We Just Believe Different Things
Thank you for addressing that in the article. The situation that blogs like this one love to bring up was a one time situation that had some misunderstandings. I’d be happy to talk to you about if you’d like. Can a church not make an error or a mistake? Are we not willing to give grace? It was a good learning opportunity for our staff to put new principles into place. We talked with our District President and made changes and apologized to him. Sadly not one person in your community or in the articles that ever write about that moment have ever decided to talk with us. Even though we will not see eye to eye with one another and you’d rather us be elsewhere, Larry, I do pray that you continue to lead with effective Word and Sacrament ministry. And you may not see us on the same team but I do. Blessings.
— The Rev. Zach Zehnder
The above comment by Pastor Zehnder was in response to my article: “Lack of Trust is Not the Problem.” In it, I referred back to a situation from two years ago, in which his congregation (King of Kings, Omaha) had a worship service that Pastor Zehnder would argue upholds this confessional statement:
In our churches Mass is celebrated every Sunday and on other festivals when the sacrament is offered to those who wish for it after they have been examined and absolved. We keep traditional liturgical forms, such as the order of the lessons, prayers, vestments, etc. (Apology 24:1).
Well, you can watch it for yourself. The congregation posted it on YouTube. This is their alleged Article 24 Mass. If you want to zoom to the “consecration,” it’s at about minute 18. You can decide for yourself if this Mass is keeping “traditional liturgical forms such as the order of the lessons, prayers, vestments, etc.” as we have all vowed to do at our ordinations:
Dr. Eckardt wrote his thoughts on this putative Mass in his October 2023 piece: “The King of Kings Debacle.”
As for the praise band singer “consecration,” this was, according to Pastor Zehnder, a “misunderstanding,” a “mistake,” an “error.” I’m told the real problem is actually me: I’m not extending “grace.” Moreover, the DP talked to them, they apologized, and they had “a good learning opportunity for our staff to put new principles into place.”
First of all, for all of the talk we hear about “leaders” and “leadership,” throwing the staff under the bus is a rookie mistake. Effective leaders take responsibility, not throw shade at their staff and blame subordinates.
The buck stops with the pastors.
Even in the purely secular world of leadership, this is Leadership 101. It is even more so with the holders of the Holy Office. Is this what Pastor Zehnder means by “equipping the saints for ministry” - to blame the staff for this debacle? Was all of this the praise band girl’s fault? Was it the guy running the soundboard culpable? The staff? Really? It’s inconceivable that this was his answer. This calls to mind Robert Ringer’s classic book, Winning Through Intimidation, the chapter on the “court holder.” We have a lot of court holders and talkers in the LCMS who like to pontificate to the rest of us about leadership, but I’m not sure most of them could pass the wet-paper-bag test. After a first career in IT consulting, holding a PMP credential, and with all of the leadership training that goes into military and emergency services training, I can confidently say that blaming the staff is not the ideal leadership paradigm.
But my main point here is that this was not a “mistake.”
Mistakes should indeed be forgiven. We all make them. In my 21 years of ministry, I have my own vast collection. I have made some unbelievable doozies.
On one Reformation Day, I omitted reading the Gospel. Yes, I actually did that, and didn’t catch my mistake until I was halfway through my sermon. That was a bad one! On another occasion, I dumped a flagon of wine on the altar (thanks be to God it had not been consecrated, and having an east-facing altar, I was able to clean everything up during the singing of the Offertory, with a minimum of distraction to the congregation). Early in my ministry, filling in at a sister congregation, I mismanaged the stewardship of the wine, and was left with a massive chalice full of the blood of Christ - which was also high-octane port - after the distribution. To avoid profaning our Lord’s blood, I had to correct this mistake by consuming the whole chalice (on an empty stomach) during the Nunc Dimittis. Needless to say, I was wrecked as I was greeting the faithful after the service. Thank God my wife drove me home.
So yes, we all make mistakes. We learn from them. We also make mistakes in our pastoral practice: giving law where Gospel is in order, giving Gospel where Law is in order, misreading people and situations, and just plain messing up. We all have our stories, some funny, some horrifying. We learn from them, and we move on. Yes, mistakes ought to be treated with grace.
