Just Watching...
May 2010 -- Number 53
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Class of 1953
The Emerging Church
Why Can We Be Fear-Less?
Time to Take the Step
In Closing -- LWML and Wheat Ridge Ministries
Discussion Forum

It's been awhile since the last issue of JUST WATCHING … and there's a reason. I don't scoot around the church as I once did. I've been "watching" in different ways: reading, listening, chatting, emailing and working through the accumulation of information about churches and the church that pours in. Given that I'm not likely to accumulate frequent flier miles at the rate I once did, I've been working on how to do what I did, but in another way. I want to keep serving the interests of pastors and parishes and I want to do so for the rest of my life. I think I can do this because I agree with Longfellow's poetic opinion, "Age is opportunity no less than youth itself, though in another dress." Tying that to the futurists' three futures – the probable, the possible and the preferable – I have been trying to figure out where my preferable future might lie. I think I know where to look based on the hint I received from a beaten-up, slightly yellowed, unframed photo.

THE CLASS OF 1953

That beaten-up, slightly yellowed photo is of the 1953 graduates of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri – my class. Look four rows down to the third person from the right and that's me. Ready for the parish ministry? Oh, my. Were any of us?

 

 

I came upon this photo while digging through some boxes in the basement. I don't know why, but once I had pulled that class photo out, I couldn't put it back. Rather, I took it upstairs and leaned it to one side atop my desk. There it has peeked out at me from behind three or four church directories until the other day when I absent-mindedly took it in hand and gazed at those very raw young graduates who have been locked in time, row on row, together with 35 unsmiling faculty members, for 57 years. Little did any of us know what was to come.

We were like kids at Six Flags, crowded into the roller coaster's front car as it ratchets up the track to the top of that first hill. Though filled with nervous anticipation, first-time riders tend to think up to that point, "Hey! This isn't all that bad!" Then the bottom drops out and they find themselves hurtling down those skinny rails, heading for the ground, hanging on for dear life. What we didn't know about in real life terms was the similar suddenness we would be forced to face – stomach-churning upheaval for the next half century. The last half of the 20th century was awesome, I think like no other, but time will tell. It's enough to know it happened.

Without detailing the social, economic, ecclesiastical and political eruptions that came our way over those years, two things are sure: 1) we were unprepared for what was coming, and 2) we had no idea of the speed with which our world would turn.

In a way, that class photo is a microcosmic facsimile of what happened within the rest of the world during our clergy watch. Start with the 100 graduates. Count them. What Lutheran seminary produces graduating classes of 100 today or has done so at any time in recent history?

The graduates are all male. Many (most?) of today's seminaries would close if they depended on an all-male student body. Can you imagine saying that sentence out loud 50+ years ago? But there's more in that photo.

Many congregations today won't accept seminary graduates, at least not sight unseen. Or, what graduate today accepts a Call without some kind of prior interview? In 1953 there was none of that. It was assumed graduates would accept the Call they were given and head there post-haste even though the young cleric and his wife knew next to nothing about where they would live, either as to a house or kind of community. They just went. Naiveté? Faith? Whichever, it was another example of change-in-process.

There are no second career guys in our class photo except for maybe a few GIs left over from WWII who scared the many profs with their wider experience. Today? Take second career graduates out of the graduate mix and the pool would be pathetically small.

Faculty/graduate's garb? Less than 10% of the faculty and graduates in the 1953 composite wore clerical collars, de rigueur today. That was not just a matter of sartorial choice, but a clear reflection of the 1953 liturgical attitude. I'm also sure that a year later 90% or more of those 1953 Lutheran lads led Sunday worship wearing a black Geneva gown. Few cassocks or surplices. No albs. Few candles. No incense. Not much chanting, either.

Academically, a few of my classmates had done the extra work required to earn a BD. None had an STM. About a third of the faculty members had earned doctorates, five of whom had joined the faculty during my years of seminary residence. I won't try to lay out the core curriculum of that time, but for what it's worth, it's nothing like today's requirements for a seminary degree. Better? Worse? Different! I think we thought we'd learn 'the real stuff' later from the people.

That photo is a souvenir from another era. It's true: "The past is a foreign country. They do things different there." Do they ever! The shift from 1953 to 2010, which my class photo illustrates, ought to be headlined "Change!" Most significant … that change hasn't slowed down, let alone stopped. The vocational rollercoaster into which we were unceremoniously plopped years ago is still roaring down the rails and, if anything, is picking up speed. You figure that out.

