This is Keith and this is Ben, and this is Main Street Lutherans. So for this episode, we are talking with Dr. Andy Root from Luther Seminary about evangelism and a thing that he talks about as a theology of consolation and how it relates to Martin Luther's theology of the cross. And the evangelism side of this is pretty interesting. In our, in one of, in our most recent episodes, we've, we've talked about, we've talked about evangelism in certain ways. We've talked about inviting people in who have been pushed away from the church and the way the church, the big C church, has rejected certain people and how our church, the elca, reaches out to those folks. We've talked about how our programs of education bring families into our churches and cases or meet needs in the community, which is also a way of evangelism. We thought we'd start out at least here talking about evangelism, the traditional ways, how our churches have done it, how we've experienced evangelism.

Yeah, and I think, you know, I'll just speak from my personal history and you know, kind of with St. Matthew and prior to that. And I think, I think as Lutherans, kind of stereotypically, we tend to speak about evangelism as if what we're actually speaking about is recruitment. You know, we're trying to recruit new members. We're trying to bring people into the church that have never been there before. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that if that becomes, you know, if, if the goal of evangelism is to add members and literally, you know, typically behind adding members is bringing in more money, right Then, then evangelism is really considered nothing but a self centered goal. You know, whereas, you know, the root of the word evangelism is to, is, is gospel, is to share the, the love and grace of Jesus. And I think that what we're going to hear from Andy Root really kind of gets at that a little bit. But you know, I remember when I first came to St. Matthew, we still had, you know, what was called an evangelism committee. And occasionally people would come to the committee meetings or, you know, pass something along to somebody on the committee and say, you know, we really need to be out in the neighborhood, you know, and we're in an urban setting in St. Matt, so we really will be out in the neighborhood knocking on doors or putting out flyers or, you know, handing out information about our worship services and our programs and that sort of thing. And you know, I would always, I, I can Hear, I, I think people have good intentions with that, but I, I always want to ask them, how do you receive when strangers come knocking on your door?

Absolutely.

And, and, or how do you react when you find, you know, this probably, you know, it doesn't matter if it's homemade, you know, cheaply made or even professionally made, you know, nice fancy, glossy looking brochure about whatever you might find tucked into your screen door on your porch. You know, I think most of us tend to take a peek at one of those things and by and large just throw them in the trash. And, you know, somebody does come knocking on our door, we tend to be kind of suspicious about what it is that they want from us and pretend not to be home or try to keep the conversation as brief as possible or at least are entering into it with a sense of, kind of defensiveness and suspicion and not really being open to what they might want to share with us. So, you know, I think that the idea of evangelism as really sharing the love of Jesus in concrete, tangible ways, whether it's through a food bank or a mission trip or even a community block party, is going to be more effective than cold calls or flyers on doors. That's just my personal opinion. I'd be glad you'd prove it wrong.

Yeah. In my experience at Unity, this last shoot, five years or so, I don't know that we've had a specific evangelism push in any particular way. We did go to Pride in was sort of an evangelism spirit there. There was a lot of inviting to come to church. That's the traditional way of looking at it anyway. But the other side of it really is what we'll talk about in this interview is the presence being in the places. And Carla talked about this. Carla Christopher talked about this. Going to the places where the people who need to hear the word of God, being in their place and, and being with them for them to, to experience that in, in their own context, not having to remove them from their context and come be part of ours. And so, so there's that. Unity has Pastor Jack Eggleston. A lot of people probably listen to the podcast, probably know Jack. He's been, he's been all over the place. He's. He's a popular guy. When he joined as pastor of Unity after being in the Senate office, one of the first things he talks about doing was going door to door and knocking on doors. About that time period. They also would put up a giant display, a projection display, and show a movie, not a particularly Christian movie, but maybe a Disney movie or something out on the lawn and invite people to come in from the community with no sort of obvious ministry piece to it, just to engage with community and see what the needs of the community are. So there were things like that. I think Dr. Root gives a great illustration of how theology plays out in evangelism in our way, in a very Lutheran way. And reading his book, he ties together Martin Luther's theology to this theology of consolation, which comes a couple generations before Martin Luther. In fact, I find that to be really interesting and really evocative and has some power there. So I think we've got a great interview here. Happy to share it with you guys, and I think there's going to be a lot of good conversation that comes out of this.

All right, well, let's go to our interview with Professor Andy Root.

