Rostered and Called V

This past November, I was officially installed as a rostered ELCA minister of word and sacrament and teaching theologian at Valparaiso University. As a part of the candidacy process that led to this installation, I had to write two essays, some of whose contents might be of interest to at least a few readers of this irregular blog. I have already shared sections from the "entrance essay" that began the process. Here are two further sections from the second one, "the approval essay":

B. What community of faith helped shape your understanding of God’s mission and your gifts for missional leadership? Identify missional leadership gifts that were developed and strengthened by your experiences in this formative faith community and provide a few examples.

            Many communities of faith have shaped my understanding of God’s mission and the gifts that God has given to me for use in that mission. From my home congregation in Salem, Ore., I learned about the variety of ministries and baptismal chrisms that God produces in the church for its edification. That congregation saw its unique purpose as reaching out to students and faculty at Willamette University and to workers in state and city government. It was in the context of this vibrant congregation that I learned that “all who are baptized into Christ are baptized into his death and resurrection, into his mission, and into his body.”[1]

            From Bethlehem Lutheran Church, West Dundee, Ill., where I served for nearly five years as an assistant pastor, I learned about working with a senior pastor in a large suburban parish, about pastoral counseling, and about the nuts-and-bolts of leading an organization staffed almost entirely by volunteers. During those years, when I was also a graduate student at the University of Chicago Divinity School, I began to recognize and develop gifts for teaching. I was at that time blessed to be the student of many master teachers, among them Martin Marty, Langdon Gilkey, Brian Gerrish, and Robert Bertram.

            From Immanuel Lutheran Church on the south side of Chicago, which I served on a part-time basis during my years at the Divinity School, I learned a lot about urban poverty, racism, drug addiction, gang violence, “white flight,” nihilism, despair, but also about Christian hope, faithful perseverance in the face of adversity, and trans-missioning Christ’s love and grace to people who were hurting in very troubled families and neighborhoods. The music of John Coltrane, Johnny Cash, and U2 helped renew my spirit in those trying days (and subsequently).

            From Immanuel Lutheran Church, Michigan City, Ind., where I served for nearly four years as an interim pastor, I learned patience. During those forty months, when I was also a full-time professor of theology at Valparaiso University, the congregation and I were forced to keep plugging along together, by God’s grace, through the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit, under the cross of Christ. We focused primarily on the day-to-day, the week-to-week. I grew in my understanding of the fact that the church’s mission is more than just what the pastor does, an insight that I first received during my ministry within the other Immanuel congregation.

            From my fifteen-year involvement in the Chapel of the Resurrection at my university, I have come to appreciate how God’s Spirit empowers and motivates students to assume roles of leadership in the various chapel ministries (e.g., peer-to-peer, music, drama, assisting in worship, small-groups, spiritual retreats). I have had to hone gifts for pastoral care and counseling to struggling, hurting, grieving students. I have been blessed to see and hear world-class preachers and theologians in action, both in the chapel and in other campus settings, and these proclaimers have inspired my own faith, while at the same time providing me with rich examples of the kind of evangelical, Christ-centered preaching to which I aspire.

C. As an outgrowth of your personal gifts for missional leadership, envision how you will nurture and empower others to serve as missional leaders through their vocation and participation in the life of the church. Within your response, integrate an expression of a Lutheran understanding of vocation.

            I understand my vocation at Valparaiso University to be that of a Christian missionary. Just as Christ set aside his glory and took the form of a servant, so I understand my vocation to be that of a humble, Christ-like servant (Phil. 2; Mk 10.42-45). As an ordained Lutheran servant-educator, I have tried to complement the theology department’s mission to enable “all graduates of Valparaiso University to be knowledgeable of the Christian faith, sensitive to religious issues in our global society, and prepared for roles in which their understanding of religion may enhance their contribution to church and society.” Through my teaching, I hope all students gain understanding of the Christian faith, especially of the theology of the cross and of a distinctively Lutheran approach to “vocation.”[2] I seek opportunities to teach and mentor students toward their spiritual formation and empowerment for service—and to extend God’s welcome and care to all. I’m grateful that my vocation allows me the opportunity to explore the trans-missio of God’s word for the sake of eliciting trust in the gospel promissio.[3] Indeed, “promissio is the secret of missio. For the mission’s Sender was himself the keeping of that promise. And the mission’s gaps, across which we move with our theological doings, are ultimately spanned by the same promise—of himself by the Spirit through his Word.”[4] 

