So what are your thoughts?  If you are a pastor, does the knowledge overload overwhelm you?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the situation of pastoral calls in the United States today.  For those who do not know, this past week was Call Week at both of our LCMS seminaries.  The LCMS Joint Seminary Fund recently put out their little PDF file listing where everyone is going, if you’re interested (with some tragic omissions).  It is a time of excitement, anxiety, joy, fear, and about every other emotion you could imagine.  Between serving as a student and also serving as an admission counselor for several years at Concordia Theological Seminary, I’ve been to my fair share of call services.  They are one big bottle of crazy wrapped up in about two hours (or less, depending on who’s preaching).

But this past week was not a week of happiness at my alma mater.  Twenty two men from this year’s class did not receive calls, and I believe eight men at Concordia Seminary.  The sort of standard fare reasons for this are fairly predictable.  I have heard the following, and I’m sure there are more:

• Economy.  Congregations simply can’t afford to call pastors.
• Congregations requesting graduates from a specific seminary.
• A vast left-wing conspiracy against confessional students at both seminaries.
• The SMP programs, DELTO programs, and various alternate route programs are drying up the number of traditional calls in the LCMS.
• The graduates aren’t qualified or don’t have the right personality/disposition to serve in the Holy Ministry.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to these soon-to-be brothers in office that are awaiting calls.

Here are a few things that I pray that we as a synod consider as we try to wrestle with this sadness, especially as we move into the 2010 LCMS Synodical Convention:

Repent.  We as a church body must repent for our failure to place these men (and their families, for they do go together).  They aren’t martyrs like our forefathers in the early church.  But they have desired a noble task (1 Tim. 3:1), and we as a church body have encouraged them in this endeavor.   While I suppose there were no guarantees that they would be placed, they have acted in good faith, and so should we.

Explain everything in the kindest way.  It is easy and oh so tempting to ascribe motivations to people in power, to students, to congregations, and to just about anyone.  There may be culpability here, but it must be based on fact, not innuendo and what really comes down to either gossip or slander.

Search the Scriptures.  Our Lord has said:  “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Luke 10:2 ESV)  This is the Word from our Lord.  It is true.  The need is there.  We have a world of hurting sinners in need of the healing balm of the Gospel.  If we as a synod cannot place these men, it is more of a sign that we are not aligned with what God wants of His church than anything else. How have we allowed our priorities as a church body to be derailed so that the preaching of the Gospel is not the point?

Pray.  This again may be obvious, but it must be said.  Pray in thanksgiving to God for His gift of the Holy Ministry of the Gospel.  Pray in repentance, that our Lord may forgive our arrogance, our selfishness and our need to make everything fit and be controlled in our own way.  Pray that God would provide for these men and their families, as they are now in synodical limbo.   And pray that God would do His work of placing these men where they are needed so that His Word may go forth to the joy and salvation of all.

Act. These men and their families (about 30 in all between the two seminaries) have real needs, with debt, families to provide for, and ongoing preparations for God’s work for them.  How can we as a synod, as congregations and as individuals care for and serve them while this is sorted out?

What am I missing, friends?

-LL (aka Pr. Todd Peperkorn)

PS Rev. Matthew Harrison also recently had a wonderful sermon offering comfort especially to those who have not received calls.  I would urge you to read it and check it out.

Lately, nearly every time I interact with these different groups of young people, I think about on of my former pastors. His name was Dale Ness, and he was my pastor from the time I was ten until I was about thirteen. I went to school at the one room school his congregation operated, and I am a Lutheran pastor today to a great extent because of him. There are others that were influential as well, but certainly he was the first.

Pastor Ness loved children. He had eight children himself, and so there house was a constant barrage of comings and goings, with children covering a range of infant through high school. Our school was small, and he was the main teacher (as well as pastor, but that’s another story).

My memories of Pastor Ness are pretty clear. We sang. We prayed. We did memory work. He drove a goofy old truck named Hiawatha. He loved us, and we feared and loved him. He was strict but somehow managed to portray a deep passion for the little ones entrusted to his care. He played with us in the playground, and he managed to model and instill the love of Christ into a little odd collection of sinners at Holy Cross Lutheran School.

He was far from perfect. He had a temper, he worked himself nearly to death, and he had real problems with burning himself out from too much work.

Tragically, the church was forced to close the school, and it nearly killed him. Not long after he resigned from the Holy Ministry, moved to Idaho from Missouri (where I grew up), and was killed in an accident while he was working on his car (maybe it was Hiawatha; I don’t know).

