Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, here we are. Q and A podcast. Pastor Brian Wolfmother, Pastor, St. Paul Lutheran Church and Jesus Deaf Lutheran Churches in Austin, Texas. That's me together with Pastor Andrew Packer, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, I had a rumor about you, and that is you're always confusing quinquagecimo with Quasimodo Guineadi. Talk about a nerdy.
I was so happy when I came up with that nerdy liturgy joke.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: I'm gonna say half. Half the people will get that.
That's great.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Wow, that's pretty Good. You're a YouTube theologian. You get that joke.
Look at this sticker I found. I was trying to use it to adjust the white balance because my video is so bad. If you're. If you. If you get that joke, you're. You got to subscribe to the channel. It's great. All right, you got some questions for us today?
[00:00:44] Speaker B: We got some questions.
All right, first question.
She wants to know about. First. John 4. 7. Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God.
So the question is, what about those who have not been born of God?
Is their love not really love? That is not really from God?
[00:01:07] Speaker A: That's. That is a great question. Wow. Sometimes I think every now and again, and this is one of those moments. I think I should look over these questions before you read them.
This is one of those moments. So. Because. So I think, on the one hand, let's make a distinction here, that there is a. There is a way that we can do things that look a lot like love apart from Christ. In other words, there is a love that belongs to what? There's a love that belongs to the natural law.
There's a.
A storge. This is the Greek word. I don't think comes up in Greek, but it's what it's. Luther talks about all the time. It's the familial love that. This kind of common affection. And we can say that. That now, that's. That's love.
It's a. And it's a real kind of love, but it's not the love that comes from God.
This does limit that loving that comes from God to those who are called what. Who are.
Who are born of God and belong to God. That kind of supreme, divine love only belongs only to them. And so there is an exclusive love that can only happen when we have.
When we have faith in Christ. In other words, when we know that God loves us. And that's what John is talking about. Now in what way? Here's where the question I think is hard.
Oh, and we should say this because remember how Luther talks about how you can't love God unless you first know that he loves you.
And so apart from the love of God in Christ and the knowledge of the love of God in Christ, which is faith, there can only be the fear of God and fear of his wrath and so forth.
So that's what's going on. But now here's the tricky part. In what way is the love of God sort of baked into creation so that our natural love is connected to that love?
And that is. I do not, I don't know how to answer that question. I remember our professor, Dr. Fakencher used to always say the reason the sun comes up is because Jesus died on the cross.
The reason the corn grows in the field is because Jesus died on the cross.
The reason why anything at all good happens is because Jesus died on the cross.
And so every little bit, even of natural goodness is an expression of the love of God, which would include things like our care for one another, even apart from faith.
So there might be a way, because of the death of Christ, there might be a way that everything good that happens is connected to that, even if we don't know it by faith.
But I think to Maria's kind of original question here, I think this is true, that.
A true love that the Lord requires cannot happen apart from faith, apart from the gift of faith.
You have thoughts on that?
[00:04:23] Speaker B: It's just making me think of C.S. lewis's four loves. Right. So the store gate affection is the first one, Philia friendship, the second, Eros, romantic love. And then the fourth one is agape or I think he called it charity. God's self giving love, that that's seeking the good of the other, right? Even at cost to self is his point there.
But I think if God is love and he creates all things, I think you're right. Everything's ultimately rooted and grounded in him. But the one that most reflects the the character of God is not Storge or Philia or Eros, but the one that most reflects the character of God is that as Lewis calls it, the agape love, the self giving love that we see in Christ, which is what we're called to, how we're called to love others. So I think it's a good summary. If you want more on that, check out his book. It's really good. Like many of his books or most of his books or all of his books. I don't know, because where you want to go with that?
[00:05:22] Speaker A: How many. Yeah, this could be a question. How many of C.S. lewis's books are good?
This is, you know, Luther we're doing worldwide Bible class is studying the life of Jacob with Luther. And Luther's always talking about this storge, this human affection, the kind of basic human love, and how you almost have to be a monster to lack that. And that's probably a reflection of this divine love, but again, a reflection of it.
And we love because he first loved us.
And it reminds me, remember how the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament is the command of love, love your neighbors, yourself. And then Jesus, the night before he's betrayed, says to his disciples, I'm going to give you a new commandment that you love one another. And like, hold on, we heard that that's not a new commandment at all. We heard that commandment a long time ago from Moses. But then Jesus says that you love one another as I have loved you.
And so the uniqueness there is that Jesus is framing our Christian love as a reflection of his sacrificial death on the cross.
And it's that that is really a profound change in the, in the, in the shape of love.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: All right, next one.
You started a whole host of questions not too long ago when you talked about whether we can defend churches, like whether we use force in church. So this is kind of building off of those last two times you've answered that, but it wants further clarification.
Okay, so I'll skip to the question since I kind of summarize the first part.
First one, you shall not murder. Does God see murder and killing as two different things?
Murder being a sin as a plot against your neighbor, killing not as a sin where you may kill someone in self defense, or a police officer killing someone to save others, etc. And then question two.
