Has Lutheranism Failed?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Thinking Fellows

Episode: Has Lutheranism Failed?
Date: January 12, 2026
Hosts: Caleb Keith, Scott Keith, Adam Francisco, Bruce Hillman
Produced by: 1517 Podcasts
Duration: ~45 minutes

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode tackles a provocative question seen throughout Lutheran circles and broader Christianity: "Has Lutheranism failed?" The discussion addresses various aspects—declining church attendance, closure of congregations, Lutheranism's cultural influence (or lack thereof), and whether these trends amount to "failure." The hosts aim to set baseline definitions for church "success" versus "failure," evaluating these concerns through the lens of Lutheran theology and practice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining “Failure” for the Church

• Goal of the Church—Universal & Local

  • Adam Francisco (04:13):

    • Cites Luther: The church is "the gathering of sheep who hear the shepherd's voice."
    • The church nurtures the saints (via gospel proclamation and sacraments) and serves God's mission to save the lost.
    • Dual purpose: serving the elect and participating in God's salvation mission (missio dei).

  • Bruce Hillman (08:28):

    • Stresses distinction between what the church "is" (by grace) and what it "does" (out of obedience).
    • Failure can only be measured in obedience to the church’s God-given mission, not in its inherent existence.

  • Scott Keith (10:42):

    • Walks through the Augsburg Confession, tying justification, sacraments, and church existence.
    • "The church is the congregation of the saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the sacraments are correctly administered." (11:43)
    • The local congregation’s distinctives: contextual pastoral care, preaching tailored to the congregation, but fundamentally the same as the universal church’s purpose (16:29).

  • Memorable Quote:

    “At the end of the day, you have to sit back on…that it is enough that the gospel be preached and the sacraments rightly administered. And I'd say in a lot of ways that's what we really rely on here at our church…Sometimes more can happen, but that much is enough.”
    – Scott Keith (17:34)

2. Lutheranism’s Public Perception & Influence

• Recognition and Regional Variation

  • Caleb Keith (18:16):
    • Notes the lack of Lutheran brand recognition outside the Midwest; on the coasts, “Lutheran” might mean anything from “Catholic Protestant” to “progressive Christians.”
  • Bruce describes Lutheranism’s divergent reputations—“progressive” (news stories about ELCA) or simply unknown (19:55). He cites Mark Noll on Lutheranism’s historical “retreat from culture” under leaders like Walther, leading to a split between “progressive” and “quietist”/confessional Lutherans (21:00).

• Failure as Brand Confusion?

  • Bruce (23:24):

    • Argues the real problem is “insularity,” not failure at marketing.
    • Critiques “arrogance” in conservative Lutheran circles, seeing themselves as doctrinally pure and therefore closed to outside learning or cooperation.
    • “There is an arrogance in conservative Lutherans…about how their doctrines are so true...the practice…in practical life, there’s not an openness oftentimes to learn.” (24:19)

  • Scott (26:41):

    • Pushes back: warns that engaging with or letting the culture determine doctrine or methodology causes drift and error.
    • Highlights Lutheranism’s rich contribution to social good in U.S. history, countering claims that Lutherans aren't “helping people.”

• Interaction with Other Christian Groups

  • Bruce (29:38): Points out resistance among Lutherans to contextualization or working with non-Lutheran Christians, e.g. for evangelism strategies.
  • Caleb gives examples where Lutherans have refused participation, such as declining to provide content for the YouVersion Bible app (35:00).

3. Does Lack of Recognition Mean Failure?

• Scott (40:25):

  • Reframes "failure": Is the lack of recognition hampering the church’s core mission (pure preaching, sacraments)?
  • Admits to widespread catechetical failures—Lutherans less able to communicate why being Lutheran matters, resulting in weak retention and growth.
  • “There's a catechetical failure…when it comes to teaching people what it means to be Lutheran and why it’s important to stay Lutheran...” (43:05)

• Adam (44:43):

  • Suggests Lutheranism’s tools for robust witness are all there, but differences in public presence are often because Lutheran pastors are focused on pastoral care, not “celebrity” roles.

  • Wonders why other small traditions (e.g., Orthodox Presbyterians) have well-known intellectuals but Lutherans seem absent from public discourse.

  • Memorable Story:

    • At Oxford, the Lutheran society booth was placed with non-Christian and world religion tables rather than among Christian groups, illustrating public misunderstanding or invisibility of Lutheranism in some contexts (48:00).

4. Role of Lutheran “Public Intellectuals”

• Caleb (51:12):

  • Notes bright Lutheran students typically are channeled into internal Lutheran colleges/seminaries, limiting broader connections and networking.
  • Contrasts with Catholics or Reformed Protestants, who often build networks at elite secular universities, leading to greater influence and recognition in public discourse.

• Scott (53:50):

  • Warns against making “public intellectual” status a part of the ordinary pastoral role.
  • Praises the historical and ongoing work of figures who build bridges, like Rod Rosenbladt.

5. Ultimate Answer: Has Lutheranism Failed?

• Consensus: Lutheranism has not failed, but does face significant challenges:

  • Catechetical decline—insufficient teaching on the distinctive value of Lutheranism.
  • Decline in attendance—mirrors wider U.S. Christianity trends.
  • Limited public influence—due to historical insularity and educational networking.

• Key Point: The decline or lack of recognition is not equivalent to failure so long as the church remains obedient to its central calling: preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments.

  • Summative Quote:

    “I would say Lutheranism in the United States has not failed, but does have things it could do better or improve or a future that is bright…I feel like the reason to do an episode like this is because people are afraid that the future of Lutheranism is doom and gloom...I kind of feel like it’s the opposite.”
    – Caleb Keith (60:14)

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “The church is the congregation of the saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the sacraments are correctly administered.”
  — Scott Keith (11:43)

• “Failure…is really an obedience question, the evaluation of a failure is really an obedience question.”
  — Bruce Hillman (59:44)

• “As long as you are preaching the gospel and rightly administering the sacraments, that statement is true. Right. That God will preserve it. But you can't alleviate yourself from any responsibility if you are called to the role to do that, and it’s not happening. That’s the job.”
  — Scott Keith (59:19)

• “Everybody’s welcome, but not every idea is welcome.”
  — Adam Francisco (51:07)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:19 – 04:13: Framing the question; Lutheran decline & lack of influence explained.
• 04:13 – 18:16: Defining the church’s purpose and metrics for “failure.”
• 18:16 – 36:37: Lutheranism’s public image, insularity, interaction with other Christians, real-world branding examples.
• 36:48 – 44:43: Recognition and catechetical “failure”—what’s missing in Lutheran identity and outreach?
• 44:43 – 51:12: Vocation of Lutheran pastors vs. public intellectuals; public witness and the “branding” issue.
• 51:12 – 58:18: Education, networking, and why Lutherans are less influential in broader Christian scholarship/discourse.
• 58:18 – End: Final reflections—defining real "failure," the limits of measurement, and hope for the future.