I don’t have the reference, but I believe the following liturgical mistake happened at one of Walther’s congregations in the 19th century. All of the consecrated elements had been distributed. More elements were placed on the altar. In the confusion, the pastors assumed that these elements had been consecrated. They were about to distribute this mere bread and wine, when a brave woman stood up in the balcony and shouted that the elements had not been consecrated. The pastors corrected their mistake, and thanks be to God for that well-catechized lady!
So yes, mistakes are part of the work of any and all post-fall people, pastors included. And liturgical mistakes are also bound to happen. We do our best, and we offer grace when they do happen.
But having the praise band songstress “consecrate” the elements was not a mistake. It was a premeditated, planned, and carefully executed, scripted liturgical act under the leadership of a nearly-20 year pastor. And it confesses a certain belief about the office of the laity and the office of preaching (the Predigamt), that differs from Articles 5 and 14. It confesses a kind of sacramentology at odds with what is taught about the Lord’s Supper in Article 24 (not to mention the Gospels and 1 Corinthians).
It is not a mistake or a sin to act on one’s beliefs. Our actions flow from our beliefs. My Baptist friends and brothers in Christ who don’t officiate over the Lord’s Supper the way I do are not making a mistake. They are acting consistently with their sincerely-held beliefs. And if you don’t believe in the sacred mystery of the Holy Eucharist, if you believe the elements are only symbolic - you will simply act differently than we who do. The sanctuary will also look different. King of Kings and her pastors believe different things than, say my, or Dr. Eckardt’s, congregations. We are simply not the same. It has never dawned on me to have a layman - be it a lady in the parish, the organist, an elder, or a singer - take charge of the Words of Institution. It’s a matter of confession. The pastor has the vocation to do this. He is the “steward of the mysteries” (1 Cor 4:1). He is called to take charge of using the church’s keys. It is his job, his call, his vocation, his office, and his responsibility. He cannot delegate this to the laity. And no amount of strained exegesis and comma-games with Ephesians 4:12 can turn lay-“consecration” into authentic Lutheran belief and practice. That cannot simply be waved off as mere orthopraxy, for it is a matter of orthopraxy borne of orthodoxy. For we are indeed informed and formed by Articles 5 and 14. Maybe our pastors would do well to read more of our Book of Concord and less of Peter Drucker and Stephen Covey. And how is it possible for the senior pastor (one of four pastors on staff) to graduate from one of our seminaries 19 years prior, to become a pastor, to serve in the ministry all those years - and still not know what the pastor’s job description is? As for the associate pastor, who often points out that he is a fourth-generation LCMS pastor, did his great-grandfather, grandfather, or father ever ask a female choir member to take care of the “consecration”?
Are any of the lay members of King of Kings catechized well enough to shout out to the pastors that the elements were not, in fact, consecrated? Is that even a priority in that congregation?
And the old bifurcation between style and substance doesn’t work. Style reflects and reinforces substance. We in the LCMS pledge that “Mass is celebrated every Sunday and on other festivals when the sacrament is offered to those who wish for it after they have been examined and absolved” (emphasis added). This means closed communion. Our confessions prohibit us from having open communion. That is part of our walking together. We commune people who are baptized, who have been instructed in the Christian faith as we confess it, and who are part of our altar fellowship. Those who have not been instructed, or those who have been instructed in heterodox church bodies whose confessions are at odds with our own, are not to receive the Holy Sacrament in our churches. That is simply godly pastoral care. This is why we commune only a subset of Christian people, namely, those who share our confession, specifically members of LCMS churches and churches around the world who are in altar and pulpit fellowship with us. But King of Kings’ website says: “God’s Word tells us that when we receive Communion, we are not merely receiving bread and wine, but the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Baptized adult Christians are invited to share this great gift of God. We ask that children experience our First Communion Classes in 5th & 6th grades before taking communion.” Emphasis added.
