This is Keith and this is Ben, and this is main Street Lutherans. Today we're going to talk about the churchwide church, the ELCa, at the national level. And we've got a special guest, Imran Siddiqui. He's actually here with us right now as we're talking. So welcome, Imran.

Thank you for having me.

So, Keith, how many interactions have you had with the ELCA headquarters?

Oh, golly, there was that incident with the fire. No, I don't think I've had any.

No.

Well, I'll tell you, I've had, I've had. Well, I've had a few, but the main one that I remember is I was actually interviewing in 1997 to be the webmaster for the ELCA. That was quite an interesting journey. Ended up not being able to make my interview because I had to say yes to a different job before I could take that one. So I remember that.

I would have forgotten about that.

Yeah. Whole thing about getting a flight, and the guy I worked with only worked a couple days a week, so it just didn't work out. So how much do you think your average parishioner in your church understands how the national church operates?

Operates? Probably minimal. I think that we've got, you know, people that would recognize wings and arms. You know, they, they might know about. Yeah, they probably know that we have a presiding bishop. They may or may not be able to identify who that person is at the moment. They probably have heard of. They've certainly heard of lutheran disaster response at ELCA, world hunger, because we make regular plugs for those ministries. They've probably heard of some of the para ELCA or organizations that the ELCA relates to, like wisdom, portable leaf. But beyond that, I don't know. They may know a little bit more about the synod that we're in, but again, not too sure much.

Yeah, I don't think the church at unity. I think we've got one person who works closely with a few different wings. But in general, it's kind of hard to get your mind wrapped around just because, you know, it's not in our faces every day or even every week, so. Well, we have with us today, as I said, Imran Siddiqui, vice president of the ELCA. We're so glad to have you here today.

Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm glad to be here myself. Yeah.

So as the vice president, what does that mean and what got you into this whole thing in the first place?

You've been in this role for about a year now, right?

Two almost two. So, yeah, I started November 1 22. I was elected at the Churchwide assembly in Columbus in 2022. And what got me into this was, I guess, an inability not to say yes. And so as many of us end up in places, we end up. So before this, before being in this role, I was the vice president of the southeastern synod of the ELCA, which is a synod that incorporates the states of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi. And I'd been there for about four years. I just got reelected again. And there was an election coming up in 2022. I don't know if you recall, but the previous elected vice president was a man named Bill Horn. He passed away, unfortunately, before his term was up. And then Carlos Pena, who was a former two term ELCA vice president, came on to be interim vice president and he was not interested in running again. And so it was a wide open process. And this was the first time that the vice president of the ELCA was done by a pre identification process. And so the idea was everyone that goes to the churchwide assembly gets to nominate up to three people for the role that they want. When someone nominated me, at first, I asked my bishop, I said, are you trying to get rid of me? Was this you? And he said, it wasn't me. I thought about it and I said, you know, because of, you know, everyone gets to nominate three folks and they have to be laypeople. The vice president of the ELCA always has to be a layperson. And so I said, well, you know, there's probably a lot of people going to be nominated. Let me just fill out this bio form, you know, and most, you know, hopefully I'll get enough support. I can go on stage and talk for four minutes or something. So, to my surprise, there were only 13 people that had filled out the bio form that came out about a month before the assembly. That's all my wife. I said, don't worry, don't worry. No one's going to pick me. No one knows me. It's not going to happen.

To be fair. Did anyone know any of the other nominees?

Well, some of the other nominees have been around in their positions for quite a while.

Okay.

A lot of the other nominees were vice presidents of synods. Some of them had been in their second or third term as vice presidents of synods, had been working with people around the country. Now, granted, that's a good question, because the question is, how much do people know about the folks that are working in various things and in social statement task forces or doing things with other synods and things of that nature. I mean, in a lot of ways we're very atomized. So now, the thing is, then I went to Columbus, and the first ballot, I think I was second, and I said, uh oh. And then after the third ballot, I was first by like 100 votes. And I said, uh oh. You know, that's when I kind of knew.

Were you wearing scarlet and gray? Because that does really well in Columbus.

Actually, I was not. I think on the day that I was elected, it was a Thursday, so it was Thursdays in black, which is a world council of churches program to cast light on victims of abuse, women of abuse. So I was wearing black and I was wearing red pants. So I don't know if that's close enough.

Pretty close. It's better than.

Yeah, I, I wasn't wearing blue and yellow.

And yellow. Yeah.

Right.

So they would do still pretty well in November in Columbus.

That's right.

Yeah.