I think about him often as I go about my daily work as a pastor of a church with lots of children. I think about how much he shaped me as a person and as a pastor today. I pray someday that God would use me to bring the Gospel of hope to little ones just as he did.

Is there a parallel with the Christian faith? Particularly with the Holy Ministry. Here’s what I think may be a good comparison and a bad comparison:

The good comparison is that we should live our lives here on earth without worrying about the future. Matthew 6, etc. We have died in holy baptism. Our lives are hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3). Understood properly, this frees us to be divinely reckless with the gifts which our Lord gives us today, knowing that he will provide for all things.

The bad comparison is to believe that since we have already lost the battle (we will die) that we might as well simply slog through it, but there is no life at all.

Been there? Either one or the other? I know I have.

-LL

Turn to page 123 of the book nearest to you.

Count the first five sentences.

Post the next three.

The book is Pastors in Transition: Why Clergy Leave Local Church Ministry, by Dean R. Hoge and Jacqueline E. Wenger. The sentences are from a paragraph about how a pastor (named Andrew) regrets the pain his wife felt during his time as a parish pastor:

I mean, I will filling the pastorate role, and everybody seemed satisfied about that. But they expected her to be as big a pastor as me, and be a preaching and everything. And that’s not my wife.

There you have it. A little glimpse into the inner workings of being a pastor’s wife.

-LL

I’ll tag my buddies Dave Juhl and Scott Stiegemeyer.

123 Meme « Esgetology

-LL

Now I don’t think pastors are unusual in this complaint.  We all like to believe that we are important, and that the menial things that just need to get done are somehow not worth our effort.  Who hasn’t complained about being overworked and underpaid or underutilized at work?

Now the pastor as steward and servant of the congregation is in an interesting place.  On the one hand, there are certain things that are clearly pastoral duties that can’t be shirked or sidestepped, such as preaching, teaching, administering the Sacraments, ministering to the sick, the shut-in and the dying, and the like.  That is why we have pastors, after all, and the further away the pastor gets from these basic purposes, the further he gets from his final purpose as a pastor.

However, there is a whole host of things that need to get done which are not so easy to keep clear.  Judging doctrine, for instance.  Sitting in a meeting, working with the youth, almost anything that has to do with people probably includes judging doctrine in some fashion or another.

In the same way a part of the pastor’s office and work is to oversee the worship life of the congregation.  This is easy to understand when we’re talking about picking hymns and liturgy.  But what about turning the lights on (and off)?  What about putting a tape in the machine so the shut-ins can have a recording of the service, or posting it on the Internet so members away from home or in their car can listen to it?

I guess that my views on these things have changed over the years.  It would be nice if I could spent 100% of my time doing clearly pastoral work.  But we don’t live in heaven; we’re on earth.  Here on earth the pastor gets done what needs to get done so that the work of the ministry may be carried out.  Sometimes that means shoveling the walk.

So where does the congregation come into this picture?  The congregation comes in to help the pastor be a pastor.  While there are lots of non-pastoral works that the pastor may need to do on a regular basis, it doesn’t serve the congregation to have the pastor spending all or most of his time with these things.  This means that the congregation, through its leadership or more directly, needs to work with the pastor to evaluate his use of time and energy on a regular basis.  Nothing is perfect, but if we work together toward minimizing the non-pastoral work that the pastor does, everything will work more smoothly.

In Christ,
Pastor Peperkorn

Boards? Meetings?

Yes, boards and meetings. A hundred years ago or more there were almost no boards or committees in churches. In American Lutheranism in general, you had a voters’ assembly, and probably a group of laymen who were considered the leaders of the congregation. Eventually they came to be called elders (originally another term for pastors). There may have been officers (congregational president, treasurer, etc.), but that was about the extent of it. So the thought of having boards with regular meetings was almost nonexistent, and certainly would not have been on the radar (another “new” invention) of how pastors spent their time.

Today it is a different picture. Congregations have boards and committees for many things, and meetings usually follow suit. Now to be fair, most jobs today have meetings, and I haven’t met anyone who ever woke up thinking, “YEAH! I get to go to a meeting today!” It does, however, create an interesting time question for pastors. Where do meetings and boards fit into the Ministry, and what is my role at these meetings and boards?

In order to answer that question, we have to answer the question of what role a pastor plays in the congregation as a whole. As we discussed last month (in The Pastor and the Congregation), the pastor is a shepherd, a steward, and an ambassador for the Master. He has no authority in and of himself, but can only speak on behalf of the One whom He serves.
So what role does the pastor play then?

