Pastor's Notes

You all make it easy to leave. I know you will care for one another and, though there may be some speed bumps, ministry and mission will go on and its impact will continue to be felt. You have a more than capable staff that remains and will work together with each other and with you.

You make it hard to leave. Never have I lived in a community this long nor served a church this length of time. In the past I seem to have been a “Nine Year Guy”, not a short time, but not a long time, either.

Pastors have opportunities to interview and leave especially these days with a shortage and less movement among pastors. Yet each time I got close to receiving a call elsewhere, it was here.it was you…that drew me back. Every interview opportunity affirmed this call was still there, tugging at me.

Since the announcement of my retirement, I have heard the word “congratulations” over and over again. I certainly appreciate all the good wishes I have received, but must confess congratulations seems like such an odd word to me. Congratulations suggests to me that people are glad for me as though I have escaped some difficult existence or circumstances.

I enjoyed and appreciated my ministry of 43+ years. Much of it never seemed like work. To be a pastor it is helpful to like people and enjoy being around them. Though I am in many ways a very private person, I enjoy being with people.

While in seminary I was interviewed by the chaplain at St. Elizabeth’s in Washington, D.C., a mental health facility. He was interviewing me on behalf of the international program I was applying for in Hawaii to receive certification in counseling. On his written review he wrote, “I don’t pretend to read minds, but when the possibility of doing this program in a faraway place was discussed, his eyes lit up.” I’m sure they did. For some reason new places, experiences, and people excite me. It seems I was cut out to serve in the West with its transient population instead of my native Pennsylvania with the highest percentage of natives of any state. When I return to my roots, it often seems like very little has changed.

It seems to me thus far that it is harder to leave here than to leave the ministry. I will see in the days ahead if this is true or not. The sorting of my books…which to take home and keep, which to give away…was quite revelatory in this manner. It was surprising how few “pastor books” I kept. Most of those I hung on to were about Luther, Lutheranism, and church history, especially in the US. Theologians, biblical commentaries and the like now adorn the shelves of the ULC/LCM library.

I will now be a former pastor and your former pastor. I will have to find a new neighborhood in which to follow Christ, serve God, and serve others. I do so with great confidence it will also be God’s neighborhood. Now you will have another come to serve and lead in your neighborhood. Keep in mind this will be God’s call through the community. Welcome them as such as you did for me these past decades. It will be a new day in the neighborhood. It will be God’s Day.

Yes, it is hard to leave, but made easier by who this community is and by faith this community has belonged and will belong to God.

It seems almost, if not, daily we engage in some conversation that includes saying, “Before the pandemic” and/or “After the pandemic.” Maybe we should begin dating things BP and AP. A few years after, that is AP, the impact of the pandemic remains, like the force with Luke Skywalker, strong. People and institutions large and small operate differently since the pandemic.

I can’t help wonder, however, if the pandemic was something that exposed us more than it did change us? Absolutely things were different during the pandemic. And, as previously stated, much has changed after the pandemic.

Think, however, of the time of the pandemic as well as its after affects. During the pandemic divisions in our country seemed to widen instead of coming together. After the pandemic, we seem, if anything, more divided. So often difficult times have a way of bringing people together; the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, the terrorist attacks on 9-11. One would have been on solid ground to think the insurrection of January 6 would bring us together. And it did, but only for about a day, then everyone dug into their side even more deeply and the divide widened. We couldn’t even agree killing police, threatening top governmental officials with death, and trying to overthrow the will of the people was wrong.

The pandemic exposed that anything and everything could be co-opted for political gain. In his Large Catechism regarding the commandment against stealing, Martin Luther said we have an obligation to care for our neighbor. Should we fail to do so, according to Luther, would be to steal from our neighbor. It seemed we saw more verbal and even violent attack on the neighbor than we did see care. Masks were made about the wearer, not about the neighbor. Much health advice and those working diligently to provide it was scorned.

We have become a culture of “us vs. them” and we stick mostly to our own tribe where our thoughts are mostly reinforced. We don’t even wish to know why someone thinks differently than do we. What life-shaping forces made them think as we do? We prefer judging to conversation, listening, and asking.