So, I mean, that was how, when I got elected to the role, and it was a surprise to me. And I don't know, like most other people, you know, I knew of the church wide organization, right. But I didn't really know it. You know, I knew that we have Bishop Eaton, who's the presiding bishop. I knew there's the secretary, Sue Rothmire, you know, and I knew that there was an organization up there. But, you know, aside from that, I couldn't tell you, tell you much more. So it was an interesting learning curve about getting in there after that. So that was how I became the vice president of the ELCA. Then I had some talks with Carlos Pena to say, so what is this? So I should say the vice president of the ELCA in a certain way similar to the vice president of a synod, in that the role of those, the role of the vice president ELCA is to chair the ELCA church council. And that's it. That's constitutionally it, basically, that's the main role, ELCA church council. And this is whatever technical term, but I. The highest legislative body in the ELCA between church wide assemblies. What that means is that everything the church wide assembly does and passes, the church council has to kind of put into practice and have to figure out how to do it right. It's easy enough for an assembly to say, we're going to be this. It's the church council kind of has to figure out, all right, so who are we going to send that to to work on this, to figure out how we can do this. Right. So that's a lot of the work that the church council does. The church council is not sitting there going, all right, how can we make up new things and do weird stuff? It's mostly, how can we do what the church wants us to do based on what they voted on at the assembly? Now, vice president, of course, as I mentioned, always has to be a layperson. So the ELCA vice president is technically the highest lay person in the church and one of the four officers of the church with the presiding bishop, the secretary and the treasurer in your synods. Right, the vice president, similar as the highest layperson in your synod, they chair the Senate council. And Senate councils have a slightly. I guess I should say it's a little different because a lot of senates have assemblies every year. So, yeah, it's kind of a. But in the churchwide organization, it's every three years, which makes it kind of, kind of a little bit interesting in that respect. But the term is six years, as well as any other officer and as well as any church wide or any ELCA church council person is elected to six years. So. And I think of the officers, it's a six year term. There's no term limit. But usually a lot of people say, you know what? You know, two terms, twelve years is enough.

Yeah. So the rest of the church council's elected at churchwide the same way.

So they're elected in a little different way. Right. So the church, the officers are elected in this kind of, it's five ballot process where you have an ecclesiastical ballot on the first one where you write down anyone that qualifies. So for vice president, you can write down any layperson in the church. Rick Steves got votes, for example. Then it whittles down. Then the second ballot is whoever was listed on the first ballot who didn't pull their name out. Third ballot is the top seven. So it goes to top seven, then it goes to the top three, and then it goes to top two.

Unless somebody gets a majority. Right?

Unless some. Well, it's not a majority. So the first bout, 75% changes each one about 60. And it's, it's a supermajority up to the point where, you know, the found find abouts is the majority. One church council. If you ever been in churchwide assembly, you know, there's a, there's a long ballot of names. I forget the exact name of this ballot, but it has church council members, it has committee members, it has both. I mean, there's like a hundred, hundred different ballots. And you're supposed to go down, you're supposed to pick up individual on each ballot. Every, every part or most parts have someone running against them. And for church council, what happens is there are 65 synods, there are 35 elected positions, and then there might be some at largest, but all the synods kind of take turns. So you're paired up with another synod. So, for example, southeastern synod is paired up with South Carolina synod. So for one six year term, South Carolina gets to pick, and in their synod assembly, they pick two nominees for the churchwide assembly to pick from. Six years. After that six years is up, it goes back to the southeastern synod, who gets to pick two people to send a churchwide assembly for everyone to vote on. And that's. They vote on basically a bio form. And if you think about it, that's like 200 bio forms for everyone to read to make the decisions on who to pick. It's a lot. It's a lot. And I thought about, there has to be a better way. But then I'm also like, yeah, I mean, I guess if we had like a two week assembly, maybe, but.

Well, and that's a 35 person church council.

Well, it's more than that because there's, there's been at large is added. Right. So it's. It's over 40. It's. I think it's closer to 45.

Wow.

Yeah. There have been some at large has added just to make sure that things are balanced in different ways. And so the people that decide how many is the actual church council will decide. Do we need any more at larges? For various reasons. So.

Wow. Well, that's. That's a lot to, that's a lot to manage as far as people. That's not your normal. That's not your more normal committee to wrangle, if you will.

No, no. And of course, then you walk in, in the middle. Right. Because they have every church wide assembly picks, like, I don't know, a third or whatever it is of it. And so you have people that have been there for three years when you walk in and you got to know all those folks, then you got the new people that come in that year. And so, yeah, I heard in the past it was a lot easier when church wide assemblies were every two years, as you were able to have the overlapping, you know, things going on, whereas the. Every three years means invariably the folks that have been on, say, executive committees will all leave at the same time.

Yeah. So speaking of wrangling a lot, the things that, and I know this is a very generalized kind of question, but the things that the church wide assembly does and passes, and then the church council is responsible for figuring out what kinds of things are these. I mean, these, I think for the sake of our listeners going to be curious, are these theological discussions, are these administrative policies, are these social justice issues?

Well, generally speaking, they can be all of those, right? So I'll give you some examples. You know, what the churchwide assembly did last time in 2022? One of the things that they passed was they wanted a DEIA audit of the governing documents, right? So that's an administrative, you know, how do we do this? They also passed something to look at on leave from call status. You know, there was a passing. And so those things are more admins, administrative. So the church council has done so on lead from call. There's a task force that was set up to look at this and propose changes for the next church wide assembly. And so when we meet in November, we'll get kind of some of the recommendations from that committee, from that task force, the DEIA audit. The church council went to a. An attorney in the Chicago area to go look at these documents and find out where we can improve or increase kind of diversity, equity, inclusion information. And so that person came up with recommendations that's being looked at by the constitutional law committee of the church council. So those things are done that way. And then there's, there was a resolution passed to look at the human sexuality gift and trust social statement. And so church council working with. So first sent it off to the theological and ethics folks at churchwide to create a task force in order to look at these things, then come back. So that's a theological base and so operational. Theological. And what was. I had another example of the one you said.

