I’m a candidate for ordained pastoral ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and this is part 2 of my candidacy approval essay.
Approval Part 2: Core Theological Commitments
Prompt for Part 2:
- What key theological insights have been influential in your development as a missional leader in the Church as it participates in God’s mission in world? Include distinctive biblical and Lutheran theological building blocks which you have used to construct a theology of mission that informs your current understanding.
- Describe how these key theological insights informed the missional leadership experience you described above in #1.
- What are the distinctive contributions of the Lutheran theological tradition for both (1) the Church’s discernment of and participation in God’s mission in the world and (2) the formation of disciples for mission in a pluralistic society?
My first core theological commitment – both personally and as a missional leader in the church – is reliance on God’s grace. As obvious as it might sound for a Lutheran Christian to talk about grace, my understanding of God’s grace through Christ really is fundamental to my faith and my understanding of myself.
Everything I do as a leader is based on God making the first move. I know myself well enough to know that if I’m relying on myself to do good, to be a good person, or even to participate in God’s mission of reconciliation, I will fail. In God’s grace, however, God sends the Holy Spirit to enable me and all whom God calls to participate in God’s work. Jesus, of course, is the ultimate expression of God’s grace.
I understand God to be both just and loving, and I believe God’s just nature is opposed to sin. But in God’s loving grace, God has broken into our world, into our sinful lives, in the person of Jesus in order to do what we could not. Our sin separates us from God, but Jesus has put our sin to death on the cross, and because of Jesus, God forgives us. The one who has the authority to justly judge us is the same one who is also our advocate.1
In the resurrection, we, like Jesus, are given the promise of new life, a new life only possible because of God’s grace. This grace comes through the action of the Triune God, not through our actions. When we least deserve God’s grace, God gives it to us. “While we were still sinners Christ died for us.”2 God is always the one who comes to us, who initiates faith.
I believe the church is an instrument of God’s grace. Of course, God’s plan of salvation was accomplished on the cross and attested to in Jesus’ resurrection,3 but God’s mission of reconciling the world to Godself continues, and as the church, we participate in that mission. The church’s role is to proclaim God’s grace, to steward the gospel message. Through means of grace such as the sacraments and the preaching of the Word, the church proclaims God’s grace to itself and the world. In missional service, the church lives out God’s grace to the world, serving and doing good in response to God’s grace, empowered by God’s Spirit.
Our missional service can only start with God’s grace in Jesus. And because salvation comes only from God’s grace, it’s not my responsibility as a leader to save anyone. I’m called to proclaim Jesus Christ and him crucified4, to help people recognize God’s presence in their lives and situations, and to help people grow in faith and their relationship with the Triune God, but it is the Holy Spirit alone who enables growth, who redeems and sanctifies.5
Another core theological commitment is the Lutheran understanding of the priesthood of all believers. Because no one is deserving of the gift of God’s grace6 and because the Holy Spirit is the one doing the work, God can use all people. As a leader in the church, I see a big part of my job as letting people know that God is calling them, and equipping them to answer that call. As one of my favorite offering songs growing up puts it, “Everybody’s got something to offer, young and old, the prince and the pauper, in the name of the Lord.”7 God can use whatever we have to give, and God’s Spirit is poured on all.8 Because it’s the Holy Spirit at work, no one is indispensable to God’s mission, but God calls everyone to participate, to lay down their lives for others,9 to serve God and neighbor.
In Jesus Christ, God has come into the world, and in Jesus, we all have direct access to God. As a church leader, I see myself not as having any sort of special access to God, but as one called to proclaim that in God’s kingdom, all are equal. All of us are hopeless, dead in our sin, curved in on ourselves, but God’s grace is sufficient for all of us, giving all who have faith new life in Jesus Christ.
As the ELCA Constitution says, “This church affirms the universal priesthood of all its baptized members.”10 Holding to that universal priesthood of all believers, as a church we continue the practice of ordaining specific women and men as pastors, calling some to specific roles of public leadership. As a pastor, I am called to a specific role, part of which is to help others recognize their own calls to ministry whatever their vocation.
Another Lutheran contribution to my core theological commitments is Luther’s understanding of the two kingdoms. God is active both in the sacred realm (the church) and the secular realm (the world). The church stewards the mysteries of grace, but does so in order to serve the world.
God is active in both realms, meaning we as Christians are called to be active in both realms as well. God cares about all of life, so we should care too. Because God cares about more than what we do on Sunday morning, we as the church bring our theological commitments, our understanding of God’s mission, into the rest of our lives.
This understanding of God’s active involvement in both of these realms means that the church cannot be disengaged from the world. As a leader in the church, therefore, part of my role is helping the church recognize and engage with all kinds of issues in the world. I see Luther’s two kingdoms insight as foundational for the church’s engagement in justice and social issues. The church is interested in eternal matters, but it also must be interested and engaged in the here and now, in the reality of people’s suffering in the world.
God is at work to bring justice, peace, and reconciliation to all, and God is calling the church to participate in that work. That’s a difficult calling in our pluralistic, complex world, but rooted in God’s grace in Jesus, we as Lutheran Christians are empowered by the Holy Spirit and given the ability to humbly engage and serve the world in the name of Jesus.
One of the biggest contributions I believe Lutherans have to give to the wider church is our willingness to see the world as it is, in shades of grey, rather than forcing it to fit a monochromatic worldview. As Presiding Bishop Eaton has said:
“Lutherans have a history of living with paradox. There are some things that are nonnegotiable for us. But there are other things that it is possible for people who love Jesus holding the same faith together, can have very strong, very sharp disagreements, but it does not have to lead to disunity.”11
Our tradition has an openness to paradox, a willingness to accept complex realities and not reduce them to something easier to grasp, yet less true. That shows up even in our understanding of how Jesus meets us in communion, when we take Jesus at his word that the ordinary bread and wine are his flesh and blood, trusting him to be present in, with, through, and under the elements of the Eucharist, even though physically we can see the elements remain bread and wine.12 We’re willing to accept paradox and to hold the mysteries of God13 as mysteries, rather than needing to reduce them to simple explanations.
