LCMS: The Tale of a Denomination In Flux

Although I am not officially a member of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS), my interest in the denomination is quite high. It is, of course, the Scriptural and Sacramental aspects of the denomination that I find compelling, and not the squabbling of synodical politics. But because such politics can have such a tremendous impact on what does matter, LCMS members must concern themselves with such things.
Recent events in the LCMS seem to threaten the very makeup and fabric of the denomination. Given that a succinct summary of these events appears difficult to find, I offer this post not as an argument of what should be done, but rather as a summary of previous and ongoing developments. Even for those, like me, who are not official members of LCMS, this tale of a denomination in flux provides a window to larger symptoms afflicting numerous church bodies.

All denominations, it seems, have a natural life cycle that involves a battle between liberal and conservative factions. In the LCMS, the liberals are sometimes referred to as evangelicals, and conservatives often prefer to call themselves confessional Lutherans. Phrases such as such as these have varying definitions, but for purposes of this post I will stick with the admittedly simplistic phrases of “conservative” and “liberal”.
The last big battle between conservatives and liberals in the LCMS came to a head in 1974 when a president of the LCMS’s crown jewel of a seminary, Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, began teaching allegedly liberal methods of Biblical interpretation. After walkouts and firings, and even the formation of a new rival seminary by liberals (”Seminex“), the whole dispute eventually ended in the fracture of the church. LCMS remained the haven of conservatives, with liberals breaking away to form what would eventually become the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). This 1970s dispute remains in the back of the mind of many congregants who fear a resurgent liberal faction.
Currently the LCMS is led by President Gerald Kieschnick, widely considered to be a moderate. Yet he has thus far been unable to avoid controversy. His first major controversy arose in September of 2001 after he supported a Lutheran pastor’s participation in an interfaith prayer event at Yankee Stadium to commemorate the terrorist attacks on the U.S. The LCMS generally shuns interfaith events in order to avoid “syncretism” and “unionism”.
Kieschnick soldiered on and won re-election to the presidency in 2004 (though with only 53% of the vote). Then came the culmination of his church growth emphasis: the Ablaze! Movement. Simply put, Ablaze! was a new vision of the LCMS to convert people to Christianity and get more butts in the pews. Yet conservatives worried that this noble goal would also usher the LCMS into a new era of pop-culture Christianity.
Kieschnick insinuated that he wanted only to change the style, and not the message, of the LCMS. In some cases this might mean more contemporary music and less old fashioned organs churning out Bach (who was himself a Lutheran). In other cases it might mean the modernization of old liturgy. Indeed, Kieschnick seemed to openly embrace the seeker-friendly mantras of nondenominational evangelicals like Rick Warren. As Kieschnick said, “This is not your grandfather’s church.”
Yet conservatives in the LCMS liked their grandfather’s church and continued to point out that style and substance often go hand-in-hand. One congregation used a $25,000 Ablaze! grant to put up billboards purporting to come from the devil (e.g., “JeffersonHills Church Sucks,” signed “Satan”) and another used Lent not for its historical message but as an opportunity to offer a speaker series on sex. Conservatives were fuming, and all was not well.
In this already heated environment Kieschnick delivered a shot across the bow to conservatives. During Holy Week, without warning and without explanation, the LCMS canceled its popular, nationally syndicated radio program “Issues, Etc.” The program, like the LCMS church body itself, was an intellectually rigorous show that used 14 hours of in-depth programming each week to address culture, politics, and church life. On its last show in mid-March, for example, hosts Todd Wilken and Jeff Schwarz covered the life and faith of St. Patrick, scientific and philosophical arguments in defense of the embryo, the excommunication of two Catholic women claiming ordination, and the controversy surrounding Jeremiah Wright.
Yet Issues, Etc. was canceled, and the real reason appears to be rooted in the show’s skepticism of modern church marketing methods embraced by the likes of Kieschnick. The emergent church, the Purpose Driven Church movement, and the common self-improvement mentality of modern churches were commonly met with intellectual and theological challenges from Issues, Etc. Presumably this didn’t sit well with LCMS leadership.
The act of cancelling the show was bad enough in the eyes of most conservatives, but like Watergate, the cover-up was arguably even worse. Any trace of the show’s extensive archives online was quickly removed as if it had never existed (though some have since been restored). Initially, the bureaucrats would say nothing other than the show had been canceled for “business and programmatic” reasons. Later the LCMS also cited low ratings, even though the last time such data was tracked was three years ago.
In bolstering his argument that Issues, Etc. was a financial drain, Kieschnick claimed it had been losing $250,000 per year. However, in the same time frame Ablaze! lost an estimated $2.2 million and, shockingly, Kieschnick borrowed $5 million from other ministry budgets to be used for the Ablaze! movement. One way to look at it, then, is that Issues, Etc. went down in Ablaze! of poor prioritization. Poor business decisions of upper management have also come under scrutiny.
Nevertheless, recent evidence suggests finances were only part of the equation. Anonymous complaints of “hyper-orthodoxy” were leveled at the show prior to its removal. Moreover, the Synod posted job advertisements for the very positions it claimed it was forced to terminate for budgetary reasons, only to then yank the ads after realizing its mistake. In sum, the LCMS continues to point to funding problems and a lack of listeners as the primary reason for the show’s cancellation when the evidence points to a very different conclusion. Kieschnick may not only be thumbing his nose at LCMS conservatives, but he seems to be doing so in a less than honest and forthcoming manner.
In the wake of the ensuing controversy, borne out most prominently on critical weblogs like The Wittenberg Trail, Augsburg 1530 and Bring Back Issues Etc., Kieschnick has issued a call for greater unity in the Synod. Ironically, greater unity may be the end result, but it appears that it will be a grass-roots driven unity focused on restoring the LCMS to its traditional self.