Yeah, administrative or policy?

Yeah. So, and then, you know, policy wise, like, there are things such as there are things that are passed saying that the ELCA should, you know, for example, advocate for. I think there was something that were advocate for voting, you know, for increased voting laws, you know, like the, like the John Lewis voting act, things of that nature. And so the church council will refer that to the presiding bishop, and the presiding bishop will decide what's the best way to go about it. Might be through advocacy arms of the ELCA, might be something that she says herself, those sort of things. But for all of the questions, all of those apply in different ways. There are some things that people want to pass, and because of the way we're organized, some things get confused and they don't end up being the way that some people think they are. So that's one of the jobs of the church council is to figure out, okay, how can we do some of these things, and how can we do them in accordance with how our constitution exists in the present moment? Because we can't do anything that goes beyond what we're allowed to do. And so that's kind of one of the goals the church council is tasked with. How can we do this, and how can we not be in violation of our constitution at the same time? Preston.

So those are the official things, but you're out there doing stuff. Maybe I just didn't notice it before, but you're out there doing stuff. You were at the youth gathering, making videos and tiktoks with them. You've got stuff on Facebook every week, and you're interacting on Reddit, you know, all that stuff. So that seems like an awful lot of additional things to take on. And I'm not sure if anybody had done that before.

Well, yeah, I mean, so I do know Bill Horn did go to a youth gathering. I do know that. But, you know, and so I was, one of the things when I came in, I was like, okay, I know my official role is this, right? But really, you know, I kind of want to do more than just that, you know, what is it? It's two meetings a year. Church council meets two meetings a year, executive committee of church council meets on Zoom once a month. Right. I'm like, you know, I was thinking it should be a little more than that. And one of the things I was thinking is, what do I want from someone that's an officer of the ELCa? And I was thinking about, and I said, you know, one of the problems with the church wide organization that people talk about is kind of a lack of transparency. Like, we talked about what, you know, people don't know what exactly is the church wide organization doing or who are the officers and what are they doing? So I said, all right, how about I'll be more public presenting to just talk to folks and figure out, you know, what's on their mind, what's going on in the church. And they can pick my mind if they want to. And sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But just to be kind of open and available for people, just to have someone that they can bounce questions off and figure out things about. So I said, what are the ways I can do that? I mean, I was already on Reddit, so I figured, you know, they can just keep posting on Reddit. I kept the Low profile for a while, though, afterwards, and then I had a Facebook page. And I had a meeting with the folks at strategic communications. Right. And I was like, so, you know, and a lot of the conversation that I was planning on having was, okay, how can we be more open as a church to what we're doing, telling people what, you know, the church council is doing, what conference of bishops is doing, and what they, in this conversation said, well, you know, before Bill Horne passed away, he was thinking of having a public Facebook page. And he said, would you be interested in that? And I said, oh, sure. You know, first I was like, let me think about. And I said, you know what? Election season is coming up soon, and I don't want my public, my personal page to be, you know, associated with a church wide, you know, position and be talking about politics or partisan politics at the same time. So I said, give me, yes, give me an official page so I can separate, you know, kind of those two aspects. And so we worked on that. We got that set up. And then, you know, for a little bit, I didn't, you know, I did small things, and I thought about, you know, what are ways I can engage with people? Because, you know, when I got elected, one of the things I really wanted to do was to open a channel for people to have conversations so that they know that people in a church wide position are listening to them and are, you know, engaging in this, the issues that they're dealing with. And so I said, all right, let me just figure out ways to do that. And so I've settled on. I've settled on. I post at least three times a week. I ask a question on Mondays and this Monday, I think it was something related to what was written in the lectionary. So sometimes I pull from that. Sometimes I pull from holidays, asking what the church can do to support workers on Labor Day. And then on Wednesdays, I ask, you know, what can, you know, what do you need prayer for? And then on Fridays, what are, where did you see God this week? And then every once in a while, I'll post about something else, either that's coming from the church wide Facebook or something that I just was on my mind or something. And then people will engage with it. And sometimes people get mad, and sometimes people get appreciate it, but sometimes it gets heated.

Yeah, well, it's the church. The first time I saw your question, where did you see God? At work this week. I thought you meant at work. Where did you see God? And so when I saw it the second time, I thought, that's not what he's asking.

I mean, it could be right. It's your interpretation. You know, I'm not going for a literal interpretation of my, my question.

Yeah, well, and in that case it actually, it fit. So. So I answered that first time and then wondered why you were asking again the next week and like, ah, God talks a lot at work.

Yeah. Can, can do. Yeah.

Yeah.

But I've also done so other things. I've been invited to various other. I mean, I, I met Keith at lower Susquehanna Senate, had a clergy wellness. I don't know, it was a weekend, I think.

