Will Barry's 'Action Group' Put Out the Fire?
By Rev. Jack Cascione

First, a news release from Synod, to be followed by our response.


LCMSNews

No. 37 July 27, 2000

BARRY NAMES 10-MEMBER 'ACTION GROUP' TO ADDRESS RECRUITMENT, RETENTION

A 10-member "action group" appointed by Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod President A.L. Barry is set to first meet Aug. 9 in St. Louis to address concerns about recruitment and retention of full-time professional church workers in the Synod.

In a letter to those in the group, Barry stated, "I want this group not to be another task force simply studying this need in our church, but an action group that would say `and how can our entity help address this ituation -actions!'"

Barry and others have pointed to such recruitment and retention concerns over the past year. For instance, a ³Clergy Shortage Study² commissioned by the LCMS Board for Higher Education found that unless the Synod retains more pastors, fewer parishes will have one ... from 5,230 in 1997, to 2,200 in 2017.

Members of the new group are Dr. Karl L. Barth, Elm Grove, Wis., representing the LCMS Board of Directors, who will chair the group; Dr. Alan Borcherding, St. Louis, representing the Concordia University System; Dr. L. Dean Hempelmann, St. Louis, pastoral education; Dan Leeman, St. Louis, Worker Benefit Plans; Dr. Carl Moser, St. Louis, schools; Rev. Roger Gallup, River Grove, Ill., ministerial growth and support; Rev. Terry Dittmer, St. Louis, youth ministry; Dr. Bryant Clancy, St. Louis, Black ministry; Jeff Miller, St. Louis, Lutheran Church Extension Fund; and Dr. Arthur Scherer, Baltimore, Md., Council of Presidents.

Rev. Ken Schurb, an assistant to Barry, will serve as staff for the group.

For more information, contact Joe Isenhower Jr. via e-mail at joe.isenhower@lcms.org, or by phone at (314) 996-1231.


There is smoke in the galley and there aren't enough hands on deck. Barry's proposed 10-member "Action Group" to address recruitment and retention is, in this writer's opinion, the best possible move he could make to deal with the current church worker crisis facing the Synod.

Barry couldn't asked the Seminaries, the Synodical Schools, the BHE or the District Offices for a solution, because they are in many respects contributing to the problem.

Thankfully, there are hardly any "conservatives" or "church growth/leadership training" types on the action group because they are also contributing to the crisis.

The committee is largely made up of bureaucrats, people who have to deal with practical organizational issues. Except for those with prior association with the COP, they are all well suited for this assignment.

The goal is to seek a solution based in the Law, not the Gospel, and not to justify the administrative failures of the past 40 years. Members of the COP haven't written books on polity because a uniform practice of polity would tie their hands. If there were no Synod, members of the COP would be unsuited for building a new Synod.

If few church workers in the Synod have complained about the problems, they are most likely not able to articulate the problems, or feel they are powerless to correct them, or they would rather vote with their feet.

How is it that our Synod, which began growing largely in poor rural farm communities and lower class immigrant urban areas, could recruit so many dedicated workers with so little to offer? Many worked for a few hundred dollars a year and were often paid in crops, chickens, pigs, and cows. Today we have pension plans, health care, counselors, and district issued pay scales, but recruiting is in decline.

The issues are really about integrity, loyalty, dedication, structure and polity, the last things that Synod wants to discuss because there are too many vested interests.

The LCMS was not the only church body in America with the Gospel. Not only was Walther a master of Law and Gospel, he was also a master of polity and understood the absolute necessity of publishing the most comprehensive practice on church self-government. He wrote at least three different volumes on the subject, more than any previous Lutheran theologian had ever seen the need to write. There was no Government to supervise the church in America; therefore, the LCMS had to supervise itself.

In a recent survey conducted by Reclaim News, only three of the professors at St. Louis and six of the professors at Fort Wayne will agree that the Voters' Assemblies are supreme, an open violation of many LCMS congregational constitutions. Professors at both Seminaries openly criticize Voters' Assemblies, while the Synod has nothing to put in their place.

Seminary professors are telling their classes that this writer wants to make the Voters' Assemblies into "God." To whom are they accountable?

