This is Keith, and this is Ben, and this is Main Street Lutherans. Today we're going to talk with Pastor David Daubert from Elgin, Illinois, about a book that he wrote that's called the Lutheran Trump Cards. When Pastor Daubert wrote this book, it was in response to questions about what are the core ideas of Lutheran faith, particularly for the elca. And so he has this list. We'll talk about that here. He's got 13 cards, the trump cards in a deck of cards. We're going to talk about the first five of them, but we'll get to that here in a second. When we talk about Lutheranism, though, we often resort to some catchphrases. When we do that, we talk about things like saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, which has all the words that go into defining that, but it means a lot. Simul justus et piccater is Latin for at the same time, saint and sinner. And that's a pretty important one. We talk about how we're all, no one's. No one's perfect, but in God's eyes, we're all God's creation and so important and valued and loved.

We also say sin boldly. I used to have a coffee mug with those words on it.

You know, there was a story when I was early college, I heard some youth. I was part of a youth director or youth leader education program. And one of the folks said they were at a seminary class and they were learning about. About this idea of sin boldly. But the person leading the class wrote it wrong. And it said sin bodily. And that is not what Luther said. But to say it could have been included.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, Luther.

Luther said in.

In response to how do we live knowing that everything we do is tainted by sin? He said, sin boldly, but trust in the Lord Jesus Christ even more boldly. Still, Lutherans also are not alone, but we frequently use the call and response.

Phrases, the Lord be with you and also with you.

There you go.

And then those are the, you know, those are the ones come from our church services. We. We were talking about this and, and one of the things that, that while we sing at camp, we sing, you'll know they're Christians by our love. But oftentimes, if you're a Lutheran in a place that has lots of other Lutherans, sometimes you'll know that someone is Lutheran by their Live Generously T shirt from Thrivent Financial. Because when a church does a project that uses Thrivent funds, Thrivent will often send out batch of T shirts. So everybody gets a T shirt that says live generously. And they come in all sorts of colors by now. And it doesn't necessarily mean that the folks are Lutheran. Actually, the shirts have been around long enough. They're in thrift shops and have been passed out for all sorts of reasons. And then we're in our region in the Midwest and into the east coast, we get lost and found. And so one of the. One of the things that's distinctly Lutheran, I would say, is slinky from their song Lions.

Right?

Yeah. So some of these phrases help us talk about being Lutheran. But this conversation we're about to have with Dave Dobert really gives us some new ways to think about talking about being Lutheran and what makes us different and what is powerful, what's valuable about our perspective on the world. And so, with no further ado, here is our conversation with Pastor David Daubert. Joining us today is Pastor Dave Daubert, who wrote a book called the Lutheran Trump Cards and is part of Day 8 strategies. Welcome to the show. We're going to talk with you about. About your book a little bit and about what it means to be Lutheran and how we can declare ourselves Lutheran in the world around us.

Great. Well, it's good to be with you guys. Thanks for the invitation. And I'm glad after all these different years, the book's actually still pretty useful to people. And I'm. I'm quite astonished, actually. It's survived a second presidency and people are still interested and the like. And so, I mean, it does cause confusion, actually. People say, what's that good to do? And it's like, nothing. The book was written first, actually.

Yeah. And in fact, I think I started to learn how to play bridge in the basement of one of the churches. You were at church.

I will say, though, just as a kind of an interesting note, you can buy this book on Amazon right now, but only on Kindle, because the paper book has been frozen.

Oh, wow.

Since March. So for 11 months now, it hasn't been available because when Donald Trump ran for president the second time, there were all sorts of collectible things like playing cards and things. And their AI bot recategorized the paper edition of this book as playing cards.

Oh, wow.

And then froze it to make me verify that they were authentic playing cards, which I can't do because they're not. And I've been through customer service for their actual selling division now on five different loops, and they refer me and say, someone will get back to you with the thing. And they Haven't. So if you want to buy this book, you have to buy the Kindle edition on Amazon. It's still apparently not a playing card on Kindle, and you can buy it at 98strategies.com website and we'll have links.

To that in the show notes there.

But it is kind of a fascinating thing that at the moment, because of the confusion with the name trump and the cards, you can't buy it on Amazon because they really think it is cards, not a book.

So now you need to make, now you need to make some, some playing cards.

Well, I actually have a little set that people can get to go with them when they do series and stuff. You can buy printable cards to give out to confirmation classes and stuff. And, and they were kind of fun for kids. And some churches have used them for summer campaigns. Done 13 weeks, you know, we got a chapter, I think. So are cards available?