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Conclusion

The episode powerfully frames “failure” in obedience and faithfulness to Christ’s command—rather than mere numbers or influence. The hosts recognize specific struggles in American Lutheranism (catechesis, engagement, public voice), critique some historic insularity, but ultimately emphasize the enduring faithfulness of Lutheranism’s core distinctives. Their parting message is hopeful: the church’s future is bright so long as it remains clear on its mission and open to growth.

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For listeners:
If you're interested in Lutheran theology, grappling with the complexity and reality behind the “decline” narrative, or want a lay-accessible, nuanced discussion, this episode provides rich context and encouragement.

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Transcript

[A]

Has Lutheranism failed? This is the question we're going to answer for. This is going to be our first episode of 2026, so we're going to come out with a heater here and ask has Lutheranism failed? The reason we are asking this question is I see this question plus sort of adjacent issues to it like Lutheranism is failing or Lutheranism is collapsing. Basically all the time there's various videos saying that the future of Lutheranism is collapse if X, Y and Z doesn't change. And so I want to ask you guys this question today and give you a little more to work with with what I think people mean by failed. And then we'll go sort of question by question. I'll ask a general question and then I'll we'll take turns having each of you answer it, at least for the first couple so we get a baseline of some definitions that everybody's working with and then we'll go from there. So my name is Caleb Keith. Today I'm joined by Scott Keith, Bruce Hillman, and Adam Francisco for our very first episode of 2026. Thank you, fellows. Podcast. All right, guys, so what I think people mean when they say Lutheranism's failed or failing or is going to fail is they're essentially referencing the general decline of attendance in Lutheran churches as well as the closure of churches across the US that there's a declining number of Lutheran churches and that there's been a declining number of people who self identify as Lutheran or going to Lutheran churches on Sunday. This isn't totally unique in Christianity or in Protestantism in the United States. There's been decline across all of denominate all of the denominations. But for some reason Lutheranism seems to get attention on this. One of the other things that I'll hear about this is that Lutherans don't seem to have influence or an ability to converse with a broader group of Christians. So people don't really know how many Lutherans there are. And one example of this would be that it often seems like there is more Reformed or confessional Presbyterian influence in Christian thought and publishing, university presence, just ability to reach people through online means like podcasts, video and things like that. Even though by the numbers there are more confessional Lutherans in the United States than there are sort of conservative confessional Calvinists or Reformed Christians, however you want to phrase that. So one of the propositions would be is that Lutheranism's failed because it can't speak to anybody else or doesn't or something like this, which may or May not be true. So those are some of the questions I want to address. The first major question I'm going to give to each of you, though, is I wanted to find what the goal of the church is so that we could figure out if it's failed. So what is the goal of the church? What we would call the invisible church or the universal church, or even the church Catholic? What is the goal of the church? All of those Christians who trust in Christ by faith? And then what is the goal of an individual church, of an individual congregation? And from there, then I think we can actually start to ask a real question about what failure would look like. So, Adam, I'm going to give you the first opportunity this morning. What is the goal of the church? And what is the goal of a church?

[B]

Seems like such a simple question, but it's actually got to be careful measure, because you think you should have prompted me on this so I could have thought about it, especially since I've been on NyQuil for about five days straight. But I'm going to say, well, first, I think the. This is not the goal of the church, but the most basic definition of the church is I think, as I think it's the small articles where Luther says it's the place where sheep. It's the gathering of sheep who hear the shepherd's voice. And I would say then that the goal in the church is the nurturing of the saints through the proclamation of the gospel, the administration of the sacraments. I will add one more thing, and I think this is where it's going to. Maybe we're not going to part ways here or anything like that, but it might be a little bit sensitive, especially for Scott. He's a very sensitive soul on this topic. I think that the church is the primary instrument by which God himself executes his mission, and his mission is to seek and to save the lost. So I think there's like a two, if you will, like a twofold goal of the church is one is for the serving of the saints, the elect, through the gospel, through forgiveness. But it has another purpose, too, as part of what missiologists would call the missio dei, the mission of God for the salvation of sinners.

[A]

And so then what would be the goal of an individual congregation?

[B]

So, yeah, that's an interesting question because on one hand, like, congregations in a real temporal sense make up their mission. They all have their own mission statement, and it's usually something like that.

[C]

Right.

[B]

But I would think that a local congregation, if it's really a Christian church would. At the core, its basic essence is that it's a. It's a place where people gather to hear God's word and to receive the sacraments. That's the essence. Now there's things you can add to it. Right. You know, it's a place where animals can come for absolution. Just kidding. Jesus. I've seen a little bit of that at some of the Presbyterian or the Episcopalian churches around here.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. Like your dog bites the neighbor, so you bring it to church to get a body.

[B]

I don't know. I think it was just the term they use. I don't know that they actually are absolving an animal.

[C]

Do they.

[D]

Do people absolutions too, or just animal absolutions?

[B]

I don't know. I usually don't go in Episcopal churches or Episcopalian churches. I'd rather go in a mosque than an Episcopalian church.

[D]

Whoa.

[A]

Wow. That's actually.

[D]

You might understand the language better.

[B]

No, I just. I mean, in a mosque you get what you get. In an Episcopalian church, you have no idea whether there's going to be Christianity or some heresy.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

It's also sometimes worse to have like, you know, really gross misrepresentations of Christianity than, like you were saying, than going to a mosque and knowing that they worship a demon. Like that's. When you go to a Christian church, you don't worship. You're a leaning in holy.

[B]

I love it. Yeah. This is our year, guys. Year 11.

[D]

Is this year 11? Did we do a 10 year celebration if this is year 11? No.

[A]

Our anniversary is in February.

[D]

Is there a big celebration planned? Big live recording or something like that?

[A]

There probably should be a party. A big party.

[B]

We should go to Bruce, wherever he lives. I don't know if he wants school. Three of those.

[D]

But how would we do a 10 year celebration in Pennsylvania?

[C]

Why wouldn't you? It's the birthplace of freedom.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. There you go. I go hang out at the Liberty around the Liberty Bell.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Because whether we like it or not, the show has a West coast listenership bias.

[C]

All the more reason to give him.

[D]

A tour of Pennsylvania.