So for all of the blather about unity and walking together, King of Kings is walking its own path when it comes to the very holiest thing that happens on the planet: the miraculous Presence of God in the flesh on our altars (or little portable side tables, since King of Kings really doesn’t have an altar). In their communion practice, they are in rebellion against our synod, not walking with us, even as their pastors gaslight and scold us for not being in unity with them. For decades, we’ve had synodical resolution after synodical resolution confessing closed communion. But we also have a lot of churches who just give the synod (and the rest of us) the finger on this, and commune virtually anyone who claims to be a Christian. While I was on vicarage, the pastor’s wife (vested in alb and cincture, by the way) was assisting with the pastor and me in the chancel in the distribution of the Holy Sacrament. During the distribution, she ordered me to give the blood of Christ to a Roman Catholic who was married to a Lutheran. This couple alternated attendance between the local Roman Catholic congregation and ours. And this was a highly liturgical parish. Open communion is an epidemic in our synod. We are not walking together. Of course, we who practice closed communion (which is at times most uncomfortable) do so because we believe the Holy Sacrament is supernatural, and can be harmful to those who don’t share our confession (1 Corinthians 11:30). But according to King of Kings’ website, you can be of any denomination or church body - and you’re welcome to commune there. We just believe different things.
So just who’s not walking with whom here? Who is responsible for disunity?
We also confess closed communion in AC 24:35-37: “Chrysostom says that the priest stands daily at the altar, inviting some to the Communion and keeping back others.” The parish pastor is the steward of the mysteries (1 Cor 4:1). King of Kings is a four-pastor parish, so there should be a lot of sacramental stewardship and mutual accountability going on there. Oh, but I’m the one who is causing disunion. No amount of “conversation” is going to close the altars (or little portable side tables) of King of Kings, or make their pastors walk together with us by using the settings of the Mass in our synod’s hymnal, or conduct themselves with solemn reverence around the elements of the miracle, or even have the common courtesy to walk together with us and vest like they actually believe this stuff. Rather, they hope that “conversation” will wear us down into accepting a baseball jersey to be just as authentically and confessionally Lutheran for a celebrant of the sacred mystery (sacramentum) as a chasuble. And if we don’t come to their conclusion, we’re the problem. At very least, they want us to shut up about it. Why can’t we all just admit that we don’t walk together.
We just believe different things. We are not the same.
And what is the goal of this “conversation”? What Pastor Zehnder and his Senior Pastor Griffiths want is for me to accept them, to come to the conclusion that we are, in fact, walking together, that the worship at King of Kings is authentically Article 24 Lutheran, that they indeed have not abolished the Mass, that it is “celebrated with the highest reverence” (AC 24:2), that “it does not, therefore, appear that the Mass is more devoutly celebrated among our adversaries than among us” (AC 24:9). The fact that there is no recognizable liturgy, that the vocations of laity and pastor are blurred, and that the “consecration” of the Lord’s Supper, with a loaf of bread (is that also being consecrated? What happens to it afterwards?) and an empty chalice as props, and making use of little plastic pre-packaged communion packs (and who knows what happens to the reliquiae?) that the faithful are already holding onto during the “consecration” - this all makes for confusion and chaos.
Just what is sacred, and what is common?
Once again, if a church holds that the elements are merely symbolic, that there is no miracle happening, all of these practices - aped from neo-evangelicalism - would be congruent: a faithful confession.
Pastors Zehnder and Griffith take the tack that none of this is harmful or disruptive to to fellowship, because we’re the same. But it is simply a fact that we are not the same. We just believe different things. I believe this is disruptive of fellowship, while they do not. Therefore, it is an objective fact that we believe different things. Both cannot be true at the same time. So when they invite me to “conversation,” they want me to accept them. They don’t care how I celebrate Mass in my congregation; but they want my acceptance of theirs. They want your acceptance. They want to be accepted by all of our parishes and pastors: by those of us who can truly say “we have not abolished the Mass” with a straight face, and those of us who abide by our synod’s practice of closed communion.