Excellent.

But they're free. Not on Amazon. All right. Yeah.

So the, the idea of this, the idea of cards, I think we can, we can walk away from the, the trump word. But, you know, if we, we talk about a suit of cards.

Well, actually, you can't work away from the trump card. I mean, trump word in a sense, because that's how it evolved. When I started, I, I've been teaching a long time, and people would be putting things together, and then we would talk about what to include and not include. And somebody would say, well, maybe we could just skip this part of something. It would save some time. And I'd say, you can't skip that. It's one of our trump cards. Of course, if you play cards, the word trump in cards means it's a strong one, it's the good ones. It's something that's a keeper and has some strategic power. So it really came out of the language of cards being used in colloquial elisms for that's a trump card, that's a strong thing. And then over time later, we'll talk about some of the cards in this thing. The ones I mentioned, the, the ace through the 10. I wrote an article for the Lutheran magazine about these. And then Elizabeth, who was my editor for that, said, you know, if you write the ace through the 10, people are going to want to know what the whole deck is. They want to know all of them. So I began to flesh out the whole thing as a response to her question, what are the rest of them? And then that book evolved. So it kind of evolved over time. Conversations about what's important about Lutheranism what are our strengths? And then the article that came out of that being a discussion point. And then the question, well, you got us to the 10. How about 9, 8, 7? All the way to the 2? So it's been an evolving thing. And the card analogy actually was the conversation about a way of thinking about strengths.

Sure, yeah. If you'd done it in Michigan, it would have been a euchre deck.

Yeah, euchre. I play euchre, too, and it's the same deal.

One of the things I really liked about the book was that each chapter is fairly manageable. It's fairly short and ends with discussion questions. That lets you process that with a group. And so our church used it for our Wednesday night services and talked about each of those chapters, and it really brought people together about what unites us. Some of the things Keith and I have talked about in the podcast so far has been about how a lot of people that are in our congregations aren't familiar with the depth of Lutheran things in general, theology in particular. This really does a good job of bringing it to conversation in a way that's approachable, it's not heavy, it's not full of dense theological reading and that sort of thing. So I really appreciate it. Let's talk about those cards.

Yeah. Well, we're going to look at kind of the top of the deck, the ace through the 10. And this really evolved. I was at a theological conference. I was a theological conference presenter for a synod that shall remain nameless because the story's got kind of a downside. I was presenting on these things. I started out with a foil statement, which is a tricky foil statement that I said into a bunch of ordained Lutheran rostered leaders. There's a belief out there that there's no way to God except through Jesus Christ. And I was going to then reverse and say, that's not true. The Bible doesn't teach that. And one of the pastors said, amen. That's right. And then you're kind of, oh, that's an awkward kind of a thing. Now we've got a gathering of Lutheran pastors who've all been ordained and met some theological criteria. And they, at least one of them was so sure that. That the ace wasn't the ace, that they said amen to the foil statement. And so really, Luther's great discovery was there's no way to God, period, that you can work your butt off and it's just not going to happen. And that Jesus is not about how you get to God. You know, You've all seen that little flyer on the door knocker kind of thing where there's the gap and Jesus is in the gap. And if you believe in Jesus, you get to go and be with God. And it's always the man and it's never a woman, it's always a man gets to cross the cross through the chasm and gets to go with you, with God. And the Bible is so clear that Jesus is not about getting us to God, but about God coming to us. I mean, it's about incarnation. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It's about love that comes down. So Luther's great discovery, if you will, which it's in the Bible, so it's not like he thought it up, is that the whole Jesus thing is about a God who won't stay away. It's not about taking us away, but a God who won't stay away, about a God who comes into our midst. And I think that's the key to Lutheranism and it's the radicality of Lutheranism, particularly in America. We're going to be in charge and we want to have some participation in our own everything, right? We want to be capable and competent and responsible. And we actually like to, you know, get mad at people who are irresponsible and then we can blame them because they're whatever that we don't like. And so Americans like control. I'm sure human beings do it as a general rule, but in America, it's, it's really like a self control, self determination. These are all like cultural icons. And so Lutheranism is really very countercultural. Nope, not a damn thing you can do about it. God's coming to you and God's coming to you. You want to go to God. Not an option. And you know, Psalm 119, you know, R139, rather Psalm 139, about wherever you go, whatever you do, God's always there. God's just a pursuing, loving, coming to you, God. So that's where this all started. And if you don't get that, you can't be a Lutheran really, because that's. I mean, you can be a Christian in some other ways of thought, but the basic starting point for Lutherans is that love comes down, God comes to you. There's nothing you can do to get to God, but God loves you to not get to you. So then you got that. And that doesn't necessarily mean that's good news. If God's really wrathful and angry and wants to knock the, you know, out of you, then, lo and behold, when God comes, you could be terrified, right? And we've got stories all through scripture in people's lives that if God's coming to you, is that good news? Of course, the answer could be no. You know, I'll be back. Was not necessarily Arnold Schwarzenegger's promise to bring a smile to your face. So when we meet Jesus, and this is where grace comes in, when we meet Jesus, we discover that the God who comes to us comes to us with a. With a love and with a graciousness. And that's the recognition point. Believing that if you will, faith justified by grace through faith, meeting that Jesus and trusting, knowing that Jesus changes everything else about our lives. God comes to us, and God comes to us graciously. And my favorite scripture passage about Jesus is the resurrection story in the upper room on Easter, which is sort of John's Pentecost story. And it said, they're all locked up in the room. They're scared that what happened to Jesus is going to happen to them. And then Jesus comes back. Which of course, the first thing that could be is you guys deserted me and I had a really rough time on the cross and I'm back and I'm going to knock the tar out.

