There we were, the problems of the LCMS clergy, as determined by Alan Klaas, all over the Metro section of the Thursday, March 16, Detroit News, including color pictures.

The title read "Shortage of ministers worsens in Metro area: Churches explore new ways to fill their pulpits."

There is little question that the Board for Higher Education (BHE), at the urging of the Dr. William Meyer, the Executive director of the BHE, commissioned this study to create a need for Dr. Norbert Oesch's Seminary without walls, the Pastoral Leadership Institute.

The time is getting short and the Synod is running out of "libby" pastors from the 60's and early 70's. What to do, what to do? I've got it! Let's get Klaas to show that LCMS pastors are incompetent, poorly equipped, psychological misfits. He can ask all the wrong questions and the public media will run with it.

It is my understanding that the a few years ago Klaas divorced his wife and married a woman who worked in the ELCA national or regional head quarters. Now Klaas is going to judge the LCMS clergy in public with nothing but "objective statistics," of course.

What is the judgment of Klaas's report? The findings were published in the January 24th, 2000 LCMS NEWS release titled, "REPORT FINDS RELATIONSHIPS KEY TO KEEPING, RECRUITING PASTORS." Will someone please take Martin Luther out back and shoot him? Luther was the past master of bad relationships with the devil, the world, and our flesh, not to mention half of Europe. His problem was he was too focused on theology instead of relationships.

I take no issue with Klaas's statistics but it is his choice of questions that came from the depths of hell. It's too bad Klaas couldn't have conducted a survey on those being thrown to the lions in the first Century.

Klass's survey arrives at the following conclusions:

"estimates that a fifth of all parish pastors in the Synod are in 'advanced stages' of burnout, with a similar number well on their way to it;"

"a 'harshness' and 'intolerant spirit' among many Synod congregations and pastors that 'is poisoning the infrastructure of the LCMS;'"

"increasing psychological problems in pastors' and seminarians' families, and minimal resources in the church to deal with those problems; and"

"parents discouraging their sons from entering the parish ministry."

Klass's premise for asking these questions is fundamentally flawed. The LCMS ministerium is not about relationships; it is about theological agreement!

Since I joined the Synodical roster in 1969 there has been no peace in the Synod because there is no theological agreement. I have never witnessed theological agreement in any circuit, district, or Synodical Convention.

I can't get the Michigan District Board of Directors or the Council of District Presidents to agree on three and only three creeds for use in LCMS Church Services, let alone the use of Lutheran hymnbooks or practice Voter Supremacy in all congregations. One third of the Synod in Convention doesn' t agree on the name "Lutheran."

My first year in the Ministry, we clergy had it out in Detroit over whether or not to invite the ALC and LCA to joint worship with us for the Reformation service downtown.

Most of the pastors I've followed in the ministry or worked with in congregations had a mistress. They are now out of the ministry. At least three of these guys tried to run me out of the ministry.

I once asked Robert Preus if the fighting would ever stop. His immediate response, "Never." His view was that if the devil never quits how can we. It is interesting how the St. Louis faculty supported Joe Barbour in his lawsuit against Rev. Herman Otten.

Klaas is wrong about parents discouraging their children. I just warned my son to prepare for a life long war.

Why isn't Dr. John Johnson leading the movement to reinstate Herman Otten? Is it because the truth is too much of an embarrassment?

The fact is that I love my work as a pastor. The congregation has given me more support that I deserve. Why isn't Klaas interested in the only reason there is a Synod, namely doctrinal agreement?

The report says, "If the downward trend in the number of clergy continues as it did during the 1988-1997 period, the study suggests, there could be only 2,220 parish pastors in the Synod (compared with the 5,187 reported for the end of 1998) by 2017."

Why doesn't Klaas show that if the nearly 500 LCMS pastors who are now working for the District Offices and Synodical entities were all turned out on the street there wouldn't be a clergy shortage in the LCMS. In other words, the LCMS laity is financing their own clergy shortage.

It is hard to recruit new pastors when the clergy don't have theological agreement. The Synod needs to shrink for a while till it understands the all-important need of doctrinal agreement that it once enjoyed.

It appears Klass just wants us to be happy while we compromise the truth. There much more happiness in the ELCA. They have overwhelmingly agreed to surrender the doctrines of justification and inspiration of Scripture. They happily operate by Episcopacy.

The Detroit News article covered the problems of a number of denominations but relied heavily on Dr. Klaas's report on the LCMS. The following quotes from Klaas are in the article.

"I would say this is a growing major problem that is clearly headed toward a crisis," said Alan Klaas, president of Mission Growth Ministries, a national ministry consulting organization. Klaas this year authored a report on the clergy shortage for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod."

And again..: "This is tears in their eyes, fist pounding the table, saying 'I've got to get out of this blankity-blank job,' Klass said of the nearly 70 pastors he interviewed for his study. Forty percent were either burned-out or on their way, he said."

The Detroit News article concluded:
"To fill empty pulpits, many congregations are turning increasingly to more dual-career pastors, female pastors, second-career pastors and even people without a seminary degree to lead the local church."

The Detroit News analyzed the problem as follows:
"One of the Protestant denominations hardest-hit by the pastor shortage is the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. That denomination is struggling to cope with the grim arithmetic of a new report that predicts those 1,000 churches will remain empty, even if seminaries produce twice as many graduates and the retirement rate of pastors is cut in half. The report also suggested that pastors get free counseling and that seminaries begin using a "deeper level of admission screening, possibly with the kind of clinical psychological screening often used by businesses." The authors said the $500 test was well worth the cost, since the denomination will be forced to spend about $89,000,000.00 to replace pastors who retired early."

We have a few corrections for Klass. First, Michigan has 400 congregations, and twenty-three vacancies is just over 5%. Just five years ago we had 30 vacancies in Michigan and John Heins said this was good for movement. Where is the shortage?

Isn't it interesting that women clergy appear to be the solution according to the Detroit News.

Naturally, for Klass, the next solution is more physiological screening. Every seminarian is already regularly screened by a counselor at the seminary every year. Who wants to be a pastor, with the presumption from the beginning that the students are psychologically imbalanced. The Catholic priests have a high level of Aids and the LCMS pastors have physiological problems. Thank you BHE and Allen Klaas.

The Detroit News didn't do an exposé on the physiological problems of the autoworkers, the public school teachers, or the insurance salesmen. It was the LCMS "fist-pounding clergy."

If Bill Meyer wants to have a study for the BHE, why is it in the Detroit News? Why doesn't he want to know about the real cause, which is the lack of theological agreement? If this is Bill Meyer's way to improve the LCMS, why isn't he being fired! Maybe the report is right. A mentally ill ministerium would keep him employed and keep paying for more public humiliation from its own headquarters.

The most recent issue of "Jesus First" made the BHE report its lead article (March 2000 Issue 6). As expected, the last thing "Jesus First" is concerned with is theological agreement. They think the Synod is "narrow and legalistic." Why didn't that show up in Klaas's research?

Rev. Jack Cascione is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church (LCMS - MI) in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. He has written numerous articles for Christian News and is the author of Reclaiming the Gospel in the LCMS: How to Keep Your Congregation Lutheran. He has also written a study on the Book of Revelation called In Search of the Biblical Order.
He can be reached by email at pastorcascione@juno.com.

March 20, 2000

[ Home ] [ Convention Proposals (2001) ] [ Articles ] [ Table of Contents (Articles) ] [ Search ] [ Reclaim News ] [ Contact Us ] [ Submit Articles ] [ Links ]