We're very excited to have with us today Dr. Andy Root. Andy is the Balsam Chair of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He's a practical theologian with a lot of recent work focusing on the intersection of faith and the secular age. Lots of books, lots of podcast appearances, and your own podcast, for that matter. Great to have you with us.

I guess you're. Are you. Is this an intervention about my workahol workaholism?

No, I can't. Keith will tell you. I'm not one to talk.

All of my family are coming in on this screen to say that this is an intervention and you're taking me off to. Yeah.

Now, I'm pretty sure that Ben actually would aspire to be you.

Well, that's a dangerous thing, Ben. I don't know if you want that.

It's complicated. Yeah. Behind the curtain here is a plate of cookies and some punch. All right, so what brought us together a bit was that I think it's your most recent book at this point in the summer of 2025, is evangelism in an Age of Despair, Hope beyond the Failed Promise of Happiness. And I've heard you speak about the book and about this topic quite a bit in the last few months through all the podcasts I listen to, and it really syncs up well with what I've been dealing with in my head, which is how do we do evangelism in the elca? It's very different, and thought we'd talk about how that comes. And this book does a great, great job of modeling how that works, even though you're not saying specifically it's elca, but it's definitely Lutheran Yeah, yeah.

I mean, in some ways, I feel like this is probably not the way to start a conversation on the book and to pitch the book, but I worry that I could disappoint people because the title of it, the first word in the title is evangelism. But in many ways, it's really a book about a kind of theology of consolation and how that links up with the theology of the cross. And then trying to do this, I think, strange thing that's been pretty consistent over the kind of work I've tried to do, which is to try to think of the most kind of practical forms of ministry or the kind of different loci of pastoral practice, if you will, or congregational life, and try to think those through the theology of the cross. And so this is an attempt of trying to look at evangelism as a kind of for good or for ill. For some people, it makes the hair stand up on the back of their neck. Some people get some excited that we're finally talking about this again, you know, however you feel about it, to try to do a thought experiment, to think this through, the theology of the cross, to think this kind of contextually in this moment, what would that look like? And I think it maybe breaks a little bit more ground on just trying to connect a theology of consolation with the theology of the cross. But it is really trying to look at evange, too, and to look at evangelism kind of beyond a kind of instrumental strategy, which I think we often see it that way. Even, I think, in. In the main line. I mean, I'm always surprised that I get these whispers, you know, like, in the midst of all the decline, there could be like a whisper, almost a shameful whisper, like, hey, maybe we just need to do evangelism. You know, like, I'm not even. I'm not even comfortable with this as a concept, but, you know, our churches are so empty, or we're so worried about the future of the denomination that maybe. Maybe we better take a look at this strange instrument that we've locked in the shed of the church far away. So, yeah, I'm trying to also maybe redeem it in a bit that way, too, and say, you know, there is something essential to the Christian faith that tries to testify to the experience we've had and tries to live that out in some sense, but try again on both those levels, try to keep it from being instrumentalized. And maybe the way that we stereotypically think of conservative Protestants doing it, but also the. The way we've kind of fallen back into it in mainline Protestantism and think maybe both of those are instrumental approaches we need to kind of avoid.

Sure, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because I think you're right. We've got this, we have in our minds these stereotypes that, that in, in the evangelical world that evangelism is talking to people about Jesus and getting them saved and in the Protestant world, the, the mainline Protestant world, it's inviting them to church. And both of those, you know, stereotypes make us uncomfortable and also I think leave us feeling lacking in some way as, as Lutheran. So I'm excited to be talking about that with you some more today.