            I do hope that, along the way, at least some of my students come to consider that it is possible to move from a naïve, childhood understanding of the Christian faith, through criticism and doubt, to something akin to what my teacher Paul Ricoeur called a “second naiveté.”[5] Every semester I remind myself and them of the functional wisdom of Bernard Lonergan’s advice to young theologians, in the form of what he called basic “transcendental precepts,” which work well with a Lutheran understanding of vocation: “Be attentive, Be intelligent, Be reasonable, Be responsible.”[6] The risen Christ forgives and frees one to be creative, to be imaginative, to be open to the new life-giving realities that God is creating today in and through Christ and the Spirit. I hold up before my students the promise that Christ is the Lord of all creation, that he calls all to serve God in every honest occupation, and that for followers of Christ all of life is the arena of Christian ministry to God and all of creation.[7]

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[1] “The 1965 LCMS Mission Affirmations,” a set of resolutions that articulate some of the best missional theology that this church body has adopted. The pastoral and lay leaders in my childhood congregation made significant use of these resolutions in that congregation’s own missionizing in the 1960s and 70s. See “The 1965 Mission Affirmations” (online),  http://thedaystarjournal.com/1965-lcms-mission-affirmations/ (accessed 4/5/2018). (I am the editor of this online journal.)

[2] Toward these ends I invite students to read my textbook, Fundamental Theology: A Protestant Perspective, afterword by Martin E. Marty (New York: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2015).

[3] Robert Bertram, “How a Lutheran Does Theology,” The Report of the Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue, Second Series, 1976-1980 (Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications, 1981), 77. The original title of this essay was “Doing Theology in Relation to Mission.”

[4] Bertram, “How a Lutheran Does Theology,” 87.

[5] See Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon, 1967), 347-357.

[6] Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: The Seabury Press, 1972), 53, 231.

[7] This language also comes from the 1965 LCMS “Mission Affirmations.”

"Institutional Mobbing" in the LCMS

Pr. Edward Engelbrecht, with whom I have had some online interactions over the years, has recently written an article for Lutheran Forum that is receiving quite a bit of attention for some of its assertions. The piece examines "institutional mobbing" in the LCMS, i.e., the strategy and tactics used by some in that church body to harass and antagonize "troublesome" pastors and professors so that they will eventually leave the denomination.

I learned about Engelbrecht's essay via an East-coast pastor, who reached out to me last summer to see if I could confirm or deny any of the details in Engelbrecht's analysis. This pastor told me that Engelbrecht had told him that I was one of several LCMS pastors and professors to whom he is alluding in the article. (I told this pastor that I have a five-foot long shelf of 5-inch binders that are chock full of documentation that details my experience of being "mobbed" in the LCMS. It began already before my ordination on July 14, 1989, and it has even continued after my expulsion from that church body on July 15, 2015. While I was not the object of every tactic that Engelbrecht describes, I did experience many of them. Certainly the overall strategy of "mobbing" fits with what happened to me, especially between 1997 and 2015.

Earlier this week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an article on the article. You can read that P-D story here. For Engelbrecht's essay, go here.

All of my LCMS "memorabilia" will eventually go to the ELCA archives. Perhaps a future doctoral student of church history who is interested in the institutional decline of a church body like the LCMS might find those materials of some interest, if only for a footnote or two.

A Chance to Regain Paradise

Last year a Valpo alumnus, Mike McCarey, invited me to read the manuscript of a novel he had recently written that engages issues in science and religion. I did so and found it an interesting story. The book, A Chance to Regain Paradise: What Preceded the Big Bang, is now available via Mike's website.



 

For excerpts and to order the book, go to www.chancetoregainparadise.com. The novel is $15.99 (free shipping in the continental US included). You can also order it via Amazon in softcover and for Kindle.

Rostered and Called IV

Earlier this year, I became a rostered ELCA minister of word and sacrament. As a part of that candidacy process, I had to write two essays, some of whose contents might be of interest to at least a few readers of this irregular blog. I have already shared sections from the "entrance essay" that began the process. Here is the first part of the first section from the second essay, "the approval essay":

1. Person in Ministry

A. What is your understanding of God’s mission in the world? Describe your faith in the Triune God and how your Trinitarian faith has informed your understanding of God’s mission?