Of you right into the southward Jesus, right?

First thing, Jesus says that peace be with you. And then they're amazed. And then what do you do? He says it again. I think it's really important. Jesus says, peace be with you twice just to make sure they know he meant it. It's like this deep, deep, deep truth. Peace be with you. Yeah, you deserted me. You abandoned me. Everything I hoped would happen and you would do. You let me down. You're complete and utter failures. Peace be with you. And then what does he say? As the Father sent me, I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they're forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they're retained. And he says, as screwed up as you are and as bad as you've done, I'm going to invest everything I got in you, and you're going to go off and do my work now. I mean, that's a really cool story. And that's the Jesus we meet. A God who comes, no matter how bad we've dropped the ball and says, I still love you. You're still useful. So those are the first two keys. And believing, trusting, knowing, whatever language you want to use around that changes the rest of it. Now, I don't know if you want to stop there, dig in further. If you want to just run through to the 10.

That's good. So, so, so aces. There's, there's no way to God that, that God is always is with us. What no matter what we do, we can't prevent it.

Right.

King is. Then Jesus reveals that God is love. That, that God's not, not coming for vengeance. Right? Yeah.

No. One of the things that I think is unique about Lutherans and you know, a little later we'll talk about what makes ELC Lutheran is different than non ELC Lutherans. But one of the things that I think makes ELCA Lutherans different than non ELCA Lutherans is that we're Lutheran and we've been accused of in the opposite direction.

Right.

But I think that the Queen is a really important card because we have a non judgmental take on this. And I go back to the single double predestination kinds of stuff. In those arguments with Calvinism and other kinds of things. Luther and Lutherans in general always believed that when you knew that God loved you, you could trust that you were going to be fine in this world and on this side of death and in the other side of death and what was to come. That that was a love that transcends life in the world and into eternity. And that God had always intended that for you because that's God's intention to love people in this world into the next, on this side of the grave and on the other. But we always rebelled at our best when there was the other side. That God also intended some people not to be loved across the grave and to be sent to hell and damned for eternity. A kind of double predestination of Calvinism and Lutherans in the during the Reformation and shortly thereafter really landed that we're the single predestination people. If God loves you, it's because God loves you. And it was always intended to be. If you don't know that God loves you, it doesn't mean that God doesn't or won't or can't. We can't say. We've always been agnostic about the outcome of other people. We've never said, well this person's not qualified for heaven, they're going to hell. Not at our best we could say, I don't know, we could say a lot of things, but we can't say with a surety boy so and so just doesn't believe in Jesus and they're a bad person, they're going to rot in hell. Because it's just not our turf that goes beyond our ability to speak for eternity. And we've got very clear sense that we can make all kinds of choices in our life. But if it's eternal, it's off the table. That's God's domain. So I think one of the things that I love about being a Lutheran in our branch is that we're not as judgmental about people who aren't us. And that at our best, you love your neighbor and you hope what's best for them. So when somebody says, is your Buddhist neighbor or your Hindu neighbor or your Jewish neighbor in heaven? Which is, you know, not always the language I would use anyway. But that's the kind of question I would say, I don't know, but I hope so.

Sure.