Yeah.

Bishop Dunlop said, hey, do you want to come up for this? We'll cover your expenses and you can talk. And I said, oh, sure. And so one of the things I found is it was a good way to talk with folks. Right. So, I mean, they just set it up as a q and a. I mean, I just talked a little bit about my past and I think I talked for ten minutes about it and then I opened it up as a q and a because I'm interested in having those type of conversations. Thought this was a great place, especially. It was, I mean, very clergy focused and clergy these days have a lot of questions about how the church is transitioning and changing and what role is going to be there for them. So I thought that was a very interesting and very fruitful conversation. And I'm very quick to say when I don't know something. Right. I mean, I think that it helps for us to be actually talking about these things even if we don't know where we're going, at least it's on our mind. So. So I've done things like that and, you know, I love doing kind of q and a stuff, so.

Yeah. And I think you're right. You know, from where I was sitting in the room, it seemed to me like people were interested in hearing from someone who knows a little bit about what's going on at church wide because, you know, pastors are probably more in tune with those movements than lay people are in our congregations. And yet, I'll speak for myself. I know a lot of generalities. I don't know a lot of specifics. And so to be able to hear an update on whether it's the commission for renewing church or an update on ELCA world of hunger or whatever it might be, that's, that is a really helpful opportunity and a place to kind of vent and ask questions and, you know, just to share frustrations. And I think that that part of the conversation stayed civil. But, you know, there was a chance for people to complain a little bit in an appropriate way about, you know, what they. What they see or don't see. Yeah. And I think that was a. I think that's a. A fantastic use of the space, even though I recognize that it's not officially your job and yet you're willing to put yourself out there in that regard. And I think that's fantastic.

And I like the venting, too. I mean, when you're talking about venting, I'm a layperson. Before I stepped into the. Before I started asking questions on Facebook and doing Q and A's, I didn't know half the issues with clergy. I mean, I literally had no idea. I'm in the southeastern synod. We don't have a clergy shortage where I am, but I go to some other things and people are, you know, saying that the whole thing is coming down. Right. Because clergy shortage. And then I learned about all these things that, you know, in certain synods, they have churches that are willing to pay guidelines and stuff and they can't find a pastor to do it. And it's like, oh, I would have no idea if I wasn't open to people venting about things. So I like hearing that, too. I mean, to a point, you know, just don't call me any names. We'll be fine.

Well, and I'll tell you, I think your background, we talked before about your role. You're outside of the church, you're in labor law, and our ministers are, you know, our ordained clergy, our laborers within the church, hopefully less and less will we depend on them for all the work of the church. But we've been doing that for a very long time and making sure their needs are met, whether it's retirement or being able to pay their student loans. It's really important. And it seems like you're well placed to help listen to those things.

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people don't really think about, even in their own congregations, how their pastors get paid. Right. We just, we just went through a call process. We just called the pastor. She's going to start this upcoming Sunday. But most of the people, you know, they may hear, okay, we've offered whatever this, so they hear it once and then they completely forget about it, and then they have no idea what's going on or pay attention to it. They just know, well, someone's paying the pastor and they're staying, so everything is fine.

Right.

I.

But they don't know. I mean, a lot of people don't know. Does that fit with standards? I mean, where the standards come from, I mean, a lot of people just don't really think about it, which is shame, but it's just the reality that we're in.

But more and more congregations in the denomination are thinking about it because they're not able to get a pastor.

Right. Right.

So it just keeps coming up.

Yeah, but you're right, though. I think that there's that. That transition in pastoral leadership sometimes is sometimes the closest that a layperson in a congregation will come to their interaction with the wider church, because that next pastor is coming from somewhere. They received their education somewhere. Their benefits are getting paid by the congregation, but they're being provided by someone outside of the congregation, predominantly through Portico. So that's where especially folks that really don't have much of any sense about the wider church outside of the four walls of their own congregation, that's when that sense becomes a little bit more perceived.

Preston, so how's your experience been in this role? How have you liked it? You've been there two years, possibly there for another ten.

I haven't decided if I'm going to go for another term or not, but so far I've equated it to drinking from a fire hose. Right.

That's because of spirit, right?

Yeah, well, yeah, but also, I mean, there were things I didn't even know existed, right. Wings of the churchwide organization, which I was unaware about. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, that makes sense. And also, this person is fantastic, and they're doing an incredible job. One of the things I think that we fall down upon a lot is we don't. We feel it's beneath us to promote ourselves. So the churchwide office does so much good work, and there's so many good people in it, but we don't kind of blow our horn about it enough so that people that are in the. In the pews think that, you know, they're just skimming from the top and not doing anything and, you know, dressed in fancy robes or something, you know, but, you know, there's a lot of good stuff going on. And that's the thing I've been learning. These two years have been a learning experience for me to know what's been going on in the church. And then, you know, for church council, you know, people are there that are giving their time and money. I mean, church council isn't getting paid for their work. You know, the only people on church council that get paid are the presiding bishop, the secretary, and the treasurer. The rest of us are doing it for, you know, as a volunteer basis. Right. So, and this is, I mean, it's not a minuscule amount of work, right. There's a lot of reading and then they've got a kind of, you're making decisions on behalf of the church, but, you know, you don't hear complaints about, I mean, people are willing to do this work and it's, it's inspiring to see how many people are just, you know, willing to do the work of God in our church. So those are the things that I, that's really bolstered me that I've been going through for these, these years and just seeing kind of what the church wide organization does, how it helps synods, how it helps congregations in ways that we don't tell people, but we should.

