Messages

1

Your Turn / Re: The Aging LCMS Pastors & Laity

« on: May 08, 2023, 01:13:41 PM »

Pastor Weedon, congrats on your confirmands. Looks like a great Sunday in Southern Illinois, I vicar at Zion in Belleville a hundred years ago. Nothing like the spring when the trees are blooming and the fall when the hillsides are covered in yellow and red trees...God be with you all.

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Your Turn / Re: The Aging LCMS Pastors & Laity

« on: May 06, 2023, 10:31:24 AM »

It may be the norm in rural Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin. But the official circuits here, that I”m aware of, are nothing like they are in the Midwest. There’s a piece of me that would like the camaraderie you all have. Here issues of casuistry and support are more organic and certainly very relational. Seems my anecdotal experience is different than yours. That’s ok. Events like best Practices for Ministry have done a good job of bringing relational connection to many.

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Your Turn / Re: The Aging LCMS Pastors & Laity

« on: May 05, 2023, 08:51:47 PM »

Pastor Weedon, your experience sounds pretty cool indeed. I”d offer that is fairly rare across the LCMS. I have seen men in two generations compete for calls and jobs. Things like working in Synod or District Office, Lutheran Hour Speaker…, compete for churches with more $$ and more perceived prestige. The friends in my circuit are very close and supportive like you suggest, it’s more informal than organized.

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Your Turn / Re: The Aging LCMS Pastors & Laity

« on: May 05, 2023, 06:48:36 PM »

Seems to me we have all been competing against one another for grades, recognition, called positions, etc. There’s precious little working together in our band. A man observing LCMS nationally once said to me, “you guys are so provincial.” Our hybrid polity is doing us in. Has to do also with the almost complete inability to get along. Local circuits should be united in working together, congregations would literally rather die than work together. We are not the only denomination like that, my buddy works in Friends tradition and it’s similar there.

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Your Turn / Re: The Aging LCMS Pastors & Laity

« on: May 05, 2023, 02:34:52 PM »

Love this thread…seems to me we need each other more than ever. It’s so tough for us to handle that. We have a culture of competition and rivalry’s, starts at seminary. Hopefully, millennial pastors can change that, their generation is very collaborative. Love to see a movement of fostering churches, setting up parameters to help one another. I think this is happening more than we think because it’s more organic and outside of the “rules”.

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Your Turn / Re: The Aging LCMS Pastors & Laity

« on: May 04, 2023, 01:32:51 PM »

Hats off to the new recruitment/admissions team in St. Louis. Ben Haupt has done a great job in retooling this process. I had heard from some "that God isn't calling men the way he used to seminary." This meant that they didn't just run a bus from the Concordia Colleges full of guys to come and enroll in Mdiv programs. St. Louis seems to have plugged the rather large hole in the bottom of the bucket. Well done to have 60 guys instead of 30. We measure what matters, and this matters a ton to congregations. BTW I"m 59 kind of a weird thing to be on the down hill side of the demographic.

Tom Eckstein is right, at what point do we not have a pastoral shortage, but have a congregational overage?

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Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 27, 2023, 09:38:43 AM »

Love this Dave...congrats on a good night in NY:)

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Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 26, 2023, 10:45:11 PM »

A lot changes in 4 years including 2 of a pandemic…Actually my focus and leadership has changed markedly, I”m glad I”m not Synod president either. It may have cost me my soul, as I believe it has for others.

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Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 26, 2023, 10:15:03 PM »

Me too;) thanks

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Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 26, 2023, 09:46:18 PM »

I should not have let my name stand for that. Big mistake

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Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 26, 2023, 09:05:40 PM »

Yes sir…that’s why congregational ministry is so critical…we believe the Scriptures, we believe the Gospel…we are Sacramental…we honestly don’t need to have a convention somehow make us more confessional…that’s a myth IMHO…but we will celebrate being in fellowship with tiny factions of Lutherans, pat ourselves on the back and sing the doxology. It’s a small way to think we are a big deal.

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Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 26, 2023, 08:58:32 PM »

The Scripture reminds us to do things in the light and that godly things are done in the light. I guess it depends on how you function. Our congregation operates pretty transparently, save some litigation stuff and HR stuff. I guess it’s a way of doing things. They synod is dying on all fronts and all the people in almost all the positions, and honestly in all the positions of great authority, have been put forward by a cabal of anonymous people. It’s absolutely a stupid exercise to have a nomination committee for the LCMS Convention. [and a waste of money for airfare and hotel rooms] Just let the anonymous people choose their list and go. I guess you could make a strong case the United List is the de facto nomination committee. I guess I”ll leave it to you what’s dysfunctional. The remnant of the Lutheran Confession will be in congregations and not the offices of the LCMS.

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Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 26, 2023, 07:44:28 PM »

I’m with Dave, I don’t have any skin in game anymore either. We have had Confessional hegemony and alignment from top to bottom for 15 years. When the moderates win a board seat or two on a board it’s a miracle. But with so much self government, we get the leadership we deserve. Guys used to wrestle about who went to the Convention from the circuit, I’m going this year because I don’t have kids at home. Thinking of heading up to GB to see Jordan Love at camp…maybe we go together Dave:)

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Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 26, 2023, 01:33:21 PM »

I remember going up to Ft Wayne from St. Louis on a student leadership exchange. This was in Spring of 1991 and it was awful there. We all met the guys, who we had met with the fall at St. Louis, and they were hurting so much. We hung out with them, prayed with them and offered care. They had to wait for calls, because some how the Holy Spirit passed over Ft. Wayne Grads. Their wives and families were sobbing in chapel. It was tragic piece of LCMS politics.  That whole episode was painful and drives such deep feelings even today.

In the LCMS it seems like the winners win and put it in the face of the loser. Rather than using elections, decisions, visitation as an opportunity to come together, we use them as an opportunity to bludgeon the perceived loser. Even now we are bifurcated in the LCMS and the people with power win, albeit some victories are pyrrhic but still, the idea of getting along and doing mission together is long lost on this. Actually thanks for the link to the Convention Workbook, it reinforces my comment.

Peace on Wednesday!

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Your Turn / Re: Concordia University Texas

« on: April 24, 2023, 04:43:21 PM »

I buried the gentleman who was chairman of the board when Dr Preus was let go. What a fine man, what a tough call.