When a soldier kills in war, is that a sin? Is it their duty as a soldier to perform such actions? To clarify, killing in war, meaning not in self defense, but in the act of battle where you're attacking an armed combatant who may or may not be directly attacking you back.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Good question. And the answer is absolutely. There's a distinction that the Lord makes between killing and murdering. And I think the best place to see that is in Genesis chapter nine, which is when the Lord. This is a so important issue. It's the, it's. In some ways it's kind of the renewal of the covenant after the flood.
But the Lord is going to change things up he's going to let Adam, or sorry, the sons of Noah, the children of Noah, eat the animals, not just fruit. So the, the prohibition against eating flesh is lifted, but not the blood. That's important and fill the earth. That's repeated. But here's verse. So this is Genesis, 9, 6, 7. Whoever sheds man's blood by man, his blood shall be shed.
For in the image of God he made man. And as for you, be fruitful, multiply, bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply in it.
So there's two things there, there's one, the shedding of man's blood, that's murder.
And the Lord says if that happens by man, his blood shall be shed. That's capital punishment.
That would be killing, but not murder. In fact it's the required punishment for a murderer which the Lord put in place.
And so we have that distinction. And this is reflected by the authority of the sword. So in Romans 13, Paul says the Lord does not give the sword in vain.
So the sword is that authority to kill.
And it's given by God to the government to be exercised for the protection of life.
So the picture that Luther gives, and this is especially, I would refer the writer, the questioner here to take a look at Luther's. This is Cody.
That soldiers too may be saved. In fact, well, I'll try to include a link to this in the description of the video. You can download it for free from my website, the PDF there. And, and Luther's picture of a, of people going to war is like a surgeon cutting off a hand that has an infection. So say you have gangrene in your hand and it's going to kill the rest of the body. So you amputate the hand to save the body.
And the hand doesn't appreciate it, but the rest of the body does. And this is what war is. It's an, in some ways it's an amputation, it's a bringing of smaller death so that death doesn't capture everything and destroy everything.
So.
So self defense.
Well, I don't know if the self defense question was in here. Yeah.
Security guards at church, etc, so that, so that doing your duty as a soldier and killing someone, or doing your duty as a judge and sentencing someone to death, capital punishment or doing your duty as an executioner, giving someone capital punishment not only is not a sin, but it is in fact a good work.
And this is an important thing especially for soldiers to realize that when you go warring, you're doing a good work in service to the Lord and His word now, it's only because of sin. I mean, you can't imagine that. That there's going to be any of this kind of violence in the new heaven and the new earth. When the Lord does away with death, it'll be great. There won't be no need for armies and soldiers. There won't be any swords at all.
It'll all be plowshares.
But in this life, to. To put a curb on sin, the Lord gives that authority of the sword.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: It's also in that same one where Luther says that it's. It's not murder if you're fighting a just war.
And if you're not sure if it's a just war or not, you basically have to trust your superiors. If you're. If you figure out it's not a just war, then you have a duty to. To not fight. But if you don't know, then you have to trust those who have sent you to fight and leave that. Leave that in their head. Because the average soldier isn't always going to know all the details. Right. Going in, Joe I thought was helpful too. He's looking at the whole picture, not just, hey, your soldier going to war, that means it's a good thing, right? He says, wait a minute.
No, it's good if it's a just war, which is a whole. Could be a whole, another several set of videos.
And if it's not a just war, then you need to.
You need to get out. And if you're not sure, then you need to trust those who have sent you.
And then it's kind of on their head.
All right, man, I need.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: I'm looking at this thing, the PDF on my website. My website is a disaster when it comes to these books. I gotta really fix this thing up. But it's here. If you go to Wolfmuller Co slash downloads and, and. And take a. Can I show it to you? Yeah, here it is.
You can download all these free. I mean, there's a lot of free books that it's there. But whether soldiers to. Can be saved. You just download the guy right there. Bam. And you got it. And you can read it. It's not too long, a couple hundred. Oh, no. Hundred pages or something. And, and this is Luther talking about this. And it's just phenomenal. I mean, this. This is such a great. A great piece. So it's there for you.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: All right, next question. This is a. This is a longer one.
So they're saying they understand the frustration we talked about with pastoral care that Pastors can be frustrated when people don't let them know someone needs care. Right.
But this is a different part of that discussion that they want to bring up. So whenever the topic of pastoral care comes up in conversations with other adults in their 20s to 40s, it's not usually about concern that the pastor is too busy. It's usually people saying that they want to have pastoral care, want to be involved at church. But when? How?
The church is only open during the morning and the early afternoon. What about the toddler? What about work?
Every event at church is during the workday. Meetings are during the kids bedtime. Everyone leaves right after church on Sunday, and that's assuming there's a full time pastor and the church has regular hours. I've rarely heard pastors talk about it and how they respond is unpredictable. I don't usually hear ah, there's just been miscommunication. We'll make it work.
