreshman year my son was born,
january 8th.
I went back to school for secondsemester and then had to take
several days off because he wasborn, and that, really that
(05:32):
created the necessity for analternate route for me.
You know, he was born while Iwas in college doing my
undergrad work.
My daughter was born in 2006.
I knew that.
I knew that God had a directionfor me.
I knew it was in the LutheranChurch.
I knew it was going to be inthe Lutheran Church Missouri
Synod, because by then myspiritual formation was enough
(05:52):
that I realized there was nogoing back to where I'd come
from.
And I didn't know what to do.
No, I didn't know where to go.
Where to go, and so I started afaith evangelical seminary in
Tacoma.
I'd started back in the latesixties um, as a solution to
what they saw then as theliberalizing of the Lutheran
church.
Uh and um, they were a group ofcongregations abandoned
(06:15):
together and started a trainingschool for pastors.
Uh, by the time I got there ithad moved from faith evangelical
Lutheran seminary to faithevangelical seminary, they still
had a Lutheran track.
I took, you know, I took allthe same classes, had Lutheran
systematics, went through, youknow, went through Lutheran
doctrine, went through, you know, read Christian dogmatics by
Herbert Mueller, cover to cover,and went through that stuff and
(06:38):
I got in there starting withapologetics going.
Well, maybe I can find a way totransfer and get myself to St
Louis, but my kids are growing,my wife's in her career.
I'm approaching my 30s.
I was like, what do I do?
Snp wasn't a thing and honestly, I wasn't called the.
I didn't feel like I was led toanything other than ordained
(07:00):
ministry.
And so, you know, praise God,we found St Luke's and I started
working with my pastor there,started working with our
district president and movedtowards the colloquy route and I
graduated seminary and weapplied for colloquy and the
synod came back and said, hey,at the last convention we
(07:22):
actually eliminated that.
Like, okay, what do we do?
And our district president wentto council presidents and went
to the Senate and said, hey,we've got this.
Guys, is there anything we cando?
Well, they made the resolutionit passed at convention but it
was never actually published andso they grandfathered me and so
(07:45):
I went to, I did.
I flew out to St Louis.
I had the worst interview of mylife probably the most
terrifying experience I've everhad sitting at a table in the
center with people sitting allthe way down on both sides of me
so I couldn't see all of themwith these huge binders that
they would just open up thepages and ask me questions, and
(08:12):
it was probably the longest hourand a half of my life facing
off with these people from, youknow, from St Louis, and we had
a professor in from Fort Wayneand they were doing colloquy
interviews all day long.
And I often laugh about thisbecause I, the pressure was just
on, because I I didn't gothrough a Concordia, I was not
the first guy to come throughfaith and come in through
colloquy.
I mentioned, you know, the, Imentioned my education, and they
(08:39):
said, oh yeah, we know allabout you guys there and I was
like this isn't going well.
I said, look, this was mysituation.
It was either that or Fuller andthey got off on this track
about Fuller.
We never got back to face, sokind of finished out the end of
the interview and I waited for acouple of weeks to see what
they were going to do, becausethey could have required me to
go to seminary for a year or twoyears.
(09:03):
They could have required allkinds of things, but I almost
think it was it's almost like abackhanded compliment because
they required me to do avicarage and read a stack of
books.
Okay, and that was the extentof my requirement to qualify for
colloquy and I was grateful forthat.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Once you read the books, what did you do?
Did you have like a feedbackloop with somebody to kind of
talk through those, or what didthat look like?
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Or you, just I was supposed to read them, I was
supposed to discuss them with mypastor, my supervising pastor,
and then he would share as asupervisor with.
Colloquy is an interestingprocess because it doesn't loop
in the seminary.
You know, we work throughdistrict and through the Senate,
and so I was supposed todiscuss with him.
(09:52):
And then I had two interviewsat the end of my vicarage to
qualify for to qualify forordination, would you say would
you say that process was robustin your opinion, kind of going
through it how?
much I had actually, how much Ihad actually learned.
Eventually, at the end of theday, they really had to rely on
(10:27):
the fact that.
You know I had.
You know, you look at mytranscript and I have these
classes in, you know, inLutheran doctrine and systematic
theology and and practice andworship.
And then assigning the vicarage, even though I'd done an
internship and I'd been servingas a lay deacon in my
congregation for three years aswell, during that time preaching
(10:47):
and assisting the pastor withministry and stuff.
You know, I suppose every caseis different, right?
You know, they take it on acase by case and assign what
they think is necessary.
So I guess I assume that theysaw enough of something, that it
was okay.
It wasn't the greatest system,but it really highlighted to me
(11:08):
the fact that, you know, if Ihadn't had the option of
colloquy, I don't know what Iwould have done.
I knew that I was supposed tobe in the LCMS but there wasn't
a route for me to uproot myfamily and that was a real
struggle.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Well, thanks for sharing your story and and for
reaching out.
What do you love now, being inthe local parish serving dual
parish?
What do you love most?
What's the good?
Let's hunt the good stuff.
What, what is?
What's God doing around you,eli?
That you're like man?
This is incredible.
I can't believe I get to be apart of Word and Sacrament
ministry.
It's really extraordinary.
I mean I'm just coming off theheels of doing our our noon, our
(11:44):
noon Monday Thursday service,witnessing two out of 20 first
communicants today and seeingthe joy of mom and dad and
family and friends wrappedaround.
I mean there's just there's alot of hard stuff in the
ministry, you know, but there'sso much beauty and awe and
wonder at seeing God at work andyou get to be a small part of
the big stuff he does.
So what's given you great joyright now in your ministry life,
(12:07):
eli?
Speaker 4 (12:08):
You know, interestingly enough I took over
my second parish two years ago,so I serve full-time at Christ
Community.
That was my original call.
Grace was one of thosecongregations that was too small
to call a pastor and basicallyI got to reach out from our
district, me and another guy andthey said is there any way that
you can help them out?
They've had an elder serving astheir leader for the last five
(12:31):
months.
Is there anything you can do tohelp them out?
I spent a little bit of timetalking to my family and talking
to some of my colleagues in thearea and I went.
I think I could help them outand so I took them on in
addition, so technically I'mlike committed to time and a
half to do these twocongregations and I stepped into
(12:52):
this congregation where theaverage age is like 80.
We have an average weekly ofattendance of between 20 and 25.
I have exactly two familiesthat are under 60, or I did
until the last few weeksfamilies that are under 60, or I
did until the last few weeksand I've been doing you know
I've been doing more memorialand funeral services than I've
been adding people to thecongregation and it seemed like
(13:14):
a dead end.
But I'll tell you, you know theplace I find some of the most
joy right now is that thatcongregation has a committed
group every Wednesday at 11o'clock that comes together for
Bible study.
And you know, I think if I wereto say what's, you know what's
my biggest joy in ministry Ilove preaching and I love doing
adult Bible study.
I love giving people theopportunity to you know, to
(13:38):
experience Jesus.
I think Jesus is meant to beexperienced.
That was one of the places Istruggled growing up in the
church is we went through theliturgy every week but it was
never talked about, we just didit and so, outside of
confirmation, I'm not sure Irecall a time where we ever
talked about why we did what wedid in any sort of way.
(13:58):
It was just the same thing andone of the greatest things I got
, I think.
Going through these otherexperiences spending time with
Pentecostals and Calvinists andstuff worship services I think
that really drives ourcontemporary setting at Christ
Community.
It's one that I inherited butone that we've changed to try to
(14:31):
really give people theopportunity to experience.
I could do that through Biblestudy.
I mean we sit down and we talkand I love getting the
conversation.
They had been so used it'staken me two years to get them
to respond in Bible studybecause they were so used to
sitting there and being taughtand now it was like, hey, what
are you reading, what are youseeing?
What do you think Jesus issaying?
Or what do you think you know,where do you see Jesus showing
(14:53):
up?
We're going through the storyright now and you know we're in,
we're in, we're in here.
We are at Easter time.
We're talking about the fall ofIsrael, the Northern Kingdom,
and we get a chance to take alook at that and go.
You know how does the fall ofthis Northern Kingdom that
(15:14):
coincided with Palm Sunday.
How did that tie into PalmSunday?
You know, where do we see Godbringing hope when everything
looks hopeless?
And you know Elijah talkingabout how he's the only one left
and he's miserable.
And yet God says, hey, look,I'm going to have you anoint
kings and prophets.
And there's people out thereand you know say, look, we're on
(15:36):
the West Coast.
You know it can feel like we'rein a barren wasteland out here
at times, but you know there's aremnant still around and, and I
think getting people to seethat and go hey, oh okay.
It's probably one of thegreatest moments.
I always come off a Bible studyjust kind of going man, that
was great, a great time.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Let's go deeper into that.
There's so much research onkind of Aristotelian lecturing.
Is has its place, to be sure,because you could kind of
capture it up into anotherperson's thought process.
But transformation comesthrough dialogue, comes through
questions, and then deeperquestions.
And so what's your Bible studystyle, if you will?
(16:19):
Because it sounds like therehad been seasons in your
congregation where it was morelike pastor gets up and he just
kind of talks, for it's like anhour-long sermon of sorts rather
than an interactive.
You use the word experience.
So what, what's whatdifferentiates your kind of
adult teaching style?
Speaker 4 (16:37):
I like dialogue.
You know I don't want to be theonly, I don't want to be the
only guy talking.
You know, I think that evenflows into preaching, trying to
encourage people to say I knowthat when you were growing up in
Lutheran church you were.
I had a guy I worked with yearsago.
I always remember this itcracks me up because he was
another Lutheran guy and he saidman, we were taught you do not
(16:58):
raise your hands in worshipunless you have a question and
you better not have anyquestions.
And I always laughed about that.
You know, because you know Ispent time at Pentecostal church
and stuff.
And you know like, oh, you know, get up, and you know, get up
and engage in worship and thatsort of thing.
So in Bible study and stuff, Ilike to have a dialogue.
(17:19):
I like to throw stuff out andsay look, what do you think?
What are you hearing?
You hearing, you know I'm notgoing to tell you what I'm
hearing, at least not right now.
Like, you know, what are youhearing?
Let's talk about it and let'ssee what you figure out.
Uh, you know, does it coincide?
Or?
And I like getting in and kindof explaining the stuff that
tends to slip over the head, andwhat I found in that is when I
(17:39):
just get up and talk, um, Ileave out.
You know when we you know whenwe start talking with people and
get into kind of feedback, allof a sudden I'm sitting there
and I'm going.
I don't know how many timesI've read this passage.
I prepared for this Bible studyand then that went right over
my head.
I didn't, I didn't even thinkabout it, and so it's great to
(18:00):
get connections myself, and Ithink the opportunity to allow
people to talk in Bible study ishuge.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Well, it's because the word is living and active,
eli.
Yeah, it's like the very wordthat created everything you see
and don't see, that took fleshin the person of Jesus, still
actually moves people today toconfess Christ and then want to
practice.
Shout out to Allen Iversonwe're talking about practice.
Man, people need to practicetalking about Jesus, and the
(18:29):
church should be a place.
Small groups should be a place.
Bible study should be a placewhere people get to stretch
their practice muscles inanticipation of discipleship in
the home, discipleship in theircommunity.