            God’s mission presupposes God’s creation of the universe through the eternal Word. That mission centers on God’s sending (missio) of the eternal Word into that creation in order to love and redeem it to the glory of God. This merciful mission of God to and in this sin-filled, sick, and suffering world includes then the exacting claim and comforting promise (promissio) of Jesus the Christ, the incarnate Word of God. Through him God’s reign is coming. Jesus speaks about it in parables, allegories, and aphorisms, and he actually begins to bring it by loving the unlovable, challenging the powerful and haughty, forgiving the guilty, healing the sick and disabled, comforting the fearful, freeing the burdened, raising the dead, eating with sinners and tax-collectors, and ultimately by dying and rising for the forgiveness of our sins and for our salvation.

            The risen Christ now says to his followers: “Peace be with you! As I have been sent by my Father, so now I send you” (Jn. 20.21). “Go, and make disciples….!” (Mt. 28.19-20). So following from the Son’s own being sent comes another sending, namely, the missio of the Spirit, the Comforter, who now summons people to change their old ways of thinking and living and to trust that for Christ’s sake they are reconciled to God and at peace with God (cf. Jn. 14.25ff.; 2 Cor. 5.19-20; Rom. 5.1ff.; 8.1ff.). The goal of the Spirit’s missio is the reception of the Spirit’s promissio by faith alone (Gal. 3.14; AC IV and V).[1] That missio is a mediated one: through the proclamation of God’s judging and consoling Word, focusing especially on the extravagance of God’s grace and mercy, which is “the proper function of the gospel” (SA III.4); through the washing of holy baptism, by which sinners are put to death with Christ and raised anew with him; through Christ’s holy supper, by which the people of God are forgiven, renewed, and refreshed—again and again “until Christ comes again”; through the production of spiritual fruit (Gal. 5.22ff.), which is the proper outgrowth of such faith in Christ, for the sake of the world’s deep needs; through “the mutual conversation and consolation” (SA III.4) of those who bear Christ’s name in the world. Called by the Spirit into this ecclesial fellowship with God and one another, all of God’s people are sent back (missio) into the world to share (trans-missio) the promise (promissio) of the good news of God’s redeeming love and grace in Christ for all people, especially for “the poor in spirit; the hungry; the thirsty; those who are ardently waiting and watching (Mt. 25.1ff.); the restless who in this world know that they are entirely in an alien land and that here they have no continuing city; those who long for and expect the solution of all problems solely from the coming Lord alone.”[2] Whatsoever we do unto the least, we do it to Christ (Mt. 25.34-40).

               I believe and trust in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, because of God’s missio to me, namely, to call me by the Spirit through the gospel, to enlighten me with the Spirit’s gifts, to make me holy and keep me in the true faith, just as the Spirit “calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy” the whole catholic church on earth and keeps it united with Jesus Christ in this faith (SC II.6). I believe that I cannot believe without the Spirit’s ongoing work to create and sustain my faith on a daily basis. In times of deep doubt and uncertainty about God, I find strength in the promise of my baptism. Marked with the cross of Christ, my sins and death have become his, and his righteousness and life have become mine. In my baptism, the triune God has said, “You are my child. I love you and forgive you. I will never leave you or forsake you.” That cruciform promise frames each of my days. It sustains me in my living and working, in my cross-bearing and daily dying. It gives me hope for the future.

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[1] I was first taught the connections among "missio,” “trans-missio,” and “promissio” by Robert Bertram. See especially his essay, “How a Lutheran Does Theology,” The Report of the Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue, Second Series, 1976-1980 (Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications, 1981), 77. The original title of that essay was “Doing Theology in Relation to Mission.”

[2] Edmund Schlink, “The Sojourning People of God,” in Edmund Schlink, Ecumenical and Confessional Writings [The Coming Christ and Church Tradition and After the Council], ed. Matthew L. Becker, trans. Matthew L. Becker and Hans G. Spalteholz (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 258. Schlink’s ecumenical theology has had a significant influence on my own understanding of the mission of the church in relation to Jesus’ prayer that his followers “be one” (Jn. 17). I am currently serving as the editor and principal translator of the six-volume Edmund Schlink Works project. For an analysis of Schlink’s understanding of the vocation of the Christian theologian in a university, which deeply informs my own vocation, see my inaugural professorial address, “Christ in the University: The Vision of Schlink,” The Cresset 80 (Easter 2017), 12-21.

Pericopes of the Week: Jaworski and Ervin

Recent television appearances of John Dean led me last week to re-read several Watergate-related books on my shelf. Among these are Leon Jaworski's memoir, The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate (Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1976), and Sam J. Ervin Jr's The Whole Truth: The Watergate Conspiracy (New York: Random House, 1980). Dean's own Blind Ambition (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976) and Theodore H. White's Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Scribner, 1975) also received attention. A short detour took me to the thirty-seventh chapter ("President Nixon and the Crisis in the Presidency") in the fifth edition of The American Constitution, by Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976).