[A]

Okay, Bruce, your turn. So what's the goal of the universal church? Church Catholic. And what's the goal of an individual congregation? Anything. What tweaks would you make? Or are you just in full agreement with what Adam said?

[C]

Well, I'm in full agreement with what Adam said. I guess to me it's a. I'm just thinking about the secondary question, which is like based off whatever we're going to say about this, you know, how has a church failed? And look, there's things that the church just is, and it is by grace. Those things that God has formed it, created it and made it. And then there are things that it is instructed to do. Some of those things that it's instructed to do are to distribute grace either through saints of the sacraments or the right proclamation of the Word. But the question of failure and the question of the individual church versus the universal church is still sort of a question of obedience, which isn't a bad thing. But it's. If you're going to say the church has failed to be something, well, it can't fail to be something that it doesn't by its own efforts sustain or become. It only can fail in regards to what it is responsible for. And that's a question of obedience. So I think to Adam's point, that stresses more that the church has been given a mission. That mission includes long gospel, it includes caring for the saints. And it has to, you know, if it fails to properly do that mission to participate in God, it's not its own mission, it's God's mission. But if it fails to do that, then it's being disobedient. You could say in some sense that it's failed.

[A]

Okay, Yeah, I think I like that direction. I do. There's a good distinction there that I think has to be made, which is that the church has the jobs to proclaim, distribute to serve those things. And so the gospel is actually placed on the church as a command right. To proclaim the gospel is a demand on people who have to proclaim. And so there's a. There's at least something to acknowledge there, that when we are told we need to proclaim the gospel, that is a demand on us, not grace on us. So I think that's a good addition. Dad, you want to give us our final definition? This is like a McLaughlin Group.

[D]

No, the right answer is wrong.

[B]

Wow, you dated yourself.

[D]

I know, I know. And I also knew you were going to say that. This is. This is interesting to me because it's such. It's such an obvious answer. Of course, Bruce and Adam got it right. I always go to the. And I know crazy, right? It's interesting to go to the Augsburg Confession on this because anytime I teach the Augsburg Confession, I always sort of focus on what I call this race to justification where you get in the first three articles, you kind of get like a. Setting the stage of our reality. One, that there is a God, that he is creator of all things, that you, you know, you owe everything to him, that there is sin in Article 2, that you are in this sin, that you are complete need of God's redemption because of this sin. And then you get to Article 3, where you get that redemption comes through Christ, the Son of God. And then you get to Article 4, which is the saving article, right? This is your justification. This is how you're justified.

[A]

And.

[D]

And then Melanchthon, as he writes the Augsburg Confession, he's really good at anticipating questions from the audience. And you can see this, okay, Article one is God. Well, there's going to be a question, why do I care about God? Article two, sin. One of the big reasons you should care about God is because he's holy and you're not. And that this is going to cause a big problem for you. Article three is the solution. This is in Christ. Article four is justification. This is how you get salvation personally to you. You are justified on account of Christ by the grace of God. And then Article 5, you start talking about, how do I really, really, really get this personally? And you get the thing I think Adam was trying to say with this strange missiology language in the ministry, right? That specifically says, so that we may obtain this faith, right? So that justification comes by grace through faith on account of Christ. You get that in Article 4. But so that you may obtain this faith that saves you. God established the ministry that is the teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments so that these things are given to you. The Holy Spirit works through them to bring you to faith. And then it's really interesting in the Augsburg confession, in Article 6, right after that, Melanchthon slips in the new obedience, right? And this is where he starts talking about good works, that good works are necessary, not that you're saved through them, but that they're commanded by God, that they don't merit justification or forgiveness of sins, but that the voice of Christ testifies. So you also, when you have done all that you are commanded, will say, we are trustworthy servants. We have only done what was our duty. And then, as if to anticipate the question, okay, what is this going to mean? He then in Article 7, slips in the article on the Church, which answers your question, what is the church? Right. So you have the ministry which is specific, the specific office of teaching and preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments. And then you have the Church and I in our day and age. It's important to go Back to Article 7 when we talk about the church both for what it says the church is, and what it says is necessary in the church, and what it says is enough in the church. So I'm just actually gonna. I was gonna do it by memory, but I'm just gonna read it so I don't mess up a word and get roasted on the old interwebs. Our churches teach that one holy church is to remain forever. The church is the congregation of the saints. Whichever someone said in which the Gospel is purely taught and the sacraments are correctly administered for the true unity of the church, it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, I.e. rites or ceremonies instituted by men should be the same everywhere as Paul says, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. Ephesians 4, 5 and 6. And so that's the church. Right. And why does it exist? It exists for Article 5, for the sake of the ministry. Why does the ministry exist? To bring faith to the world through the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of sacraments, which happens within the church and in the context of the church, and is then connected to both justification and good works.

[A]

Langton was pretty smart. Yeah. I mean, I think talking about the church, especially in our context, without having, you know, Article 7 in the background is a bit of a mistake. So that is a very good addition. It sounds like to me then from seven, that the goal of the church would be that Christians, those who confess Christ and believe in him by faith, would gather together. That's a goal. So gathering together is a goal in order to preach the Word, administer the sacrament, and to receive the Word and receive.

[D]

To receive the saying the sacraments according.

[A]

To the truth of Scripture. So there can be ways in which that gathering is failing because people are gathering maybe around the Word, but not according to the truth. So the teaching or the preaching there is not in accordance with Scripture. For instance, would be one argument, and that would be probably the baseline for we would say the separation of different churches across the world.

[D]

Right.

[A]

Is that we would say, we look over there and we go, your gathering is not totally in accordance with the teachings from the scripture. And so then we would have distinctions in. In those gatherings. But that's the goal from there. Dad, what would you say is the individual goal of a congregation? Is it just the same applied locally, or is there something distinc when it's now individuals who have gathered?

[D]

I think it's the same applied locally, but with some additions like specific pastoral care, specific preaching to the individual congregation, that law and that gospel is going to have an expression within that congregation that can sometimes be tailored to things going on within the congregation. There's specific pastoral care of people, both in their sin, in bringing them to repentance, and just in their infirmity, in giving them actual care. I think some of the. If you go Back to Article 5, some of the office of the Ministry will happen. You know, I would say the great majority of it is going to happen at the pulpit and at the altar table. And. But beyond that, there will be specific aspects of that ministry that might happen in evangelistic enterprises, maybe at a coffee shop or something like that, or in a youth group or in a Bible study or something like that that happens locally and differently at specific congregations. Like, we don't have much of that here, but we don't have much demand for it at this point either. But some churches have a lot of demand for it, and we'll fill that need specifically through Article 5. Aspects of the ministry in particular ways that are specific to their congregation. But at the end of the day, you have to sit back on when you're talking about the core of the thing that it is enough that the gospel be preached and the sacraments rightly administered. And I'd say in a lot of ways that's what we really rely on here at our church, this little church up in Big Bear, is that it is enough that those things happen. Sometimes more can happen, but that much is enough.