Telling the gospel story.
People, this is a wonderfulcalling for every member.
I'd love to get your take onthis.
Do you think a higher majorityof your members because of that
(18:51):
kind of interactive Bible studystyle?
If you were to ask, are you atype of evangelist Like, would
more of a majority of them saywell, yeah, I'll talk to anybody
about Jesus because I practicewith Pastor Eli talking about
Jesus.
Any thoughts there, eli?
Speaker 4 (19:06):
I wish I could.
I wish I could say for surethat it's driving more
conversations from people.
That's that's the goal.
Right is getting people.
You know, we all know the GreatCommission, right, we know that
this idea you know to, you know, as you're going to, you know
to share the good news thing,and we know that in our minds.
(19:26):
But so often, I think I went toPLI a number of years ago and
one of the things that Iremember talking about there was
it was, you know, we get caughtup in the, the need to feel
prepared.
You know, I got to take onemore class, I got to do one more
Bible study, I learned one morething.
So I'm ready.
If somebody asks a question Idon't know an answer to and
we're so often, I think, afraidto step out.
I really think the goal is totry to get people just
(19:47):
comfortable talking about and go, look, you really do know the
answers.
You know you don't have to have.
You know I'm a pastor, I'vebeen doing it for.
You know I've been doing it for12 years.
You know, and I don't have allthe answers either, there's
things I'm still learning anddiscovering.
I mean, you mentioned Tim.
It's a living word.
Yeah, I hope that I never stoptrying to or never stop
(20:12):
discovering new things, butthat's always the goal is to get
them to be comfortable talking.
Are we there yet?
I don't know, I think.
As Lutherans, I think we have anatural tendency to like to
learn but not translate thatinto as effectively into genuine
(20:33):
conversations with our friendsand neighbors.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, god intends us to be a river, not a reservoir.
And teaching, or sharing, islearning twice, and so the
quicker you can learn somethingand share it with a friend.
This is how the gospel spread.
Do you realize?
Jesus is Lord.
Christ is risen.
He is risen, indeed, hallelujah.
It's Monday, thursday Ishouldn't be saying that anyway,
but Sunday's coming right, andso this is the tomb is empty.
(20:56):
This is the invitation that wehave for all of the baptized,
for the royal priesthood tobecome adept and confident in
the Lord, to share their faith.
Jack, any, take on the role of,I think, teaching and our
preaching in moving the everydayfollower of Jesus.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
he is another priest and he should not be thought of
(21:35):
as any different than the restof the priests of the
congregation.
So now, if that's the truth,this is a powerful statement,
that is an identity statementthat marks what it means to be a
believer right, not justforgiven, not just saved those
are very important.
But then also priest rightwe're part of the royal
priesthood those are veryimportant.
But then also priest rightwe're part of the royal
priesthood.
So what is given, then, to thepriesthood?
(21:55):
Prayer, intercession, sharingthe gospel these are all things
given to all priests, not justpastors.
So now, if you're a pastor,that should start to reshape how
you think about how youinteract with your congregation.
That you are there as anequipper right, obviously,
you're serving them with wordand sacrament, but you're also
equipping them to fully live outtheir daily vocation as priest
(22:17):
right, that's exactly whatLuther was thinking about when
he wrote the catechisms.
He wanted that to be a tool forparents.
Right, it's a tool for pastors,but it's also a tool for
parents to disciple theirchildren, which means it's
something that was going to bebaked into the fabric of society
.
So I think that's a very like.
We really need to lean intothat right.
That is something that I thinkis most important.
(22:38):
I have neighbors I want to beable to, in casual conversation,
be able to share the gospelwith them whenever that need
comes about.
There's people in the town inthe zip code that your
congregation know that you, thepastor, are never going to know.
So, you have to depend on thembeing a part of the church, an
extension of the church, to begospel sharers, carrying the
(22:59):
gospel with them wherever theygo.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah, no doubt.
Think about the night Jesus wasbetrayed and he inaugurated
this new covenant, giving us hisvery body and blood, signaling
back to Passover, but thensaying, hey, in the next 24
hours, I am the Lamb of God whotakes away the sin of the world.
And this is the way I'm goingto come to you and guess what?
(23:23):
You're going to share it withothers, we're going to share it
with others and we're going torally.
There's a multiplying effectthat even comes from the Lord's
table.
It was not just for them, itwas through them, for all who
would come to faith and bebaptized and believe in the
triune God, and the world wasforever changed.
Eli, you like to talk about thereal presence.
I love talking about the realpresence as well.
(23:45):
I mean this is, this issomething that is a
differentiator.
Something that is adifferentiator and really I mean
deeply biblically grounded.
I think, now that this is apodcast, that really argues a
lot.
But if we're to say, hey, thesacraments for all people,
baptism for all people,sacrament of Holy supper for
those who have been examined cansee, this is the body and blood
(24:08):
of Jesus.
Confess it in faith.
Jesus is actually here for you,not just bread and wine, but
also his very body and blood.
Talk about what you love, aboutthe real presence of Christ,
how we articulate it in the LCMSEli.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Well, this was one of the moments when I realized I
was heading in the wrongdirection.
When I was in college, Istarted out on the pastoral
ministries program at NorthwestUniversity.
It was the one designed to getyou into pastoral ministry and
the assemblies of God.
I thought that's where I washeaded and I was taking a class
called pastoral techniques andwe.
It was fascinating class.
(24:44):
I've never run into somethingthat was similar to it.
We took field trips, going to acrematorium and standing in the
back next to the ovens and going, hey, you as a pastor may find
yourself in this place.
And I remember we went to achurch and we practiced how to
do baptism.
And this was one of my firstexperiences with full immersion
baptism, which I love.
(25:05):
I love the experience of thatwhole water connection.
And you realize, you know whydoes a pastor have a lot to
think about?
You put somebody bigger thanyou down in the water.
How do you get them back up ontheir feet?
Uh, so there's a question.
You know it was a great classbut we got you.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
I'm picturing right now.
If I had to baptize jack in abig I don't know how this.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
You better bring a friend you like you keep going.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Sorry, yeah, you drop somebody back and you're double
baptized.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
I mean, is that bad?
I don't know.
But we went to a church andwalked through communion and one
of the things that struck mewas the pastor of that church as
he was talking to us aboutcommunion.
And he was talking to us aboutwhy they use bread and why they
use exclusively grape juice, andI remember him using the words
(25:55):
we use unleavened bread and weuse unleavened wine, is what he
called it, um, to explain thereason for not having alcohol in
it.
I started thinking about thatand I'm going, man, I grew up
Lutheran church.
I grew up with we didn't.
Grape juice actually wasn't anoption in the church I grew up
in.
Something seems off to me.
(26:16):
And then I started doing alittle deeper reading and I'm
like there's no way it couldhave been grape juice.
I mean, at the time of thePassover we don't have fresh
grapes.
You know, the only grape juicethat was available was was not
unleavened, as he would have putit, and I got to really
thinking about that.
And then I started thinkingabout you know, I remember being
in chapel and we celebratedcommunion and you could tell it
(26:37):
wasn't a practice that regularlyoccurred.
Yeah, and the pastor's like,yeah, the Bible says something
like this.
And he looks, he's looking itup, and he and then it's like,
okay, so we're just going topass the trays down and why
don't you take it and eat anddrink?
And you know, and then he saidthis is something that
symbolizes.
And I was like whoa, wait what?
And I really wrestled with thatand that's what really kind of
(27:01):
put me back onto the path ofwhere is the right place.
You know, there were otherthings you know discovering.
You know discovering Luther inin church, history and stuff and
all that.
But it was the practice ofcommunion, more than anything
that drove me back.
I guess what I would say backhome was that sacramental nature
(27:23):
.
I started having conversationsafter I graduated.
I started working for theuniversity while I was a student
.
Not only did I have a child anda wife and a full-time course
load, I also worked full-timefor the university in the
maintenance department, and so Iwas there for a decade and I
got to know all the professors.
I remember having conversationswith some of my Bible
(27:45):
professors.
I mean, these were great men.
They were, you know men, youknow PhDs out the years from all
these places, really smart guysand we'd have these
conversations and I asked one ofthem one day.
I said what is it?
I said the experience I've hadwith the assemblies is this
spirit-led concept.
I mean, the spirit invadeseverything that you do until we
(28:07):
get to communion and baptism.
And then, all of a sudden, it'slike where'd he go?
Where'd he go?
Yeah, that's a great way ofputting it.
And I said why do we have sucha hard time with this idea that,
uh, that Christ could bepresent in communion?
Um, and that's really, that'sreally what got me there.
(28:28):
Uh, and then it was a couple ofyears ago.
We were doing an epiphany serieson the gifts of Christmas.
What were the things the wisemen brought?
Why gold, frankincense andmyrrh, and what were these ties
to Old Testament temple worship?
And as we were talking aboutgold and talking about the
construction of the ark andoverlaying of gold and the
cherubim on the top, and uh andthe, and god saying and where
(28:52):
did god rest?
He rested on the mercy seat.
This was where he dwelt,amongst his people.
And then here we have the newcovenant, uh, where christ meets
us in the supper uh.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
So, eli, I have to share this.
So, uh, I was baptized lutheranand then raised pentecostal and
then came back to Lutheranism asan adult and we were at some
sort of conference where we justhappened to be around a lot of
Pentecostal folks and they werekind of doing their thing and
(29:22):
there was a realization, kind ofan aha moment.
Now I tend to draw a lot ofconclusions that maybe that's a
right conclusion, maybe it's awrong conclusion, but to me it
seems very reasonable thatwhat's going on in that
expression is we all have aGod-sized hole and we get to
fill that hole in communion,being with you know, having the
real presence of God, the real,you know, the real body and the
(29:45):
real blood.
We have that hole filled for usand what I think I sometimes
see is that their kind ofexpression, their hyper
expressiveness with the HolySpirit, is trying to fill that
same hole.
That we get filled with thesacraments, right, and so to me
it's almost like I see it almostas an overcompensating like
where they go over the top withprophesies and speaking in
(30:06):
tongues and all that kind ofstuff that they're trying to
fill that hole that we getfilled with that sacramental
expression that we have well,this is why our extra notes this
is my own kind of drawing the,the dotted lines, and I'm sure
people could tear that apart.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Go ahead if you want to, but that's kind of what I
see well, I mean, whatdistinguishes the sacraments for
luther and then for us, andthis goes back 500 years.
You know one of the big caseshe makes to Catholic brothers
and sisters it's not a work,it's God working for us.
It's extra nose that comes fromoutside of us and changes us
(30:41):
from the inside out, creatingand sustaining faith in the
triune God.
Like I got nothing to bring tothe table, I'm a dead man, I
have to be revived.
And the fervor of our praise,that's always just in response.
You can say whatever you want.
I mean, david danced and playeddifferent instruments, all this
(31:03):
kind of stuff.
That's just all in response, ahymn of praise, sacrifice that
we are children of God, not bywhat we do, but just because God
says so.
And I think passive faith,extra-nose faith outside of us,
is a bridge.
There are others, but a bridgeinto inter-ecumenical dialogue
(31:24):
with other brothers and sistersin other traditions and I think
we should be charitable about it.