Because if you love your neighbor, you want what's best for them and you can't actually hope someone goes to hell and stay at your best as a Christian. But there are people, you know, there are people who have pretty clear lists and hope certain people go to hell and have certain criteria, which to me means grace isn't exactly grace, it's grace with footnotes. And I think at our best, we're a church, that's grace with at least as few footnotes as we can allow ourselves to put on and still be the fallible, screwed up human beings we are. We all like footnotes, but at our best, there aren't any.

And I think we acknowledge that the footnotes are ours.

Absolutely. And that's my job, is to remind people, any footnotes you put on there, those don't have a divine signature.

They might get erased and probably will.

They might get erased and actually God may not read the footnotes in such matters.

And just, you know, this particular point was really poignant to me. Well, it has been since I read it because I've taken on the Santa Claus role. And so when I saw the new movie Red One, the caper movie with Santa Claus being kidnapped, Santa Claus in that movie doesn't have a naughty list. Right. It's just a nice list. And so that was a great example to me of this idea. Right? It was the Krampus that kept the naughty list and insisted on it being there. And Santa didn't want it and so rejected it. And that was a great analogy for me.

I like it. So I think that's one of the things that's unique about ELCA Lutherans at our best, anyway, where I think the least judgmental by nature, now that's its own judgmental Statement. I recognize that because you make judgment all the time. But I think at our best, we recognize it's not our primary job to. To judge people not like us to be inadequate, but to simply try to receive them as neighbor and love them at their best. All right, I don't know if that's helpful, but to me, that's. That's a big deal.

I certainly think it is.

If we move on to the Jack and go on to the Jack and real quick, these are kind of flip sides of the two things that the Jack has to do with the vocation of the baptized and attend the priesthood of all believers. Both terms get used a lot in the church, and I think they're both important to me. The vocation of the baptized is our calling to continue the ministry of Jesus in the world. And I like that phrase, even continuing the ministry of Jesus. And I'm a pretty sacramental person. So I think when St. Teresa of Avila said Christ has no eyes but yours and no hands but yours, that she meant it that literally, our bodies are a dwelling place for God, that union with Christ and our baptism is real, and that our bodies are sacramental. That's a later chapter we won't talk about today. But then we're called to do the work of Christ, which is to love neighbors. So in my mind, vocation of the baptized as a metaphor is using your hands, serving, neighbor, loving, caring, feeding, embracing, listening. It's how we live in that. If you want to use those things in the horizontal dimension of neighbor to neighbor, person to person, working for the common good, working for the life and love of our neighbor, caring for people. That vocation is really grounded in Luther's call. It is the duty of every Christian to be Christ for their neighbor. That real sense is essential for what it means for us to be us. That Tim Wingert wrote a thing in response to the tweets and stuff about Lutheran social services and the grants and things, and he kind of, tongue in cheek, said, lutherans recognize they don't have to do anything to please God, so they have a lot of free time on their hands that they can use to love their neighbors and serve instead. That's a paraphrase, but it's pretty close to what he said, and I kind of liked what he said, which is kind of like chapter one, right? There's no way to God, so you don't have to screw around with a whole bunch of religious baloney trying to figure out how to get all that right. You actually can. Most of your religious Activity can be directed someplace useful. And that's the vocation of the baptized. How does God use us to reach and connect other people and care for the world? The priest of all believers is the exact same thing in reverse. The priestly role was always to be an intermediary, to stand in for. And of course in the Reformation we. One of the big issues was everybody had to have the same person stand in for him. It was the priest, like the real priest, who could stand by an altar and make Jesus show up with the magic words and things. And Luther's concept of the priesthood of all believers was this real sense that anybody could pray for anybody because all of us have God's ear. Now in America, that's gotten kind of abused because everybody thinks, wow, I don't need to go to church anymore. I think I can talk to God for myself. That really wasn't what priesthood of all believers was about. Because being a priest always requires three parties, God, you and another person. Because a priest is an intermediary person. So once you decide to be your own priest, you're no longer a priest, you're just you. And we all have God's ear. But it's not a priestly role. A priestly role is again about love of neighbor. And so while in the vocation of the baptized, God is using me, sending me to love my neighbor. In the priestly role, God is using the neighbor to come to me or me to come on the neighbor's behalf to God. It's this kind of two way thing that if I love Ben or Keith here, it's nice I can pray for myself. But if you've got an issue, it's actually probably kind of comforting to know that I would pray for you. And not because I'm special, but if I had an issue, it'd be nice to know that you guys would pray for me. And when I visit people in the hospital, I've never said, I know I'm going to be all right, I've been praying for myself. I've never heard anybody say that. But I can't tell you how many times I've heard somebody say, I know things are going to work out okay, I know I've got a lot of people praying for me. And so priests of all believers is actually a very communal thing. It's what we do on behalf of each other. To say that your life matters enough to me that I'm going to spend some time with God talking to God about you. It's a really powerful thing to pray for each other. Not that it's magic or that what I ask for is going to turn out the way I want, but it's really. It's how I love neighbor. And vocation of baptized is how God uses me to love neighbor this way out to the world. And priests of all believers is how God uses me to love neighbor by bringing neighbor to God, if that makes sense. This is kind of a two sides of the same action. How do I love neighbor? And it's that relationship of God sending me to them and them to God. So that's really, for me, the. The pieces of it. And if you put them all together, the basic elevator speech for Lutherans is that we can relax because instead of working our tail off to figure out how to get right with God, God comes to us and Jesus says, I'll make it right with you, and does it so graciously that we're free to hope the best for our neighbors and sent then to care for them in word, prayer, and indeed vocation. And that's what it means to be a Lutheran at its very core is to believe that God is loving and comes to us and then frees us up to wish the best and work for the best for the people around us. That's really pretty simple. It's not rocket science. And at the same time, it's really powerful to think that the Creator of the universe has chosen to intervene in our story lovingly so that we would do better and at loving and being the people that we were called to, created to be all along. That could only happen with God doing it in and through us.