[A]

Okay, so my next question will actually be sort of about failure and measuring as an organization or as different organizations of people gathered together to fulfill these commands and obligations that the community of believers have as people, we naturally want to measure that, figure out when it's working, when it's not working, and things like that. So I think that is where a word like failure comes in. So Lutheranism in America, it's not the predominant Christian religion in the United States. It's probably not the most politically or socially influential one. I mean, it's definitely not. We could just say it's definitely not. Some people might not even really know what a Lutheranism is, especially when you get regionally. So if you're in certain parts of the Midwest, everybody knows a Lutheran, and probably most people could tell you the difference between a Missouri Synod, Lutheran and other Lutherans and something like that in, again, particular regions of the Midwest. You get out to the west coast here and it's kind of, oh, I maybe heard of Lutherans before. And it could be either really bad or you're kind of like the Catholic Protestants. I'll hear that one a bit. And then I'm sure that's similar on the East Coast. Bruce so does that sort of like inability of Lutheranism to have a identity in the minds of the population of this country that it's in and that it has large church bodies in constitute failure, is that mean that Lutherans have not successfully gathered people together for the pure preaching of the gospel and the pure reception and administration of the sacraments?

[C]

Yes. Weird. You know, I had pastored out here on the east coast in New Jersey for just almost 20 years, and I had grown up Catholic. And when I grew up Catholic on the East Coast, I had a very clear sense of what people thought of Catholics. But when I became a Lutheran, I never knew. At least now I spent time going to school in the Midwest, and it was different out there. But on the east coast, at least when I would tell people I was a Lutheran pastor, I never knew how they would take that, because some people knew Lutherans as the most progressive of all the Christian groups. You know, any news story about, you know, a homosexual bishop or a lesbian or was a Lutheran more than Episcopalian out here, that was really the. The news, or they didn't know anything about us. It was just like, oh, I've heard of Lutherans, but I don't really know what that means. It never had. So it either had a negative connotation with the people circles I was in, or it had a neutral. It didn't usually have a positive because it's just there wasn't anything to know about it that could be positive. And I was reading a few months ago a book by Mark Noll on Christianity in America. And in that book he pointed out how Walther, C.W. walther really deliberately and intentionally turned a certain section of Lutheranism into a retreat from culture movement because he saw that the engagement with culture by certain other Lutherans had. Had led to a sort of accommodationism and a progressivism that had lost true teaching of the word. And so you ended up getting that kind of eventual. Over the next hundred years, you get that split into sort of liberal, progressive Lutherans, and I'll just call them quietist Lutherans, although that's a little unfair. But just to make the distinction clear, meaning they're just, they're not, they're not all about being engaged in culture and changing and transforming culture and accommodating culture. They're much more doctrinally focused. Right. Like, what gets them going and what motivates them to do the things that they do. Even social programs that Lutherans had been historically involved in is coming from a doctrinal gospel experience in the, in the sort of quietist camp. So we engage culture, but only to serve the greater mission where the progressivist Lutherans were much more like no, we got to change the culture, we got to embrace the culture. This, you know, is how we do evangelism and mission is, is we show how everybody's loved by God, that kind of thing. So I think the question is really, it depends on what kind of Lutheranism people perceive. You can get a totally different answer. And I think the question of failure, for example, that's going to be judged completely differently based on which tradition you're.

[A]

By your measure, would you say that that inability to, you know, for instance, that people can't individually distinguish because you have to have this huge in depth conversation about which brand of Lutheran you are, what kind of Lutheran you are, or that people are not aware of that or that it just completely affects it is that constituent of failure that there isn't like that whatever Lutherans are sort of confessing and gathering purposefully as a Lutheran church haven't succeeded in the brand war so that the average person knows what a Lutheran is.

[C]

I think so. Not exactly the way you've put it because I'm apprehensive about confusing popularity with the success of mission on the one hand. But on the other hand I do think there's a failure. I think the failure in conservative Lutheranism, very generally speaking is really a failure to, to be humble in the face of its treasures, if I can put it that way. There's, there's. I think, look, people can knock me on this, but I just, I just think there is an arrogance in conservative Lutherans, generally speaking about how their doctrines are so true and they're so right and they're so spot on that the practice of that theology in practical life. There's not an openness oftentimes to learn.

[D]

From from not an openness to learn from bad theology. Okay, gotcha.

[C]

Well, Bruce is waiting for something to.

[A]

Show is proof of the arrogance. We literally call ourselves the thinking fellows.

[C]

Yeah, I just think, I think that the failure isn't that people aren't trying to market themselves. The failure is that there's an insularity to Lutheranism that people don't have a problem with and they actually see it as a sign, as a reflection of the sort of purity that exists in the doctrines. Now you can say the doctrines are pure. But if you then take the next step and say from that, well, I have nothing else to learn from anyone. I've figured out how to properly express this doctrine very specifically into practical circumstances. This is the only way that it can be done because this is what it means according to the doct. I just, I start to have issues with that.

[A]

So.

[D]

All right, here's a peek behind the curtain. I'm not going to say why, but we've tried to record this episode once before and after we were done. This is the kind of thing that got me. I don't know what that means, what you just said. I don't know what it means. I don't understand what the expression of the true doctrine is when it's not being open. And the reason I get, I am always annoyed by that kind of thing, at least a little bit, is because every time I've run into it, it means that there's an unwillingness to let culture and sinful culture oftentimes define how you speak to the world. And since you're not doing that because of your doctrine, you're never going to be as successful. And I'm like, well, come on now. But at the end of the day, there's example after example after example of church bodies who have allowed culture to help them not only define doctrine, but also define the expression of their doctrine and have fallen into just utter error, just utter error. I mean, we're talking heresy. And I do not blame conservative Lutherans.

[A]

For.