Can you think of an example or two? I mean, that's just out individuals, but, you know, something that an office accomplished.

So one of the things that we do a lot is, you know, disaster stuff. Right? So Lutheran disaster response is actually part of the service and justice home area in the ELCA. And so many times when there's a disaster, and down where I am in the southeastern synod, there's a hurricane that hits Mississippi or Savannah or if there's tornadoes that go through Tennessee, Lutheran disaster response is right there helping our disaster response team and trying to get people funds, organizational structures, stuff. And they're essential. I mean, without LDR, it'd be a lot harder to get this stuff done. So that's one of the examples. And a lot of people don't think about it. Don't think, oh, that's part of the churchwide organization. It's one of those things where like, oh, yeah, there's a lutheran disaster response, you know, that's a good group of people and they don't put together. That's actually part of your ELCA. That's the churchwide office that is doing something in support of congregations and neighborhoods in which those congregations reside in. So that's one example, I think, which is where you see the churchwide office helping folks. And there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of training. I was just in Chicago, I want to say, two weeks ago, they're starting a latin young leader training, and they had latin young leaders from across the country coming to Chicago to learn about ways to be leaders in their communities, in their congregations, and how their congregations can help their communities and how the church can help them. And this is like, this was the first year, so the head of the Latina desk pasta. Hector Carasquia wants this to grow every year. And so the one thing that was kind of interesting is, and I appreciate this, it was almost all done in Spanish, so they have to have a translator for me and for folks that don't speak Spanish that well, or at least. Yeah. Can't understand it when it said that fast. But, you know, these are little things that are being done that people might not notice are being done. And it might be, I mean, some people might say, well, you know, it's kind of small and. Well, yeah, but, you know, some, a lot of this stuff takes a lot of organizational time, a lot of money to get off the ground. And so some of these things may start small, but, you know, they're, they're building, they're, they're putting seeds in the ground. So those are two examples that just came off the top of my head.

Thanks. Thanks.

Yeah. That, that bridges is over. To what challenges do you see that our church is, is attempting to meet and what, what are the biggest, what are the, I guess the 30,000 foot things that we can do to meet them at that level?

Well, so that's the fun thing that when you ask people what are the challenges of the church? And I've asked various questions of this, people will come up with 100 different things. Right. But I mean, some of the big ones, I mean, we've touched on a little bit. There are congregations that don't have pastors and have been waiting for a while and they don't know what to do and they get frustrated because they can't get a pastor. There are congregations that feel isolated, that they don't have enough help because either, a, they're rural or b, they're, they speak Spanish and they're in a space where kind of, they feel they're by themselves because guess what? The website isn't in Spanish. Right. The ELC website is Spanish. They don't have resources in Spanish. There are people who feel that they're disconnected from everything because there's a synod above them that does stuff and there's an ELCA above that, but they don't know how to get, say, grants from ELCA that's going down because their synod isn't telling them how to go about doing that or isn't batting for them a lot of these things. I mean, it's because things are a lot disconnected. And I've spoken about this in a few different areas and I think I may have spoken out to the clergy in lower Susquehanna where Keith was there, but like, you know, the ELCA is a compromised organization. Right. When it started, there were, I mean, there were three different groups, but there were two big main ones that have different ways of doing church, and they jammed them both together and they didn't want the other to win, so.

And we dealt with some of that in the Deakins episode. That's sort of what happened with Deakins and Ames and all that.

Right, right.