The Synodical teachers colleges, now called Universities, have also abandoned the teaching of an agreed upon structure for the congregations and most of the members of the COP are busy personalizing their own district polities.

The result is that the pastors, teachers, and congregations operate without any work standards, ethics, rule, order, structure, ESPRIT DE CORPS, tradition, whatever you want to call it, and the result is a administrative free-for-all and pandemonium for the church worker. Church workers are usually guilty until proven innocent and there is absolutely no effort to standardize procedures from one congregation to the next.

The United Auto Workers and the airline mechanics union put the COP to shame and these unions are paid a lot more. What benefit is there to a Dispute Resolution Process with no objective published standards for church polity that the church workers once enjoyed? An appeal to Walther's "Pastoral Theology," "The True Visible Church," and "The Form of the Christian Congregation" is viewed as anecdotal.

Just in our circuit alone in the past few years, two pastors in one congregation were both coerced by the District Executive to sign statements of resignations so their congregations could "grow" with a new constitution. This resulted in the loss of hundreds of members and bitterness among clergy and teachers in the area.

In another congregation, a new pastor of the CEO stripe, with no authorization from the Voters' Assembly, sent three teachers a letter, which said they should resign because they weren't "team players" (a new standard for church polity). Two of these called teachers, each with 25 years experience, left the congregation. We would not see the current rise of hyper-euro-Lutheranism if the Synod actually practiced its "official" polity.

After these church worker nightmares, let the Synod try to recruit new pastors and teachers from the youth of these two large congregations. Incidents, such as these, are becoming more evident throughout the Synod.

Both Seminaries refuse to answer if they support Voter Supremacy and the Fort Wayne faculty officially refuses to answer any question about what kind of polity it teaches, because this writer "would never be satisfied." This is from the Synod that once used its successful and excellent polity as a drawing card for recruiting church workers and organizing congregations. "Lutheran" is about doctrine and "Synod" is supposed to about the regulations of polity.

Today, the Synod may know what it teaches, but it doesn't know what it is doing.

Prospective teachers and pastors are recruited by the Synodical Schools but are not trained to serve the members of any particular Synod. The focus has shifted to "turfism" and institutional and district advantage at the expense of the Synod's existence.

A house divided cannot stand. Many make the absurd claim that a regimented, unified polity is legalistic. Thus they promote the antinomian spirit of fragmentation and call it "the freedom of the Gospel". All forms of government are necessarily legalistic or else they are chaotic for lack of order. All polity, constitutions, organizations, and Synods' are based on LAW!

There is no longer any handbook of procedures to which the lay people, teachers, or pastors can adhere for the sake of unity, not since CPH took Fritz's "Pastoral Theology" out of print to the advantage of COP and the Seminaries. Rather, we have the chaos of multiple-choice polity, which often becomes a church worker's kangaroo court. One church has a Board of Directors, one a Voters' Assembly, another follows PLI, another a CEO, another Don Abdon, another Loehe, another Willow Creek, and another writes its own Core Values etc.

When everything is "right," nothing is right; there is no permanence or job security, only the capricious eccentricities of the local District Office protecting its own interests.

The Synod's lack of a unified polity leads to worker disenchantment and large-scale departures for a more satisfying, stable work environment.

It appears the current shrinkage and loss must continue until the Synod divides itself into smaller church bodies of like-minded practice. These smaller like-minded Synods would offer the possibility of stability and protection for growth within themselves.

We recommend that the "Action Group" consult management strategists from Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot and ask what is the result of an erratic, undefined worker management policy on a nation wide organization. The Synod can't copy the profit-motive-driven organization of business but this does not free it from the necessity of following its own polity.

This writer believes the realities of this current crisis are too painful for the "Action Group" to address. They are in a lose, lose position. Too much attention to the real problem will fan the flames of church workers departure but and attempt to enforce uniform Synodical polity will find little support.

Christ will not loose any of His elect, but the Synod as an "undefined organization" will continue to decline.


Rev. Jack Cascione is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church (LCMS - MI) in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. He has written numerous articles for Christian News and is the author of Reclaiming the Gospel in the LCMS: How to Keep Your Congregation Lutheran. He has also written a study on the Book of Revelation called In Search of the Biblical Order.
He can be reached by email at pastorcascione@juno.com.

July 29, 2000