While hanging on for dear life on today's rollercoaster, I began reading Dr. Phyllis Tickle's latest book. She says she might be described as "a scholar without portfolio" (page 10 of her book). But she knows how to craft a thought-provoking book that has helped me handle a rollercoaster with more fun and less fear. To my eyes, she is an academic generalist who dips her pen into many different inkwells of learning (my grandfather would understand that metaphor but not my grandchildren – change) and does so with such clarity that any reasonably well-read reader will grasp her point whether they agree with it or not. Her work is a splendid introduction into a new and powerful way of looking at things.

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THE EMERGING CHURCH

Dr. Tickle's book, "The Great Emergence" (Baker Books, 2008), is one of a number of recent publications that can help us scale the implications of macrocosmic events to those imbedded in my microcosmic class photo. Picking up on what others before her have written, she presses and expands on the opinion that about every 500 years the church, its storage spaces packed to the rafters with all kinds of largely irrelevant things, holds a big garage sale. When it's over, the church finds itself smaller and closer to where the mind of Christ originally intended it should be. The church experiences another re-formation and the "rollercoaster" rolls on.

Recognizing that there was a gigantic rummage sale in the apostolic era, a loose timeline for when those rummage sales have happened since includes:

... around 500/600 A.D., when the confrontational doctrinal struggles had calmed down with Nicaea and Chalcedon's products, the Roman Senate had adjourned for the last time, bringing the Roman Empire to a close, and the pagan hordes that had ravaged Rome settled in and decided to stay: rummage sale.

... around 1050 A.D., when the Eastern and Western church experienced an awesome split we are still trying to work out today and the so-called Dark Ages, a.k.a. the age of feudalism, wrapped the world in its arms: rummage sale.

... around the 16th century, as the Renaissance and the Reformation took center stage with all they triggered in terms of how people looked at God, man and the world, including the underpinnings of our Declaration of Independence: rummage sale.

... the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as we struggle with things about which we once were so certain, when everything seems up for grabs and we find ourselves wrestling with what it means to live by faith.

Today's ferment started over a century ago, long before most of us, who in 1953 were posing for class pictures, were around. Today the rummage sale is in full swing.

So what's the point? How about this: we need to recognize again that hope does not lie in desperately clinging to any part of our yesterday. The rollercoaster is no safer if we clutch the hand rails of our car for dear life. Safety lies where it always has – in a faith focused on Christ as Redeemer, Lord and Friend – and in Paul's who's-afraid-of-another-rummage-sale Romans 5 sequence. Read how he calmed jittery folks in an earlier frightened era.

The better pastors and parishes I've been watching and reporting about these last years have sensed and been dealing with this rollercoaster stuff for some time. Among the reassuring things we can know about them is:

a) better parishes and pastors actually exist, but
b) sad to say, they are a minority. However,
c) they are aching to share what they have learned!

Given that a "garage sale" is going on right now among Lutheran Christians, I do not fear for our future as God's people. Rummage sales have the same effect as scraping barnacles from the bottom of a boat. It gets rid of a lot of drag and increases the boat's speed.

But I do fear for those who do not understand there's a rummage sale in process. Instead of identifying and dumping what's of no present use, some have become avid collectors of old wine skins and oil-less lamps, afraid to become Alexander Pope's "…the first by whom the new are tried…" rather than "…the last to lay the old aside." Neither is the desirable position in which to be found. There is a middle way, a kind of rollercoaster Golden Mean.

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WHY CAN WE BE FEAR-LESS?

I have sought and found ministers and ministries of all sizes who understand that extremism is dysfunctional and who instead gather and use things of real worth. They trump traditionalism and its companion, dead orthodoxy, with Scripture. In the process, they abandon nothing that is essential to an exhilarating practice of the Christian faith even though they are often accused of doing so. Things these effective parishes and pastors all have in common are:

... they know, claim and treasure their Lutheran roots while continuously focusing on people, all the people for whom Christ died. That approach to ministry can make for interesting bed-fellows because the opening question for those they come upon while working in God's field is, "What do you believe?" rather than "To what group do you belong?"