[D]

Being wary of this kind of conversation, because every example, you mean, there are just so many examples of how this goes wrong when you start to allow the sinful culture to dictate for you your terms of success in the world and how you might get there. Like the sort of methodologies for getting there. And the last time we did this, one of the things that kind of annoyed me, it was like, hey, we're not doing enough of like fulfilling the felt needs of people. And that's why Lutheranism is failing. And then after we got off the show, I'm like, I called Caleb. I go, this really bugs me because Lutheranism, specifically conservative Lutheranism, has a history in this country of fulfilling the actual needs of people in this country through orphanages and old folks homes and schools and universities and fraternal societies and even freaking insurance, for Pete's sake, time and time and time and time again. And then people look at it and go, well, you just not, you're just not doing enough to help people with their left hand kingdom Needs. I'm like, give me. This was our history, man. We built the orphanages in this country. We built the old folks homes in this country. We built the hospitals in this country, we built the colleges in this country. Universities. No, we're not, not to the degree that we were. And I think you have, there's, there is a point there. But then the question is why? Is it because Lutherans wanted to stop doing it or because the state took every single one of those things over and made it so that people felt like they had secular options to do it that were paid for by the state and I. And, and then it's like, well, you're not doing, you're not fulfilling those actual needs anymore because the state's fulfilling those needs and now you need to start fulfilling the felt needs. Well, what are felt needs? Felt needs are sin. Like, I feel like I need a new freaking Porsche 911 really bad.

[C]

But I know felt needs are sin. I mean, there are felt needs that are important to people. Like for example, a child maybe may have a felt need that they need to be that their parents care about them or listen to them when they bring them to a problem. I mean, that's, I get what you're saying about general felt needs. I'm just saying I wouldn't classify the whole, the whole thing as a, as necessarily a sin. I can see where it can quickly get indulgent and selfish. I would agree with you there.

[D]

I'll go, I'll go with you there. But when we talk about these sort of, the felt needs that the church should be fulfilling corporately, I'm not even going to say, I guess I wouldn't say that necessarily all of those are sin too. But they're also kind of often tangentially connected to Article 5 and Article 7 of what we think the church is and does.

[C]

Well, let me give you an example of what I was meaning because I never actually said that people should take their lead from the culture. What I was referring to was particularly other Christian groups that Lutherans don't tend to, they don't even tend to interact with other groups. Well, like evangelicals, say, or Pentecostals or whoever.

[A]

Pentecostals.

[C]

And, and yet those other, those other groups will tend to work somewhat together on certain things that they, they agree about right or right or wrong on how you think they do that. But here would be an example that I would give. I have many times, and I'm not saying this is anecdotal, but many times I have had conservative Lutheran pastors tell me that any type of contextualization.

[A]

To.

[C]

Try to get the gospel into the hearts and minds of people is a sort of cop out sellout to culture and that the church doesn't really, that the best means of evangelism is to invite someone to church. So there's an active resistance that I have seen in a lot of these conservative Lutheran pastors to go out and preach the word, teach people, equip people to go out and do that, other than go out and bring them back into the church where the word is rightly preached and divided. And I don't think they're open to the pastors I've talked to who hold this view, other trusted voices, like people even like say DA Carson or Tim Keller or something like that, who would have a way to help you think through what a kind of an appropriate evangelism or outside evangelism could look like. It could be developed in a Lutheran way, but there's not an opening. That would just be one example of the kind of thing that I'm talking about.

[A]

I understand this one. I also think, I actually think sort of some of the examples of what 1517 does kind of shows. I mean, and even some of the pushback we got from early conferences. Dad. Of having non Lutherans say speak as plenary speakers at here we still stand and get accusations of, you can't have a Reformation conference and include Calvinists. It should be a Lutheran Reformation conference only we're the only true Reformation church kind of stuff. And we continue to have Calvinists and confessional Reformed Baptists. And we've had Episcopalians, Episcopalians and you know, we've, we've had the people speak at our conferences. Well vetted, smart people. And so I think at least we've acknowledged that there is something to having some camaraderie with people in other traditions. I would say the difficult thing for me with this kind of accusation about this is there are other confessional churches that also don't play nice, that people don't, you know, levy this accusation against that don't have growth issues. So I would say Rome is a really great example. Like you're, you know, Roman Catholic institutions aren't asking what they can learn from Tim Keller.

[C]

Well, they would, they wouldn't do that.

[A]

Correct. And so to say that a Lutheran needs to, in order to, to like grow and be a part of this broader, you know, confessional story and to have people understand who they are, what they are, I think is difficult because I think confessional Lutheranism sees itself much more like the Catholic Church, where the universal confession of the globe, of the world of Christianity and we have a confession and people should know us by our confession. I just kind of see.

[C]

I think that's changing in Catholicism. I mean, look at Bishop Barron would be the kind of key example of that. But I think the reason why the Catholics can't do that, and they do do that with orthodox is simply because of the Protestant Catholic divide over salvation is so great.

[B]

But they did do it with Chad Bird. They did invited Chad Bird to come to.

[C]

That's what I'm saying. I think there is something. This is some changes, some of that is changing. But I'm just saying the Catholics will work with the orthodox to find strategies and vice versa. But yeah, they don't generally tend to work with the Protestants, but we wouldn't work with the Catholics.

[A]

I know my dad's going to explode, but I'm going to not let him speak for one more. The example where I would say this kind of thing is true is actually my dad and I went and reviewed this David movie and afterwards we were talking about how, you know, you can see where theology is inserted into some of the music writing and stuff like this. And it seems like when you dig deeper, people will be like, ah, Angel Studios. Is Mormon controlled or this controlled when it comes down to individual movies, actually, a lot of these decisions are made by like groups and boards. So when you look at say, Sunday school curriculum at various publishers, or you look at these Christian movies, there will be people from four different traditions, five different churches working together on this project. And one of the things you'll never see is a confessional Lutheran. You will never see a confessional Lutheran name there.

[C]

You think by you're saying you're inferring by choice or by like, because they weren't asked or because they wouldn't do it.

[A]

I think sometimes I'll give an example that I know sometimes it's by choice. The Bible app, the big Bible app called YouVersion Bible. It's the biggest Bible app on the App Store, years ago, opened a podcasting function on the app and they reached out to various denominations to see if they would have a podcast on scripture on that platform and just hosted on that platform. 15:17 ended up being the Lutheran representation on that platform with 40 minutes in the Old Testament and 30 minutes in the New Testament. However, we were not their first choice. I was told in various meetings I had with youversion that they approached the Missouri Synod, that they talked to people in St. Louis, that they talked to people at Concordia Publishing House and that they were told no because they wouldn't have because there was a final doctrinal review process by YouVersion before they would allow things to go on the app. Thankfully, they said no. Also, they reached out to the elca, funny enough, and to Augsburg, and they both said no as well, because they would have to put content on there that would get reviewed by these people. They reach out to 1517, and we said yes. And guess what? They reviewed the content and they never changed anything we said while it was on there. And so I do know that Lutherans have said no to things. I don't know everything they say no to. And I know there's a huge list of things they're never invited to. But. So, yeah, I don't know. We're a little far from is that failure? But I guess to Adam and my dad, the question is, is that failure? After we've looked at our definition of the church and what the church is.