This willingness to accept paradox allows us to meet people where they are, as I believe Jesus would, and allow the Holy Spirit to work in them, rather than forcing them to first meet our expectations. Acknowledging the ambiguity inherent in our imperfect world allows us as the church and especially as church leaders the freedom to not have all the answers, and to be authentically open to the honest questions of faith people have. At different times, all of us have questions and doubts about faith, and rather than feeling like we need to falsely hide our doubts, the Lutheran tradition has room to engage the questions and doubts.
Starting from the foundation of our faith in Jesus, we are free to question, doubt, and explore, confident that the Holy Spirit will meet us in our doubts and guide us into truth. As the father of the boy with the unclean spirit said to Jesus in Mark 9:24, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
In a pluralistic world, being humbly open to questions is absolutely essential to our ability to serve our neighbors and to proclaim God’s grace in Christ to the world. As a leader in the church, I absolutely believe Jesus is God in the flesh, God’s self-revelation to the world, the most complete picture we can have of God.
But there is always more we can learn about God. The church has been wrong many times in the past, for example in its acceptance and even endorsements of tragic parts of history like slavery, colonial exploitation, the crusades, oppression of women, et cetera. There is always more we need to learn; there are always elements in the church in need of reformation. The church is an institution made up of sinful, selfish humans. We should never cease to be amazed that God chooses to accomplish God’s mission through us and the foolishness of our proclamation!14
I have a great appreciation for the ELCA’s commitment to ecumenism and dialogue. In seminary, I’ve increasingly realized how strongly faithful, committed followers of Jesus can completely disagree with each other on issues of all sorts. At the same time, I’ve realized how similar many Christians are to each other in our core commitments and understanding of God’s grace.
For the last two years my family has been living ecumenism as my wife works as a youth director in a United Methodist Church congregation, one of the ELCA’s full-communion partners. Although there are occasionally different emphases and even different understandings of how God is at work, we can work together and faithfully trust the Holy Spirit is using us to further God’s mission.
Beyond our ecumenical relationships with other Christians, we can also engage with and learn from people and institutions beyond the church. God is also at work in the world beyond the church, an understanding supported by Scriptural stories such as Balaam in Numbers 22 and Cyrus the Great in the ending of the Babylonian exile. As the church, we need to be aware of other ways God is at work and support others’ efforts to further peace and justice for our neighbors throughout the world.
However, at the same time we acknowledge and support how God is at work through others, we also need to hold on to who we are as Lutheran Christians. We need to be willing and prepared to faithfully and honestly proclaim our distinctive Christian witness of God’s love, the God incarnate in Jesus Christ, sharing our witness to God’s activity in the world through Jesus Christ.
Another key theological insight for me is the Lutheran understanding of vocation. As a person called to be a public leader in the church, my purpose is to proclaim God’s grace (the gospel) in such a way that people recognize the relevance of faith for their lives. I understand vocation as God calling people where they are, calling people to proclaim the gospel, seek justice and peace, and serve their neighbors in all of life. My vocation is to serve the church and the world as a pastor, publicly proclaiming the gospel through word and sacrament, and facilitating the ministry of others, but my vocation is no more important or essential to God’s mission than anyone else’s vocation.
God calls people to service in many different vocations. I think this expansive understanding of the nature of God’s call is a distinctive contribution of the Lutheran tradition, and it is key for my theology of mission. My role is to help people discover how they can serve God and answer God’s call in many different ways, in many different roles in their lives. This is particularly true in a pluralistic world where some want to limit God’s role to merely the realm of the church. As Lutheran Christians we understand God’s mission to encompass all of society, the secular realm as well as the sacred realm.
All of my core theological commitments stem from my understanding of God’s grace revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. Because of what God has done for me and the world in Christ, I am set free from my bondage to sin, set free from my selfish nature, and I am able to answer God’s call to serve the church, the world, and my neighbors. Everything I do in my ministry is done in response to what God has done for me.
I see my calling as a pastor as proclaiming God’s grace in order that others may recognize what God’s grace has done for them, see the relevance of faith for their lives, and be equipped to respond in gratitude by participating in God’s mission through serving others.
Read part 1
Continue to part 3
Read part 4
Footnotes:
[1] The Hope of Eternal Life: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue XI. Ed. Lowell G. Almen and Richard J. Sklba. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Lutheran University Press, 2011), ¶63. 1 John 2:1.
[2] Romans 5:8.
[3] Colossians 1:20.
[4] 1 Corinthians 2:2.
[5] 1 Corinthians 3:6-7.
[6] Romans 3:23-24.
[7] Larry Olson, “Everybody’s Got Something to Offer.” Dakota Road Music, 1989.
[8] Joel 2:28-29, Acts 2:17-18.
[9] John 15:13.
[10] Constitutions, Bylaws, and Continuing Resolutions of the Evangelical Lutheran of America 2011. Section 7.10.
[11] Elizabeth Eaton, quoted by Elizabeth Dias. “Meet the Woman Who Will Lead Evangelical Lutherans: ‘Religious but Not Spiritual.’” Time. August, 2013.
[12] Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Article VII in The Book of Concord, 597-598. ¶23, 35-39.
[13] 1 Corinthians 4:1.
[14] 1 Corinthians 1:21.