Seems like some have thought about it before, which seems strange. I've rarely seen a response like ah, I have meetings or services in the evening. Some days I could schedule around those, which would work if people knew about it. I've also seen defensive responses. I already barely see my kids. I barely get a day off. When do I actually get to go home? And you know, that's fair enough. I've really only had one pastor before who made it clear to people he'd meet on weekends or evenings. He is the sort of guy to keep a cot in his office to work from 5am to 9pm some days, which is a kind of expectation that would make me defensive too.
I just can't imagine anyone is intending for people to resign themselves to having church fellowship and pastoral care when they retire or to the extent of pastoral care, to be a handshake after the service.
And I really am aware of a lot of people who have congregations on Sundays. But any pastoral counseling and Christian fellowship is only happening between friends, online, or not at all.
My wife has shared similar frustrations more often now that we have kids.
It was that way when my parents were my age, two with email groups like Martin Lupers. So I don't think I'm just missing something or making it up. That's a throwback, huh?
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: I honestly don't know what to tell anyone. Do you have any advice on how to actually get pastoral care or church fellowship? If you go to work and have a family, how do you handle that in your congregations? Or make it clear to people? What is the expectation on our part? Getting babysitters taking Time off work. Because if you do have advice, I'll pass along to people when I get the chance and keep it in mind myself. It would be appreciated.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: All right. Yeah. This is, this is. So this is tricky. And I notice especially it's tricky with pastors who have young families because that time at home at night is particularly precious for them also. So when you. And it's, it's, it's not lost on most pastors that when you're working is when everybody else is off.
I mean, like when you're in a meeting or when you're seeing. It's because they're off of work and you're on work, so you're trying to sync up the off hours and it's particularly difficult.
And you wonder like, you know, that the pastor would come in the middle of the night if you're dying, but he's probably not going to come in the middle of the night. If you're just wondering why Matthew's genealogy skips three kings. You know, that's probably a like normal daytime thing. Thing.
I used to meet a guy who was a. He was a military guy and so we would meet in the morning before he went to work. So we would go get coffee at 4:30 or 5 in the morning. And we do that every couple of months. That was pretty.
Oh, that was brutal. That would. But you know, there, there we were waiting for the Starbucks to open.
Man didn't.
Or looking for that sort of thing. So. But how I do it now, and I don't know what your solution is, Pastor Packer, but we have a Wednesday services and I have just in my own calendar, I have office hours after the Wednesday evening service. So I have a couple of hours that I kind of put aside there for meetings.
Oftentimes on Sunday afternoon is when I'm meeting with couples to do kind of pre marriage counseling and stuff like this so that they're. If you have nine to five, almost always my lunches are booked and I. And I'll tell people, hey, if you can get off for lunch, I'll come right there and, and meet you close to where you work and we can get lunch close by. So we got an hour to meet in the meantime. But you're just trying to fit it in because everybody's busy. It's also something to know that, you know, the phone becomes an option here where a lot of times I'll help people. We're trying to match something up in the calendar and maybe there's not two weeks or three weeks till we can actually match up our schedule, but say, hey, let's try to. Let's just try to catch up on the phone for half an hour when you're driving home. And. And that's sometimes a good option, too. If it's a theology question, it's nice to do this asynchronously. So. Hey, Pastor, I've been thinking about a few things. If you jot down some notes, that'd be great.
That's also, that's also an option. But you just, you know, you're trying to fit it in and it's one of these things like, hey, how do you get some time in there? How do you make it work?
It's tricky. One of the. Okay, so I'm going to toss it to you because then I have a, like, I have a thing that I'm trying to figure out, which is like group pastoral care, just to answer questions and stuff that people have. So it doesn't require sort of individual time, but just to sit in a group and talk because people are wondering about different things. I'm trying to figure out how to do that, but I haven't figured that out yet. But I don't know. Any thoughts that you have on this?
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Yeah, a couple. One is, you mentioned people being busy. I mean, part of it is we all have just, myself included, we've all overbooked ourselves. We overextend ourselves. We don't have any, what they call margins, right? In our schedule, we're not able to just go do stuff, be with people.
And I think it's just an issue of our culture. Like, we just are always go, go, go. We don't work those things in well enough. So, I mean, even if you're like reading through the email, it's not just that the pastor's busy, right? Those people are really busy, and he say they don't match up. But even if you're free evenings, people are busy every evening too, right? They've got kids, sports, and they've got other meetings than with other stuff. Like, there's just, it seems like everyone has stuff all the time. The way I've tried to solve that, I don't know if it's the best way, but I usually, when I need to meet with someone or they need to meet with me, I say, give me several days and times and I'll make one of them work, right? I just say, give me a list, give me some options.