[D]

Supposed to do, I think it's funny that you think you can stop me from commenting on all of that. I'm not going to.

[B]

Come on, Scott, have a drink. But say what you want.

[D]

Here's the thing is that there's a distinction, at least a little bit of a distinction, between the original examples of what a congregation should be doing under the leadership of an individual pastor and how much we should expect that pastor to be able to do and how creative we should expect him to. To be and all that. And actually, like an evangelistic, the evangelistic work of an organization that can be more nimble and more open evangelistically and apologetically than can a local congregation. Like 1517. 1517 doesn't have the obligations to the individual people that they're called to serve that an individual pastor does in a congregation. And so we can be a little bit more open evangelistically and apologetically and catechetically to the world than can an individual LCMS pastor in a congregation for the most part.

[A]

So a good example of what you're saying is because at least this is what I would say 1517 can and should have somebody like Mike Horton to come give a talk at a conference.

[D]

But about the bondage of the will from a Calvinist perspective. Yep.

[A]

And he gave, like, a historical comparison between Lutheran and Calvin. A local LCMS congregation should not have a Presbyterian pastor or college professor or seminary professor come on Sundays, even if.

[D]

It might get them 20 more butts in the pews. Correct.

[A]

Completely agree. Okay.

[D]

So then what was the other Question since I started to answer my own. Oh, I also say Chad Bird was asked to come do a historical outline of the Old Testament from the perspective of Christ in the Old Testament, which is a rather safe thing for even Roman Catholics to have somebody like Chad do.

[A]

They needed him to because they don't know what's in the Bible.

[D]

Well, agreed, but. All right, so what are we talking about? Failure?

[A]

Yeah. So my question is, let's just boil it down to this. Is our recognition problem, our sort of Lutheranism confessional Lutheranism's brand recognition problem in the United States constitute failure? Is that failure?

[D]

I think we've beat around the bush a little bit to say that, you know what, we've not even, we've not even like identified. What does failure mean in sense? Like, does failure mean the fact that much like other, you know, big denominations, Lutheranism has by the numbers and is currently in decline.

[A]

So failure in this scheme. So this is why I had given a definition of the goal. This is what I'm trying to kind of get people to see here, is that each of you could define failure in various ways, but we defined the goal which we all agreed on, which means is this hamper? So failure in this sense would mean is this hampering the goal of the church? Is this making it so that the goal of the church that we defined as sort of from Article 7 and from Small called and from the scriptures not being fulfilled because people don't know who Lutherans are? That's kind of what I mean by failure here. Now other people could say, well, it's failure because it's not as many people as could be reached or something. But for us, for the thinking fellows, does that mean that we're failing at that mission that we have outlined already on this show?

[D]

I'd say, I mean, it's difficult to say this globally. I'm not a synodical president or anything like that. I don't have my finger on the pulse of what happens in hundreds, if not thousands of congregations across this country and across the world that call themselves Lutheran. But I, from what I've seen on the whole, there is a preaching problem in the Lutheran Church where I think the. And it's getting to some degree, it's getting better. I think just, and this is anecdotal observations from just going to places where oftentimes that the gospel is preached is sort of sidelined to other agendas, be they conservative or more liberal ish agendas, is sidelined on both sides. Everywhere I've gone, I'd say, you know, when they celebrate the sacraments, those sacraments are rightly administered whether they're celebrated every week or less frequently. I've never seen a baptism in a Lutheran church where I've said, oh, that's heretical. I've never really seen the Lord's Supper celebrated where I've said, well, I mean, that's not true, but rare. I've seen that, but rare. Rarely, Rarely there's some sort of. I don't even know if I, I'm, you know, I think they would call them conservative movements into that, but I actually think they're more liberal movements in that have. Have changed sometimes that where I think there has been a failure. And I don't blame individual pastors necessarily, and I don't. I don't know who to blame. I think there's a catechetical failure in the church when it comes to teaching people what it means to be Lutheran and why it's important to stay Lutheran and why it's important to get married and have kids and raise those kids not just in the general faith, but in Lutheranism and to perpetuate this church specifically and this theology specifically because it's important and for the reasons that it's often criticized that it protects good and right doctrine and practice, that it needs to keep going as the Lutheran faith. But at the end of the day, I, I know that that's in God's hands and that he will persist it as he has intended, but that he does call us as part of that persistence to have a role. And part of that role is to catechize the children so that they grow up in this faith and then want to. And not even if they. I don't care if they want to, but just do stay in it and then raise their families in it. There's a whole aspect of that that's just been lost to general. Hey, maybe it'd be good if you'd stay generally Christian. Doesn't really matter where you go. Hey, it'd good maybe if you got married and if you got married, maybe it'd be good if you married a Christian, I suppose, and may. If you guys decide you want to have kids, that's great. But, you know, if you don't baptize them in the Lutheran Church, maybe if you at least read them a Bible story every once in a while, that'd be good. Other priorities, you know, secular priorities are not taught that vaguely. In homes, it's not taught vaguely that maybe it'd be good if you'd Finish high school or maybe it'd be good if you'd go to college. It's taught very specifically and we've stopped teaching this one specifically and catechizing this one specifically. And it's, it's showing failure. It's showing a decline in the church that has, I think, has to do at least partially with that probably also has to do with a lack of evangelism and apologetics as well. But in the context of the congregation, what the congregation does in word and sacrament, I think that most pastors try to be faithful to what they understand as the importance of the preaching the word and administering the sacraments. Just on the catechetical side, I think we've lost something. And again, I don't blame the individual pastor for that. I think that over time, as a slow creep, culture has made its way in and secularization has made its way into the mindsets of people. And that includes probably people in church, in church leadership, and the whole nine yards.

[A]

All right, Adam, your turn. Does sort of the decline plus the marketing issue, the awareness issue constitute failure?

[B]

Can I just say no?

[A]

Yeah, you can just say.

[B]

But, you know, as we've been talking, one thing kind of reminded of what Rod used to say when questions of whether or not Lutherans should, what's the word? Take on, appear more. Less Lutheran, and when engaging the culture or something like that. And he'd always say things like, Scott, remind me if, Tell me if this is not quite right. But he'd say, I think confessional Lutheranism can hold its own.

[D]

Yeah. Yep.