Looking ahead to a future beyond 1976, the latter book ends with the following warning: "Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Nixon crisis is that an entire coterie of men who showed little or no understanding of the profound principles underlying constitutional government in the United States were able for some years to exercise effective control of the presidential office. They were at length repudiated. But the kind of challenge they posed can be met successfully in the future only as long as American society is knit together powerfully by a sense of destiny arising out of a common devotion to the underlying values of constitutional liberty" (Kelly and Harbison, pp. 1039-40).

In light of our present political crisis, reading Jaworski (who was appointed special prosecutor after Archibald Cox had been fired in the Saturday Night Massacre) and Ervin (who was the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Watergate) produces multiple moments of deja vu.

Both of these public servants argued (1) that a judge can issue a subpoena for the president to testify before a grand jury (and/or produce subpoenaed evidence for a grand jury, thus severely restricting so-called "executive privilege"); and (2) that a grand jury can at the very least name a sitting president as an unindicted co-conspirator in an indictment.

Ervin went further:

"I reject this theory [that the president cannot be prosecuted for a crime unless he has first been impeached by a majority of the House of Representatives and removed from office by two-thirds of the Senate] on the basis of an extreme illustration. If he is exempt from criminal prosecution until he has been impeached by the House and removed from office by the Senate, the President can constitutionally forestall his impeachment and removal from office, and thus evade responsibility for his criminal acts by perpetrating unpunishable homicides upon a sufficient number of those representatives and senators who think he merits impeachment and removal" (Ervin, p. 99).

Jaworski, who as a practicing Presbyterian occasionally offers commentary of a spiritual nature in this memoir, ends the book with this brief paragraph: "From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known: our Constitution works. And during the Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to affirm that no one--absolutely no one--is above the law" (Jaworski, p. 279).

While Ervin's book is frequently repetitious and occasionally devolves into a dry list of facts ("Haldeman said this.... And then Ehrlichman said this...."), it contains many bon mots. Here are a few:

"I can't resist the temptation to philosophize just a little about Watergate. The evidence thus far introduced or presented before this committee tends to show that men upon whom fortune had smiled benevolently and who possessed great financial power, great political power, and great governmental power, undertook to nullify the laws of man and the laws of God for the purpose of gaining what history will call a very temporary advantage.... The evidence also indicates that the efforts to nullify the laws of man might have succeeded if it had not been for a courageous Federal Judge, Judge Sirica, and a very untiring set of investigative reporters. But you come from a state like  the State of Mississippi, where they have great faith in the fact that the laws of God are embodied in the King James version of the Bible, and I think that those who participated in this effort to nullify the laws of God overlooked one of the laws of God which is set forth in the seventh verse of the sixth chapter of Galatians: 'Be not deceived. God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.'" (Ervin, p. 182)

Ervin quotes Justice Robert H. Jackson: "Men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the executive be under the law" (p. 223).

And Ervin ends his book by summarizing the comments he made to the Select Committee when it submitted its final report to the Senate in June 1974. Here is a brief portion of those remarks:

"[The presidential aids who perpetrated Watergate] apparently believed that the President is above the Constitution, and has the autocratic power to suspend its provisions if he decides in his own unreviewable judgment that his action in so doing promotes his own political interests or the welfare of the nation.... I digress to reject this doctrine of the constitutional omnipotence of the President. As long as I have a mind to think, a tongue to speak, and a heart to love my country, I shall deny that the Constitution confers any autocratic power on the President, or authorizes him to convert George Washington's America into Gaius Caesar's Rome....

"Candor compels the confession... that law alone will not suffice to prevent future Watergates. In saying this, I do not disparage the essential role which law plays in the life of our nation. As one who has labored as a practicing lawyer, a judge, and a legislator all of my adult years, I venerate the law as an instrument of service to society. At the same time, however, I know the weakness of the law as well as its strength.

"Law is not self-executing. Unfortunately, at times its execution rests in the hands of those who are faithless to it. And even when its enforcement is committed to those who revere it, law merely deters some human beings from offending, and punishes other human beings for offending. It does not make men good. This task can be performed only by ethics or religion or morality....

"When all is said, the only sure antidote for future Watergates is understanding of fundamental principles and intellectual and moral integrity in the men and women who achieve or are entrusted with governmental or political power." (Ervin, p. 312)