Because I tell them, look, I know my schedule's like, probably more flexible than yours, so you Tell me when you can meet, and I will pick one of those times and we'll meet, whether it's at coffee or lunch or in my office or at their house or whatever I ask for. Just give me some options. Tell me what works for you, and I'll make it work. That's been, especially since being here, I didn't have, you know, a smaller congregation in Colorado that wasn't as big of a deal trying to schedule those things, but here that's been the best way. I find people usually have some time. It just may be an odd time here or there, but I can try to make one of those at least work and make sure that that happens. And then with other church events and stuff, I mean, I know here we offer so many different things at different times. I'm sure people can find something if they really wanted to. And I do agree, though, there's some stuff that's offered that's not good for, you know, not good for everybody. Like if you're working, like I taught the women's Bible study today, and it's from 9 to 10:30 on a Wednesday morning.
So if you're working, that's not a great time. Right. But we also have other Bible studies at other times. That's not the only one we offer.
So, yeah, that's not gonna work for everybody, but it works for a bunch of people. And we have men's Bible study on 6:30 on Mondays.
And even with being before work, it doesn't work for everybody. You know, there's just, there's no way to find any time that works for everybody, no matter what you do. So you do your best. I think both as pastors and I think people have to be flexible too, and realize, well, can I rearrange my schedule so I can make these things?
I think it's both sides trying to work at it and trying to figure out ways to make it happen.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Yeah, it is, though. It's worth the effort. You know, it's worth the effort to have that conversation and to know that your pastor wants to know you and you want to know him and to. And to lean into that. That's. That's good.
And, and for churches to try to build these common spaces. So we have. I was thinking about that. So our, our guys do. All right. We have a monthly Saturday morning Bible study and a monthly Sunday night fire pit. And it's. So the Bible study is Bible study, but then there's space around that for just to kind of be there and talk and hey, pastor, I Got a question? I've been thinking about something and that to sort of build those spaces. During COVID we used to do a monthly picnic after church. And in Africa, this is what they do. Every Sunday after church, they just have a barbecue and people bring meat to church and then barbecue it there and eat together. And I was trying to make that tradition, but after it worked, it was great. During COVID After Covid kind of died down, then people went back to their own stuff and we lost it. But to have that common time where there's nothing scheduled, it's just open and you can visit and mingle and ask questions and. And do that. That we. We have to cultivate that.
That time also.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we need way more of that stuff.
I know we've tried various things here, but again, it's hard because even when you schedule something, a lot of people are going to be like, that doesn't work with my schedule. So you just keep trying different things at different times and hope that as you offer more and more people can make something work.
All right, let's move on to the next one because you have to record other stuff still today.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Oh, boy.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: All right.
Oh, someone's quoting your book.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Uh, oh, yeah. Which one?
[00:22:49] Speaker B: This is from Has American Christianity Failed.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Uh, oh.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: All right. I was reading your book, has American Christianity Failed? And I came across a paragraph that got me wondering. The paragraph reads, the clarity of the scripture is also lost when an inner illumination of the Holy Spirit is needed to understand the text.
Is it true that the Holy Spirit gives us faith to believe the text, but in American Christianity, the Holy Spirit has to illuminate the text, teaching the individual believer the true meaning behind the words.
All right, so my question is, what do you mean exactly by saying that the clarity of the scripture are lost when we need an illumination of the Holy Spirit to understand the text? Please elaborate.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Yeah. This is a distinction I think is really helpful. It's part of the debate that I think I'm having with Dr. Veltz, and that is the question of what is. What role does the Holy Spirit play in interpretation? And what I would like to say is that the Holy Spirit is necessary to believe the promise to believe the text, but not to understand the text.
And I. I think part of our doctrine of the clarity of scripture means that anyone can see from the plain reading of the text the things that are necessary for doctrine in life. And it has to do with my conviction. And I'm saying my a lot here, but Pastor Packer, you. So you can Tell me if I, if this is the, if this is a quirky thing of mine or, and therefore I should be rebuked, or if this is like, oh yeah, that's what we all say. But the. Because the Christianity is public, when Jesus says, we didn't say anything in secret, we said everything out loud. What it means is that everybody can read what Christians believe and know what Christians believe.
We are not Gnostic.
And this is one of the Gnostic. The features of Gnosticism is that the doctrine and the teachings are secret so that Christians don't do anything in secret. All of our doctrine and teaching is public.
And I think that applies also to the Scriptures.
So that if the Lord says what he means and anybody who can read can understand what he means now, no one can believe it apart from the Holy Spirit, but we can understand it. Now this isn't to say that our reason isn't fallen or sinful or doesn't share in the effects of the fall. We confess that the noetic effects of the fall so that we can be wrong and we're not always right.
But I think our doctrine, declared as Scripture, means that the Lord speaks in a straightforward way. So even someone who doesn't believe that the body and blood of Jesus is in the Lord's Supper can read the words, this is my body, and say, oh, well, Jesus says it's his body, but I don't believe it. But that's what the words say, or whatever. Take whatever doctrine you want. I think that's the case.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: So I have a question related to that.
So like Psalm 119:18 says, Open my eyes and I'm going to see wondrous things from your law.