For ultimately, King of Kings wants change. But they don’t want to change; they want us to change. They want synod to change. They want everybody else to change. And this is why they, and other church-growth advocates, want to change our polity, to abolish the equality between our churches and pastors as we are represented in synod, but so that big churches and their pastors can dominate and force change down our throats. It is the velvet glove adorning the iron fist. They are openly saying so. So you pastors of faithful, but struggling and small, Article 24 churches need to shut up and let the megachurch guys lord over us. You pastors who have side hustles or second or third congregations, you losers need to step aside and let the more “successful” pastors of growing churches (which typically just so happen to be located in growing wealthy suburbs), the guys with the bucks, tell us all how this is going to work. They have the answers. In fact, they are the answers; we are the problems, the impediments - or as a former synod president put it in his typically gauche species of cant: “speedbumps.” And they also know that they need to dilute the effect of the seminaries, because both of our seminaries would (under the current administrations) not advocate for lady-praise band singer “consecration.” Nor would Pastor Griffith’s stunt (back in 2018) of bringing pizza into the sanctuary of the St. Louis Seminary chapel as a gimmick (and profanation of the sacred space) be permitted under the current leadership. And yes, this is no exaggeration. Watch it for yourself. Was anyone ever held accountable for this? Was the sanctuary of the chapel ever re-consecrated following this mockery? And the bigger tragedy is that nobody was fired or defrocked over this abomination. We definitely believe different things. Very different things.
They want change, and they know exactly how such change gets implemented.
The Rev. Charles Porterfield Krauth laid it all out in 1871. There are three stages: toleration, equal rights, and supremacy. This is a trenchant observation of the strategy of change that we see reflected even in the Hegelian dialectic and Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three. It begins by asking toleration. It's friends say to the majority: You need not be afraid of us; we are few, and weak; only let us alone; we shall not disturb the faith of others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions. Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ, and any favoring of the truth, because it is the truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is ipso facto non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the church. Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them. From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated, and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points. It puts men into positions, not as at first in spite of their departure from the Church's faith, but in consequence of it. Their recommendation is that they repudiate the faith, and position is given to them to teach others to repudiate it, and to make them skillful in combating it.
We see this strategy used as a strategy for change in both church and state, from the “ordination” of women, to homosexual “marriage,” the pattern is the same: toleration (“Just let us have women clergy in our church, you are free not to do so in your church.” “Just let us marry our partners so that we can see them in the hospital.”), to equal rights (“recognize our female clergy,” “recognize our ‘marriages,’”), and finally supremacy: (“Take communion from a female ‘pastor’ or you won’t be ordained,” “Bake the cake, use the pronouns, force your daughter to shower with a man”).
The ultimate goal to make us bend to the will of those seeking change. They want us to accept lay “consecration” - which is their understanding of Eph 4:2 and Articles 5 and 14. They want us to accept their baseball-jersey vestments and prop-fakery, their profanation of holy spaces, and their open communion - and to compel us to submit to walking with them in their understanding of Article 24. They want us to accept their irreverence and liturgical chaos, their their lack of altar, font, and pulpit, and their refusal to walk with us by even using the same hymnal or liturgy. They know that this has to be done in stages. For some reason, it’s important for them to remain in the LCMS and to make us remain bound to them. Maybe they derive some kind of respectability by being part of the LCMS, even if they hide it under a bushel in their self-marketing. There is clearly some benefit that they receive. They want “conversation” to change us, not for them to change. So in spite of their assertions to the contrary, they want to win the argument. They want to remain the same, but they want us to change. And if they get control of the synod apparatus, look out. I don’t foresee them not using it as a cudgel.
They want us to be unable to address public issues of fellowship publicly. They want to be able to promote their particular confession with impunity. They want weaponized bylaws. They want “heads I win, tails you lose.” This is why the vast majority of ordinary (and typically small) LCMS parishes - congregations that use the hymnal, that strive to be faithful liturgically and in stewardship of the sacraments, that don’t have stages and guitars and drums - need to be vigilant. We need to confess. We need to avoid the temptation to just get in line and shut up. We need to resolve not to give in to intimidation. We need to be bold and courageous as we confess our faith. We need to be able to continue to elect leaders that are committed to our confession of the faith, and fight back against attempts to rob us of our representation in order to affect their long-term strategy of change. We need to take Krauth’s warning to heart, especially given that his own church body would be doomed to become part of the ELCA a little over a century after he warned the church.