And so one of them was more hierarchical, one of them was more congregational. And so they said, let's be a little bit hierarchical, but let's be congregational as well. And, you know, if you have do anything, obviously it's gonna not make sense later down the line. So 35 years down the line, you're like, why in the world is that being done? It's because. Oh. Cause back then they decided this made sense to make everyone happy. I don't know. One of the issues that I kind of see is that people in the Pe seem to believe it's more hierarchy than it actually is. Right. Bishops are very limited in what they can do. Bishop Eaton is very limited in what she can do. She likes to say, I am not a pope, and I'm glad I'm not a pope, but a lot of people seem to think that she can just say, okay, you know, pastor in this area, boop. You know, that sort of thing. Yeah. And so I thought, and you know, that my personal idea is that we should make the reality match the perception. There should be a little bit more authority up the line, there should be a little bit more structure together. And, you know, there are some synods that are doing some wonderful things with pastoral shortages. There are some synods that are grouping congregations together and they're saying, okay, you have six congregations, you have two pastors, two deacons, and they're going to travel among them, you know, group them together. There are, you know, different ideas about, I mean, and I've brought this up, whereas, you know, kind of the idea of, you don't need to be, have a pastor to be a functioning congregation. You know, in the beginning eras of like the US right out west, that you would go months without seeing a pastor and congregations would have to do the work themselves and they'd wait for the traveling pastor to come by and do what the traveling pastor needed to do. And so part of this is also, in my opinion, there's a systemic devaluation of lay leadership in the ELCA. Right. We think pastors need to do everything. Pastors are the boss. We need to run everything by the pastor, even if it doesn't apply to kind of things in their bailiwick. And so this is something that's infected some pastors cause they wanna be in charge of everything and it's infected some congregations. So pastors who wanna say, hey, you're the congregation, get pushed into doing more than they think they should because the congregation is like, no, that's your job. And so we got to kind of, we have to rethink that. I mean, that's a systemic thing. We have to rethink that. Whereas congregations exist based on, you know, they can exist as the membership of the congregation, the pastor kind of slides into the role and is not necessarily doesn't make or break the congregation. It works with the congregation. So laity and clergy need to work together and figure those things out. I mean, it's now, on the other hand, it's easy to say if you're in a place that gets a regular pastor every time you get an opening, right, if you're in an urban center or something. But we do need to rethink some of this stuff. Also, you see, numbers at a seminary are much lower than they have been in the past. So it's going to require some really interesting thought processes, but it's also going to require a difference in how we see how we're connected to the other expressions of the church. So these things, multi point stuff, only works when a synod has an authority to make those constructions happen. Right. If the church organization has a little bit more authority, maybe they can help in restructuring some of those things. I know people get mad at me a little bit for this because they really like their congregational viewpoint. I've seen enough issues with congregational stuff where I kind of like the more, you know, more of an episcopalian type type of, you know, hierarchical view. But I think that's, that's going to be something that we have to think about because, I mean, we exist among other groups. They're congregations together. We're not, you know, you know, we are congregations, but sometimes we have bought into the mentality that the congregation 2 miles down the road is our competition as opposed to our friend. And I think this all ties into it. And I think that if we kind of have a little bit more authority up the ladder, it might allow for a more. We're working together on this as opposed to we need to do this alone. I remember when I was just a Senate council member and I would go in and somewhere, I went in somewhere who wasn't giving mission support because their pastor asked me to come in and I said, okay, you know, you know, I asked, what, what are some of the issues? And someone said, well, feels like we're, you know, redoing things, we're reinventing the wheel every time we do stuff. Why can't the Senate tell us what to do about these things? And I said, well, you know, there's these people, this person you can reach out. It's like, well, yeah, but, you know, I have to reach out to them. Why don't they just tell me, you know, sort of thing? And it's like, you know, kind of weird thing where it's like this is another group that needs to come to us as opposed to feeling like we're all together working for the same goal. And so it's going to take a change in mentality, it's going to take a change in kind of how we see our own little congregation amongst a great mass of Lutheran Christianity.

What have you heard Imran and or thought about, say, the number of synods that the ELCA has? Because you're talking about that structure in this moment. I think that might be an interesting next piece.

So I haven't heard, I don't know where they're going with. So I'll just start off by saying, and I'll answer the question, but I'll start off by saying that the church council and CRlC are not really in conversation with each other right now on purpose. Right. Because we want the CRLC to be independent. We don't want to put our thumb on anything. We get updates right from the chairs, but we don't know kind of what they're working towards. We'll know in our meeting this November because they're going to present their findings. So we know a little bit what they're talking about. We don't know what they're going to go with. The sit in question is very interesting. And one of the issues with the Senate thing, of course you might know, is that in the constitution it says exactly what the boundaries of each synod are. So someone decided to make that a constitutional thing as opposed to like a bylaw or something. That makes it really hard to change, first of all. Secondly, one of the issues is, you know, if you change the synods, how do you reallocate resources? The synods have been helping out certain congregations. If you take away a certain congregation and put it in another synod, will people freak out? We've been paying for this for how many years and now, I mean, that's part of the same idea of, you know, this is our congregation and that's their congregation, our synod. Their synod, right. I mean, I don't know if it's a little different in a state like Pennsylvania where you are, where citizens are right next to each other, down here in the southeast, it feels, I mean, it feels a little bit more disconnected because we're talking about states. And so our nearest synod are also. So we have Florida, Bahamas Senate. To the south of us, we have South Carolina Senate, we have North Carolina synodhouse. And they're, you know, the political boundaries make it feel more like this is a good boundary to have sort of thing. Not that we're not close with each other in region nine or anything like that, but just it may be different when the synods are smaller and I imagine, like, for example, Minneapolis area Synod and St. Paul area Synod might have a different view on, you know, sharing things with Synod wise, then maybe a bigger synod would. So the other issue is going to be how big do you make these synods? Southeastern Synod is already pretty long. Our bishop, Bishop Kevin Strickland, has put like hundreds of thousands of miles on the car already in four years. I think he put like 200,000 miles on it. Do you really want your bishop to be on the road that much? And I mean, almost, you know, you see him on Facebook, he's here, he's there, he's like, do you have any time to decompress or to be with your family? You know, these are important questions. I mean, what do you do about that? And then travel budget goes up and then what would our synods look like? So all of these. So once you start asking the question, yeah, almost have to go back to the beginning and be like, all right, so how do we do these sort of things? So I will say there was an interesting conversation. It was with your bishop Keith, Bishop Dunlop. We were at a church, we were at a church council meeting. He was filling in as a liaison bishop, and we were asked by the commission for a need lutheran church come up with some, you know, out there ideas. And so his thought was, what was it? It was ten synods, 50 bishops. The concept was, you have a synod, but you'd have multiple bishops in the synod, and the bishops would act as like a pastor of the pastors. Right. Or like. Like someone in a pastoral role. And maybe you'd have a separate person for administration. Right, like, because a lot of bishop work is admin, right? So maybe you have a separate person from administration and the rest of the bishops are there to be pastoral in those areas, then I thought about this and said, well, what about this, too? What if we take all of the pastors and have them be employees of the synod? That way everyone gets paid guidelines. That way all the pastors can organize in a union and bargain for fairer wages or conditions. That way, congregations might get more pastors than they would otherwise. Right. Because pastors can be paid well and also go to someplace which may not have that much money. Now, of course, this might. Some people might be scared. Well, we might have less past, we might have less pastors. We have four pastors. We might get three, you know, or something like that. Or they might try to close our church. I mean, these are, these are concerns that are valid, but, you know, like, you know, these sort of ideas or thought processes, like, what do we want our ascendants to be? You know, what do we want our bishops to be? I think are the primary questions we need to ask and not just say, oh, well, let's go to 50 sentence just because we think it's better. I mean, I think we need to really rethink the whole middle management level if we're going to go.

