by Rev. Glenn E. Huebel
(Presented previously and republished with permission. Also published at
Consensus.)
My assignment today is to provide a parish pastor’s perspective on our Synodical struggles. Pastors in our Synod serve in a great variety of ministries, and context shapes perspective. A pastor who serves a small rural congregation of families who have been connected for decades, whose grandparents were baptized in the congregation, and who see very few new faces on Sunday will see a different Synod than a pastor who serves in the inner city or one who serves a fast growing suburban congregation. It is only fair for you to know my background before you hear my perspective. I have served in many different kinds of ministries and communities during my 24 years in the pastoral office. As a young man I pastored a tiny mission congregation in a quiet little old Texas railroad town with one traffic signal, one small high school, and no chain stores, not even a McDonalds. I am now serving as Sr. Pastor of a multi-staffed congregation with a preschool and school in a heavily populated and fast growing suburban community with traffic snarls, three large high schools, shopping centers, and new neighborhoods on every corner. I have also served everything in between. All of this I have been blessed to experience without ever changing locations or congregations. I was sent out of seminary in 1980 to plant a congregation in Keller, Texas, and the world has been dramatically changing around me ever since. I am not a confessional pastor who lives in the delusion that we can recreate the 1950s or any other era. I am used to dealing with change, and I know that we must adapt to new circumstances, but not through accommodation. From the beginning to the present, Messiah, Keller, has been a haven and refuge for orthodox Lutherans who want to remain steadfast and constant in confession of the truth as the world changes around us. Messiah’s membership is a cross section of the community itself, a wide distribution of ages and economic status with a large core of young families. A large proportion of our members are professionals working in the airline, defense or high-tech industries. As I have informed my congregation of synodical problems and issues through the years, the people of Messiah have remained theologically unified. We may debate for an hour over a $50 item in an $800,000 budget, but we are of one accord in the important matters. The present crisis is no exception. For this rare and precious blessing I give God thanks daily.
It might be helpful for you to know also that I am a pastor who is well acquainted with our Synodical President. Our relationship actually began on a very positive basis over 30 years ago when I was a 19 year old church youth director in Port Arthur, Texas. I greatly admired Pastor Kieschnick, the young and enthusiastic pastor of Redeemer, Beaumont, who was also the spiritual counselor for the zone youth organization. This experience gives me some understanding of those who have fallen under the Kieschnick spell today. Pastor Kieschnick, as circuit counselor, ordained me in my home congregation in 1980. During the following years we occasionally engaged in friendly correspondence and personal conversations, discussing various issues troubling the Synod. We did not always agree with one another, but our relationship was cordial. After he was elected District President he appointed me to my first term as circuit counselor and thereby placed me on his “team.” This was a magnanimous choice on his part since I was a founder and editor of
Concord, and he was not a fan of unofficial publications (at least, not confessional ones). The circuit counselors met for two three-day retreats each year to discuss Synodical issues and to be informed of the Kieschnick agenda. Our conversations and correspondence became increasingly confrontational as I saw, firsthand, his agenda and leadership methods, and as he saw that my loyalty was not to him …. my reluctance and refusal to be a “team player.” I do appreciate, however, the opportunity that I had, while circuit counselor, to deal directly with those on the other side of the theological fence. I became keenly aware that the issues are not as simple as both sides often make them out to be. I also became aware that our disagreements are not merely a matter of semantics. In the end, I think both Jerry and I finally realized that our conversation is futile. I think he appreciates my advice even less than I appreciate his agenda. Our conversation has virtually ceased since he became Synod President.
My assignment is to describe life in the Missouri Synod in the post 2004 Convention era. The assumption, of course, is that the 2004 Convention was a watershed for our Synod, and it certainly was quite a significant event. It is now crystal clear that this is no longer our “grandfather’s Synod” even in doctrine and confession. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the real watershed occurred with the election of Rev. Kieschnick in 2001. All that has followed since that election, including the Benke controversy, the power struggles of the past triennium, and the 2004 convention, has been a predictable and natural result of the 2001 election. Confessional leaders differ from one another in style or degree, but Rev. Kieschnick is a leader of a different KIND. Pastor Lawrence White calls him the first “post modern Synod president,” and he is right. He is a thorough-going, unabashed, impatient, pragmatist. President Kieschnick emphasizes and focuses on what works instead of what is true. He prefers the measurable over the unseen, the things he can control over the free course of the Gospel working where and when it pleases God. He tends to view the church primarily as an outward institution rather than a union of saints who hear and follow the voice of Christ. President Kieschnick is not just a little more moderate than old LCMS conservatives. He has a fundamentally different approach to the nature of the institution, ecclesiastical authority, and even to the clarity and authority of the objective Word of God. This kind of difference has been described quite well, I think, by Bonhoeffer, in his “Life Together,” where he makes an interesting contrast between the community of Spirit and the human community. He wrote,
“In the community of the Spirit the Word of God alone rules; in the human community of spirit there rules, along with the Word, the man who is furnished with exceptional powers, experience, and magical, suggestive capacities. There God’s Word alone is binding; here, besides the Word, men bind others to themselves. There all power, honor, and domination are surrendered to the Holy Spirit; here spheres of power and influence of a personal nature are sought and cultivated. It is true, in so far as these are devout men, that they do this with the intention of serving the highest and the best, but in actuality the result is to dethrone the Holy Spirit, to relegate Him to remote unreality. In actuality it is only the human that is operative here.” (From Life Together, Harper and Row, 1957, page 32)
With the election of Kieschnick, Synod crossed the line from a “community of the Spirit” to a “human community of spirit,” whether it intended to or not, whether it realized it or not. An institutional revolution was set in motion. No longer are church politics ruled and shaped by theology. Under President Kieschnick, theology has become the handmaiden to political expediency and social engineering. In this reversal, the centrality of concord is replaced by the centrality of institutional harmony and growth, the authority of the Word is replaced by Synod’s official “interpretation of the Word,” which is, coincidentally, under the President’s control, the theology of glory replaces the theology of the cross, the relationship between Synod and congregation is reversed (i.e., Synod does not belong to congregations, congregations belong to the Synod), the authority of clear Scriptures, is replaced by the authority of fuzzy and complicated bylaws which always seem to say what the President wishes them to say, theologians are replaced by administrators, pastors are replaced with institutional managers and entrepreneurs, and the principle of sheep judging shepherds is abandoned.
Caution for German Lutherans: Humor Ahead