In a nutshell.

Yeah, that's the Euchre deck or the peanut deck.

That's right. Almost. We need the nine, but. But we're okay. The.

Thanks for guiding us through that. Many of the cards so far. One of the things that strikes me is how, you know, as. As Lutherans, we. We frequently talk about the Incarnation. We talk about God becoming human in Christ and dwelling among us. And we do speak about the church as the body of Christ. One of the taglines for the ELCA is God's work, our hands. This notion that God works through us in the lives of people around us and for the sake of God's creation, et cetera. And yet listening to you describe the work of the church in the way that you have it really injects a different theological perspective than just we're doing good stuff for the sake of God or we're doing good stuff for the sake of God's world. We are. We are a part of God working incarnately. And that's a really gutsy thing to say. It's also, I think it's profoundly sacramental in this notion of. Of who we are and who God is and who we and God are in relation to each other. Yeah, I don't know. You know, it would.

There's.

There's probably a heresy that I'm bordering on in saying that. That, you know, that God exists through us. And. And so I don't want to go that far, but there is this. Yeah, there is this incarnate notion in what you're describing that I think is. Is much more. Much more powerful than just, you know, God loves us and so we do other nice things for other people.

Yeah, And I think I would. I would. I would agree with you. There is a heresy in what you said almost, but at the same time, I would think it's almost right also, in a sense, I wouldn't say God exists through us, but God manifests God's existence through us. That there's something about us that matters and that because we're finite, tangible beings and only learn and encounter things in finite and tangible ways, if God doesn't have a finite and tangible expression of God's self, then it's all just, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder. I'm philosophizing, I'm thinking, which is, you know, it's fun and interesting, and we all do that. But the incarnation is about God actually declaring through the tangibleness of life who God is in Jesus and then claiming us to be the body of Christ. That's our role. You know, we actually collectively embody Jesus to the world. That's the church's job. We may be lousy at it sometimes, but that's what we're called to do. At our best, we embody Jesus. And let's be honest, if people don't like God, usually it's the church they don't like. Right. People. People who don't go to church expect the church to represent God well. And when we don't, they say, I don't even sometimes say, I don't believe in God. The church is all full of idiots. Which is kind of like saying that so and so had a bad. You know, you got a bully at the school. Maybe they don't have parents because, you know, I don't like the bully. They must not have had parents. Well, don't. That's. It's not true. But we represent God very real. It's a Very real thing. I don't know that we take it seriously as often as we should. I think what you said, very profound.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for saying it.

Everything about this, and it's maybe because I grew up Lutheran and you know, you know, went through, you know, Lutheran school and then Lutheran college and all that, but it seems to me that this just makes sense and it doesn't make sense that anybody would think any other way. So what is it about this that other Christians, you know, how does this make us? What's the thing that people that are not Lutherans, most don't understand about this?