Scratch the surface of much of the divide and the issue of race oozes out. We all have our platitudes regarding race and racism. Do we ever have conversations with those of different races to ask what their life experience is now and what it has been in the past? I am reminded of a cartoon in the ‘60’s that showed a crowd of white people gathered pointing at a gathering of 3 African Americans with the white folks saying, “Look at how they stick together”, totally oblivious to the fact their small multitude was doing the exact same thing.

Advent nears. That means Jesus nears. Many are quite good about making New Year’s resolutions. Might we make an Advent resolution to seek out in dialog those on the other side of our culture’s widening fissure? Might we so prepare for Jesus that we make serious attempts to have him find us as caring for all our neighbors as we see demonstrated in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan? Can we see even the enemy as our neighbor as the Samaritans were the hated villains of Jesus’ teaching audience?
What might we do beyond pointing fingers and making accusations?

Yes, some of our behavior has changed due to the pandemic. Our call to love the neighbor has changed. There are no asterisks or footnotes to Jesus’ teachings and parables saying “not applicable in difficult times.” Indeed, these are very much for difficult times.

The pandemic has exposed the tenuousness and vulnerability of life. It may have amped up our anxiety level, but we cannot hide behind this and blame our woes on it. What are we going to do about our divisions? What we have been doing is failing. What was exposed in ourselves that needs addressing and change? How might we have been hiding behind the pandemic and using it as an excuse for the way things are and maybe even preventing us from working to change the status quo?

We are always who we have been…BP and AP; God’s imperfect sinners. GOD’S imperfect sinners. Belonging still to God, might we work to belong with each other?

Coyotl or Ueoueocoyotl is an Aztec deity. The deity is depicted as a coyote and is from where the word coyote derives. In ancient Aztec it meant very old.

Coincidentally I was reading the book, “American Coyote” over a couple of nights when on one of those nights we were awakened by the barking and howling of coyotes just beyond the wall of our home. Suddenly I was not as enamored with this somewhat mysterious creature about whom I was reading.

Coyotes it seems were not to be found very much outside of Mexico or the Southwest from the time of European discovery of the Americas. They tended to be numerous where wolves were fewest. Wolves, it seems, do not like the competition for food which the presence of coyotes creates.

The thing about Coyotes, however, is their adaptability, their flexibility, and their willingness to take risks. Today there are coyotes in New York’s Central Park. To get there they had to take either a bridge for cars and trucks or a railroad bridge. Taking the Holland or Lincoln tunnels seem to most a more remote possibility. Imagine the risk involved in such exploration!

Originally the European settles and later Americans did not know what to make of these creatures. Were they just small wolves or jackals? Eventually they were seen as their own subspecies and given the popular name coyote.

In my years out West, it seems everyone has a coyote story. “American Coyote” makes the point that these creatures are much like us in their willingness to explore and in their ability to adapt. Originally it seems, coyotes were vegetarians. Later, when a new set of circumstances demanded, they became omnivores if not carnivores. Coyotes, you see, unlike wolves, have molars to chew, not just incisors to tear and shred.

Humans have had to adapt. While eagles have their eyrie, prairie dogs their holes and tunnels, humans live in houses of ice, sod, wood, straw, brick, stone, and, lest we forget, stucco to name a few types of housing that fit into the area in which we live. Some humans survived by taking from what was around them. They were always on the move following food sources. Others were able to grow some of their needs, built more permanent housing and stayed put.

We dress differently, eat differently, and speak differently depending upon what place we call home. We learn to live with cold, heat, rain, fog, and dampness accommodating ourselves to our surroundings.

Maybe we could stretch the point and say Christians need to be more coyote like; that is more adaptable and flexible. We see a different expression of the Christian faith among the Egyptian Copts, the various Eastern Orthodox groups, mainline Western European Christianity imported to the US, Canada, and beyond. Evangelicals, on the other hand export their brand from the US to around the world. Clearly there is a certain adaptability to the Christian faith.

However, what I am thinking is more chronological than it is geographical. It needs to adapt to the times not in a way that embraces the times, but in ways that understand the times and understand how they shape the views of all, even those opposing the times. This is to say that from generation to generation the church cannot operate the way it always has.