This is one of my prayers forwe in the LCMS can we work out
some of our things that we needto work out so that we can unite
in in mission and ecumenicalconversation, because we believe
this confession is true, likeit's biblical it's, it's very
(31:44):
grounded, like everybody needsJesus, from little infants,
baptism, baptism infants can die, go and make disciples of all
nations.
How Baptize and then teach.
And one of our main teachingsis the real presence of Jesus in
the Lord's Supper.
And yeah, he's at work, man, Idon't just come and receive,
taste and see the Lord is goodand then invite other people to
(32:06):
come and taste and see.
Like it seems kind of simple.
And Luther you picture Luther inhis arguments, debates they had
more robust debates and I bethe and Zwingli went and had a
beer or something after theirdebate.
But the one thing he could notcompromise on was the real
presence Is means is I don'tknow what else it could mean
(32:26):
Take and eat.
This is my body, this is myblood for the forgiveness of
your sins.
And I think your comment aboutthe Holy Spirit, yeah, why would
we like the Holy Spirit wantsto have complete control,
complete access of every part ofour life, right, what we say,
what we do, how we live andobviously the most important
things bringing us into andsustaining our faith in Christ.
(32:48):
Like, why would we kick theHoly Spirit out of doing
something miraculous at the, atthe table and through water
connected to word Like that'skind of.
That's kind of wild for me toeven think about Any.
Any response to that.
Eli or Jack, eli jump and thenJack, you close this one down Go
.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
Well, I take back into that and I go.
I think there's also something,though, through these
expressions and, jack, you, youmentioned you know your
experience and trying to fillthat God-sized hole.
But then I also think about myexperience.
Growing up and church was yousaying your hymns of praise and
stuff, but you didn't react inany way.
I mean it's so funny.
I've been doing this for 12years and I'm still caught by
(33:23):
surprise if I actually getsomebody to say amen when I'm
preaching, because I'm not usedto it in my context.
But I'm like why aren't weRight?
I mean, this should change ourhearts, it should make us
enthusiastic worshipers.
And this is where I look at ourworship settings and I'm going
(33:45):
you know, how can we make thissomething that engages our
senses, that engages our hearts?
I often think about, you know,somebody asked me what's a verse
that matters to you, like, well, there's a lot, sure, but 1
Corinthians 9.22 always stuckout to me, where Paul's talking
about you know, to the Jews, Ibecome a Jew.
To the Gentiles, I'm a Gentile.
And he says I become all thingsto all people so that by all
means I might save some.
I've always taken that to be.
(34:07):
You know Paul says, look, I'mnot free from the law, you know,
I mean God's word is still myguiding principle.
But how do we then takeeverything else and help people,
you know, encounter Jesus?
How do we help people see thattaste and see that the Lord is
good.
Come in, you know, come andexperience this feeling that you
get through the Lord's Supper.
But how do we also teach ourbrothers and sisters inside the
(34:30):
Lutheran church to experienceGod?
Maybe the way, maybe the wayDavid did when you know, when he
would dance, and maybe, youknow, maybe we find a way to see
, see how how people canexperience.
You think about those, thosepeople that Jesus actually
touched.
You know his healings where hecould have just spoken, like he
did in so many other cases, andyet he uses his hands on the
(34:52):
blind man.
Or I'm always struck by theleper, you know, who's supposed
to actually let people know thathe's unclean.
Stay away.
And what's Jesus do?
He comes up and he embraces theguy.
I mean this is life change.
And so I think there'sopportunities for us as
Lutherans to experience that.
There's opportunities for us toshow what we've got to people
(35:12):
and say, look, we've gotsomething I think you're missing
.
I've never had anyone I've hadthat conversation with when I
say, how do we not say thatChrist isn't present through the
power of the Holy Spirit andcommunion?
And I've never had somebody go.
Yeah, no.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Jack.
Well, you mentioned stuff aboutthe Holy Spirit, so I have to
share a little story here.
Holy Spirit, so I have to sharea little story here.
I was at a friend's party.
A friend invited me to a partyit was like a family reunion and
a lot of the folks there theycame from more of the
Pentecostal background, and heintroduced me as a person who
worked at a church, and so allof a sudden they started
referring to me as Pastor Jack.
I said, oh, I'm not ordained oranything like that, and they
(35:45):
didn't care, they just keptcalling me that.
And so at one point this ladycame up to me and said do you
have a word for me?
Right, do you have a word forme?
And she was asking for like aword from the Holy Spirit.
And so I thought about it for asecond and I said yes, I do.
And she said well, what is it?
And I said Jesus wants you toknow that you are his beloved
(36:05):
daughter, that he cares aboutyou very much, that he died on
the cross for you, that he hasforgiven all of your sins, that
you belong to him, that thepromise of salvation belongs to
you and that any time, anymoment.
If you ever want to hear hisword, you can crack open the
Bible and he will give you wordsof comfort and peace and joy.
And she said he told you that.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
I said yes, he told me that, yeah, for you, for you,
indeed, amen.
So that's an experience, Ithink.
To go back to what you'resaying, that's a good story,
jack uh, and that's one of yourstories that I haven't heard
before, so I appreciated that aswell.
We hang out a lot anyway, so Iwas on the edge of my seat on
(36:49):
that story.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
She's like't know what you were going to say so
good job, she was just blownaway.
I was like the Holy Spirit toldyou that.
It's like, yes, it did.
It's right there in the Bible.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
I take that back.
I think I have heard that story, I just forgot it.
No, jack, you're great.
If you don't know, jack has oneof the greatest well, you do
know, if you've been listeningone of the greatest laughs.
You light up the room and fromtime to time you scare me, yuck,
okay, no, getting back to yourexperience stuff.
(37:20):
So it's not like Lutherans areanti-experiential or use the
word enthusiastic.
An enthusiast is waiting aroundfor that sort of experience, to
know that God is present, orfor someone to bring a word, or
laying on of hands or speakingin tongues, or something like
that.
Or were your words of prophecyor healing extraordinary healing
(37:43):
for God to know he's present?
God can do some wild things, tobe sure.
Some wild things to be sure,but what he does consistently is
show up and show off in hisword, both read, spoken,
believed and through thesacraments, the divine mystery
(38:04):
of being a child of God in thewires of baptism.
And so why would this be anyless experiential?
Luther was very into.
I want everybody to experiencethis, I and I want.
This is one of the things too.
Luther, jack, you, you.
I think we're in the podcastwhere we talked about, uh,
singing.
Luther wanted the congregationto sing.
Do people even know like theorigin of even singing
enthusiastically?
Speaker 3 (38:22):
comes from luther.
He wanted the congregation tobe joyfully engaged in
worshiping god through singing,which is wild because it
automatically made the worshipexperience less stoic than it
would have been just watchingthe priest do his thing up there
.
Right yeah, it's a moreinteractive worship style, and
(38:45):
what's wild now is that thatCatholics do that.
They've joined us in doing that.
Good job, all right.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
I would talk to my colleagues and I'd tell them hey
, you guys know that, you, youknow everything.
You've got, you've got yourfeet founded in the reformation.
They never liked hearing that.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah, we all come from somewhere, right, that's
right.
Anyway, all right, we just gotabout 10, 15 minutes left and,
uh, we're, we're committed.
We want to have difficultconversations on this podcast.
There are some topics that Idon't speak into currently.
I've said a lot about them, butI think, just generally, as I'm
(39:24):
setting up this topic,generally we can improve the way
we love and care for oneanother online, putting the best
construction on things onlineand putting the best
constructions.
As hard as this is around thepolitics and the convention
cycles that happen fromdistricts into the National
(39:46):
Synodical Convention.
I've been to the last three.
I don't know if I'll be goingin.
Well, it's here in town,actually in Phoenix, so I'll be
around somehow.
I don't know if I'll be avoting delegate, we'll see how
that goes, but you went for thefirst time and just tell us
about your experience, eli.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
It was eye-opening, to say the least.
I mean, I've been here and I'vebeen part of my circuit for 10
years.
I hear my colleagues talk abouthow things go and all that sort
of stuff.
So I don't think that thattruly prepared me for the
experience.
And I think the thing that Inoticed more than anything was
(40:28):
I'm not sure how we actually getanything done Just because you
know, the minute something comesup, there's often some sort of
competing or something to try toalter it, and so the
conversation starts and thensomething else gets proposed to
amend it, and then theconversation starts all over
(40:51):
with the amendment.
You debate the amendment forthe allotted time and you never
actually get back to theoriginal thing.
Then we vote.
We vote down the amendment, wevote on the original thing,
which never had any discussion,then we move on, and so that was
very interesting to me to kindof watch that play out.
Never had a moment where I felttempted to get up and speak
until we got to the discussionon pastoral formation.
(41:13):
That was a moment when I feltlike I had a story to tell.
I came from a different place.
I wouldn't be an LCMS pastor ifI hadn't had the route open to
me.
I mean, I don't like to makeabsolutes because I always say,
look, god could make anythinghappen, but you know the way I
see it and the way we were setup and the way my wife and I
(41:33):
were where our lives were andhow things were going.
30 years old I couldn't pack upand moved to St Louis.
We were surviving mostly on herincome.
I had two kids, tried to doseminary for two years, pack up,
go somewhere for vicarage, packup, come back to seminary and
then try to start out in mymid-30s.
I don't know how that wouldhave happened.
(41:55):
And so I actually, for thefirst time I queued in to talk
about this and before my namecame up, an amendment was
proposed and they cleared thequeue and they started over with
the debate on the amendment andI tried.
I never got back into the queue, but what I heard in all of
this and I can't remember whatthe amendment to the original
(42:16):
thing was exactly what we weretalking about.
But you know, here we weretalking about how do we?
How do we, how do we fill ourpulpits?
And I'm serving twocongregations.
I've got a congregation thatcould.
I've got a guy in one of mycongregations who would be an
ideal support for ministry.
He's a worker priest model.
He's the principal of aChristian school.
(42:37):
He would be ideal to help getinto the ministry and yet our
structure doesn't have an avenuefor me to get him in the way I
think he'd like to get in.
And then I think about myexperience and I'm like well, I
don't have any problem withresidential instruction, in fact
I think it's.
(42:58):
I think you want to talk aboutgold standard and I would tell
my watch your podcast on on isit the gold standard from a
little while back?
And I think, tell my watch yourpodcast on on is it the gold
standard from a little whileback?
And I think, if you have theopportunity to do that,
fantastic, please, please, takethe route, because there were
some things I missed in my route.
Mine was a hybrid I.
I had a residential class oncea week.
I to take the four classes eachquarter at a couple of distance
(43:21):
classes that were.
I was watching recordedlectures and interacting with
the professor online.
And the last one was during oneweek.
It was during a week-longintensive when I would go to
class for six hours a day to getall the lecture in and I, there
were things that I missed.
The interaction with my youknow, with my brothers in in
(43:42):
during this time, I think wasgreat, but at the same time it
wasn't a route for me.
And what I heard at conventionwere people getting up speaking
to the residential standard andsaying there is no way that we
can provide robust educationoutside of the residential model
.
I'm like, look, I'm an LCMSpastor, I'm here, I was accepted
(44:05):
and made part of this group.