We need to insist on integrity, that we should either confess the same thing, or one side or the other should step aside and leave synod. About a year ago, a similar non-liturgical LCMS megachurch congregation chose to leave the synod. I argue that this was an act of integrity, as they were not walking with us in doctrine or practice. They routinely had non-LCMS preachers, including husband and wife “ministry teams” from other denominations, preaching during their own gimmicky and non-liturgical services performed on a stage. They had husband and wife fortune-tellers on stage claiming to get direct “downloads” from God, calling individuals up to the front and doing readings on them - just like the row of fortune tellers one sees in New Orleans doing palmistry and tarot in front of the cathedral. The best construction is that this is just a con-man grift, because the alternative is that this is actually demonic. The fact that this congregation was in the LCMS for so long is itself a scandal. The DP did not suspend the pastor and congregation, but rather set conditions on the pastor that he was ultimately not willing to meet. I don’t agree with that kind of approach, but I get it. At least that congregation and pastor are no longer part of our synod. At least the DP did something. And that is a good thing. It was addition by subtraction, because numbers aren’t everything. And in fact, our number-lust is often what gets us into trouble. We are better off apart with those who are not walking with us. We just believe different things.
A few months ago, I learned that there was an LCMS church plant that had been employing a female Baptist “pastor” to preach - and this had been going on for five years. Their services - and even their opposition to our confession of an all-male pastorate - were online for anyone to see and hear. They finally chose to do the honorable thing and leave synod. This too was an act of integrity, though it followed five years of spiritual adultery. We just believe different things. We need to be able to say it.
Considering that my congregation uses the LCMS hymnal, practices LCMS closed communion, has Word and Sacrament ministry carried out by LCMS-recognized clergy, and is in favor of our LCMS seminaries for pastoral formation, which of us, Salem Lutheran Church in Gretna, or King of Kings Church in Omaha, has a stronger claim to remaining with the LCMS if a split were to come? Why should we be pushed out by the bigger, richer congregation? Why can’t we part company peacefully and work together in externals (such as cooperating in pro-life work, or for the integrity of marriage, or various kinds of chaplaincy) as churches that officially recognize that they are not in altar and pulpit fellowship? That would be the honest thing.
There is a part of Article 24 from the Augsburg Confession that I find illustrative. The immediate context is the bishops’ toleration of the Mass being profaned for the sake of filthy lucre. I sometimes wonder how much these LCMS megachurches are contributing to district and synod coffers that makes them seem to beguile our leaders like the character Svengali in George du Maurier’s novel Trilby.
Maybe we should listen to our own confession:
But it is evident that for a long time this also has been the public and most grievous complaint of all good men that Masses have been basely profaned and applied to purposes of lucre…. But Paul severely threatens those who deal unworthily with the Eucharist when he says, 1 Cor. 11:27: Whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord…. Neither were the bishops ignorant of these abuses, and if they had corrected them in time, there would now be less dissension. Heretofore, by their own connivance, they suffered many corruptions to creep into the Church. Now, when it is too late, they begin to complain of the troubles of the Church, while this disturbance has been occasioned simply by those abuses which were so manifest that they could be borne no longer. There have been great dissensions concerning the Mass, concerning the Sacrament. Perhaps the world is being punished for such long-continued profanations of the Mass as have been tolerated in the churches for so many centuries by the very men who were both able and in duty bound to correct them (AC 24:10-19).
At the end of the day, allowing that which is sacred to be profaned is a triumph of materialism. It is a devaluation of the supernatural that degrades the Holy of Holies into a common table in the dining hall, or a reduction of the most profound and sacred mystery of the Incarnation following our Lord’s Ascension - the ongoing miracle of Christ’s sublime and divine Presence in His body and blood among us - into a pedestrian variety show complete with theater props and TED talks in a “worship space” denuded of altar, font, and pulpit.
The author of Hebrews writes:
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire (Heb 12:28-29).
We just believe different things. Why can’t we all just be honest about it? Let’s just own it, figure out the best way to move forward, and cooperate in externals with integrity.