[B]

And what he meant by that is that the tools for a Lutheran, a robust Lutheran confession to proclaim and defend the gospel and the, you know, the. I'm sorry, Caleb, this is going to maybe trigger you a bit, but the Christian worldview are all there. Whether or not people do it is a totally different thing. And why they might or might not is probably everything circum, very circumstantial. Like Scott's been saying, the role of the pastor in Lutheran tradition is quite different than, say, like the evangelical church. Our pastors generally, I hope. I think not only are they preparing for their sermon and, you know, leading Bible studies, but they're going and visiting shut ins and they've got a lot of stuff going on. So one of the reasons why we maybe don't see so many Lutheran confessional Lutherans are conservative Lutherans out in the public arena because they're really busy in their vocations. And that's actually a good thing that they're taking Their vocations.

[D]

Seriously.

[B]

They're not seeking to be the celebrity pastor or something like that. But at the same time, I sometimes wonder. It is always curious to me that in a small confessional church body like the opc, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and I don't know, they got tens of thousands, very small compared to, say, the lcms, you've got people like Carl Truman who are pretty well known when speaking to issues like transgenderism, identity kind of stuff. And I always wonder, why is it that there's not a whole lot of Lutherans who are doing that? It's not that they're not. I mean, I don't care about the celebrity stuff, but why aren't there, like, a lot of Lutheran public intellectuals? And then. But then I'm kind of reminded by some conversations Scott and I have had that this is the whole, like, this is kind of what 1517 is trying to do. Not in like a snooty way, Public intellectual or something like that. Even though I started wearing a pocket square. Yeah, but you know, that that's the spirit. The. The legacy of Rod is trying to give people a chance to advocate for the Lutheran view in the public arena. And like Scott said earlier, Team 17 has a lot of opportunities to do that, whereas your local pastor does not, because he's got a vocation that. I almost said the word sequester, that sounds so bad, but kind of focuses him on his particular congregation, the sheep that he's to shepherd. So a little story, though. If I got time. Do I have time?

[A]

You do have time. And then. Yeah. And then I'll.

[B]

I have just a story to illustrate how weird it is that the Lutheran brand, I think you used that term earlier, isn't always out there. Maybe I've told it before, but at Oxford in 2002, Corey Moss and I started setting up a Lutheran society, a student society. And we went to the freshman fair, they call it Freshers Fair. And to find our booth, to pass out stuff, propaganda, you know, and we went there, and being men, we didn't look. We didn't get a map to tell us where our booth was. This is a massive hall, right? And so we go looking around, we can't find our Lutheran booth. We looked around all the other evangelical, like, Christian societies, and there was, like, dozens of them. No table for the Lutherans. So we go to somebody who's working, the working. A staff person, say, hey, could you help us find us? And they point us to this other room, which is the room for all the other world religions. And all the non Christian groups. So like every different type of Muslim and so on. And they had the Lutheran table. This is a confessional. Lutheran student society was literally positioned between the Shia Muslims and the Jains. The Jains are like a Hindu sect and like the Baha' I and the rest of them are in that particular room. And this is at the University of Oxford where, I mean, England could have gone Lutheran.

[D]

Correct.

[B]

In the 30s.

[D]

It is not well known there as a position at all.

[B]

Yeah, but you'd think, like at a place like Oxford, they at least know the name Lutheran. Like they'd say, oh, Luther, Martin Luther.

[D]

Yeah, no, it's crazy there. I mean, you have, you have. You could have easily gone Lutheran is right. Up to. And including Elizabeth's main tutor being a Lutheran.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

She was catechized on the Augsburg Confession and the Lochi.

[B]

Yeah, I don't think it's that. Obviously it's not that as extreme or whatever here in the United States, but there are places like, they're in the. The left coast and land of fruit and nuts and things like that. They've not heard of Lutherans in many places. And probably the. There's places in the east coast or like Bruce illustrated, when people hear the word Lutheran, I get this a little bit in the Midwest, they think, oh, that's the Rainbow Flag Church down the road with all these liberal Protestants or whatever.

[A]

So that sucks.

[B]

Maybe, like it's.

[D]

Maybe we've got a little bit more and more like when people argue with us for like doing Lutheran content. And I'm always wondering, like, are you. Are you worried that it's going to be too conservative and it's going to turn people off. The answer lately has been no. I'm worried that they're going to connect it to the Rainbow Flag Church down the street. And I go, oh, my. Yeah, I don't want to lose that one. That's a fight I don't want to want.

[A]

Especially.

[D]

They should lose that one. They should have to give up the name, not us.

[A]

Well, and we. There's. I mean, they're learning about saying everyone is welcome. No, not everybody's welcome. Okay, so is this kind of maybe.

[B]

Everybody'S welcome, but not every idea is welcome.

[C]

Yeah, there you go. There you go.

[B]

When it comes to ideas.

[D]

That was good, Adam. That was really good.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Adam. I have some theories here about some of the stuff you brought up, so we can.

[B]

I was just waxing.

[A]

I just. No, it was beautiful. There you go. Thank you. It was so eloquent. I wonder, when it comes to the public intellectual thing, if one of the problems for confessional Lutheranism has been that we funnel all of our potentially sort of impressive people with academic interests into the ministry and those other traditions. You will find it's like, hey, where did you meet the people that you write for this magazine now or you write for this newspaper or this article? I went to Harvard. Oh, I went to Yale. I went to, you know, some other elite school. I went to Brown. I went to Northwestern. I went, you know, something like this. And we know from experience that life and people deny this, but that a lot of life is who you know. And Lutherans kind of Lutherans know Lutherans, Lutherans know Lutherans. And part of that is, is if every single one of your bright young men ends up at your own schools for all of their schooling, those are the people they won't know. And so, yeah, and there's not a lot of professional opportunity, as you said, because once they're in the ministry, we keep them busy in those vocations. There's then not a lot of professional opportunity to know new people or people with greater influence. And I was just thinking about this because there's even some political podcasts I listen to where it's like, it's a mix of Roman Catholics and conservative Jews.

[D]

And those are my podcasts. You only listen to them when I'm in the car with you?

[A]

No, I listen to them to frustrate myself, and then I turn them off and then there'll be a Protestant. And you listen for long enough and you go, where did you meet each other? Not at church. Elite University. You went to elite university school.

[D]

Harvard.

[A]

And then I go, of course there's no Lutherans there. It's not that Lutherans couldn't get into elite schools. It's that every single smart Lutheran I've ever met has been sent to a Concordia or Hillsdale at the most diverse.

[D]

Well, and I'll bet you some of those Hillsdale people will have broader bases in that respect than a lot of us. I think it's interesting as public intellectual thing is, funny, I have forgotten to order Adam's business cards that say public intellectual. But now this will remind me. And on.

[B]

Don't do that.