Either I got in through aloophole and shouldn't be here,
or I was able to have aneducation that met a robust
standard to be an LCMS pastor ofnot one but two congregations,
and so that one was a littledisappointing to me because it
made me feel like I wasn't, Iwasn't really part of the team.
(44:26):
And then then we got into adiscussion on, you know,
re-emphasizing traditionalLutheran worship, and you know
comments were made that, look,if you're not doing traditional
Lutheran worship out of theworship book, you're not
actually doing Lutheran worship.
And I'm like aren't we sharingthe gospel, aren't we?
(44:50):
You know we're doing theconfession and we're, you know,
we're providing, you know,confession and absolution.
We're reciting the creed andwe're doing it in a slightly
different model.
Are we not still Lutheran?
And those were a couple ofthings that really stood out to
me.
But what really got me was thetopic of pastoral formation.
Like why can't we I mean, we'vegot some great colleges,
technology's come so far whycan't we provide robust pastoral
(45:13):
training to meet the needs?
I've got a guy.
I don't know how to get himinto ministry.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
So you've got us at an interesting time in the
history of our podcast.
Right now, eli, we have made acommitment, just for the short
term, not to be discussing thetopic about pastoral formation,
for the sake of peace and unityof the church, and at the same
(45:39):
time, you know, we are hopingthat others would engage in
robust conversations about thistopic.
Obviously, we've made ouropinions known about this in the
past.
I think the best way for us torespond about this right now is
probably to say what is it thatyou would hope to see with
respect to pastoral formation inthe future?
What are your thoughts?
(45:59):
I think Tim and I are not goingto make a comment on this right
now, but you are certainly freeto make a comment on it.
What would you?
What would?
What is it that you would liketo see in the future?
If you like, let's just thinkfuture focused.
What is it that you think getsour church body to a place where
there is not just robustpastoral formation but maybe
(46:20):
more accessible, more peopleparticipating in it, more you
know something that results inmore people being able to take
the call in the ministry.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
I don't think anything's.
You know, if it is God honoringand if we're following God in
being the body of believers andseeking to carry out the work of
his church, I think that he'sgoing to.
He's going to open doors and Irest that on.
(46:51):
You know my congregation.
I was a year into my call whenwe lost the lease on the space
we were meeting in and we hadsome conversations about I mean,
you're in first call and do weclose the doors?
And God opened doors instead tomove into a portable setting in
a high school.
We have been meeting in thesame high school for going on 10
(47:12):
years.
I've been part of portablechurches, high schools, schools
don't like you there for morethan a year or two.
They want you to move on.
This school has opened thedoors to us and they work their
schedules around us and theyconsider us one of the events
that happens at the school and Ican't see anything but God's
(47:32):
hand in that and I look at thatand I go that wasn't us.
It wasn't possible for us tocreate that.
I think when it comes to thisissue, I'm like man.
If we were to pray and put allof our faith behind this, I
don't know why we couldn't makeit happen.
I mean, if we put pastoralformation aside, if we look at
(47:56):
how many schools out there areproviding robust training for
all kinds of other degrees, andlet's not wipe out a residential
component.
I mean this one guy that I'vegot that I could bring in.
If he could do a significantamount of his learning at a
distance and if he could go infor a, you know, for a week
(48:16):
intensive twice a year and meetwith his cohort and stuff, I
think it would be possible and Ithink he'd get a lot of the
benefits.
It wouldn't be the same.
I know it's not the same, but Istill think the education could
be robust because we're doingit in so many other areas.
As far as the educational system, you know, across our nation
(48:36):
and our colleges are doing, youknow, this education, if people
want it, they're going to applythemselves to it, and I had to
do that.
You know I education, if peoplewant it, they're going to apply
themselves to it and I had todo that.
You know I had to do that in myeducation.
I had to watch those lectures.
I could have tried to skate by,but I'll tell you something
having those lectures to watchand to then submit notes in
(48:58):
relationship to what I watchedmeant that I was I saw the
entire lecture.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
Yeah, you were engaged in the process.
Speaker 4 (49:05):
Yeah, I'm not, you know, I'm a pastor.
I'm not, you know, I'm not aneducational expert.
I don't work in a university, Idon't all that stuff.
But I just I just think that ifwe, if we say God, how do we do
this, how do you want this tohappen?
And and and lead us, I can'tsee why we couldn't do it.
(49:27):
And the truth of the matter isI'm pastoring two congregations
because there's nobody to fillthe pulpit at the other one, and
if I didn't have to pastor two,I wouldn't pastor two.
It's a lot.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
It's a lot Thanks for doing it.
By the way, what makes youproud to be a pastor in the LCMS
?
And then, final question whatdo you hope we look like in 2050
as a denomination, Eli?
Speaker 4 (49:51):
I'm proud just to be here, honestly, to be a member
of the LCMS, to know that thereare times when I think that the
grass may be greener in otherplaces, and then I remind myself
that I'm right where God wantsme to be.
When I was installed in my call, one of the former pastors of
(50:14):
the church that I pastor, ChristCommunity, provided me with a
little framed picture that youknow, 13 years has sat on my
bookshelf over there and itsimply says I'm in God's place,
and it's a reminder to me everytime.
I think that, you know, maybe Ishould do something else, or
maybe I'm too tired to keepgoing on, or maybe I'm just
beating my head against the wall.
(50:34):
I'm like I'm in, I'm in God'splace.
When I was going to seminaryand it looked like colic we was
closing I almost headed off inthe direction of the LCMC,
because faith is a trainingseminary for the LCMC, and but
it just it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
It wasn't quite what you were looking for from a
confessional perspective, rightit wasn't right, and so I'm just
.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
I'm proud to be a member of the LCMS.
I pray for the next 50 years.
What's it 25 years?
Sorry.
I'm proud to be a member of theLCMS.
I pray for the next 50 years.
What's it 25 years?
Sorry, I'm jumping ahead there,but what's it gonna look like
in the next 25 years?
That's about the time I'm gonnabe.
I'm going to be in the retiredphase, where I am now working
full time as a retired pastoryeah, cause that's apparently
what we do here, but I pray thatwe are.
(51:25):
We're trying to find pulpits toput pastors in, because we've
got people training for ministry.
This is a good thing that we'vegot.
We want to share.
I want to share it with youknow, with the world.
I want people to be, I wantpeople to be Christians and I
want them to be LutheranChristians and LCMS, lutheran
Christians yeah.
Speaker 3 (51:47):
The area that we live in, you know, is about 4
million people living in themetropolitan area of the Phoenix
metro area.
There's probably about 2,000churches, maybe not even that
much, maybe 1,800 churchesserving this community.
There probably needs to be10,000 churches serving this
community for it to be wellserved by pastors and churches.
(52:07):
And so the vision that I haveis that whatever and I'm not
going to prescribe anything atthis point in time, but like
whatever it is that we decide todo as a church body, that it
creates that pathway, that thatmany pastors could be filled and
some right, that there would bepeople ready, willing to serve,
and that there'd be a surplusof pastors.
(52:29):
And so that's a vision that ourchurch body is going to have to
tackle and that's what I'mpraying for.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
Hey, this has been fun, eli.
If people want to connect withyou, how can they do so?
You got your email, yeah, I gotan email.
Eli.
Speaker 4 (52:43):
E-L-I at CC Ridgefield dot com.
Amen, it's all spelled outR-I-D-G-E-F-I-E-L-D rather than
Richfield, Connecticut, whichalways seems to come up when
people are looking forRidgefield Washington.
But Eli at CC Ridgefield dotcom is my email.
Talk to me there.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Yeah, man, hey.
I've loved.
Thanks for your generosity oftime on a Monday, thursday and
praying for you heading intoEaster and the Easter season.
I am very glad that you're apastor in the Lutheran Church
Missouri Synod Welcome brother.
And let's get after it.
Making and multiplyingdisciples.
This is lead time.
Please like and subscribe.
(53:21):
I'm going to double down on thesubscribe Subscriptions on lead
time.
Please like and subscribe.
I'm going to double down on thesubscribe subscriptions on
YouTube, especially wherever itis you take it in.
But YouTube, it really helps,with the algorithm, to get this
conversation into the ears ofmore and more people and we're
very, very hopeful for thefuture.
We know that the end of thestory is very, very good.
We win.
I want to win, and we win inChrist as the people of God, and
(53:46):
we want more people to know thesalvation, the winning that
comes in following after Jesus.
That's in our hearts and wewill continue.
We will not stop proclaimingChrist as Lord until that last
day comes where we take our lastbreath.
This was an honor to spend timewith you.
Thanks so much, shaq, thanksEli.
It's a good day.
Thank you guys.
Great day, good work.
Speaker 4 (54:04):
Thanks guys, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the
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(54:29):
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Thanks for listening and staytuned for next week's episode.
this is lead time welcome to lead time, tim allman
, here with jack cowberg.
It's a beautiful day to bealive and, uh, we've been doing.
We've been bunching a number ofrecordings.
I'm heading on sabbatical herein about a month and so spending
some good time with jack.
It seems like I see your mug,which is just across the hall on
a screen so frequently it's agood yeah, and you've got a
(00:24):
special treat for those.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
You got a special treat for those joining on video
.
You're wearing your collartoday.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Monday, Thursday right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
So very, very good.
Today we get to hang out withPastor Eli Thomas.
Let me tell you about him.
He's an LCMS pastor, husband,father of two college students,
sweet, both going to Concordia.
Pastor husband, father of twocollege students, sweet, both
going to Concordia.
Now let's see One's going toIrvine here and then another one
going to Seward.
In the fall, is that right?
Your 22-year-old is starting atSeward.
(00:53):
Tell that story.
You've got two Concordias, wow.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I have two Concordias .
I never imagined we'd be there,actually really excited for
that Goes fast.
My daughter started off withthe.
She didn't really have a place.
She wanted to go.
She wanted to go to Californiabecause she grew up in the
Northwest.
She doesn't like the rain, shedoesn't like being cold, so she
wanted Southern California.
So we kind of directed her toIrvine and it worked out and it
(01:17):
was great.
My son's been working for alocal elementary school for the
last three years as a para,working with life skills kids
trying to figure out hisdirection, finally decided hey,
education sounds good.
We had a DCE who is a ferventevangelist for Seward Nebraska
and that kind of sold him he was.
(01:39):
He didn't want to go toCalifornia.
It was either Mequon or Seward.
He decided Concordia would begood and we settled on Nebraska.
So I don't know.
I mean, when we go empty nest,apparently we go empty nest.
All in, quick man, it comesreally quick.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I'm just a couple years behind you, so let me tell
you a little bit more about EliGrew up in Seattle.
Majority of his family stilllives in the greater Seattle
area.
He did his undergrad work atNorthwest University in Kirkland
, washington, studying biblicallit, and he did his seminary
studies at Faith EvangelicalSeminary in Tacoma, washington.
(02:16):
Your son was born halfwaythrough your freshman year of
college and his daughter acouple of years before seminary.
So his wife is a formerChristian school teacher, turned
public school teacher when heaccepted his first call.
He came to pastoring a littlelater on in life, 35 years old,
when he graduated from seminary.
And then he went through andthis is going to form some of
our conversation today.
He went through colloquy andhe's serving faithfully up dual
(02:39):
parish pastor at ChristCommunity Church in Ridgefield,
washington, and Grace LutheranChurch in Longview, washington.