Well, and I don't know that I'm going to say that even all Lutherans, or even all in our tradition Lutherans understand it, but because I think grace is a very threatening thing because it calls me, if I'm to embody grace, calls me to be outside of my comfort zone quite often. And if I'm serious about grace, then the people that I don't like, I have to just flat out tell myself, in spite of the fact that I, I'm not adequate to like or love these people. I know God does. And so I'm always challenged in all my biases and presuppositions, particularly negative ones about other people. And that's a scary thing. It moves us by nature towards pluralism and diversity and inclusion of people that are of different races and ethnicities and abilities and gender orientations and sexual identities and all kinds of things in terms of culture and ethnicity. And we all are more comfortable functioning in the circle that we function in. That's why we function in it. And we all are very uncomfortable functioning, especially in a completely, almost non overlapping circle someplace else. That's why we don't go there very easily. And I think what makes grace hard is that if we take grace seriously, then I have to take all the people I don't want to take seriously seriously. And even the people that I may have huge animosity for have to have some sense. You know, when Jesus says, you're to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect in the Sermon on the Mount, do you remember what context that was in? It's a Sermon on the Mount paragraph where he says, even the Gentiles like people who like them. But I call you to pray for those who persecute you and love your enemies. And then he says, you must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. And so Jesus call when he stretches us at our best isn't to be nice to people who are just around us, you know, J.D. vance recently talked about the kind of circle of who we care for. And you start with the people close and like. And when you kind of run out, you just run out. And the people furthest are most different. You don't have to worry about, well, grace and the Sermon on the Mount stretches to, say, the people you don't like who are not at all like you and in fact, whose guts you actually can't stand. I call you to love them and to pray for them, and I think that's very countercultural. And honestly, if we take sin seriously, it's very difficult for us as human beings to do so. Most American, I think most Americans and most religion, in fact, really, religion by nature is designed to put a certain construction on things that we understand. I mean, I wrote this book so Lutherans would understand their own construction better. Let's be honest. You create culture, you create a worldview, you create language, and then we function out of our worldview. But if your worldview isn't by nature gracious and expansive, then you create also your own kind of isolation or silo or cultural or theological ghetto. And frankly, I'm afraid that a lot of American Christianity has really moved in that direction. And frankly, the move of Christian nationalism and some of those things are significant shifts towards. It's getting really uncomfortable here. There's a lot of people I don't like and who are very different than me, and I don't want to like or love them. And I want to have my circle be small and my responsibilities be clear. And so loving my enemies and praying for those who persecute me and all those things scares people. It just does. And I think it scares people. I think Lutherans are included in that. But at our best, we're constantly stretching ourselves to figure out how to love our neighbor better, not as a work, but as a calling. It's our vocation to love our neighbors better, and we're called to be those people because God has already, in Christ, showed us how to love. While we were yet sinners, yet Christ still died for us. Romans, that God. God has demonstrated how to do this and has done it and then says, I'm going to live in you. So it's not you doing this, it will be me. What you're not capable of doing, through you, I will love the people that you're struggling to love. I think that's radical. That's radical.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it especially contrasts with that. That image of. Of Jesus being way up high and you know, almost like a distant God. Right. So that.

At the right hand of the Father.

That's right. And so we're the enforcers, I think, is one way that some Christians look at that relationship. Right. We're the chosen ones, we're the enforcers. And so we're going to set everything right because he's not here to do anything about it. And we certainly don't look at it that way.

Not at all.

Yeah. All right. So there are other Lutherans, you mentioned them a little bit. And they don't quite see this the same way. I guess the most, most common thing I run into is that, that we get accused. I mean, just recently in the, in the context of, of this talk about like a global refuge, that we were, we were. I don't know if we were attacked, but we were declared to be not serious Lutherans by the, the president of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. I think the more common thing for them to say is that we're not orthodox Lutherans. And it seems to me that we're pretty orthodox. It seems like all this is in Orthodoxy would be related to the Book of Concord, the Augsburg Confessions. And this seems like this is really what it's about. How do you argue that?