In boards and meetings, the pastor is there in order to bring the Word of God to bear upon whatever is at hand. Every time a congregation gathers, whether it be for the Divine Service or a meeting, there should be prayer and meditation upon God’s Word. Sometimes there is more than other times, but it must always be there. If it isn’t there, then the pastor is not fulfilling his vocation, and the Church is not being the Church. Everything we say and do should be centered on Christ and the Gospel.

So I suppose you could also say that the pastor is the conscience of the Gospel at meetings. It is his job to see to it that whatever the endeavor is that the congregation undertakes, that it is done in faith and for the sake of the Gospel. It is very easy for congregations to lose track of that focus, to become distracted by other things (see Luke 10:40), or to allow unbelief and fear to make decisions that are not in keeping with the faith.

I don’t write this to imply that the pastor is above the congregation in any way. Far from it. We are all weak and easily distracted, and it requires constant vigilance on everyone’s part to remember who we are and what we are here for. In the military they often speak of “mission creep,” that is, secondary matters that can easily take over the purpose of a mission. Our mission is to proclaim the Gospel. It’s that simple. The devil, the world, and our sinful nature want us to be distracted from that at every turn. But God, who is rich in mercy, will keep us steadfast in the faith until the end.

So the pastor is there for meetings and boards. He is there to keep the focus on Jesus. May it ever be so among us.

Your servant in Christ,
Pastor Peperkorn

(from the February 2008 Messiah’s Messenger)

For Lutherans, we are very familiar and comfortable with phrases like “Word and Sacrament,” “Means of Grace,” and the like. But what do they mean, and in what way do they relate to our common life together in Christ?

Simply put, God works through means to accomplish His will. His will is that all would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. He accomplishes His Holy will by sending forth His Word to create and sustain faith when and where He pleases. This Holy Word comes to us in the Scriptures, in the preaching of the Gospel, Baptism, Holy Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper. That is where God promises to be found, and where He promises to be at work for us and in us, bringing us to heaven to enjoy His divine favor forever.

This Word, which is Jesus Christ, does not simply come randomly or haphazardly. God has appointed (set apart, ordained) certain men into the Office of the Holy Ministry so that His Word would be faithfully proclaimed and given out according to His command and promise. Our Lutheran forefathers put it this way:

So that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments was instituted. Through the Word and Sacraments, as through instruments, the Holy Spirit is given [John 20:22]. He works faith, when and where it pleases God [John 3:8], in those who hear the good news that God justifies those who believe that they are received into grace for Christ’s sake. This happens not through our own merits, but for Christ’s sake (Augsburg Confession, Article V).

In other words, God set up the Holy Ministry in order that faith would spring forth, be nurtured and grown by His Holy Word.

So what does this have to do with us, the saints at Messiah Lutheran Church? What it has to do with us is that it shapes our understanding of the relationship between the pastor and the congregation. Here are some of the more obvious ways:

• The pastor is not the boss, CEO, employee, dictator, Pope, cheerleader, chief salesman, butcher, baker or candlestick maker. He’s the pastor. Probably the best and most biblical analogy is that of a steward. The pastor is the steward or caretaker for the mysteries of God (as St. Paul writes), and it is his responsibility to give out the gifts of God for the benefit of all. Another good analogy is that of shepherd. The pastor cares for the sheep, guards them, feeds them, and serves them.
• In the same vein, the congregation or its members are not the boss, stockholders, slaves, cheerleaders, spectators, butchers, bakers or candlestick makers. The congregation is the congregation. The best and most biblical analogies are that of the Bride or of the Flock. As the Bride the congregation received from the Bridegroom (Christ) what He has to give, and returns thanksgiving and praise to him in word and deed. As the flock the congregation receives what the Good Shepherd (Christ) has to give, follows His lead, receives His protection, eats and drinks what He gives for their wellbeing.

Now understanding these two realities makes things both simpler and more complicated. It makes things simpler because it helps us to understand that the congregation and the pastor serve each other in different ways, not in an adversarial or competitive relationship, but in a relationship of mutual love. The pastor has an obligation to care for the congregation, and in return the congregation has an obligation to care for the pastor. When either one breaks down, the whole thing goes awry.

The bottom line, of course, is that Christ is Lord of the Church, and that we are all His heirs and children. Just as in a body different parts have different roles, so also in the Church, the Body of Christ, we each have different roles to play, all to His glory and for the benefit of our neighbor.

Yours in Christ,

Todd A. Peperkorn, STM
Pastor, Messiah Lutheran Church

[From the January 2008 Messiah's Messenger]