Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Electing Bishops in a time of change – Pastor Thoughts

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Just as my congregation is in a time of discerning God’s future for us, so it is with many of our sibling congregations, synods and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) as a whole. 

In fact, over the coming weeks and months, four of the five ELCIC Synods will be electing bishops. In all but ours, the incumbent bishops have announced they will not be serving another term.  Stepping down will be Bishop Larry Kochendorfer in Alberta and Bishop Sid Haugen in Saskatchewan who have each served 12 years and Bishop Michael Pryse of the Eastern Synod who has served 26 years! Additionally, after 18 years National Bishop Susan Johnson will be stepping down as National Bishop after the National Convention next summer. 

By next summer, four of six Bishops will be in the first year of their first terms. Bishop Kathy Martin of BC will have been serving for three years and Bishop Jason will be the old experienced hand with six years of service. 

This will represent a significant change in leadership among Lutherans in the ELCIC, especially so in a time of significant change for the church.

Unlike the calling of a pastor, where a congregation or ministry enters into an intentional time of discernment through an extensive call process, where candidates are considered and interviewed before being voted on, Bishops are elected in the space of a few days at a Synod or National Convention. In the ecclesiastical election process, any pastor on the roster of the church is eligible to be elected. 

In advance of these upcoming elections, materials for discernment have been provided and some synods are soliciting nominations ahead of time – though still any pastor can be nominated on the first ballot. After that, successive rounds of balloting occur with only the top vote-getters proceeding to the next round. It is similar to processes used by political parties electing leaders except without campaigning and hopefully more of the Holy Spirit. 

The task of stepping into the leadership roles of newly elected Bishops (and relatively recently elected ones) will be to help guide the church through the rough waters ahead. It won’t be enough to simply keep our ship of the church steady ahead, as we already know that we need to change and adapt. Bishops will be called to lead the transformation of the church, envisioning new directions, lifting up and amplifying innovators, and making space for those who have been historically excluded from leading. 

The task of conventions discerning and electing new bishops will be to avoid seeking safe and comfortable choices. When it feels like we are in crisis, we long for things that make us feel comfortable and safe. We long for easy and known choices. When faced with the need to change, options that feel like the least amount of change or the easiest path to change can be very tempting. 

But the reality is that God is calling us to transformation that will not be easy or comfortable. Bishops and other leaders who will guide us through will need to be willing to push us to uncomfortable and difficult places. 

They will need to help us seek faithfulness. And faithfulness will mean giving up a lot of ourselves and a lot of our baggage as the church. 

But faithful is what God continues to call us to be, even in this changing world. 

And faithful is what God promises to be, especially in the time of change ahead. 

Pastor Erik+

PS The MNO Synod has prepared some materials for discernment here: 

Click to access Discernment-Guide-for-Electing-a-Bishop-FINAL.pdf

Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Learning from our past – Pastor Thoughts

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This week has been a big week for my Doctor of Ministry studies. For a good chunk of the winter, I have been working on a course on the Gospel of Mark, a lot of learning which I incorporated into my preaching (and will continue to) and into our Lenten study. I handed in the paper for that course early (something the 22 to 26-year-old me never achieved in Seminary). Our class cohort was also informed of our thesis project advisors, which is a big deal. My project advisor is the professor who will be walking with me through the development of my fully formed research question and proposal, through actual research and into the writing phase. All of that starts this fall and will take me through to the winter of 2026. So, very exciting indeed! 

This week I completed another smaller paper on the ‘Invocavit’ Sermons of Martin Luther, the most famous of his sermons during the Reformation. This paper was the first for a class where the bulk of the “class time” will happen in Germany for two weeks in May. I will be travelling on a study tour with world-renowned Luther scholar Rev. Dr. Gordon Jensen, who was also a much-beloved seminary professor of mine. We will visit Wittenberg primarily, the town where Martin Luther lived when he was doing much of his Reformation writing. We will also see several other Reformation places and other sights in East Germany. 