I think, first of all, at the best, certain things about, let's say, the Missouri Synod church until it really went off the rails in the seventies around biblical fundamentalism and theological fundamentalism are admirable. Some of the best trained theologians and biblical people I know who are older people and came through that system were my professors and were courageous and bold. Some of them were heads of agencies in the ELCA or bishops and synods. That, that at its roots was some really good stuff. I want to say that to start with, and there's a lot I admire about the diligence of their training. I think in my mind, where it has gone astray, and I don't want to, you know, cast aspersions in a real neighborhood is that the Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod, for example, and maybe some of those who left, like LCMC and nalc, that left the elca, have opted towards a cultural fundamentalism around the Reformation. And so their understanding of confessional is as fundamentalist as an inerrant Scripture interpretation might be. For somebody who only used the King James Bible, this is what it says and this is what it means, and originalist thinking, whatever kind of thing means that you get from, you know, those kind of stuff. And that in a sense, it's their belief that basically in 1500s we got it right. And we responded to the problems of the church and we fixed it. And now that it was fixed, we're correct and we're going to do what we do because we fixed it. So they've been much more static. I think they also, because of historic things, were much more German. And I don't think it matters that they were German, but the ethnics, ethnic homogeneity of their tradition and it could have been any other ethnicity, but the ethnic homogeneity creates certain cultural assumptions that go with their understanding of it. That once you add my, my father in law was a happy Dane. He was from the Danish tradition that drank, played cards, but they always talked about the Danish tradition. He was an LCA that was an alc. He called him the Holy Danes that didn't drink and didn't play cards and didn't dance. And in fact I got somebody from the, the Danish tradition said they liked the book, but they were displeased that Luther and Martin Luther and Katie were playing cards on the COVID and they actually meant it. But when you start mixing all that together, the ELCA's got happy Danes and Holy Days and it's got Norwegian pietists and it's got Swedish state church people. And so I think by nature the ELCA has been an amalgam of multiple expressions of theology being placed in context of different cultures. And. And by nature, even though it's a bunch of northern white European people, still at its root it's much more diverse. And getting a Norwegian pietist and a 17th century German philosophical kind of Lutheran in the same room. They got a lot to talk about before they think they're in the same camp, even though in the LCA they are. So I think we've been forced to process diversity and the process of mergers means we've come up with a mindset that we can work with other people and that we're better together. And the Missouri Senate approach has been no, we've got it right and other people can screw it up. That's a mindset and I think that's a big part of it. I think that's why the two is the last card in this thing. But it's not unimportant. Semper Reformandi. The ELCA sees Reformation as a thing that is an ongoing reality, much more so than the more conservative traditions that say no. In 1517, Luther posted some stuff and started something. And by 1530, when the Augsburg Confession came out, we kind of answered all the questions that needed to be Answered, now it's done. So we can ordain women and the other group. No, no, they didn't do that. Luther didn't mention ordaining women. I don't think that's allowed. We can ordain LGBTQ people. Yeah, no, we can't do. I don't see anything in the confessions about that that doesn't fit. You know, you see what I'm saying, that there's contextual things where we can apply Reformation principles of grace and the usefulness of people to God and vocation and priesthood of all believers and make moves because of Semper Reformandi and our cultural amalgam of bringing, granted, a bunch of white Northern European people together, but again, from a lot of different mindsets, at least. So our thought was people who are different than us and don't think quite like us might still be able to be us. And that's a huge gift that we have.

It is.

And bring Lutheranism to a world without having to fix it. Whereas the other traditions. If you can't be what we are, you just don't belong, because we've got it right in a much more static kind of a way. So, to me, that's one of our great gifts. The ELC has the ability to be a reforming church and a church that has learned from its welcoming history to become something new all the time. Now, we're still not very good at it. Let's be honest. We're still. But at least we have the ability to.

We're human. I mean, humans aren't very good at that.

No, it's. No, we're human beings. Simulus epicatar. God loves us and we're justified, and we still screw things up all the time.

Yeah. No, that connects really well to what we've been talking with Mark Granquist about. We're doing a series with him about the history of Lutheranism from the Reformation up to pretty much the formation of the elca. And part of what we've been talking about is the immigration of Europeans to America and how they formed their own cloisters, almost of ethnic Lutheranism, and. And then how they joined together and. And started having to form new things. And so that connects with that really well. I appreciate that.

Yeah. And I think it's just. I think it's one of the gifts we have is we've formed by communities joining together. The other ones have mostly formed and then tried to perpetuate the community that they put together.

Yeah.

It's not 100 rule, but it's It's a pattern, sure.

So within this body that has become the elca, where do we go? You know, how do we manage disagreements within that. Within that commune, if you will. So not, you know, not disagreements to the point where people are, you know, consider themselves other than we are. But how do you know two ELCA Lutherans together, or two separate congregations or whatever who disagree? How do they remain in community with each other even as they disagree?