[D]

But one of the problems that we have today is that every, you know, every kind, pretty smart pastors oftentimes thinks it's half of their job as a pastor of their church to be a public intellectual on Twitter or sometimes even a public intellectual to the Internet from their pulpit. And I think that's really bad, actually. At the end of the day, I think that's really bad. I think there is a role for, you know, a Lutheran in the world as an evangelist and an apologist, maybe even as a catechist or as a philosopher or as a historian or things like that. But it's not ne. It's. That is not the job from the pulpit. And even as a political commentator, maybe, but that's also not the job from the pulpit. And I think that there is a role for people like what Rod did with his. His debates in his early career against non Christians, with his work at White Horse Inn, with. With Calvinists and, you know, Reformed Baptists and things like that, with his work in the Knees with Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and Christians United for Reformation. That was super, super important for Lutheran to be involved with. And Rod was the right choice for that at the time. And I totally agree with that. But there were probably five other people that could have been Lutherans that could have been involved in that. And I know that they were to some degree, like. Like I know Bob Kolb was involved with some of those to some degree. And that was important, too. There is a role for this. But Adam's right. When we see this correctly, we don't identify that as the pastor of the local congregation. That's something else. And I think you're right, Caleb. We just have fewer of those because we send everybody for higher degrees to one of two institutions usually. I mean, so they do. Their. Their perspective and even their friendship base is not expanded beyond. Used to argue against that all the time. It's why he sent guys to Oxford. He. I mean, it's why he himself talks about going and getting a doctorate from a place that was not the seminary. Not that. Not that if you got yours from the seminary, it meant that you were any less educated or not as smart. I don't think that's what it means at all. But what it did mean for him to go to Strasbourg and for Adam to go to Oxford is that they met other people, people outside of their perspective had to argue their position organically to people who had other positions organically, and to get to know what that meant. And that's important to have at least some of those people laying around or in your quiver that you can kind of bring out when it's needed. And I do hope that that's part of the role that 1517 does play in this.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And to bring it back to sort of the theme of the episode, I Also don't think that, like, I think this is an identifiable issue, but I also don't think it means that the church has failed. Right. Because it is a secondary or tertiary feature of being in the world. And so it's something we would desire that say, Lutherans have a voice, but it is not the measure of has a church failed?

[D]

And it may be evangelistically important as well, and apologetically important as well.

[A]

Well, I also think, you know, in regards to the, the failure question, you'll hear things like, you know, a shrinking church isn't necessarily a sign of failure because lots of things can make you shrink. But a church that's not grow or, but a church that's growing, I can show you that that's success or something like that. There's just a lot of difficulty around this question because I think the same thing is true. A church can grow for a lot of reasons. A Lutheran church could grow for rejecting Lutheranism. Right. Or, or its past.

[D]

I may or may not have seen something like that this past weekend.

[A]

Yeah. And I would say we've probably all been to churches where you walk in and the door says Lutheran and you go, that was not a Lutheran church. I've done it. I know my dad did it this weekend. You know, there's.

[B]

I'm gonna wait till we hit Stop Recording to ask him, but I'm getting very eager to hear the story.

[D]

Yeah, I can't, I can't say anything.

[A]

Yeah. But it happens. It happens. I know it's happened to Adam. I'm gonna guess it's happened to Bruce. I don't know how many Lutheran churches Bruce visits.

[B]

He's at the Episcopalian church usually.

[D]

What?

[A]

Bruce Watson. This is not a Lutheran church. You know, this is, this is an Episcopalian church.

[C]

I'm actually, I research like every single church before I go to it. Like, I know so much about it before I go to it.

[D]

Yeah, that's probably wise.

[A]

But I would say it's in those moments where I go, not Lutheranism has failed, but there is something failing at this congregation. Because whatever about I walked out and said this wasn't a Lutheran church affected, did the proclamation of the gospel or the administration of the sacraments or both. And so I think that's where that is failing. I think the difficult thing for people in this conversation and maybe where follow up conversations could go later this year, is that it then would seem like Lutheranism could never fail because there will always be some congregation out there, some group preserving the right preaching of the gospel and the Administration of the sacraments to a group of people. And because of that, and because grace and the gospel are under the preservation of God, it can never fail. And so you're just off the hook for doing anything that would, I don't know, prevent failure because the gospel will be preserved or something like that. And so I do. I could see some.

[D]

There's a flip side of that. There's a flip side of that. As long as you are preaching the gospel and rightly administering the sacraments, that statement is true. Right. That God will preserve it. But you can't alleviate yourself from any responsibility if you are called to the role to do that. And it's not happening. That's the job.

[C]

Earlier. It's really an obedience question, the failure question. The evaluation of a failure is really an obedience question.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, that's the job. Now, if you're doing the job and the church is declining, I don't think you can be blamed. But at the end of the day, that's the job.

[C]

Yeah, the seven churches aren't around anymore, and they've had a pretty good start.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's true. And I actually think it means you could be failing while declining and failing while growing. Right. That's the important.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

One of the important takeaways there is you could be failing while both directions are happening. You can. I would say this about, though, for people with sort of like a declining church, which is. I think a church could. Could fail by, like, going from a certain number to zero in the sense that the saints are no longer gathering. Right. And that was part of our definition. And so I would say there is some sort of necessity to provide the space, the means, the position to have people gather. So, like, if you live in an area and your church closes, there's a lot. There's Lutherans living in your area who refuse to gather in your church, and that has caused a decline. You are failing that mission in the sense that you are failing to gather those saints or. Or the saints are failing that mission because the saints are failing to gather. They could also be on the people as individuals. So there's no one prescription that does this. So there's, you know, I don't really want to, you know, sound postmodern, but there's more than one. One way to slice this cake. I would say for the sake of this episode, Lutheranism. I would say Lutheranism in the United States has not failed, but does have things it could do better or improve or a future that is bright. I don't know, I feel like the reason to do an episode like this is because people are afraid that the future of Lutheranism is doom and gloom. It's clouds, it's shrinking, it's disappearing into even more obscurity than it maybe already has. This is just feeling. I kind of feel like it's the opposite. I feel like people know that and that non Lutherans are concerned for Lutherans about that, which means we have some momentum in the direction of people paying attention to what we're doing.

[B]

Take the white pill? Is that what you're saying?

[A]

Yeah. Take the white pill on this one. Yeah.

[D]

Cheers. All right.

[A]

Before. Before 3/4 of this cast dies from whatever illness they got over Christmas.

[C]

We were all sick.

[A]

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Thinking Fellas podcast, our first episode of 2026. If you're a new listener, you can subscribe in your favorite podcasting app, apps, or on YouTube. And don't forget to check out more of the resources from 1517. Go to 1517. Org. Go to 1517 on YouTube and you can see stuff that we do every week. We'll catch you next time. Bye, Sam.