Yeah, so in, in the book I was, I was struck pretty early on, you talk about happiness and the expectation of happiness and how that ties into really how our church and our culture particularly. Culture sees things. Yeah, particularly how it's, it's kind of a new ideal that sort of forms prior to the United States becoming a country.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I actually think that. Well, I mean this is the weird thing of. Probably what I do too often is I get obsessed with trying to mine where this stuff comes from. You know, like where, where, where does this come from, this obsession we have? I mean you can hear it with middle class parents all the time where they'. It's almost a concession, you know, like, well, maybe, maybe our daughter isn't going to get into elite university, but that doesn't really matter because all we really want is for her to be happy. And, and there's like some kind of base level human experience that we imagine that at the end of the day, while in this weird kind of way it becomes both the consolation prize but also the highest good is just to be happy. You know, like in some weird kind of way, like it's both of those things. But ultimately at the end of the day there's this deep sense that if you're not happy then there's something wrong with you and there's something wrong with how you've been living your life. And I think this has a lot to do with the fact that we really see fulfillment as self created. And this is one of the realities I think makes us modern. It doesn't make us modern. Even pre modern people thought of or lived for fulfillment like, you know, that's something ingrained in what it means to be human is that we have some sense of the good. We act towards that sense of the good. But we now I think what makes us modern is we presume that that is self located and that there's a self responsibility for that And I think one of the realities is when your fulfillment is based by yourself or yourself has to produce that fulfillment. Happiness becomes the kind of gauge or measure of if you've gotten there. So it becomes almost the testifier that you have made it to self fulfillment. And there's a kind of nightmare for upwardly mobile late modern people that you could actually get everything you think would make you self fulfilled, the job, the car, the house, and then realize you're not happy. And that means that your aim towards self fulfillment has been misguided and you have to start all over again or you have to blow up that life and find another direction to go. And so there's this weird thing we do as late modern people of giving happiness, this deep sense of being able to be the direct measure of how fulfilled we are, of how full our lives are and how connected it is to the, to the good. And that gives happiness a lot of weight and weight that no, say, Greek philosopher would have ever given it. You know, like, no, no, not even an epic epicurean would have said, like the point of life is to be happy in the way we think of it, which is to kind of live this nonchalant, you know, like I, I use this French thinker Montaigne, like just when you pet your cat, pet your cat and when you sleep, sleep and when you, you know, this kind of nonchal. No one would have thought that like even the epicureans who are trying to live for pleasure or live for the freedom of the kind of hedonist impulse, it's like you miss meals and you'll only really find happiness at the end of your life. And all the Stoics are that way, that if you get happiness, you should take happiness. Happiness is like money. If it comes into your life, don't refuse it. But it's nothing to live for. And yet for us it not only becomes something to live for, but it actually becomes the measure if our life has any value at all, if, if we're happy. And that's just a, that puts a lot of pressure on kind of agents and, and in, in selves, in, in late modernity.

Well, we also have, you know, the converse of that is that if you're not happy, there must be something wrong with you.

Absolutely.

And, and yeah, so I, it really is a double edged sword. You know, I can think of, you know, imagine a couple getting married and people say that I'm just so glad that you two are happy together. And now, you know, whatever number of years, you know, unfortunately later Perhaps they're getting divorced and someone is consoling one of them and saying, well, I'm sorry things didn't work out, but maybe now you can be happy. Well, okay.

Yeah, Right. Yeah. And I think one of the big things that that does is it makes us really allergic to sadness. Like when happiness become measure of fulfillment, then sadness is actually a threat that you need to block out in every way. And yet I think we know this, that our most beautiful experiences, like our most full experiences where we feel caught up in something incredibly meaningful, are both really happy and really sad at the same time. You know, like watching your children grow is incredibly beautiful and also incredibly sad. And really, I think at a. Just at an emotive level, happiness and sadness ride together. But we've asked happiness to be the measure of something that it really can't be. And it's turns on us. It makes us need to block out all sadness and that actually in this ironic way, it makes us incredibly unhappy people. And it makes us like incredibly despairing people or angry people. You know, like, I think one of the reasons we so see so much outrage in our society right now and just, and really, you know, so many people just struggling with deep senses of mental health and things like that is we've, we've really asked happiness to do more work than it can. And it's. The ceiling has fallen in on us on, on that reality. And unfortunately, I think within our churches, we've. We've kind of perpetuated that. Essentially seen religion or our faith communities as value added to our own happiness, and in many ways seen evangelism as a pitch like that this is a religious device you can use to make you happy. And that in some ways we, we say it even in the main line. I mean, maybe we don't say it quite like this, but we insinuate it like being part of this church will make you happy. Essentially, Jesus will make you happy. Even over against all Jesus words where he. Jesus doesn't promise you happiness. He promises you actually that you're going to suffer if you follow him. That's the sure thing. He promises he doesn't.

Everybody's going to be mad at you. You won't have any stuff.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. So that really takes us right to the theology of the cross. Right?

Yeah.