So is that you would say then that's talking, that's talking about believing what's there, not about understanding what's there.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Well, I do. So look, the Holy and Chemnitz will talk about this too, about how the, the even teaching is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Digging into the text is a gift of the Holy Spirit so that the Holy Spirit is at work in, in everybody who's working on the text.
And especially when, you know, you've heard people like when you're ready, reading through someone who knows these things so well, you're like, wow, that was right in front of me. I didn't see it, but they saw it. And we recognize this is a gift that the Spirit has given to be able to teach and understand the text in this way, but that it's part of the nature of the text that it is plain clear.
Now, that doesn't mean that it's obvious, and it doesn't mean that you just read every word and understand every word. Nor does it mean that, like, one pass and we got it all.
None of. I mean, the Bible needs to be studied and needs to be understood. But it. But I. I do want to say that it is possible to understand these things apart from the Holy Spirit. And I think this is part of what Peter means when he says the Holy Spirit was not brought about by individual interpretation.
In evangelicalism, it's not. It's okay in a lot of evangelicalism, and this is maybe a caricature, but in evangelical piety, there's not a common understanding or meaning of the text, which I have to, through study and reading and prayer, reach. It's rather, here's the words, and they become the occasion of the Spirit's revelation in my own heart.
And that can be. It can sometimes be totally divorced from the text.
It's sometimes just as bad as, like, you have a home Bible study, and people are saying, well, what does this text mean to you? What does this text mean to you? Which is frustrating. You know, we want to say that there is a meaning of the text and that it's there in the words and that, and that it's the same for me as it is for you.
It's there. That there's a. There's a public testimony, and that's part of the nature of the scripture.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: I think that I was gonna add another clarifying question, but I think you just covered it. Which is your main concern is not so much that, like, we're absent of the Holy Spirit while we're studying the Scripture.
Your concern is that people who take the Holy Scripture, showing them something from the text as, like, almost like a special revelation that you or I wouldn't have gotten just from reading the text.
It's just, you know, popped in there by the Holy Spirit. And so their argument is, well, the Holy Spirit revealed this to me, and now you and I have to look at the text and say, well, it doesn't say that. And they say, but the Holy Spirit revealed it. So what can you do about that?
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: That seems to be like, what. What your. Your concern with framing it that way is that we don't. We don't start saying, oh, I saw this thing, because the Holy Spirit revealed it, but he hasn't revealed it to you, so you can't see it.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: Right? That's right. That's it. So I want to be able to Say, look, the text says. And I don't want to say. I don't want to say that. I know that because the Holy Spirit showed it to me.
But you don't. If you have the Spirit, you can see it. If you don't, you don't.
I just want to say this is what the text says.
And I think that's part of our doctrine of the clarity of Scripture. Now, again, I'm, I'm kind of in this argument with Dr. Veltz about it. Who wants to, I don't know. I think he has a godly idea that we don't interpret the text apart from the church or apart from the life of God, therefore apart from the Holy Spirit, that you have to have faith to, to read and interpret the text.
I mean, I'm, I, I'm sympathetic to his, to his concern there that we somehow like, make the text like an abstraction that doesn't live, create and live in a community of believers.
But I do want to be able to say, I think it's important for our apologetic argument and it's also important for our ecumenical dialogue that we can just say, this is what the text means.
This is what the words mean.
And we can expect that to be a true thing apart from faith.
Now it's faith that lets you believe it. So I think that's my main thing. What you said is certainly true, but I think it goes like a half step farther in our doctrine of the clarity of the text. So that an atheist, for example. So here's the test case. Can an atheist understand the words of institution?
And the answer is, well, that's what. Remember how the early Christians were being accused of being cannibals because they understood the words of institution? Now they didn't believe them and they didn't. I guess they didn't understand him rightly, but they understood him enough to say that Jesus said that we eat his body.
And so this is the, I think this is the, this is the rub that I'm getting after there.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: All right, next one. On missions.
I spent many years on the mission field while in charismatic word of faith, new apostolic reformation type churches. I left three years ago. I've appreciated your answering so many questions that I've had as I've been deconstructing recently. I've been thinking is about missions. I'd like to know your view of women and missions. Also, how's the Lutheran Church approach missions in general and long term overseas missions.
So women in missions and then just an overview of missions in general.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a good question. So we know that the Lord Jesus intends for all people in every corner of the world to hear his voice and to rejoice in his light. This is the book of Acts. Remember Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, all the ends of the earth. Make disciples of all nations by baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you. And look, I'm with you always, even at the end of the age.
So that the, the church is an apostolic church, which means not only are we bound to the apostolic doctrine, but also we're. We are. The Lord is sending out his word through his church into every corner of the world. And it's nice that when Christians go places, they bring the church with them. It's also really wonderful that the church looks to see where the church. The church is not and it sends people there.