... they prove that better parishes and pastors can be found everywhere. They are evenly distributed across our nation, looking for and finding effective outreach opportunities. Wheat Ridge Ministries' roster of grant recipients and Seeds of Hope awardees serve as living proof of this.

... their church's members are look-alikes, hard to distinguish according to Synodical affiliation. That's because today's effective members-on-the-move are church-shoppers, first looking for mission-driven churches with whom to affiliate. Whatever Synodical branding meant in days of yore, it doesn’t mean the same today. Time will tell whether it will ever mean as much in the future as it once did in the past.

Meanwhile …

... they believe a church's size is not a dependable criterion for effectiveness in ministry even though it may be harder for a smaller church to accomplish its mission than a larger one. But they also know that one frightening difference between larger churches and smaller is that when a larger church falters, it becomes smaller, but when a smaller church loses its missional way, it often dies.

... they have learned that 21st century churches can be like the 19th century doctors who resisted that upstart Semmelweis' urgings to wash their hands between patients. More effective churches are always open to considering change for they live with Hebrews 13:8 as a guiding principle: while Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, everything else is up for grabs. That's especially true about yesterday's practices and programs that haven't been regularly reviewed and renovated. Effective churches are Antiques Roadshow smart. They keep checking what has worth and why.

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TIME TO TAKE THE STEP

With all that swirling around in my head, I have decided that now is the time to lay JUST WATCHING, in its present form, to rest. In reaching that conclusion, I had to also decide whether to retire from active Christian service. It was an easy choice. No hymnist's "bed of flowery ease" for me, if you please. I believe that God recruits from both ends of the age spectrum, and once you sign on, it's for life. Different duty stations? Yes. Same duty.

Health issues were not a part of my decision, even though many mornings when I wake up it feels like something else broke. As the sainted Dr. J.W. Behnken, long-time Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod president, once explained to a pastor's conference he was addressing while seated, "I'm not weak-kneed, but I do have weak knees." I've got those knee thingys. They make me wonder why pastors make their congregation stand as much as they do. What's their point? As Liza Doolittle said, "Just you wait 'enry 'iggens, just you wait!" Bad knees are life challenges for almost everyone like the cancer and cataracts most will face if they live long enough. At 81, together with many of you, I am personally acquainted with all three. They slow me down … a little. You can't let them get to you. Trust in the Lord.

And I'm sure not running out of grist for my mill. My paper and computer files are packed with what healthier, more effective pastors and parishes have shared with me and still are. I expect to keep sifting through that accumulation of better stuff for years to come, extracting things to spice up whatever I share, whether with a few friends or a broader audience.

Which leads to one of the real reasons I'm taking a new turn in the road. I want to think through the implications, the constancy and the sweep of today's changes as it affects pastors and parishes. Which of what they deal with is essens (needed no matter what) and which are accidens (of a type with Andy Warhol’s transitory 15 minutes)? I don't know if anyone will pay attention to my conclusions, but I need to do what I can to help others who are on the rollercoaster or at the rummage sale, whichever metaphor floats your boat.

A second reason is I want to continue doing all I can to support today's better parish ministry leaders, thinkers and doers. It's only fair. None of us got where we are on our own. My servant niche in life is modest at best, but even it was attainable only because some wonderful men and women helped me along my way. I want to be among the helpers and encouragers of others.

One specific way for doing what I and some others want to do (I'm not in this all alone) is by developing a platform – a website of sorts. We want to seek out men and women whom God has gifted to serve others and help them develop and share their gift on the widest scale possible. From the world of art? Yes. Literature? Yes. Audio/video offerings? Yes. New ideas? Yes. Challenging truths? Yes. Crafts? Yes. Causes to support? Yes. And more.

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IN CLOSING -- LWML AND WHEAT RIDGE MINISTRIES

When I stepped from a rostered parish position in the early '90s and, with Audrey's support, decided to try making it on the pension to which we had contributed, with Social Security, and our savings and whatever else might come our way, we did so believing that the Lord would provide. He did. Though my general aim was to help parishes and pastors become more effective, I intentionally added a goal of doing all I could to support the Lutheran Women's Missionary League and Wheat Ridge Ministries. Those two aren't the only worthwhile efforts in my world, but they were, and are, good choices. Let me explain.