And that's probably a great image because when, when we visualize this idea of the theology of the cross, we see both victory and defeat simultaneously. Right. So happiness, sadness, and pretty much every emotion mixed together. So Luther presents us this idea of theology of the cross. It's kind of in vague terms, though, right. You know, it's things like theology. Cross calls things the way they are. Right. Names them as they are. It doesn't really tell us much beyond that, you know, in. In the. The chunk that he gives us. How do you. How do you flesh that out a little bit?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think this is. I don't know, like we'll see what people think. But trying to connect this theology of consolation with the theology of the cross, I think is helpful because I think one of the. The traps we can fall into. And of course, this is my bias as someone who kind of thinks about a pastoral theology or a practical theology is really trying to name the theology of the cross more than just a kind of doctrine of justification or a doctrine of atonement, even that. It really is a hermeneutic way to interpret the way God acts in the world or the place where God can be found. And I think ultimately that's what Luther wants to point us to, is that when you go looking for God, the place you have to look for where God is. How God breaks into this world, or what we've used in theology is a word like revelation. How God unveils God self and makes God self known. You're going to have to do this thing that's going to take the eyes of faith, which is to look on the cross, like you just said, Ben, like the cross is both utter defeat and victory, but it's only victory in the eyes of faith. Because that just as you look at it, like you look at the, you know, the Grenvald painting of Jesus, you know, that famous painting of him on the cross, if you knew nothing, if you just, you know, woke up from being frozen for 6,000 years, you would not think that that's a sign of victory or if you were an alien from another planet, there's nothing that says to you, oh, there's a powerful God. There's nothing in there that even says there's a God there, really, you know. And so Luther's point is, you actually find this God revealed in this place where God shouldn't be, in the hell of the cross is where God is found. And for him, then that also becomes. That's a pastoral word. That's a word, a very practical word of fai. Because where the hell in his own life is, where the sorrow is, where the brokenness is, is where God is at work, where God is moving. And that's the promise there. And I think the connection here that opens Luther to really start to see things that way is the real pastoral ministry of stupids. And there's just a famous book written in the 14th century called a Consolation Theology, written by a. A Parisian mystic and thinker named John. And if you're from Wisconsin, it's Gene Gerson, and I'm probably even murdering it in its French. But if, as a Minnesotan, I have to take a shot at a Wisconsin person if I can, especially as football season's about to start. But your soul wrote this book called the Consolation Theology, and it really was this sense of theology. There had been an earlier book written really at the very end of the classic period, at the ancient period, about a consolation philosophy that every medieval theologian kind of read. And Jerseau is rewriting this as a consolation, not philosophy, but theology, because he sees theology as a helpful way to help us in these moments of sorrow. And Luther was never a huge fan of Jerseau, but Stupitz was, and so his pastor really was, loved this book and helped Luther through his own great forms of temptation and suffering, his own great wrestlings with hell, by turning him to the face of Jesus Christ and turning him to the cross. And I think Luther really develops his theology of the cross out of this theology of consolation. That we need others to walk with us in our sorrow. And as they do that, as they share in our lives in the midst of this sorrow, there really is a kind of sacramental reality of the very presence of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ is revealed in our own sufferings, that God is present there. And that the cross reveals that the places God shouldn't be are the places God is. And where there's death and brokenness and loss, God arrives as a ministering force, bringing life out of death. And that theology helps us have eyes to see what is a scene of no victory, which is a scene of no God being present, to actually be quite the opposite, God being most concretely present in the. In those moments. So I'm trying to. Yeah, I'm trying to kind of connect the theology of the cross and the theology of consolation to say maybe what the church does to evangelize the world, or particularly in this moment, is become a consoling force that we console and. And share people's brokenness and brokenheartedness, especially in a social media world where people are fairly utterly alone to deal with loss. And maybe the church needs to walk into that and follow and look for Jesus in sorrow and make a confession that Jesus Christ is present in that sorrow.

Yeah, that matches up with what I've learned about our concept of accompaniment. Right. We learn about this mostly through the youth gathering, when the kids have an accompaniment day and they go out and they spend time with people who are doing work, most recently in New Orleans, but soon in Minneapolis. Right. In two years. So it's a hard thing to grasp. You know, how is this evangelism that we go alongside? I have two examples that I've been thinking about a lot. One was a group that accompanied a family to an immigration meeting. Right. It was a Muslim family. But this group, a lawyer, some synod staff, and some pastors walked with these folks into that meeting to be. They're not going to keep agents away from them if they're trying to be arrested, if there's something happening. But they are there to witness and walk with them and support them. And that seems like one of those ways. A time of not necessarily sorrow, but fear, for sure, that we walk alongside, not trying to convert them to us, but to be with them, to be hopefully part of God's presence with that family. And then also, I'm working a lot with civil rights stuff. One of my jobs at Greenfield Village is to help integrate a home from selma, Alabama, where Dr. King spent time for the Selma marches. And what happens in that house in particular is a group of religious leaders from around the world fly in to Selma just to be with them. Not all of them are going to march. Some of them will aren't even considering that. But they're there to be there for the prayer meetings and to be there as witnesses, as white people or as leaders in the world. And the idea of us being there with people in their times of sorrow, in their times of fear, even when we as a white denomination, we don't have the same fear that other folks have. Right. How do you think that matches up?