So well, welcome Eli.
We're going to have some fun.
Just tell us your colloquystory.
Let's just start there.
If we need to back up in yourstory at all, feel free to do so
, okay?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Yeah, colloquy, I'll be honest, colloquy is not what
I would have chosen, but I grewup in a Lutheran church I think
I called it the other side ofthe aisle, right.
I was an ELCA guy.
When I was growing up I was theonly one in my family going to
church and so the ELCAcongregations where I went to
preschool they were local to usand that's kind of where I
(03:20):
started out.
So I was steeped in theliturgical church growing up of
where I started out.
So I was steeped in, you know,the liturgical church growing up
.
But when I hit 16, and we movedout of the area, I kind of lost
touch, you know, and so it waswhen I met my wife that I got
back into church and she grew upAssembly of God, which was a
serious shock to my system.
That was a very, very differentworld than anything.
(03:42):
I mean, I grew up doing thewhole you know acolyte thing
processional cross, I carry theprocessional cross, light the
candles, eating, server, allthat sort of stuff as a teenager
and stuff.
And move into that world was awhole different spot, but it was
great because it got me backinto church and got me going
with her and really kind ofshaped, I think, the moment when
(04:03):
I really discovered my faith.
I mean, I grew up with it but Ididn't really acknowledge it.
It wasn't until my early 20sthat it really kind of connected
.
And that's when I discoveredthrough.
You know, I'd love to say I hadan old voice moment that said,
hey, thou shalt go into ministry.
But it was really the I triedeverything else and nothing
(04:26):
worked sort of route.
And my wife had graduated fromNorthwest University.
She was a private schoolteacher at the time, and that
was just one day.
I kind of woke up and said, hey, I think I'm supposed to be a
pastor and so I didn't knowwhere to go.
So I followed her route and Iwent to Northwest.
And it was while I was therethat I discovered that that that
(04:47):
was not the right place for me.
My, you know, my Lutheranheritage was trying to get
through and I didn't know what Iwent through.
We went through everything.
I mean we went, we went throughall kinds of churches, trying
to figure out where we landed,until we found St Luke's
Lutheran Church, federal Way,washington Shout out to my home
congregation.
That's where we landed and fromthere on that's where we headed
(05:11):
.
My problem was it took me along time to get there.
I mean, I often laugh it tookme 11 years to get through my
undergrad and through seminary.
Yeah, halfway through myfreshman year my son was born,
january 8th.
I went back to school for secondsemester and then had to take
several days off because he wasborn, and that, really that
(05:32):
created the necessity for analternate route for me.
You know, he was born while Iwas in college doing my
undergrad work.
My daughter was born in 2006.
I knew that.
I knew that God had a directionfor me.
I knew it was in the LutheranChurch.
I knew it was going to be inthe Lutheran Church Missouri
Synod, because by then myspiritual formation was enough
(05:52):
that I realized there was nogoing back to where I'd come
from.
And I didn't know what to do.
No, I didn't know where to go.
Where to go, and so I started afaith evangelical seminary in
Tacoma.
I'd started back in the latesixties um, as a solution to
what they saw then as theliberalizing of the Lutheran
church.
Uh and um, they were a group ofcongregations abandoned
(06:15):
together and started a trainingschool for pastors.
Uh, by the time I got there ithad moved from faith evangelical
Lutheran seminary to faithevangelical seminary, they still
had a Lutheran track.
I took, you know, I took allthe same classes, had Lutheran
systematics, went through, youknow, went through Lutheran
doctrine, went through, you know, read Christian dogmatics by
Herbert Mueller, cover to cover,and went through that stuff and
(06:38):
I got in there starting withapologetics going.
Well, maybe I can find a way totransfer and get myself to St
Louis, but my kids are growing,my wife's in her career.
I'm approaching my 30s.
I was like, what do I do?
Snp wasn't a thing and honestly, I wasn't called the.
I didn't feel like I was led toanything other than ordained
(07:00):
ministry.
And so, you know, praise God,we found St Luke's and I started
working with my pastor there,started working with our
district president and movedtowards the colloquy route and I
graduated seminary and weapplied for colloquy and the
synod came back and said, hey,at the last convention we
(07:22):
actually eliminated that.
Like, okay, what do we do?
And our district president wentto council presidents and went
to the Senate and said, hey,we've got this.
Guys, is there anything we cando?
Well, they made the resolutionit passed at convention but it
was never actually published andso they grandfathered me and so
(07:45):
I went to, I did.
I flew out to St Louis.
I had the worst interview of mylife probably the most
terrifying experience I've everhad sitting at a table in the
center with people sitting allthe way down on both sides of me
so I couldn't see all of themwith these huge binders that
they would just open up thepages and ask me questions, and
(08:12):
it was probably the longest hourand a half of my life facing
off with these people from, youknow, from St Louis, and we had
a professor in from Fort Wayneand they were doing colloquy
interviews all day long.
And I often laugh about thisbecause I, the pressure was just
on, because I I didn't gothrough a Concordia, I was not
the first guy to come throughfaith and come in through
colloquy.
I mentioned, you know, the, Imentioned my education, and they
(08:39):
said, oh yeah, we know allabout you guys there and I was
like this isn't going well.
I said, look, this was mysituation.
It was either that or Fuller andthey got off on this track
about Fuller.
We never got back to face, sokind of finished out the end of
the interview and I waited for acouple of weeks to see what
they were going to do, becausethey could have required me to
go to seminary for a year or twoyears.
(09:03):
They could have required allkinds of things, but I almost
think it was it's almost like abackhanded compliment because
they required me to do avicarage and read a stack of
books.
Okay, and that was the extentof my requirement to qualify for
colloquy and I was grateful forthat.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Once you read the books, what did you do?
Did you have like a feedbackloop with somebody to kind of
talk through those, or what didthat look like?
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Or you, just I was supposed to read them, I was
supposed to discuss them with mypastor, my supervising pastor,
and then he would share as asupervisor with.
Colloquy is an interestingprocess because it doesn't loop
in the seminary.
You know, we work throughdistrict and through the Senate,
and so I was supposed todiscuss with him.
(09:52):
And then I had two interviewsat the end of my vicarage to
qualify for to qualify forordination, would you say would
you say that process was robustin your opinion, kind of going
through it how?
much I had actually, how much Ihad actually learned.
Eventually, at the end of theday, they really had to rely on
(10:27):
the fact that.
You know I had.
You know, you look at mytranscript and I have these
classes in, you know, inLutheran doctrine and systematic
theology and and practice andworship.
And then assigning the vicarage, even though I'd done an
internship and I'd been servingas a lay deacon in my
congregation for three years aswell, during that time preaching
(10:47):
and assisting the pastor withministry and stuff.
You know, I suppose every caseis different, right?
You know, they take it on acase by case and assign what
they think is necessary.
So I guess I assume that theysaw enough of something, that it
was okay.
It wasn't the greatest system,but it really highlighted to me
(11:08):
the fact that, you know, if Ihadn't had the option of
colloquy, I don't know what Iwould have done.
I knew that I was supposed tobe in the LCMS but there wasn't
a route for me to uproot myfamily and that was a real
struggle.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Well, thanks for sharing your story and and for
reaching out.
What do you love now, being inthe local parish serving dual
parish?
What do you love most?
What's the good?
Let's hunt the good stuff.
What, what is?
What's God doing around you,eli?
That you're like man?
This is incredible.
I can't believe I get to be apart of Word and Sacrament
ministry.
It's really extraordinary.
I mean I'm just coming off theheels of doing our our noon, our
(11:44):
noon Monday Thursday service,witnessing two out of 20 first
communicants today and seeingthe joy of mom and dad and
family and friends wrappedaround.
I mean there's just there's alot of hard stuff in the
ministry, you know, but there'sso much beauty and awe and
wonder at seeing God at work andyou get to be a small part of
the big stuff he does.
So what's given you great joyright now in your ministry life,
(12:07):
eli?
Speaker 4 (12:08):
You know, interestingly enough I took over
my second parish two years ago,so I serve full-time at Christ
Community.
That was my original call.
Grace was one of thosecongregations that was too small
to call a pastor and basicallyI got to reach out from our
district, me and another guy andthey said is there any way that
you can help them out?
They've had an elder serving astheir leader for the last five
(12:31):
months.
Is there anything you can do tohelp them out?
I spent a little bit of timetalking to my family and talking
to some of my colleagues in thearea and I went.
I think I could help them outand so I took them on in
addition, so technically I'mlike committed to time and a
half to do these twocongregations and I stepped into
(12:52):
this congregation where theaverage age is like 80.
We have an average weekly ofattendance of between 20 and 25.
I have exactly two familiesthat are under 60, or I did
until the last few weeksfamilies that are under 60, or I
did until the last few weeksand I've been doing you know
I've been doing more memorialand funeral services than I've
been adding people to thecongregation and it seemed like
(13:14):
a dead end.
But I'll tell you, you know theplace I find some of the most
joy right now is that thatcongregation has a committed
group every Wednesday at 11o'clock that comes together for
Bible study.
And you know, I think if I wereto say what's, you know what's
my biggest joy in ministry Ilove preaching and I love doing
adult Bible study.
I love giving people theopportunity to you know, to
(13:38):
experience Jesus.
I think Jesus is meant to beexperienced.
That was one of the places Istruggled growing up in the
church is we went through theliturgy every week but it was
never talked about, we just didit and so, outside of
confirmation, I'm not sure Irecall a time where we ever
talked about why we did what wedid in any sort of way.
(13:58):
It was just the same thing andone of the greatest things I got
, I think.
Going through these otherexperiences spending time with
Pentecostals and Calvinists andstuff worship services I think
that really drives ourcontemporary setting at Christ
Community.
It's one that I inherited butone that we've changed to try to
(14:31):
really give people theopportunity to experience.
I could do that through Biblestudy.
I mean we sit down and we talkand I love getting the
conversation.
They had been so used it'staken me two years to get them
to respond in Bible studybecause they were so used to
sitting there and being taughtand now it was like, hey, what
are you reading, what are youseeing?
What do you think Jesus issaying?
Or what do you think you know,where do you see Jesus showing
(14:53):
up?
We're going through the storyright now and you know we're in,
we're in, we're in here.
We are at Easter time.
We're talking about the fall ofIsrael, the Northern Kingdom,
and we get a chance to take alook at that and go.
You know how does the fall ofthis Northern Kingdom that
(15:14):
coincided with Palm Sunday.
How did that tie into PalmSunday?
You know, where do we see Godbringing hope when everything
looks hopeless?
And you know Elijah talkingabout how he's the only one left
and he's miserable.
And yet God says, hey, look,I'm going to have you anoint
kings and prophets.
And there's people out thereand you know say, look, we're on
(15:36):
the West Coast.
You know it can feel like we'rein a barren wasteland out here
at times, but you know there's aremnant still around and, and I
think getting people to seethat and go hey, oh okay.
It's probably one of thegreatest moments.
I always come off a Bible studyjust kind of going man, that
was great, a great time.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Let's go deeper into that.
There's so much research onkind of Aristotelian lecturing.
Is has its place, to be sure,because you could kind of
capture it up into anotherperson's thought process.