So that's normally what we think of mission work is that, hey, there's no, there's no Christians over there in that place. Let's send some Christians down there so that the Gospel can be preached in that place also. And the Lord can call, gather, enlighten and sanctify his people in that place. So from the very, very get go, the Missouri Senate, well, the Lutheran Church, it's interesting. There's not a lot of missionary talk in Luther, but there's some. And he talks about it especially under the rubric of thy kingdom come, that where the Christians are, that's where the Lord's kingdom is coming. So that's a beautiful way to think about missions.
And the Missouri Senate has been particularly interested in making sure that we can send preachers to places where the pure gospel is not being preached.
So that's good.
Now, I think because of what Jesus says about baptize and teach, it means that most missionaries who are going to be doing the work of baptizing and teaching are going to be pastors, ordained pastors. And that excludes women in that missionary role, although there's a lot of support that always is needed for pastors and their families and everything that's going on. And a lot of those support roles can be filled by lay men and women in various different ways. So I know there's a lot of our missionaries have these support teams and deaconesses and other support roles that, that are filled by women. And this is really good, really godly and really quite wonderful. I think the way that we do missions now is.
Well, it's one of my projects is to Try to rethink how the Missouri Synod thinks about missionaries, because I think one of the things we, we can do well to think about is how to create resources that, that are durative, that last. And so how can we put these books, doctrines, theology, how can we, how can we put this down in media that can carry on past the work of the missionaries? But that's kind of in the weeds. The Missouri Senate, I don't know, probably has 120, I don't know how many missionaries. We had 120 missionaries that, that are sent out throughout the world. And that's great to be able to support them. It's, it's quite wonderful.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: So I was surprised when I became Lutheran how few missionaries we had per how many members we have.
Just seems a little smaller than maybe what similar size denominations might have. But the question got me thinking about. I'm reading the biography of Adoniram Judson right now that a Baptist friend sent me a couple years ago. I'm finally getting around to it. And he was the first missionary from the United States overseas.
He was Baptist. So parts of the book greatly frustrate me.
And the biographer is pretty honest about some of his own flaws and some things he does. And you're like, man, why did you do that? But the amazing thing is, so I got to a point where, I mean, he's already suffered greatly by the time he gets his first convert. It took six years to get one person to confess Christ, which is kind of mind blowing to me. And he went over there thinking, I'm going to die and my wife's going to die and we're never going to see anyone again. Like, like that's the attitude they had going over there. They thought they'd never make it back. So he's in Burma and Burma was very close to the gospel, didn't like other religions. So they get a one convert after six years. And I looked it up because I was curious how many Christians are in BURMA Now? It's 3.3 million.
[00:36:03] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: So it went from the 19th century, like around 1816 or something like that. One convert to 200 years later, 3.3 million.
And they're almost all still Baptists. It's like 80 some percent, 90% Baptist. So this one guy who was like determined to go there and got one convert in six years. Now they have over 3 million Christians. I just, you know, I just found that fascinating because it shows the power of if someone goes and they're determined to go and share the gospel, like what the Lord can do with that. And nowadays obviously there's, there is, it's not that there isn't any peril, but it's not quite like taking these ships overseas like they used to and the slowness of travel and slowness of communication, all that stuff. But it's great to support missions and to see, like you said, the long term effects of that. One of the first things they did was get a printing press so they could print books for them in their language. You know, print the gospel in their language. Matthew's gospel is the first thing I think they printed for them, those kind of things. So it's amazing what God can do with faithful people serving in missions.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: It's great. It's really great.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: All right, this one's on the pastoral office.
Can you please explain the Lutheran concept of the call?
Is a pastor called by God or called by a congregation or both?
Can there be one type of call without the other?
Do the lcms, Wells and ELS have different understandings about this? Thank you.
Just skip the last question. I'm just kidding.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: I, I, I'm still trying to figure it out. Apparently we do have a difference.
So the answer is this comes back from this doctrine of the call especially comes from Romans 10.
This is where we go to look at it. And it's so important.
Paul says, how can they call on him whom they have not believed? That call means the prayer of faith.
How shall they believe in him whom they have not heard?
How shall they hear without a preacher? How shall they preach unless they are sent as it's written? How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things.
Now that sending really is our understanding of call and ordination and placement I suppose as well. But there are men who are set apart and sent to a place and received in that place as the preacher, the one who is there to publicly forgive sins, to publicly to give out the Lord's Supper, which is always an only public, and to preach and teach in the public way. And it's beautiful because the Lord wants these things to happen. So he's sending his disciples out to all these different places to do those things.
Now. So we understand that it is a divine call. But the call that the pastors have now is a mediated call so that the Lord calls men through the church.
And we see this in Paul, for example, when he's telling Timothy to set up men in every place so that Timothy is the one that's doing it. But the Lord is the one who's arranging it.
It's a really nice distinction between the immediate call and the mediated call that our Lutheran fathers make so that the Lord can call someone directly, like the prophets and the apostles. And when he calls someone directly, he speaks through them. That's why the Scriptures are the prophetic and apostolic scriptures, and he confirms their calling with miracles so that people know that he's called.