We will get to do things like see (and maybe hold) Martin Luther’s very own Bible, see the church he preached in, and the university he taught at. We will also go to Leipzig to see one of the places where Johann Sebastian Bach lived and worked.  It is all very exciting for this history nerd. 

As I was preparing the first paper for this class, I was surprised (even after studying Luther in seminary) to learn about Luther’s approach to dealing with change. His ‘Invocavit’ sermons were eight sermons he preached in eight days to the people of Wittenberg after months of unrest and conflict over how to go about making changes together to their lives of faith. They were arguing over how to worship and what church rules they ought to follow. 

It all sounded so very familiar. We are still negotiating and sometimes arguing over very similar things today. Ironically, it also sounds like what we will read in The Book of Acts about the early Church as the new Christians sorted out how they would be a community, too. 

Luther’s message to the people of Wittenberg amid all the chaos was to remain committed to the Gospel. Like the folk then, we have challenges and difficult waters to navigate ahead. Also like the folk then, I think Luther’s message applies to us. Whatever challenges come, we too, are called to remember the Gospel, that the whole reason we are doing all this church stuff, the reason we are being a community together, is because of our call to proclaim the Gospel to one another, to our siblings in faith and to our neighbours and the world around us.

It sounds like a good lesson to learn from our own history. 

covid-19, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Easter Surprises – Pastor Thoughts

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I know that Easter Sunday is supposed to be a day of surprise; the empty tomb is a reality that changes everything. But I didn’t expect the Easter surprise I woke up to on Easter Sunday morning this year. 

Knowing that this is the time of year when snow mould and spring allergies are beginning and that colds and cases of flu are going around, it should not have been surprising that I tested positive for COVID on Sunday morning. 

So, thank you to Bishop Jason for stepping in to preach and preside at the last minute. 

Also thankfully, my course of illness hasn’t been that bad, with the primary symptoms being very low energy and a very runny rose. 

So, my first week of Easter has been spent in the basement of our house, isolating from my family, working when I can, and napping when I am tired. 

While certainly COVID isolation isn’t the same as an experience of the empty tomb and the Resurrection, it does occur to me that there are some similarities to that of disciples. 

As I stared down at my positive test result at about 7:30 on Sunday morning, it was hard to process what I was seeing. Part of me didn’t want to believe it and part of me knew that all the plans I had made for that day and the days ahead were about to come crashing down. Still, it took me time to sort out what was going on in my own mind and then to begin to respond outwardly. I needed my wife to come and see the test, as well to confirm what I was seeing. 

In a similar way, with the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples and then again to Thomas, it is clear that they did not know how to process the news of the empty tomb either. I have been hiding in my basement; they hid in the upper room. 

Thankfully, my COVID will probably go away soon enough. In contrast, the Easter morning surprise of the disciples changed them all for the rest of their lives. It is easy to overlook that part of the story. As we sing and praise with Alleluias, we can miss the mind-blowing experience of seeing something totally unexpected (even if Jesus regularly told his disciples he would rise on the third day).

That empty tomb moment changed everything for the women who went to bring spices to anoint Jesus’ body. Jesus appearing in the upper room changed everything for the scared disciples. From the moment of not quite being sure what they were seeing, Jesus’ Resurrection meant that all other plans, all the thoughts and sense of the future that anyone had had just a moment before,  came crashing down. 

The world became an Easter world in the blink of an eye and those who first saw the tomb and then witnessed the risen Christ firsthand were now responsible to live new lives because of it. 

Though we have known our whole lives that the Resurrection happened over two thousand years ago, the transformation of our world and our lives is still going on. Jesus is still ushering us into ways of being and living this Easter, too.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Pastor Thoughts

“We wish to see Jesus” – Pastor Thoughts

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“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 

As we come to the last part of our Lenten journey, we hear this striking request in the gospel reading for the 5th Sunday in Lent. It has not been an easy journey to get ourselves here, Lent has not been hard on us. Week after week what has been revealed is just how much and how deeply we do not understand Jesus and the work of proclaiming the Kingdom. It has been a process of uncovering our inability to see, hear and know Jesus as we ought to.

