Missional Fatigue
Subversive movements often take perfectly good words and redefine them, spin them, and change them into something else. Mission work is good and salutary. Missions are fundamental to the work of the church. Missionaries are those sent out by the Holy Spirit to deliver the Word of God to unbelievers. But the word “missional” has become a political buzzword for those who want to effect change in the LCMS.
Our synod is, comparatively speaking, a conservative Lutheran church body. The last major and serious challenge from the liberal forces of change - who at the time were focused on a Biblical hermeneutic that sought to desacralize the Scriptures - reached its high water mark at the Seminex walkout. It was many years in the making, and was largely hidden - until a whistleblower named Herman Otten made it public at great personal cost. Being defeated, many (but not all) of our liberals started a new seminary and a new church body which itself became part of the ELCA. And we can see how well that all went.
Liberals who want to subvert conservative institutions can either do so by means of revolution or evolution. Revolutions are hard to pull off, and are costly and risky. And key to the evolutionary method of change is infiltration, subversion, and patient persistence. This method depends on conservatives being asleep at the switch. The forces of change will gradually shift the Overton Window so that in a matter of years, they will achieve their objectives - and often the conservatives will be befuddled wondering, “How did this happen?” This is the methodology of Fabian as well as Gramschian Socialism.
The victory of liberals in the former Lutheran Church of Australia in getting female “ordination” is a case in point. They held vote after vote, year after year. They pushed, and did not quit. They wore down the conservative faction in a distorted variation of the persistent widow in our Lord’s parable. They took advantage of the conservatives trying to be “churchmen” and engaging in “conversation.” They refused to take “no” for an answer. They employed the tried-and-true subversive tactic that Krauth was warning against in 1871 - the three-step process of toleration, equality, and domination.
And now, they have successfully ruined a once-faithful and once-Lutheran church body. There are real victims in Australia: faithful Lutherans whose churches are theologically smoldering dumpster fires. At least for now, many faithful Lutherans have no place to go, while Satan celebrates. And there is no fixing this. Now the actual Lutherans are on the outs and must look to start over from scratch with no institutions or infrastructure. It is a cautionary tale and a case study that we in the LCMS would do well to examine. As strategy and tactics go, it is sheer brilliance and cunning. What else is there to do but admire their shrewdness? We need to be on guard.
Liberals understand strategy and tactics. They are patient. They exploit weaknesses. They look for pressure points. We need to understand this. To generationally subvert a people, be it a nation or a church, education is key. Liberals have managed to take over many of our Concordias (and former Concordias) - including non-Lutheran worship in the chapels and a virtually-non-existent Lutheran identity on the campuses. Happily, this is changing. It’s only too bad the rot went as far and as long as it did. The battle is hardly over. The rust never sleeps.
Liberals understand the importance of taking control of pastoral formation in advancing an agenda of change - including changing our worship practices from traditional and liturgical to making it appear more like non-denominational worship - aping those confessions that do not believe in sacraments. Of course, a lot of buzzwords are used to engage in the bamboozlement: “contextual,” “entrepreneurial,” and (of course) “missional.” There is a lot of mischief lurking behind this word “missional.”
I remember a seminary “classmate” (he was actually a distance-learning alternate routes guy) nearly 25 years ago explaining that he was being flown back home to Atlanta to do a baptism. A baptism? This seminarian was not yet ordained. Why was he doing a baptism? “It’s a mission situation,” was his reply. Really? I moved to Fort Wayne from Atlanta. We had recently had the Olympics there. It is a world-class metropolis. There are churches - including Lutheran churches and LCMS pastors - all over the place. But in the name of being “missional,” this specific seminarian was flown back to Atlanta to do some kind of weird non-emergency, planned, lay-baptism.
What’s up with that? I think we all know.
I recently saw where one of our “Usual Suspect” districts was recently promoting a non-denominational congregation comprised of immigrants. There is nothing Lutheran about their worship and the theology they promote on their website. They have a lady elder (who seems to be related to the pastor). When the inevitable pushback came, the District claimed that this congregation is on its way to colloquizing into the LCMS.
I see.
Once again, “missional” becomes the codeword for subversion. For it is one thing for a non-denominational pastor and congregation to start introducing creeds, confession and absolution, liturgy, a reverent celebration of the Lord’s Supper that suggests belief in the Real Presence, a new appreciation for Holy Baptism, an excitement for the Book of Concord, etc. leading them to begin the process of colloquization into our synod. This can and does happen. But it is entirely different for a non-denominational church (that continues to identify itself as such) to simply want to join the LCMS without any evidence of a change in doctrine and practice. At very least, this congregation is a long, long way from becoming Lutheran - at least if everyone is going to be honest. Instead of the non-denominational church changing, the reality is that we are expected to change. We already have LCMS megachurches that have abolished the Mass.