So it seems like moving resources to the region level would make sense to you.

Yeah, I mean, it could.

I think our regions used to be more developed than they are now.

Yeah, that's the other thing. The regions are kind of not as developed, but that's another. So especially out of COVID Right. A lot of syn ins are keeping more money in. That affects the regions as much as it affects church wide budget. Right. So that's another way where people are looking inward as opposed to, say, looking at the entire church together. Right. And so these are things we need to kind of open up and regions are one of those things I didn't even know about until I was elected vice president of a senate. Right. We. I've heard. I heard regions. I had no idea what they were. Right. And I know no idea what region we were in. Yeah.

Well, because you are a region, most regions are about the size of your synod, so.

Right. Yeah. Our region that currently in our region right now is the. Was it. It goes from Virginia all the way down to Florida, so.

Well, to the Caribbean.

Yeah, to the Caribbean. That's right. Yeah.

And all the way to Mississippi, then.

All the way to Mississippi. Yep.

So, yeah, as far as diversity, we've talked a little bit about that with, with latina and. And such, but I know that's been a sort of a focus that we've had. Diversity. My challenge is how do we get more diverse without rolling into our sort of colonialism, essentially. I think generally when we think of evangelism, we think of bringing people into the pews and making them part of our tribe, and that doesn't seem like a good model for diversity.

Yeah. And so we had that issue. Right. We started off by saying we want 10% people of color in the LCA, and there was no movement on that. And it almost felt like it was a goal and no one did anything with it. Yeah, we like this number, and we're just going to put this in here, but we're not going to actually do anything about it. A friend of mine is a african american pastor here in Atlanta, and she was saying when she was growing up, the Missouri Senate had a lot more mission churches in the south and black areas than the ELCA did and so, or the ACLA predecessor bodies. So they are slightly more diverse than we are. But one of the things is they actually cared enough to put money into doing mission in areas that are majority black. So one of the things that it requires, if we want to be more diverse is to actually put money behind it. Right. And I mean, and it sounds a little crazy to say, well, money you need to spend, but I mean, that's true. You can expect to have more diverse population if you don't fund missions in those areas. If you want more black folks or latino folks or asian folks, you need to actually go into those communities and you need to have congregations there for them. I mean, because I think we have a really important message as Lutherans. Like, we have a message of grace. And you hear this message from a lot of, I should say, law focused christian denominations that are very judgmental or very. You need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this. God's not going to love you unless you do XYZ. And we have a message that is much more. God is doing the work. You're not doing the work. God loves you already. You don't have to do anything in order to make God love you. And I think that's a very powerful message, but we've confined it into certain areas, and we've seen ourselves as Lutheran, as being either german or scandinavian. That's our culture. And a lot of times it was kind of funny. I spoke about this after I got elected. I was ushered into a back room, a green room at the stage in Columbus, and we talked, and there was a living lutheran article about it. And one of the things I mentioned that didn't make it to the living lutheran article was how everything in the ElCA seems to be, or a lot of things. The LCA seemed to be culturally focused on northern European stuff, right? People talk about, make jokes about Jell O and hot dish, and I was like, what in the world is hot dish? Right? And I just had hot dish for the first time last year in Minnesota. But I was like, why? Like, you know, kind of garrison Keeler esque, you might be a Lutheran if blah, blah, blah and all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I don't think people realize, I mean, it's fun and it's a joke, and I don't think people realize how much it kind of turns off folks that aren't in that culture. You know, they feel like they have to be knowledgeable about midwestern stuff in order to be a Lutheran. And we haven't made that distinction apparent. Like, this is a fun thing that a lot of Midwesterners who are Elca people do. But you don't have to know this to be a Lutheran because, you know, feeling like an outsider in your own church is not going to be helpful. And so those are, I mean, that's kind of an issue that exists, and I wonder if that help prevents, you know, kind of missions from going into different areas of the country. Right. We like to say, like in the southeast, we're very different than a lot of other Lutherans in terms of, I should say in terms of like, you know, we're. Our synod is very progressive synod, and people get kind of confused because they're like, oh, you're in the southeast. They're like, yeah, but a lot of our folks have chosen to join this church, right. For the. For the things that the church stands for, the church believes in. There's not as much of people maybe that have been there for x generations going back XYZ. And in addition to that, I should say that there are a lot of black Lutherans that have had generations of black Lutherans in their family who still get asked, when did you become Lutheran? Right. The head of service and justice, his name is Pastor Qadar al Yatim. He's from Palestine. He gets asked, when did you become a Christian? And his response, I mean, he gets frustrated, but his response has been, you know, since the day of Pentecost.