Though their name sounds like a throw back to the 1920s, to Ladies' Aids and Quilting Circles, I've had my eye on the LWML for a long time. Officially founded in 1942, it became a gender leveling, mission outreach powerhouse. Many unnamed women (my mom included), laity and clergy worked hard nursing the LWML to life and getting it going. Most of them gave of their best and then quietly melted into the background. What turned me on with the LWML was the abundance of service and outreach projects to which they gave life through their prayers and "mighty mites." I'm the wrong gender to officially join the LWML, but that doesn't stop me from recognizing them for what they are and doing all I can to cheer them on. And I do.

Wheat Ridge Ministries is another matter. First known in the early part of the 20th century for its work in the field of tuberculosis, it has, over time, morphed into an organization that encourages and supports a broad range of health and human care projects, all in the name of the healing Christ. It does that to this day, and on a grand scale. My goal was, and still is, to give them my best. They are beautiful and helping hands of Christ in a seriously stressed world.

I've seen what both Wheat Ridge Ministries and the LWML have done, both in our nation and around the world. They more than deserve our best. In saying all that, I want to specifically thank three successive Wheat Ridge presidents: Bob Zimmer, Rich Bimler and Rick Herman. Each was highly qualified for leadership in their time and brought remarkable skill sets to their moment. They all did so having an identical servant's heart for the Lord and for His people. I can't thank the three of them enough for all I've learned from them and for the opportunities to serve God and His people which they made possible for me.

So here I am on this May morning, anxious to get busy joining other Barnabas for the rest of my life. I think I know how to do that because every step along my journey, great men and women have modeled that ancient servant's style and commitment and taught me a lot about rollercoasters and rummage sales.

Now if I can just connect all their dots.

Charles S. Mueller, Sr.

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DISCUSSION FORUM

Comments

May 26, 2010
Charlie, you have become the O.P.Kretzmann of our generation! I had so many things to do this morning, but first I had to read Just Watching.Now it's off to looking for turtle nests.

May 24, 2010
Charlie, your thoughts, your encouragement, your life have been all about grace, positively challenging and encouraging others to grow. Thank you for taking time to talk with me and encourage me many years ago. Thanks for Just Watching, just sharing, just inspiring, just being you. You are a blessing! Phil

May 24, 2010
Charlie, Your a hero to so many of us. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and insights. Your words of encouragement have inspired me over the years. Just thinking of you brings a smile! Thank you for making a difference in so many ways! Gloria Edwards

May 20, 2010
Charlie Read your column once again, and found it very intereting as always. You always have a way of hitting th nail on the head. Loved the photo of our class you included. We are still as handsome today (in a diffrent way) Zimm

May 19, 2010
Dear Charlie, God has made you one of the greatest blessings to our church I have experienced in my life-time. Blessings and love, George

May 19, 2010
Charlie, I've always been eager to listen to your observations, and make the comparisons with my own and those of my brothers. As you do, so we, too, like our dear old Synod. I am impressed with new young pastors. Ten of my father's descendents are ministers or are married to them (one, David Prill is pictured with my niece, Christa, on the Joint Seminary Fund Offering Envelop) and more are in the offing, which to me is indicative of the fact that we believe fertility and not futility is the reason for husbanding in the LCMS vineyard.

May 18, 2010
Hey, Charlie--I'm one who will be cherishing your observations yet again! You just keep getting fresher and fresher through the year...God bless this new chapter. And I can't wait to see what you come up with nex!

May 18, 2010
As one who is privileged to serve with the LWML, I appreciated your comments about this wonderful organization. I also recognized that class photo - my dad was three over and three down from the top left!

May 18, 2010
Thank you Charlie for your great article. Thank you Lord for putting in Charyl's heart to continue his unique and helpful gleanings. Cliff

May 18, 2010
Charlie--you are one of the heros in my life. Thanks for about 40 years of encouragement in youth ministry, music ministry, and now a ministry for wounded professional church workers. Barb and I are blessed to know you and to count you and Audrey as friends. Thanks for blessing our lives and ministries. Love, Dave and Barb anderson

May 18, 2010
Charlie: Thanks be to God for you being just you. You showed us rummage which every rummage sale needs. You showed us the tracks that keep the roller coaster where it should be. In all that you showed us Christ and the power of the Gospel; you showed us the church and what it could be and should be. That all sounds like the past, but I know it will also be your and our future. Thankssssss again to God for you and thanksssss to you. Ralph Wiechmann

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