Yeah, no, I think that's. Those are, you know, two really concrete ways that. That we do this. And I think even sometimes such actions happen that aren't, say, done by the church per se. You know, like even your first example, it's a lawyer. Maybe the lawyer is connected to a congregation, maybe the lawyer isn't. But I think the church's job is to testify to where God is moving in that. So, you know, part of that is to witness that this kind of accompaniment is not just in itself a good human act, but that God moves within it. And so this is what I'm trying throughout the book to keep pushing us to also think of this kind of sacramental reality. And by sacramental, I don't necessarily mean it as like, word and sacrament or like baptism and communion. I mean it in the sense where the infinite and the finite participate within each other. And there's this sense where God becomes really concretely present in those moments. And I do think it's those kind of concrete kind of moments of walking with people in their fear, in both giving and receiving ministry at that deep level, person to person, that. Yeah. That God is present and that it's the church's job to testify of God's presence within that, even when it seems. Yeah. And I guess these are the eyes of faith again, because I'm sure someone could just say, well, this is just the right thing to do, or this is just a nice thing to do. Why do you have to give this all this religious language and things like that? And sometimes maybe that's fair, because we can, I think, violently kind of bombard the experience with some kind of religious justification. But there also is a necessity to point to the deeper realities of the spirit moving. And I think that's a big piece of what the church does, is says that this kind of accompaniment, that whether the church is in charge of programming it or not, programming it, is a place where God is working in bringing life out of death. And this is the cross. Again, the cross does not happen inside of a cathedral. It happens at the. As Bonhoeffer would say, at the edges of the world. You know, it's. It's. It's God being pushed out of the world. And at that. At that edge being pushed out is where, in this incredibly crazy, paradoxical way, that the whole salvation of the world occurs on the edge.

Yeah.

Andy, it strikes me that this is a conspicuously Lutheran reconceptualization of evangelism and accompaniment. And I think so in two ways. First, it's, you know, for us as a Wutheran heritage people, you know, it gives us an opportunity to reconceptualize what it means to evangelize using, you know, those words and that language of our heritage, to speak about this in terms of the theology of the cross. But you've also reminded me that the theology of the cross itself comes out of Luther's. Luther's own sense of torment and the struggle that he had. And so, you know, I think sometimes the. The best preaching is that which is simply trying to answer the preacher's own questions. And I think that was true for Luther and his work in theology. And. And it's really one of the great gifts of that heritage that we have. And there's. And there's always, you know, more. More depth to. To plumb out of that. So thank you for this work. I think it's really something that the church can benefit with in both some, you know, kind of academic, conversational ways, but also in some really practical, you know, rubber hits the road techniques of. Of being the church in the world. So.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think the only other thing I would add to that, it's really helpful, Keith, is that, you know, that there's something within Luther's experience, and I think within this kind of Lutheran imagination that says that every human being needs a pastor. And I don't mean that as a kind of, you know, ordained word and sacrament, but we need someone to minister to us. We need to minister to our neighbor, and we need our neighbor to minister to us in that no human being can go through this life alone, and torment will come, and we need a minister. And I think what the theology of the cross can link up with is how deep, and I even dare say mystical, that experience of the concrete caring for your neighbor can be. And, you know, this is to echo Luther saying, we become little Christ to each other. That can feel like a nice marketing slogan, but I think he means it in a deeply kind of mystical way that we actually have a kind of sacramental experience in what it means to do that. But there's something that we say about human beings, which human beings need to be cared for and ministered to, and most particularly in our moments of sorrow, because this God of Israel is a God who shows up and brings life out of death and frees those who find themselves against great impingements and is willing to throw God's own being into the breach so that we might find life out of death. And that's an incredibly beautiful thing, but not something you can manifest on your own. You need others to walk that path with you.

I think that's great. So where can we see you? I know you're going to be making an appearance at Theology Beer Camp. Camp.