So there's the immediate call and then there's the mediated call. And that's the call that comes through the church. And that's the call that Pastor Packer and I have. And that's why we do not write scripture, but teach the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures. And it's why our call is always underneath the word of God. And our duty is to teach these things that have been given to us in. And the church can judge us and call us to repent based on our teaching if it's not in accordance with the prophetic and apostolic scriptures.
So I think the easiest way to think of it is that the call to be a pastor is from God, but through the church.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: How then does that differ from. Or does it from the Wells churches and the Els churches?
[00:40:24] Speaker A: That's your question. That's your part of the. That's your part of the question to answer.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: I have no idea. That's my answer to that question.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: It does. It does differ, but I don't have any idea how it differs either. But they'll tell you it does, and I think it probably has to do.
Okay, look, this is you and I both wandering into unknown but so YouTube theologian, be warned. There are guys who are deep into this question and really care about it, and they will be very troubled with anything that Pastor Packer and I are about to say, because they'll be like, you don't know what you're talking about.
But the. But the. Probably the biggest difference. So here's my kind of thumbnail between the way, like the Wisconsin Senate and the Missouri Senate think about the office.
It has to do with the functions of the office or with the man in the office.
Is the focus on that the man goes into the office and then does the duties of the office, or is it that the duties of the office are given to the man?
And the Missouri Synod seems more interested in the man receiving a call and being in the office.
And the Wisconsin Senate seems more interested in the functions of the office in the. In the work of preaching or in the work of teaching or in the work of. Of distributing the sacraments, etc. So. And in some ways has a broader picture of what ministry means there. It's. To me, I don't know if I'm allowed. It seems to me like a distinction without a difference.
But again, just check the comments and you'll. You'll see how. How dumb I am in that, apparently. So I feel like that with a.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: Lot of the distinctions between us than that and them that consider, I guess, keep us still separated even after years and years of meetings and other things. But maybe that's. Maybe that's a different video. We can dive into some of that, but with a call itself.
I've seen this come up, right? So you have a call right now to two congregations, or is it one call through. It's. It's two separate calls, correct?
[00:42:40] Speaker A: Dual parish. So it's one call, but to serve.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: A dual parish, one call. So you have one call to serve the dual parish. But let's say another church calls you.
And so that call, we. We say is from God as well and that other congregation.
But so now you have two competing calls, right? You have one that you already have, and now you have this new one. So how do you know which one then is the call that you're supposed to.
Is the call for you? How does that look in our theology? How does that work out?
[00:43:16] Speaker A: Yeah, you don't know? Well, you know that the Lord wants you to be in either place because he's given you two calls, and then he says, okay, now you get to decide, which is horrible. Like, we think that we want this freedom to decide things. And then you actually get that freedom, and you're like, yeah, take it away from me. Which is why pastors are tempted to become, like, mystics, you know, or like some sort of Christian magic to try to figure out which place God wants them to go by. Like, I need a divine revelation. Which is better when really the Lord says, both are good. Both are good. You can love me by serving here where you are, or you can love me by serving there.
So you get to decide what you want to do.
It's like, what the one place the Lord lets us want to do something, we're like, I don't want to let myself want to do anything.
I tried, by the way, this did not work.
When I was called down here from Colorado, I.
I said, well, look, could I, since I have two calls, could I do both? Could I stay in Colorado for, like, the spring and summer and then come down to Texas for the winter and have like, no, we want you to be here all the time. Like, what kind of, you know, expectation is that? All the. All whole year.
Anyway.
[00:44:31] Speaker B: Now, in fairness, with all your traveling, are you really there the whole year?
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Oh, a big part of it, I'm sure.
[00:44:38] Speaker B: Most of the year.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: Most of the year.
I'm not doing the summer, that's for sure. Oh, boy.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: I. I really liked. I always found Walther's, like, kind of like steps for thinking through it pretty helpful. Like, is this new place gonna be a place where you have more of an opportunity to serve? Like, because it's very practical, really. Right. It's like just comparing what's the wisest decision for you as a pastor? And then, of course, pastors have. If you have families, and you also have to consider, is this the wisest thing for my family as well? Like, those are. Those are not always easy to do. And you know that no matter what you decide, there's going to be people upset, hurt, sad, whatever.
So, like you said, it's one of those areas where it. In some ways, it seems like it'd be nicer to have somebody telling you, okay, your time's up there. You have to go here.
But we wouldn't like that either, so.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: That's right. I remember when I was deliberating this call, I was talking to one of my professors, and he said, did. Well, do the people at Hope in Colorado, do they want you to leave? And I said, well, I don't. I don't think so. Most of them, at least don't want me to.
In fact, I was telling them that, like, you know, the church here would, I think, really wants. Wants me to stay. He says, well, if they wanted, we. If they wanted you to leave, you waited too long.
Yeah. Which means. And this is a. This is a kind of terrible. Baked in part of our polity. It means that there's going to be sadness somewhere. You know, it's just like the whole process is that way. So it's tough.
[00:46:10] Speaker B: All right, well, I think we got you done in time to make your other thing.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: Did we get them all done here?
