Peter Speckhard’s “Blue Ribbon Musings” in the March, 2010 Forum Letter is an extended riff on the restructuring portion of the upcoming Missouri Synod Convention. All of this is courtesy of incumbent LCMS President Jerry Kieschnick, who five years ago called into being the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Synodical Structure and Governance.
The Task Force’s final report is entitled “Congregations Walking Together in Mission.” Over 10,000 individuals have had an active role in the process of developing that report. All top Synodical leaders, from district boards to Synodical boards and commissions to seminary leadership to the Council of Presidents have put their opinions in writing. Beyond that, however, tons of laypeople have let the task force know what they’re thinking. Finally, three quarters of the delegates to the convention have had a two day regional face-to-face with the Report’s authors. The other quarter have received a full-length DVD, so no one’s been left in the dark. The proposals now are headed to a convention floor committee for finalization. This is as thorough-going a try at national restructuring as has ever been seen in the Missouri Synod.
Pr. Speckhard accurately describes our denomination as passionate about both its theology and its practice, including the sometimes byzantine bylaws and procedures that determine what we in Missouri believe and confess, say and do. It should be duly noted that during the assessment phase the Task Force discovered that an aspect of that same passion, is perceived as bitter battling and sabre rattling. They noted that it is the strongest negative impression of the denomination by insiders and “Ausländer”.
Pr. Speckhard also reports the downside statistical indication that for the past biblical generation of 40 years we in Missouri, like so many Protestant denominations, have been in incremental but steady decline. As compared to faith groups more captive to the spirit of the age that have declined and even split over moral and national political issues, Missouri has retained a steadfast and very strong doctrinal position. It could be asked “at what cost?”, since the bitter battling has succeeded in fragmenting a group who are as tightly knit doctrinally as could be hoped for this side of heaven.
That being said, it’s plain that President Kieschnick, at whose behest the Blue Ribbon Task Force was created, sees restructuring not as a “game changer” in terms of eternal destiny, but as a necessary strategy to encourage the practice of the Synod’s solid theological tenets in congregations and mission stations to maximum benefit of both Church and world. In that regard Pr. Speckard’s final dictum that the best thing the Task Force could have accomplished would have been to exhort to faithfulness and prayer leaves me scratching my head.
Why is it considered problematic to change structure, even in meaningful ways? I’ve been on close to a dozen local, district, synodical and community boards that have made major shifts in governance through the years. In every case but, it seems, this one, the process toward governance change is greeted with enthusiasm as potentially helpful to the accomplishment of goals and objectives, to the revitalization or cleansing of the springs of action for the organization.
As an attendee at the Northeast regional pre-convention gathering recently, I was most encouraged by the way the participants engaged the issues and debated points small and large without rancor. It was exactly the way I’ve experienced it in other organizations. I don’t believe that comes through much at all in Pr. Speckhard’s musings. Without predicting outcomes, the churchly, fraternal, engaged attitude of delegates coming to the regional gatherings bodes well for significant structural improvements.
I’m one who enjoys analogies and illustrations. Peter Speckhard is masterly in his use of these techniques. And he uses one I particularly appreciate – the image of an urban parish in a changing neighborhood. I inhabit that world. Mine is not a gothic brick structure, but a country church in the middle of a very inner-urban block. Having examined the steady decline inside the urban St. Louis gothic edifice in his recollection, Peter compares it to the Missouri Synod – an ecclesiastical dowager down at the heels – “It will never be what it was. Never.”
This is contrapuntal to President Kieschnick’s “It’s not your grandfather’s Missouri Synod.” The President, to his credit, seeks to un-stick the image from the past in order to call for what he perceives to be a Confessional Lutheran renaissance in the Missouri Synod. Pr. Speckhard instead counsels prayer and faithfulness to the inevitable end.
I know virtually all the great stories in the 114 year history of St. Peter’s Brooklyn, that country spire in East New York. I’ve read many. I’ve lived even more in my 35 years there. The pre-eminent story is the same – we are in the middle of an urban block in the middle of an urban neighborhood to stay, with the Gospel, through the Means of Grace, as ambassadors to our world of the reconciliation won in the death and resurrection of God’s Son Jesus Christ.
It will never be what it was. True enough. But not sad. Not sad at all. There are not 600 communicants with their grandparents’ German surnames today. There are several hundred with surnames from twenty-five different countries, and it’s changing all the time, growing younger along with East New York. What a privilege and what a mighty multilingual sound of joy!
Debate on the resolutions on structure presented at the national convention this summer will not be followed closely at 105 Highland Place. Why would they be? This Houston is not a street in Lower Manhattan – it’s a differently pronounced city in Texas.
But if and as conventioneers vote to adapt Missouri’s structure in order to better capitalize on mission opportunities? Then St. Peter’s, one of 6000 plus Congregations Walking Together In Mission, will be the better for it. To that end, from our spot a thousand miles and many spires away, one old Lutheran parish will be leading the cheers.
Dave Benke