Yeah. Yeah. And in October, I'll be at the Theology Beer Camp. And I think I'm going to be at the Extravaganza in. I am going to be at the Extravaganza in the end of January. So if so, folks are going to be there. I'll be there. And you can always just.

You've got a podcast.

I do have a podcast that keeps changing its name. You can blame the publisher for that, my good friend Jeremy Wells at.

Easy.

Yeah, I Think it's now called called Ministry in a Secular Age. A podcast so people can.

So the next book. The next book will change that again?

It could, it could. I think, I think we've changed it twice and now this is the third name and I'm hoping that's it.

But we'll see, we'll have lots of links there.

Professor Andy Root, thank you so very much for taking time to be with us today. We really appreciate it.

Thanks. It's been great talking to both of you.

You. Well, thanks again to Dr. Andy Root. This has been a fabulously informative and thought provoking conversation. I hope that it initiates some conversations with, with you all and also within our congregations about how we can address the needs of, of our, our communities not in their best places, but in some of their worst.

And so I remember when we were scheduling with Dr. Root, he had pointed out that he had very limited time. And so we, we definitely had to do this interview in a, in a shorter length than, than we might have wanted to and maybe not be able to explore things as deeply as we want.

But, but it could have gone on forever at that point too.

Well, he also, he, he really did give us a lot of, a lot of good things to think about in a fairly short order. So I really appreciate the conversation we had with him.

Them. Yes. Yes. All right. So we are getting to know a synod this time. We have Synod 4A is the Nebraska Synod. It is the state of Nebraska and this was surprising to me. It is 218 congregations. That is from my experience here in Michigan in our region, region six. That's a lot of churches and it has 80,000 members. Among those 800 or 218 churches. 800 would be pushing it a bit.

Yeah, Yeah, I think that's roughly the same size, give or take a bit as, as the Lower Sisquehannes center where I'm at. So although much bigger geographic area. Oh, for sure. Yeah. So the bishop of the Nebraska Senate is Scott Johnson and he took it upon himself to fill out the, the form for this, which I thought was really cool. The vice president is Alicia McGill and I apologize if I am mispronouncing that name. You can find out more information about the nebraska [email protected] or on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube and we'll have links to.

All those in the episode notes, of course, some unique synod programs. So the Nebraska Senate has parish ministry associates that have been serving the Northeast. The new, I'm sorry, Nebraska Synod congregations as Sams as synod authorized ministers for more than 30 years. And they take pride in the Nebraska and the central state Senates having been leaders in lay ministry for many, many years. And I think we're going to talk to Bishop Johnson at some point about lay ministry. If we can, we can arrange that and see how they've been doing it.

Happy to be a guest.

Yes, absolutely. We asked this question if the Senate had a mascot, what would it be? And they don't have an if there. They actually have a mascot. They have a blow up Martin Luther mascot and his nickname is Martin Flatable which is fabulous. Absolutely.

I don't know of many that actually have a mascot.

No, No. I kind of want to move to Lincoln now. That'd be awesome. What are three descriptive words for the synod? We've got generous, industrious and surprising. And I've already been surprised at least twice now just with this.

So yeah, the last question we asked them and they were kind enough to fill out was what are some things that you want everyone to know about yourself? Their response is this. Nebraska has been a leader in the Lutheran church for over 150 years. Our strength is in a unified approach to ministry. Relationships between congregations, serving our ministries and other mission partners is perhaps the strongest in the entire elca. A hallmark of that unity is generous support of ministries around the Synod. Our motto is one church better together and we live it out in many different ways. Waves you I do have to say I have a couple of the pastors and other church leaders that have been influential in, in my life or that I've come across in different times. My experience have, have at one time served in the Nebraska Senate. So they're definitely, you know, I don't think they're just bragging in making those statements.

Yeah, I, I same for me. Thinking of some folks that, that I've known. I thought it was interesting to the over 150 years I, I wondered if maybe the Nebraska Synod was essentially came into being when Nebraska got statehood and Nebraska got statehood 158 years ago. So pretty much on, on point there.

It sounds like that may indeed be the case.

Yeah, it was probably actually synod even before that before statehood. So. So there we go. Well, it's great to get to know the Nebraska Synod. Thanks for turning that in. We'll get to know some more people here soon.

Absolutely. We'll have more synods, more congregations and or other church related organizations. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fote. The show is produced by Phote Media Productions. You can find all of our contact information and links about this episode, as well as a transcript in the episode notes. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.