So there is no small amount of irony in hearing a gospel lesson that begins with foreigners coming to the disciples, asking to see Jesus and the disciples not knowing how to respond. I think we know that there is a disconnect in our current understanding of Jesus (read: what this faith business is all about). We know that we are in a strange place these days as mainline Christians hanging on to whatever we can, yet also feeling distant from and uncertain about our own faith commitments, feeling unsure if all the stuff we profess to believe is true and trustworthy. 

I am pretty sure many of us would feel ill-equipped to handle things if a visitor came to us and asked, “We wish to see Jesus.” 

In the online spaces I roam about, I am connected to a lot of other pastors and clergy from all kinds of denominations – mostly mainline or progressive. As much as folks in the pews might be wondering and wrestling with what role faith and faith practices have in our lives, the same wrestling is happening among clergy. If someone were to ask a group of pastors, “We wish to see Jesus” the number of Jesuses that would be pointed to would be as many as there are clergy present. 

Like the folks in the pews, pastors and clergy have wonderings and questions too. Often how we see and understand Jesus has less to do with what we know and understand from the witness of scripture and our ancestor’s faith as it has to with whatever concern, issue, hobby horse or question seems to be occupying our attention. There is gun-toting Jesus, social justice Jesus, moral purity Jesus, prosperity Jesus, correct theology Jesus and so many more. 

It is almost as if we shape Jesus to fit whatever thing is front of mind for us, whatever issue of our own is most important at the moment. 

So as rough as this Lent has been, unraveling the ways in which we don’t understand has been something we needed to do.  Something we need so that the revealing of the Jesus we truly need can begin. And when those folks come to us and ask, “We wish to see Jesus” we might pause and consider. Rather than the version of Jesus we want to show, who is the Jesus they need to meet? Who is the Jesus being revealed to us this Holy Week and Easter?

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Taking a break from the discipline of Lent

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As we enter the back half of the season of Lent we are near to Laetare Sunday or ‘Rejoice Sunday’ which occurs on the 4th Sunday of Lent. It is meant to be a Sunday to celebrate – in the middle of a season of solemnity – as we approach Easter. 

It kind of feels like a lot to unpack. Lent itself is meant to be a time that breaks us off from our usual rhythms and patterns of life.  It is a time to pull back from all the usual things that occupy our attention in order to make room to focus on the promises of God, on our baptismal call to take up the cross and follow. Lenten discipline is about doing things that help us to see God, to see what God is revealing to us in and through Jesus’ journey to the cross. 

But maybe it is a bit weird that after only 3 Sundays of Lent, there would be a Sunday where we pause the solemn and sombre reflection to celebrate. Surely five weeks of Lenten discipline isn’t too much to ask of us, too hard for us to follow.

While sometimes it can feel like the Church has a million rules, especially when it comes to worship and liturgy, the practices and traditions that we follow come from generations of Christians previously forming and shaping them. Maybe all the faithful siblings in faith who came before us understood what human beings are really like. We need shifts in pace, big and small, to help us along the way. Taking a moment to celebrate that we are nearly through our Lenten journey is a way to help us mark the passing of time, to keep us from getting too weighed down by Lent. 

Though it seems like five weeks isn’t that long, we are creatures who need signposts to help us along the way. We are not meant to do the same thing over and over; rather we live according to rhythms and cycles that mark and make meaning of time. Even though we live by patterns of annual and seasonal repetition, we need things to change day to day, week to week in order that we can locate ourselves in time. We need things to change to keep us engaged and present in the here and now. 

At four weeks into Lent, we anticipate the end of our Lenten journey, knowing what is to come in Holy Week. We look with even more hope to what is coming at Easter, and it is this hope that allows us to finish the journey of Lent.

So this week we take a moment to celebrate that the promise of resurrection is just and always around the corner. 

An iPhone Pastor for a Typewriter Church