But transformation comesthrough dialogue, comes through
questions, and then deeperquestions.
And so what's your Bible studystyle, if you will?
(16:19):
Because it sounds like therehad been seasons in your
congregation where it was morelike pastor gets up and he just
kind of talks, for it's like anhour-long sermon of sorts rather
than an interactive.
You use the word experience.
So what, what's whatdifferentiates your kind of
adult teaching style?
Speaker 4 (16:37):
I like dialogue.
You know I don't want to be theonly, I don't want to be the
only guy talking.
You know, I think that evenflows into preaching, trying to
encourage people to say I knowthat when you were growing up in
Lutheran church you were.
I had a guy I worked with yearsago.
I always remember this itcracks me up because he was
another Lutheran guy and he saidman, we were taught you do not
(16:58):
raise your hands in worshipunless you have a question and
you better not have anyquestions.
And I always laughed about that.
You know, because you know Ispent time at Pentecostal church
and stuff.
And you know like, oh, you know, get up, and you know, get up
and engage in worship and thatsort of thing.
So in Bible study and stuff, Ilike to have a dialogue.
(17:19):
I like to throw stuff out andsay look, what do you think?
What are you hearing?
You hearing, you know I'm notgoing to tell you what I'm
hearing, at least not right now.
Like, you know, what are youhearing?
Let's talk about it and let'ssee what you figure out.
Uh, you know, does it coincide?
Or?
And I like getting in and kindof explaining the stuff that
tends to slip over the head, andwhat I found in that is when I
(17:39):
just get up and talk, um, Ileave out.
You know when we you know whenwe start talking with people and
get into kind of feedback, allof a sudden I'm sitting there
and I'm going.
I don't know how many timesI've read this passage.
I prepared for this Bible studyand then that went right over
my head.
I didn't, I didn't even thinkabout it, and so it's great to
(18:00):
get connections myself, and Ithink the opportunity to allow
people to talk in Bible study ishuge.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Well, it's because the word is living and active,
eli.
Yeah, it's like the very wordthat created everything you see
and don't see, that took fleshin the person of Jesus, still
actually moves people today toconfess Christ and then want to
practice.
Shout out to Allen Iversonwe're talking about practice.
Man, people need to practicetalking about Jesus, and the
(18:29):
church should be a place.
Small groups should be a place.
Bible study should be a placewhere people get to stretch
their practice muscles inanticipation of discipleship in
the home, discipleship in theircommunity.
Telling the gospel story.
People, this is a wonderfulcalling for every member.
I'd love to get your take onthis.
Do you think a higher majorityof your members because of that
(18:51):
kind of interactive Bible studystyle?
If you were to ask, are you atype of evangelist Like, would
more of a majority of them saywell, yeah, I'll talk to anybody
about Jesus because I practicewith Pastor Eli talking about
Jesus.
Any thoughts there, eli?
Speaker 4 (19:06):
I wish I could.
I wish I could say for surethat it's driving more
conversations from people.
That's that's the goal.
Right is getting people.
You know, we all know the GreatCommission, right, we know that
this idea you know to, you know, as you're going to, you know
to share the good news thing,and we know that in our minds.
(19:26):
But so often, I think I went toPLI a number of years ago and
one of the things that Iremember talking about there was
it was, you know, we get caughtup in the, the need to feel
prepared.
You know, I got to take onemore class, I got to do one more
Bible study, I learned one morething.
So I'm ready.
If somebody asks a question Idon't know an answer to and
we're so often, I think, afraidto step out.
I really think the goal is totry to get people just
(19:47):
comfortable talking about and go, look, you really do know the
answers.
You know you don't have to have.
You know I'm a pastor, I'vebeen doing it for.
You know I've been doing it for12 years.
You know, and I don't have allthe answers either, there's
things I'm still learning anddiscovering.
I mean, you mentioned Tim.
It's a living word.
Yeah, I hope that I never stoptrying to or never stop
(20:12):
discovering new things, butthat's always the goal is to get
them to be comfortable talking.
Are we there yet?
I don't know, I think.
As Lutherans, I think we have anatural tendency to like to
learn but not translate thatinto as effectively into genuine
(20:33):
conversations with our friendsand neighbors.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, god intends us to be a river, not a reservoir.
And teaching, or sharing, islearning twice, and so the
quicker you can learn somethingand share it with a friend.
This is how the gospel spread.
Do you realize?
Jesus is Lord.
Christ is risen.
He is risen, indeed, hallelujah.
It's Monday, thursday Ishouldn't be saying that anyway,
but Sunday's coming right, andso this is the tomb is empty.
(20:56):
This is the invitation that wehave for all of the baptized,
for the royal priesthood tobecome adept and confident in
the Lord, to share their faith.
Jack, any, take on the role of,I think, teaching and our
preaching in moving the everydayfollower of Jesus.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
he is another priest and he should not be thought of
(21:35):
as any different than the restof the priests of the
congregation.
So now, if that's the truth,this is a powerful statement,
that is an identity statementthat marks what it means to be a
believer right, not justforgiven, not just saved those
are very important.
But then also priest rightwe're part of the royal
priesthood those are veryimportant.
But then also priest rightwe're part of the royal
priesthood.
So what is given, then, to thepriesthood?
(21:55):
Prayer, intercession, sharingthe gospel these are all things
given to all priests, not justpastors.
So now, if you're a pastor,that should start to reshape how
you think about how youinteract with your congregation.
That you are there as anequipper right, obviously,
you're serving them with wordand sacrament, but you're also
equipping them to fully live outtheir daily vocation as priest
(22:17):
right, that's exactly whatLuther was thinking about when
he wrote the catechisms.
He wanted that to be a tool forparents.
Right, it's a tool for pastors,but it's also a tool for
parents to disciple theirchildren, which means it's
something that was going to bebaked into the fabric of society
.
So I think that's a very like.
We really need to lean intothat right.
That is something that I thinkis most important.
(22:38):
I have neighbors I want to beable to, in casual conversation,
be able to share the gospelwith them whenever that need
comes about.
There's people in the town inthe zip code that your
congregation know that you, thepastor, are never going to know.
So, you have to depend on thembeing a part of the church, an
extension of the church, to begospel sharers, carrying the
(22:59):
gospel with them wherever theygo.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah, no doubt.
Think about the night Jesus wasbetrayed and he inaugurated
this new covenant, giving us hisvery body and blood, signaling
back to Passover, but thensaying, hey, in the next 24
hours, I am the Lamb of God whotakes away the sin of the world.
And this is the way I'm goingto come to you and guess what?
(23:23):
You're going to share it withothers, we're going to share it
with others and we're going torally.
There's a multiplying effectthat even comes from the Lord's
table.
It was not just for them, itwas through them, for all who
would come to faith and bebaptized and believe in the
triune God, and the world wasforever changed.
Eli, you like to talk about thereal presence.
I love talking about the realpresence as well.
(23:45):
I mean this is, this issomething that is a
differentiator.
Something that is adifferentiator and really I mean
deeply biblically grounded.
I think, now that this is apodcast, that really argues a
lot.
But if we're to say, hey, thesacraments for all people,
baptism for all people,sacrament of Holy supper for
those who have been examined cansee, this is the body and blood
(24:08):
of Jesus.
Confess it in faith.
Jesus is actually here for you,not just bread and wine, but
also his very body and blood.
Talk about what you love, aboutthe real presence of Christ,
how we articulate it in the LCMSEli.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Well, this was one of the moments when I realized I
was heading in the wrongdirection.
When I was in college, Istarted out on the pastoral
ministries program at NorthwestUniversity.
It was the one designed to getyou into pastoral ministry and
the assemblies of God.
I thought that's where I washeaded and I was taking a class
called pastoral techniques andwe.
It was fascinating class.
(24:44):
I've never run into somethingthat was similar to it.
We took field trips, going to acrematorium and standing in the
back next to the ovens and going, hey, you as a pastor may find
yourself in this place.
And I remember we went to achurch and we practiced how to
do baptism.
And this was one of my firstexperiences with full immersion
baptism, which I love.
(25:05):
I love the experience of thatwhole water connection.
And you realize, you know whydoes a pastor have a lot to
think about?
You put somebody bigger thanyou down in the water.
How do you get them back up ontheir feet?
Uh, so there's a question.
You know it was a great classbut we got you.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
I'm picturing right now.
If I had to baptize jack in abig I don't know how this.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
You better bring a friend you like you keep going.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Sorry, yeah, you drop somebody back and you're double
baptized.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
I mean, is that bad?
I don't know.
But we went to a church andwalked through communion and one
of the things that struck mewas the pastor of that church as
he was talking to us aboutcommunion.
And he was talking to us aboutwhy they use bread and why they
use exclusively grape juice, andI remember him using the words
(25:55):
we use unleavened bread and weuse unleavened wine, is what he
called it, um, to explain thereason for not having alcohol in
it.
I started thinking about thatand I'm going, man, I grew up
Lutheran church.
I grew up with we didn't.
Grape juice actually wasn't anoption in the church I grew up
in.
Something seems off to me.
(26:16):
And then I started doing alittle deeper reading and I'm
like there's no way it couldhave been grape juice.
I mean, at the time of thePassover we don't have fresh
grapes.
You know, the only grape juicethat was available was was not
unleavened, as he would have putit, and I got to really
thinking about that.
And then I started thinkingabout you know, I remember being
in chapel and we celebratedcommunion and you could tell it
(26:37):
wasn't a practice that regularlyoccurred.
Yeah, and the pastor's like,yeah, the Bible says something
like this.
And he looks, he's looking itup, and he and then it's like,
okay, so we're just going topass the trays down and why
don't you take it and eat anddrink?
And you know, and then he saidthis is something that
symbolizes.
And I was like whoa, wait what?
And I really wrestled with thatand that's what really kind of
(27:01):
put me back onto the path ofwhere is the right place.
You know, there were otherthings you know discovering.
You know discovering Luther inin church, history and stuff and
all that.
But it was the practice ofcommunion, more than anything
that drove me back.
I guess what I would say backhome was that sacramental nature
(27:23):
.
I started having conversationsafter I graduated.
I started working for theuniversity while I was a student
.
Not only did I have a child anda wife and a full-time course
load, I also worked full-timefor the university in the
maintenance department, and so Iwas there for a decade and I
got to know all the professors.
I remember having conversationswith some of my Bible
(27:45):
professors.
I mean, these were great men.
They were, you know men, youknow PhDs out the years from all
these places, really smart guysand we'd have these
conversations and I asked one ofthem one day.
I said what is it?
I said the experience I've hadwith the assemblies is this
spirit-led concept.
I mean, the spirit invadeseverything that you do until we
(28:07):
get to communion and baptism.
And then, all of a sudden, it'slike where'd he go?
Where'd he go?
Yeah, that's a great way ofputting it.
And I said why do we have sucha hard time with this idea that,
uh, that Christ could bepresent in communion?
Um, and that's really, that'sreally what got me there.
(28:28):
Uh, and then it was a couple ofyears ago.
We were doing an epiphany serieson the gifts of Christmas.
What were the things the wisemen brought?
Why gold, frankincense andmyrrh, and what were these ties
to Old Testament temple worship?