Do you know, for example, the current church structure in most churches as expressed in their constitutions comes from approximately one hundred years ago? Why would we think that would work just fine now? With today’s busyness, churches who always recruited people to be marathon runners, volunteering and helping for the long haul, need to readjust and look for sprinters instead. These are folks willing to help with a task or two, take time off, and then return to help out with some new short-term venture later.

How has technology changed the church? How is it continuing to change the church? What changes are truly an extension of the Gospel and Christian community? Which changes are harmful for these?

In a time of increased informality (it has been sometime since I have now seen ASU President Michael Crow wear a tie), how important is it for pastors to wear robes, organs to be the primary instrument, and paper the principal material for worship services? These, of course, are just a few of the lesser things which the church needs to consider when it reflects on what is truly central to the Christian faith.

Yes, here comes the usual part: But Jesus remains the same. That is all that we really need. Yes, but has Jesus really remained the same? A journey through the history of Christian art reflects different periods seeing and understanding Jesus differently. The very first form of Christian art was the Christus Rex…the risen and crowned Jesus on the cross with arms uplifted in glorious victory. This art form reflected a faith that understood Jesus as triumphant and in glory with the hope followers could share in this.

Some time later crucifixes emerged showing a tortured, pitiful, and twisted Jesus, tormented by his executioners. This reflected a faith that saw life as much misery,
guilt, and struggle, encouraging those so struggling to hang in there as Jesus understands a life that has many tragic moments.

Later works of art often have Jesus seated or calmly walking or standing. Jesus is portrayed as a very docile Jesus, merely comforting and affirming. The Christian life, then, seems to be portrayed as “Keep calm and carry on.”

By now you get the picture. Where do you and I and the church need to adapt even as we challenge? Where can we be like the adventurous coyote who risks and adapts yet continues to find ways to attack and survive, unafraid to move on?

Wile E Coyote of Looney Toons fame is not a good caricature of a coyote. I never understood, for example, why if he had all that money to buy those Acme products, he didn’t just go out and buy food. Those outside our suburban walls were better representatives. They tip toe around what had once completely been their turf, howl a bit to let others know at least part of it still is theirs, and find other ways to survive if not thrive.

Is that a bad image for the church? Church numbers may be in decline, but the world is still God’s turf. The church needs to adapt, be flexible, hang on to what is essential, and not be afraid to howl a bit at the world. If coyotes can somehow make it to and make it in Central Park, can the church find itself in surprising places?

The church’s recycle bin is full. My desk drawers are empty. My two filing cabinets have yet to be shared with the recycle bin. Almost 24 years of ministry gone from the desk drawers; nearly 44 years of ministry yet to be sorted through and mostly recycled.

The files were, for the most part, not sermons. I saved very few of those. Sermons have little literary value. It is the spoken Word that makes them sermons, not writings. Sermons repeated years later do not work; the community has changed and the times have changed. A living Word needs to be preached.

No, most of the files have to do with records of events and people. Much teaching material, some useful, some no longer applicable have found their abode in these files over the years. Some things were filed because they may come in handy at a future date; they didn’t. Some were discussion notes or lectures for forum discussions, classes, and campus presentations.

A lot can accumulate over the years. I carried out the desk files to the recycle bin. For the filing cabinets I will wheel the container to just outside the offices. As I sort and dump, I can’t help but wonder how much ever got through to anyone or how much impact, for example, did my various presentations on Luther and Anti-Semitism have or a discussion led based on the life and person of Luther’s wife, Katie von Bora.

An entire drawer is filled with files from when I was a Stephen Ministry leader training Stephen Ministers for lay caring ministry in a congregation as an extension of the church’s pastoral care. It is filled with information that is still useful on dealing with those struggling with depression, grief, illness, and divorce among other issues. What to do with those? In the right hands, they could be most useful, in untrained hands, downright dangerous.

The musical Lion King has a song titled, “The Circle of Life”. One might understand it as almost a recycling; a putting the old onto something new and continuing onward. As I enter the final phase of ordained ministry, I can’t help but wonder if any has been, is, or will be recycled in some form. Has it, is it, and will it touch someone who then makes it theirs and passes it on in a new form?

Okay, you may already be thinking this: God will see to it. That answer is the easy way out Sunday School answer that really, at least on the surface, is a bit vague. God will what? With whom? How?