And that is the name of the game.
We’re all getting tired of their shenanigans. We’re tired of being played. We’re tired of being gaslighted. We have “missional fatigue.”
In former years, the “missional” guys could find a home at Concordia Seminary - St. Louis. It was not all that long ago that praise bands, bongo drums, and even the shameful nadir of a performative “sermon” in which a pastor distributed slices of pizza for seminarians to chomp on in the chapel (in the chapel!) were all tolerated, if not accepted.
Those days are over.
We now have greater confessional unity and liturgical integrity at both of our seminaries. Both have solid leadership. And so the liberal subversives have no choice but to secede and form their own institutions (as they did when Seminex was established). We see this at the lady-led Discordia Texas - SemiTex, including the use of ethically effluvious legal cunning to achieve independence. Their hope is that a future liberal LCMS administration will accept them and reintegrate them into the fold, assuming a leftward shift of the Overton Window. The Left operates this way. They just do what they want, confident in getting away with it, and certain that a future emasculated leadership will eventually be worn down and led by the nose and come around to their way of thinking.
And now we are (again) seeing the phenomenon of the alternative seminary - including quick, cheap, and easy virtual MDiv programs. The hope was that they would wear down at least one of our seminaries and/or our praesidium so that the new paradigm would simply happen - thus carrying out an end-run around the meddlesome seminaries and their stubborn Lutheran theology and worship. But so far, nobody is taking the bait. It doesn’t matter. The subverts will carry on and hope that a future administration will ratify their rebellion down the road. Moreover, there is always the possibility of colloquy for men who receive a SemiZoom degree and then later seek admission to our ministerium - again depending on a squishy and subversive future administration to ratify their rebellion.
The arguments for an online MDiv sound attractive. It is quicker. It is cheaper. It is easier. Much like “online church,” it is convenient. It is entirely possible to get an MDiv degree and never set foot in a pulpit, never interact in the real world with professors and fellow students, never actually join together in a Divine Service, or even to be bothered to put on pants. Pastors need to be formed incarnationally, not virtually. Formation is not a matter of learning skills, like watching a YouTube video to learn how to fix a leaky faucet. Professors and students need actual facetime for the purpose of discernment and growth. This is part of what it is to be human. Our seminarians need to worship together and live in community. We are flesh and blood men, not pod-people living in a Gnostic matrix of data-acquisition.
We invest in that which we believe to be important. It’s Economics 101. A man who desires the holy office seeks a noble work. His formation is crucial, not merely a box to check that can be satisfied by a click here and there. I have run into such men who believe they have a “calling,” and so do not need all of the “book learning” of the seminary “which is often a cemetery,” as the canard goes. “Why do we need languages, we have Google translate?” Yes, I heard that one from a frustrated wannabe pastor. “Why should I have to move and quit my job?” Which is just our version of “Let me first go and bury my father.” Some people see pastoral formation as only education and training, only as the acquisition of skills and knowledge. If that were the case, congregations could save a lot of money by simply calling an AI bot to preach for them online anytime, 24-7 - while they sip coffee at home in their bathrobes.
But all of that said, the frustration of liberals lies in their inability to avoid what the seminary is teaching. They want rock and roll and dancing girls - and in some cases (though certainly not all), same-sex marriage and women clergy. They argue for these things not based on God’s Word, but rather based on an entrepreneurial view of the church as a business that must produce the goods and services that the people demand. They see the church as a market - which is the very thing that made our Lord lash out with violence.
Again, I’m gratified to see the pushback - not only from our seminaries, but from ordinary pastors and laity. In the past, we have been cowed and bullied into silent compliance, being threatened with 8-balling and accusations of not being nice and churchly. Who knows? Maybe Charlie Brown has had the football pulled away from him one too many times. It is long overdue that Lucy’s parents - wherever they are - give that brat a spanking. Nothing prevents the slow and steady “long march through the institutions” like the silent majority standing up and saying, “No!” and doing so with firmness, willing to apply discipline when necessary.
Unless you want to end up like the feminized and satanized ELCA or the LCA, now is the time for everyone - laymen and clergy, educators and administration, young and old - to push back and say “enough is enough.”