And as we were talking aboutgold and talking about the
construction of the ark andoverlaying of gold and the
cherubim on the top, and uh andthe, and god saying and where
(28:52):
did god rest?
He rested on the mercy seat.
This was where he dwelt,amongst his people.
And then here we have the newcovenant, uh, where christ meets
us in the supper uh.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
So, eli, I have to share this.
So, uh, I was baptized lutheranand then raised pentecostal and
then came back to Lutheranism asan adult and we were at some
sort of conference where we justhappened to be around a lot of
Pentecostal folks and they werekind of doing their thing and
(29:22):
there was a realization, kind ofan aha moment.
Now I tend to draw a lot ofconclusions that maybe that's a
right conclusion, maybe it's awrong conclusion, but to me it
seems very reasonable thatwhat's going on in that
expression is we all have aGod-sized hole and we get to
fill that hole in communion,being with you know, having the
real presence of God, the real,you know, the real body and the
(29:45):
real blood.
We have that hole filled for usand what I think I sometimes
see is that their kind ofexpression, their hyper
expressiveness with the HolySpirit, is trying to fill that
same hole.
That we get filled with thesacraments, right, and so to me
it's almost like I see it almostas an overcompensating like
where they go over the top withprophesies and speaking in
(30:06):
tongues and all that kind ofstuff that they're trying to
fill that hole that we getfilled with that sacramental
expression that we have well,this is why our extra notes this
is my own kind of drawing the,the dotted lines, and I'm sure
people could tear that apart.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Go ahead if you want to, but that's kind of what I
see well, I mean, whatdistinguishes the sacraments for
luther and then for us, andthis goes back 500 years.
You know one of the big caseshe makes to Catholic brothers
and sisters it's not a work,it's God working for us.
It's extra nose that comes fromoutside of us and changes us
(30:41):
from the inside out, creatingand sustaining faith in the
triune God.
Like I got nothing to bring tothe table, I'm a dead man, I
have to be revived.
And the fervor of our praise,that's always just in response.
You can say whatever you want.
I mean, david danced and playeddifferent instruments, all this
(31:03):
kind of stuff.
That's just all in response, ahymn of praise, sacrifice that
we are children of God, not bywhat we do, but just because God
says so.
And I think passive faith,extra-nose faith outside of us,
is a bridge.
There are others, but a bridgeinto inter-ecumenical dialogue
(31:24):
with other brothers and sistersin other traditions and I think
we should be charitable about it.
This is one of my prayers forwe in the LCMS can we work out
some of our things that we needto work out so that we can unite
in in mission and ecumenicalconversation, because we believe
this confession is true, likeit's biblical it's, it's very
(31:44):
grounded, like everybody needsJesus, from little infants,
baptism, baptism infants can die, go and make disciples of all
nations.
How Baptize and then teach.
And one of our main teachingsis the real presence of Jesus in
the Lord's Supper.
And yeah, he's at work, man, Idon't just come and receive,
taste and see the Lord is goodand then invite other people to
(32:06):
come and taste and see.
Like it seems kind of simple.
And Luther you picture Luther inhis arguments, debates they had
more robust debates and I bethe and Zwingli went and had a
beer or something after theirdebate.
But the one thing he could notcompromise on was the real
presence Is means is I don'tknow what else it could mean
(32:26):
Take and eat.
This is my body, this is myblood for the forgiveness of
your sins.
And I think your comment aboutthe Holy Spirit, yeah, why would
we like the Holy Spirit wantsto have complete control,
complete access of every part ofour life, right, what we say,
what we do, how we live andobviously the most important
things bringing us into andsustaining our faith in Christ.
(32:48):
Like, why would we kick theHoly Spirit out of doing
something miraculous at the, atthe table and through water
connected to word Like that'skind of.
That's kind of wild for me toeven think about Any.
Any response to that.
Eli or Jack, eli jump and thenJack, you close this one down Go
.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
Well, I take back into that and I go.
I think there's also something,though, through these
expressions and, jack, you, youmentioned you know your
experience and trying to fillthat God-sized hole.
But then I also think about myexperience.
Growing up and church was yousaying your hymns of praise and
stuff, but you didn't react inany way.
I mean it's so funny.
I've been doing this for 12years and I'm still caught by
(33:23):
surprise if I actually getsomebody to say amen when I'm
preaching, because I'm not usedto it in my context.
But I'm like why aren't weRight?
I mean, this should change ourhearts, it should make us
enthusiastic worshipers.
And this is where I look at ourworship settings and I'm going
(33:45):
you know, how can we make thissomething that engages our
senses, that engages our hearts?
I often think about, you know,somebody asked me what's a verse
that matters to you, like, well, there's a lot, sure, but 1
Corinthians 9.22 always stuckout to me, where Paul's talking
about you know, to the Jews, Ibecome a Jew.
To the Gentiles, I'm a Gentile.
And he says I become all thingsto all people so that by all
means I might save some.
I've always taken that to be.
(34:07):
You know Paul says, look, I'mnot free from the law, you know,
I mean God's word is still myguiding principle.
But how do we then takeeverything else and help people,
you know, encounter Jesus?
How do we help people see thattaste and see that the Lord is
good.
Come in, you know, come andexperience this feeling that you
get through the Lord's Supper.
But how do we also teach ourbrothers and sisters inside the
(34:30):
Lutheran church to experienceGod?
Maybe the way, maybe the wayDavid did when you know, when he
would dance, and maybe, youknow, maybe we find a way to see
, see how how people canexperience.
You think about those, thosepeople that Jesus actually
touched.
You know his healings where hecould have just spoken, like he
did in so many other cases, andyet he uses his hands on the
(34:52):
blind man.
Or I'm always struck by theleper, you know, who's supposed
to actually let people know thathe's unclean.
Stay away.
And what's Jesus do?
He comes up and he embraces theguy.
I mean this is life change.
And so I think there'sopportunities for us as
Lutherans to experience that.
There's opportunities for us toshow what we've got to people
(35:12):
and say, look, we've gotsomething I think you're missing
.
I've never had anyone I've hadthat conversation with when I
say, how do we not say thatChrist isn't present through the
power of the Holy Spirit andcommunion?
And I've never had somebody go.
Yeah, no.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Jack.
Well, you mentioned stuff aboutthe Holy Spirit, so I have to
share a little story here.
Holy Spirit, so I have to sharea little story here.
I was at a friend's party.
A friend invited me to a partyit was like a family reunion and
a lot of the folks there theycame from more of the
Pentecostal background, and heintroduced me as a person who
worked at a church, and so allof a sudden they started
referring to me as Pastor Jack.
I said, oh, I'm not ordained oranything like that, and they
(35:45):
didn't care, they just keptcalling me that.
And so at one point this ladycame up to me and said do you
have a word for me?
Right, do you have a word forme?
And she was asking for like aword from the Holy Spirit.
And so I thought about it for asecond and I said yes, I do.
And she said well, what is it?
And I said Jesus wants you toknow that you are his beloved
(36:05):
daughter, that he cares aboutyou very much, that he died on
the cross for you, that he hasforgiven all of your sins, that
you belong to him, that thepromise of salvation belongs to
you and that any time, anymoment.
If you ever want to hear hisword, you can crack open the
Bible and he will give you wordsof comfort and peace and joy.
And she said he told you that.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
I said yes, he told me that, yeah, for you, for you,
indeed, amen.
So that's an experience, Ithink.
To go back to what you'resaying, that's a good story,
jack uh, and that's one of yourstories that I haven't heard
before, so I appreciated that aswell.
We hang out a lot anyway, so Iwas on the edge of my seat on
(36:49):
that story.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
She's like't know what you were going to say so
good job, she was just blownaway.
I was like the Holy Spirit toldyou that.
It's like, yes, it did.
It's right there in the Bible.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
I take that back.
I think I have heard that story, I just forgot it.
No, jack, you're great.
If you don't know, jack has oneof the greatest well, you do
know, if you've been listeningone of the greatest laughs.
You light up the room and fromtime to time you scare me, yuck,
okay, no, getting back to yourexperience stuff.
(37:20):
So it's not like Lutherans areanti-experiential or use the
word enthusiastic.
An enthusiast is waiting aroundfor that sort of experience, to
know that God is present, orfor someone to bring a word, or
laying on of hands or speakingin tongues, or something like
that.
Or were your words of prophecyor healing extraordinary healing
(37:43):
for God to know he's present?
God can do some wild things, tobe sure.
Some wild things to be sure,but what he does consistently is
show up and show off in hisword, both read, spoken,
believed and through thesacraments, the divine mystery
(38:04):
of being a child of God in thewires of baptism.
And so why would this be anyless experiential?
Luther was very into.
I want everybody to experiencethis, I and I want.
This is one of the things too.
Luther, jack, you, you.
I think we're in the podcastwhere we talked about, uh,
singing.
Luther wanted the congregationto sing.
Do people even know like theorigin of even singing
enthusiastically?
Speaker 3 (38:22):
comes from luther.
He wanted the congregation tobe joyfully engaged in
worshiping god through singing,which is wild because it
automatically made the worshipexperience less stoic than it
would have been just watchingthe priest do his thing up there
.
Right yeah, it's a moreinteractive worship style, and
(38:45):
what's wild now is that thatCatholics do that.
They've joined us in doing that.
Good job, all right.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
I would talk to my colleagues and I'd tell them hey
, you guys know that, you, youknow everything.
You've got, you've got yourfeet founded in the reformation.
They never liked hearing that.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah, we all come from somewhere, right, that's
right.
Anyway, all right, we just gotabout 10, 15 minutes left and,
uh, we're, we're committed.
We want to have difficultconversations on this podcast.
There are some topics that Idon't speak into currently.
I've said a lot about them, butI think, just generally, as I'm
(39:24):
setting up this topic,generally we can improve the way
we love and care for oneanother online, putting the best
construction on things onlineand putting the best
constructions.
As hard as this is around thepolitics and the convention
cycles that happen fromdistricts into the National
(39:46):
Synodical Convention.
I've been to the last three.
I don't know if I'll be goingin.
Well, it's here in town,actually in Phoenix, so I'll be
around somehow.
I don't know if I'll be avoting delegate, we'll see how
that goes, but you went for thefirst time and just tell us
about your experience, eli.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
It was eye-opening, to say the least.
I mean, I've been here and I'vebeen part of my circuit for 10
years.
I hear my colleagues talk abouthow things go and all that sort
of stuff.
So I don't think that thattruly prepared me for the
experience.
And I think the thing that Inoticed more than anything was
(40:28):
I'm not sure how we actually getanything done Just because you
know, the minute something comesup, there's often some sort of
competing or something to try toalter it, and so the
conversation starts and thensomething else gets proposed to
amend it, and then theconversation starts all over
(40:51):
with the amendment.
You debate the amendment forthe allotted time and you never
actually get back to theoriginal thing.
Then we vote.
We vote down the amendment, wevote on the original thing,
which never had any discussion,then we move on, and so that was
very interesting to me to kindof watch that play out.
Never had a moment where I felttempted to get up and speak
until we got to the discussionon pastoral formation.
(41:13):
That was a moment when I feltlike I had a story to tell.
I came from a different place.
I wouldn't be an LCMS pastor ifI hadn't had the route open to
me.