It has not been emotional for me to sort through all this. But I haven’t gotten to all the funeral sermons and files yet. So far it has mostly been something leaving me in thought to wonder.
Something, however, has crossed my mind in all this. Maybe you are in some ways a bit of recycled material from me, other pastors, and other influences large and small in your life. Now it is up to you as this new product to not let any of this go to waste; pass it on. Recycle some of yourself. Such recycling is not reserved for pastors. Parents are most likely the main purveyor of recycled material which in turn gets recycled again for generations. Likewise, teachers.

As one with great frustration in learning algebra, somehow, I still remember the FOIL system. (factoring: First Outer, Inner Last). Something, despite all probability to the contrary, got through. I look forward to sharing this prowess with my grandchildren to impress them with my “knowledge” of Algebra!

The oceans may be full of material that should have been recycled. The church and humanity itself seem to be the place that God recycles. We just have to trust that it is so and keep plugging away.

The church is in an interesting place. By church, I mean “The Church”; the holy catholic church which you and I confess most weeks in the Apostle’s Creed.
Now, to be sure, there has never been an idyllic time in the church’s history. Never. I have a small book titled, “Why on Earth did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries?” Why, indeed! Persecution, superstition, a faith that was about carrying crosses, not avoiding them…why indeed?

Note I said an interesting time. It is also very much an uncertain time. The only thing that is clear is that our previous way of doing things is not working. People are leaving the church and study after study says it is not because they have lost their faith or that their faith does not matter. The vast majority of those leaving the church do so because of their faith! What they see in Jesus, how they understand God through the lens that is Jesus, is not what they see reflected in the institutional church.

Congregations can no longer get volunteers for even the most basic of tasks. Many choose to watch worship on line rather than worship in community. In our own metro area two of our churches are ridding themselves of their property and buildings not for survival but so they can do more than survive; they can both have and lead a mission.

Are these and more such acts tossing out a life-line or are they pruning for a healthier, stronger ability to follow Jesus? Time will tell. What is clear is that God doesn’t need brick and mortar to do ministry. Christ’s church can survive in a number of new ways, but it is not survival we should be about. It is thriving; thriving in following Jesus in the mission of Jesus.
We are among the fortunate here at University Lutheran Church/Lutheran Campus Ministry. While many congregations struggle to discover their mission and discern the call of God in their locale, we are clear in ours. The original writing still in our file says we are here to serve the community of Tempe and Arizona State College (ASU had yet to become a university) We have an outreach to ASU that is clearly our call. Other congregations are envious of us with all our young adults. We are an encouraging sign to many that young adults are interested in faith and can be reached.

I heard such talk last week at our bishop’s convo. We represent to many the hope that faith continues to be passed on. Yes, but all of us need to remember what I wrote in the beginning of this piece: people are leaving the church because of their faith. What needs to be done, what changes made, what parts need to be retained, to continue to have the Christian faith be what it was created to be: a faith exercised best in and through community and a faith that is relational; a faith that often relates to and with God through the people of God. What form might that take?

Certainly, it takes a people unafraid to talk about their faith and talk about it outside the church, not only within the church using understood code language and in-house terms. Risks must be taken by all the church. Standing pat is a recipe for continued downfall.

At this same conference I heard for seemingly the one-thousandth time in my ministry, most churches in order to grow must first stop doing some things, perhaps even long-held and valued traditions that make growth difficult. The church must be willing to change and even to fail so its message of Good News can reach those with needy and ready ears.
We do not need a dose of positive thinking. I don’t believe God to be a positive thinker. Rather I see God as a positive doer. That is the path we must take. Can we have faith without putting it all on the line? The difficulty should not be our willingness to risk, but rather the figuring out what risks we are called to take.

The biblical God is a God who keeps coming after us. Such a God requires a people of pursuit, a people willing to be uncomfortable. …willing to give up their way for God’s way. I just heard a speaker, a Presbyterian pastor say, “You can be right, or you can grow.” There can be a certain narcissism in our demand to be right…even when we might be right.

Yes, we are in interesting times. Keep in mind we are also, as always, in God’s time. The church has been here before. More importantly God has been here before. Go ahead, trust the process you may develop, but trust more in God.