[00:46:15] Speaker B: I believe. Wait, is that seven? Hold on, let me make sure.
No, we have one more. I'm sorry.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:46:20] Speaker B: I thought we were done.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: You're so excited.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: I was like, man, we got you out plenty of time, but now we're not going to, so it'll be fine. No, we have one. All right. All right.
This one is very short. Short one. As far as the question, I don't know if the answer is short.
How should we respond to someone who says a loved one Is looking down from heaven, like, on them, watching you.
[00:46:45] Speaker A: This is why. So remember how Pastor Melius, our friend Jared Melius, stole my notes and wrote a Lutheran Witness article, which is, like, the most popular Lutheran Witness article ever written?
7. It's called why Easter Matters. 7 Myths About Death and Dying.
So. And that came out of. Did you know. Did I tell you that? Backstory.
[00:47:06] Speaker B: No, I didn't know that.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: This was a long time ago. I was. Do. So. Okay. Back backstory is.
As a pastor, you. You hear all this crazy stuff about death. Like, I remember I was there at a casket at a viewing, and someone said, it's not mom.
And I'm like, who is it? Like. And that. But they would. They meant, oh, she's not there anymore. That's just the body. But it's not exactly the right time to. Or someone says, oh, they became an angel. Or, oh, look, it's cry. They're cry. It's raining. They're crying. Or, oh, they're looking down on you. And. And all. There's all these kind of, like, pious ideas about heaven and life everlasting, and it's just not really the right time to talk about it. When you're in the throes of mourning, you know, you're just.
So we. So I said, I want to write a little thing about 7 myths about death and dying. And, you know, our loved ones become an angel, that they're looking down, and all these sorts of things. So we put that together. And then Pastor Amelius took that list and wrote a really nice Lutheran Witness article. I think he changed one about cremation, and you can still read it online.
Actually, we should put a link in the description, why Easter matters. 7 myths about death and Dying. It's really. It's really. Actually really nice.
But that's one of them that they're looking down on us now.
Our understanding of what's called the intermediate state, which is that existence of the soul apart from the body in the presence of Jesus, waiting for the resurrection is very, very limited from the Scripture.
So we just get tiny glimpses of it, like the glimpse of the martyrs that are under the altar in the Book of Revelation. It's just a small. And they're praying, how long, oh, Lord. And they're given a robe, and they're told to wait for a little while longer. Paul says to be absent from the body is to be present from the Lord.
He says, we long for this. Not to put off the clothing, but to be further clothed so that there's Little hints to live as Christ, to die is gain. Stuff like this about what that is like. But we don't know much.
It seems like the idea that there's an observation deck from the throne room of heaven from which the loved ones see the things that are happening on earth, there's no indication of that. That seems like a pagan idea kind of brought into the idea of heaven that's there. But no doubt there is communication between earth and the throne room of God through the angels and through the all knowingness of Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit as well.
So that there is the kind of communication, but it's not this kind of looking over.
But it's hard again.
It's one of the reasons why I think the Lutherans aren't, for example, why they don't call the Catholic tradition of prayer to the saints necromancy. Someone was asking me, why don't we just plain old call it necromancy talking to the dead? I think the reason is because anyone who's mourned the death of someone that they love very much, you just, you, you can't. It's very hard to, to have a life that, that those ideas don't creep in like that you don't just want to talk to your, to your dad or to your mom or that you don't just imagine that they're, that they're rooting for you and cheering you on.
In fact, Hebrews, remember, calls them the cloud of witnesses. And I don't think it's because they're actually watching or witnessing us, but that there's a way that they are cheering for us. And that's probably their prayers for us.
That those who have gone before us are praying that the Lord would continue to bless us and serve us according to his good pleasure and bring us at last to the joys of eternal life.
But it's a hard thing to think about when you're just right there in the midst of it.
So back to the question. How do we respond to someone who says a loved one's looking down from heaven?
It might be enough just to say, hey, you know, the Bible gives us a lot of these sweet names for death, like depart and be in peace and to live as Christ, to die is gain and we sleep in Christ.
But one of the most beautiful ones is from Revelation 21, they will see his face.
And the indication that the Scriptures give us is not that our loved ones who die in the faith see us, but that they see Christ.
And this is our joy. That their gaze. They have that beatific vision and that the Lord is bringing us to that as well.
So I. That might be the way I would approach it.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: I think that's a beautiful note to end on.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: Well, if you are a YouTube theologian, thanks for sending the questions. Thanks for subscribing to the channel. That's really cool. We got some nice feedback that you like the cut up videos but you also like the full length ones.
So we're going to post those up after we post all the other ones up. So if you like to watch the whole big long shebang with all the joking around in between the questions. We didn't joke around too much this morning.
That's going to be there for you as well. You can send in your questions Wolfmuller co Wolfmuller co contact.
Get a hold of us that way.
Send in those easy questions for me and the hard ones for Pastor Packer and we'll see you. We'll see you soon. Thanks again. God's peace be with you.