I mean, I don't like to makeabsolutes because I always say,
look, god could make anythinghappen, but you know the way I
see it and the way we were setup and the way my wife and I
(41:33):
were where our lives were andhow things were going.
30 years old I couldn't pack upand moved to St Louis.
We were surviving mostly on herincome.
I had two kids, tried to doseminary for two years, pack up,
go somewhere for vicarage, packup, come back to seminary and
then try to start out in mymid-30s.
I don't know how that wouldhave happened.
(41:55):
And so I actually, for thefirst time I queued in to talk
about this and before my namecame up, an amendment was
proposed and they cleared thequeue and they started over with
the debate on the amendment andI tried.
I never got back into the queue, but what I heard in all of
this and I can't remember whatthe amendment to the original
(42:16):
thing was exactly what we weretalking about.
But you know, here we weretalking about how do we?
How do we, how do we fill ourpulpits?
And I'm serving twocongregations.
I've got a congregation thatcould.
I've got a guy in one of mycongregations who would be an
ideal support for ministry.
He's a worker priest model.
He's the principal of aChristian school.
(42:37):
He would be ideal to help getinto the ministry and yet our
structure doesn't have an avenuefor me to get him in the way I
think he'd like to get in.
And then I think about myexperience and I'm like well, I
don't have any problem withresidential instruction, in fact
I think it's.
(42:58):
I think you want to talk aboutgold standard and I would tell
my watch your podcast on on isit the gold standard from a
little while back?
And I think, tell my watch yourpodcast on on is it the gold
standard from a little whileback?
And I think, if you have theopportunity to do that,
fantastic, please, please, takethe route, because there were
some things I missed in my route.
Mine was a hybrid I.
I had a residential class oncea week.
I to take the four classes eachquarter at a couple of distance
(43:21):
classes that were.
I was watching recordedlectures and interacting with
the professor online.
And the last one was during oneweek.
It was during a week-longintensive when I would go to
class for six hours a day to getall the lecture in and I, there
were things that I missed.
The interaction with my youknow, with my brothers in in
(43:42):
during this time, I think wasgreat, but at the same time it
wasn't a route for me.
And what I heard at conventionwere people getting up speaking
to the residential standard andsaying there is no way that we
can provide robust educationoutside of the residential model
.
I'm like, look, I'm an LCMSpastor, I'm here, I was accepted
(44:05):
and made part of this group.
Either I got in through aloophole and shouldn't be here,
or I was able to have aneducation that met a robust
standard to be an LCMS pastor ofnot one but two congregations,
and so that one was a littledisappointing to me because it
made me feel like I wasn't, Iwasn't really part of the team.
(44:26):
And then then we got into adiscussion on, you know,
re-emphasizing traditionalLutheran worship, and you know
comments were made that, look,if you're not doing traditional
Lutheran worship out of theworship book, you're not
actually doing Lutheran worship.
And I'm like aren't we sharingthe gospel, aren't we?
(44:50):
You know we're doing theconfession and we're, you know,
we're providing, you know,confession and absolution.
We're reciting the creed andwe're doing it in a slightly
different model.
Are we not still Lutheran?
And those were a couple ofthings that really stood out to
me.
But what really got me was thetopic of pastoral formation.
Like why can't we I mean, we'vegot some great colleges,
technology's come so far whycan't we provide robust pastoral
(45:13):
training to meet the needs?
I've got a guy.
I don't know how to get himinto ministry.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
So you've got us at an interesting time in the
history of our podcast.
Right now, eli, we have made acommitment, just for the short
term, not to be discussing thetopic about pastoral formation,
for the sake of peace and unityof the church, and at the same
(45:39):
time, you know, we are hopingthat others would engage in
robust conversations about thistopic.
Obviously, we've made ouropinions known about this in the
past.
I think the best way for us torespond about this right now is
probably to say what is it thatyou would hope to see with
respect to pastoral formation inthe future?
What are your thoughts?
(45:59):
I think Tim and I are not goingto make a comment on this right
now, but you are certainly freeto make a comment on it.
What would you?
What would?
What is it that you would liketo see in the future?
If you like, let's just thinkfuture focused.
What is it that you think getsour church body to a place where
there is not just robustpastoral formation but maybe
(46:20):
more accessible, more peopleparticipating in it, more you
know something that results inmore people being able to take
the call in the ministry.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
I don't think anything's.
You know, if it is God honoringand if we're following God in
being the body of believers andseeking to carry out the work of
his church, I think that he'sgoing to.
He's going to open doors and Irest that on.
(46:51):
You know my congregation.
I was a year into my call whenwe lost the lease on the space
we were meeting in and we hadsome conversations about I mean,
you're in first call and do weclose the doors?
And God opened doors instead tomove into a portable setting in
a high school.
We have been meeting in thesame high school for going on 10
(47:12):
years.
I've been part of portablechurches, high schools, schools
don't like you there for morethan a year or two.
They want you to move on.
This school has opened thedoors to us and they work their
schedules around us and theyconsider us one of the events
that happens at the school and Ican't see anything but God's
(47:32):
hand in that and I look at thatand I go that wasn't us.
It wasn't possible for us tocreate that.
I think when it comes to thisissue, I'm like man.
If we were to pray and put allof our faith behind this, I
don't know why we couldn't makeit happen.
I mean, if we put pastoralformation aside, if we look at
(47:56):
how many schools out there areproviding robust training for
all kinds of other degrees, andlet's not wipe out a residential
component.
I mean this one guy that I'vegot that I could bring in.
If he could do a significantamount of his learning at a
distance and if he could go infor a, you know, for a week
(48:16):
intensive twice a year and meetwith his cohort and stuff, I
think it would be possible and Ithink he'd get a lot of the
benefits.
It wouldn't be the same.
I know it's not the same, but Istill think the education could
be robust because we're doingit in so many other areas.
As far as the educational system, you know, across our nation
(48:36):
and our colleges are doing, youknow, this education, if people
want it, they're going to applythemselves to it, and I had to
do that.
You know I education, if peoplewant it, they're going to apply
themselves to it and I had todo that.
You know I had to do that in myeducation.
I had to watch those lectures.
I could have tried to skate by,but I'll tell you something
having those lectures to watchand to then submit notes in
(48:58):
relationship to what I watchedmeant that I was I saw the
entire lecture.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
Yeah, you were engaged in the process.
Speaker 4 (49:05):
Yeah, I'm not, you know, I'm a pastor.
I'm not, you know, I'm not aneducational expert.
I don't work in a university, Idon't all that stuff.
But I just I just think that ifwe, if we say God, how do we do
this, how do you want this tohappen?
And and and lead us, I can'tsee why we couldn't do it.
(49:27):
And the truth of the matter isI'm pastoring two congregations
because there's nobody to fillthe pulpit at the other one, and
if I didn't have to pastor two,I wouldn't pastor two.
It's a lot.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
It's a lot Thanks for doing it.
By the way, what makes youproud to be a pastor in the LCMS
?
And then, final question whatdo you hope we look like in 2050
as a denomination, Eli?
Speaker 4 (49:51):
I'm proud just to be here, honestly, to be a member
of the LCMS, to know that thereare times when I think that the
grass may be greener in otherplaces, and then I remind myself
that I'm right where God wantsme to be.
When I was installed in my call, one of the former pastors of
(50:14):
the church that I pastor, ChristCommunity, provided me with a
little framed picture that youknow, 13 years has sat on my
bookshelf over there and itsimply says I'm in God's place,
and it's a reminder to me everytime.
I think that, you know, maybe Ishould do something else, or
maybe I'm too tired to keepgoing on, or maybe I'm just
beating my head against the wall.
(50:34):
I'm like I'm in, I'm in God'splace.
When I was going to seminaryand it looked like colic we was
closing I almost headed off inthe direction of the LCMC,
because faith is a trainingseminary for the LCMC, and but
it just it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
It wasn't quite what you were looking for from a
confessional perspective, rightit wasn't right, and so I'm just
.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
I'm proud to be a member of the LCMS.
I pray for the next 50 years.
What's it 25 years?
Sorry.
I'm proud to be a member of theLCMS.
I pray for the next 50 years.
What's it 25 years?
Sorry, I'm jumping ahead there,but what's it gonna look like
in the next 25 years?
That's about the time I'm gonnabe.
I'm going to be in the retiredphase, where I am now working
full time as a retired pastoryeah, cause that's apparently
what we do here, but I pray thatwe are.
(51:25):
We're trying to find pulpits toput pastors in, because we've
got people training for ministry.
This is a good thing that we'vegot.
We want to share.
I want to share it with youknow, with the world.
I want people to be, I wantpeople to be Christians and I
want them to be LutheranChristians and LCMS, lutheran
Christians yeah.
Speaker 3 (51:47):
The area that we live in, you know, is about 4
million people living in themetropolitan area of the Phoenix
metro area.
There's probably about 2,000churches, maybe not even that
much, maybe 1,800 churchesserving this community.
There probably needs to be10,000 churches serving this
community for it to be wellserved by pastors and churches.
(52:07):
And so the vision that I haveis that whatever and I'm not
going to prescribe anything atthis point in time, but like
whatever it is that we decide todo as a church body, that it
creates that pathway, that thatmany pastors could be filled and
some right, that there would bepeople ready, willing to serve,
and that there'd be a surplusof pastors.
(52:29):
And so that's a vision that ourchurch body is going to have to
tackle and that's what I'mpraying for.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
Hey, this has been fun, eli.
If people want to connect withyou, how can they do so?
You got your email, yeah, I gotan email.
Eli.
Speaker 4 (52:43):
E-L-I at CC Ridgefield dot com.
Amen, it's all spelled outR-I-D-G-E-F-I-E-L-D rather than
Richfield, Connecticut, whichalways seems to come up when
people are looking forRidgefield Washington.
But Eli at CC Ridgefield dotcom is my email.
Talk to me there.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Yeah, man, hey.
I've loved.
Thanks for your generosity oftime on a Monday, thursday and
praying for you heading intoEaster and the Easter season.
I am very glad that you're apastor in the Lutheran Church
Missouri Synod Welcome brother.
And let's get after it.
Making and multiplyingdisciples.
This is lead time.
Please like and subscribe.
(53:21):
I'm going to double down on thesubscribe Subscriptions on lead
time.
Please like and subscribe.
I'm going to double down on thesubscribe subscriptions on
YouTube, especially wherever itis you take it in.
But YouTube, it really helps,with the algorithm, to get this
conversation into the ears ofmore and more people and we're
very, very hopeful for thefuture.
We know that the end of thestory is very, very good.
We win.
I want to win, and we win inChrist as the people of God, and
(53:46):
we want more people to know thesalvation, the winning that
comes in following after Jesus.
That's in our hearts and wewill continue.
We will not stop proclaimingChrist as Lord until that last
day comes where we take our lastbreath.
This was an honor to spend timewith you.
Thanks so much, shaq, thanksEli.
It's a good day.
Thank you guys.
Great day, good work.
Speaker 4 (54:04):
Thanks guys, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
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
(54:29):
this gospel message.
Subscribe to our channel, thengo to theuniteleadershiporg to
create your free login forexclusive material and resources
and then to explore ways inwhich you can sponsor an episode
.
Thanks for listening and staytuned for next week's episode.
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