Right.

Which is a good answer. But I mean, there's kind of this idea of, you have to be a certain way to be a Lutheran Christian. And it may not be stated outright, but it comes up. And so that's an issue I will say that the number of people of color in the LCA has risen now to 6%. And the reason for that is because white Lutherans have left, as opposed to a lot more people of color Lutherans. But the idea is, where are you prioritizing and where are you sending mission funds and who are you speaking to? If we want to get more diverse, we need to actually speak to people in ways that they're at, and we need to actually identify with people and their pain, their hurt. I was, the ADLA convention was, the african descent Lutheran association was here in Atlanta last year. I think it was last year or 2022. But one of the things is, you know, people have experienced harm in the church and experienced, you know, kind of minimizing or put down in the church. And a lot of it comes down to, you know, they don't feel like they've been listened to or taken seriously. And that, that's kind of like where you start from. Let's listen to what your concerns are, take them seriously, try to actually rectify them and do something with them, as opposed to a Dropbox that has, like, a bottom that's open. Right, right. And so that also applies, I mean, that's a race issue, but it also applies to youth. Right. And young adults. Like, you know, one of the things is great. Like, the youth gathering just happened this summer, but one of the things that comes up a lot is this is fantastic youth. Young adults feel heard. They, you know, they feel like they're part of the church, then they go back home and all of a sudden they're closed off from the, their church doesn't value them as much as, say, the youth gathering did. Right.

And then, or there just aren't that many of them.

Yeah.

That's the experience of my son. He's, you know, he, he felt all alone as a teenager in his church and then goes to the youth gathering where, you know, and he's with a group from a couple other congregations, and then he's back home again.

What do you do? Right. And then, I mean, we still have the issue with gender as well. Right. Female pastors still get treated terribly in a lot of situations. You still have congregations that say, we. We don't want a woman pastor. Right. I mean, even with. I mean, in the, some of the stuff, you know, Bishop Eaton could tell you about the stuff she's been, you know, things have been said to her would make you squirm. I mean, like, you know, some of the. We still have a long way to go there. We've gone farther, I think, on gender than a lot of the other issues. But still, I mean, there's still ways to go. And I think we need to kind of say, you know, we still need to listen to women. Right. That. And take their concerns seriously. They feel uncomfortable in certain ways. We need to actually kind of think about that. And then there are also one of the things that I've heard a lot is, you know, people with disabilities feel like they don't really matter in the church. Churches are old. They don't have ramps sometimes, and they get told, well, we don't have the money, sorry. Or people who have issues with listening. My church currently has an aging sound system, so if someone has a problem with hearing, they're a little out of luck. And it's one of those things where, what are we doing to help folks and where are we spending the money on folks that have issues with hearing or with seeing? So a lot of these questions are, where's our money? Where's our focus? Who are we listening to? Who are we talking?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. We're going to address another set of things in the next episode, so we're going to keep talking, but we'll come back in a couple of weeks here for all you listeners. Well, this has been a great conversation with Imran Siddiqui. We are cutting this conversation into two pieces, and the remainder of that conversation will happen in episode 22. You've heard enough of us today, and we thank you so much for that. So let's move on to the catechism questions on our last episode. In episode 20. In episode 20, our question was, what book of the Bible speaks positively about Jesus gender diverse people? The options were Jonah, Matthew, ecclesiastes, and revelation. The answer is Matthew. Matthew, 1912, which talks about eunuchs.

Indeed it does. Question for this week. Then, in the year 325 CE, a common era christian bishops met for the council of Nicaea to hammer out agreement on fundamental beliefs of christians. What was the result of this meeting? Your answer options are a, the Nicene Creed, B, that Arius, Theonis and Secundus were excommunicated from the church in exile, C, that there were the creation of 20 new church laws, or d, the rescheduling of Easter.

Yeah, so if you come up with an answer for that, that one might be a bit tricky for you. You can contact us by email, our social media, even our phone number that are all in the episode. Notes. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fot, and the show is produced by Fog Media Productions. Find all of our contact information, links and a transcript in those episode notes. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.