Well, I think, first of all, as I've watched things happen over the years, staying together is an attitudinal thing. If people want to stay in relationship, it's more likely that they will. If they don't want to stay in relationship, it's more likely they can find a reason not to. So I think part of it is, do I want to relate to this group of people who have diversity and at least purport to want to have even more diversity than we have? I mean, that's kind of what we're working towards saying is we haven't got this right yet. We're actually still narrower and smaller in our vision than God is, and therefore we've still got work to do. And so I think part of its attitude, and you can't change attitude very easily except by loving people who are different than you over time. And I think it takes two to do that. And I think we're all responsible for our half and seeing what happens, does that make sense that if somebody's being a jerk towards me and wants to try and sever relationships with me and do something towards that, I can decide what to do about that or what not to do about that, and I can continue to try and stay in relationship and positive and encouraging and clear about what I believe and why there's difference and so forth. But people that want to leave or stay in a cranky spot in a relationship usually do, and people who want to fix it usually can if the other person wants to fix it, too. So that's where I would start. That, in a sense, a core value is that we live in community together, and that community is hard. But we must be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. So we do the best we can to actually maintain relationships. The second thing is, I think we have to decide for ourselves. You know, let's suppose this book is right, which it's not. If I was to write this book in 2025, I would change some things, even myself. You know, my own thinking has changed. It's still, I think, pretty close to what I would write my I'm not like in a whole different world. But, you know, you write something, you think, oh, that could have been a little different, or I changed examples or maybe I would reword one of the cards this way or that way now or so forth. So I think you have to constantly be asking two questions. One, what really is at the center of this? What's non negotiable for us to stay Lutheran? Which for me, I think those, the ace through the 10 really are non negotiable. And I would even go towards for ELCA Lutherans, you know, loving the Bible without worshiping it and life is sacramental. I think those are a big deal. You know, I think your discussion, Keith, about, you know, God is actually manifesting God's self through us is part of the, part of the game for us that you ditch that and now you're. You're something else. But then there's a lot of things that really don't matter as much as we say they do. Let's be honest. Once I've kind of navigated this thing, the fact that the pastor at some congregation down the street is gay or transgender really is kind of a stupid thing for me to care about at my church down the street and sever a relationship over. They're not pastor where I'm at. And if I can love my neighbor, I can love those people. And who knows, they might even do a good enough job to change my mind if I'm opposed to that, right? As long as I stay in relationship. Now, once I severed say, oh, they got a pastor, I wouldn't have called. Well, that's fine. You're not there. It wasn't your call anyway. I think a lot of times people get bent out of shape about stuff just to make a point and feel superior to other people, and they sever the relationship as a way of saying, I'm too good to be with you. Now, nobody severs a relationship to say, I'm not worth you. Anybody who leaves a church usually severs relationships. You're not worth me. And once we get into that kind of a contest, we've immediately ceased to be Lutheran again and resorted to being just screwed up human beings who don't believe what we say because life is not a contest. And frankly, if it wasn't your call to call that pastor, then keep your nose out of it and stay in relationship with the pastor. They do call because it was their call. So I think we meddle too much in things that don't matter, and we try to be Superior to people in ways that are unnecessary.

Well, this has been great. Now we sort of skipped over the Day eight Strategies piece. So Date Strategies, that's where your books publish out of here. And it's not just this book. You've got some others about. I think there's one about modernizing the church to be able to do.

Yeah. And Invitational Christian Beyond Chitchat I just wrote with Elena Salmon, which is about getting people to talk about their faith in church. But yeah, Date Strategy has been around. It's my kind of consulting writing brand. I picked the name for a couple reasons. I've got a good friend who's Jewish that I have lunch with quite often. And Jewish people are circumcised on the eighth day. On the eighth day, they're circumcised because they're entitled to experience a full cycle of creation. Full seven days, including a Sabbath before circumcision. Because circumcision is your entry into the covenant. The claiming of you being a responsible partner with God to an eight day Euro, which I think is very interesting.

Yeah.

So. So a big part of it is that the eighth day is about accepting responsibility to partner with God then. The second thing about it is that early Christians were referred to as Day 8 worshippers. They worshiped on 8th day and Christ was the new creation and that creation is fulfilled and the new thing happened in the resurrection. So the worship really, we don't worship on the first day of the week, we worship on the eighth day of the week. And so I wanted that connection to the risen Christ and new creation. So it really has a Jewish circumcision covenant and a Christian new life, resurrection, life in Christ kind of a piece. And so I wanted us to be working towards a new creation as God's responsible partners, if you will. That's kind of what it's about. That's where the name came from. Awesome.

So we'll have a link to the website for date strategies there and you can get books and information. If you want to bring Pastor Daubert in to talk to your congregation, you're welcome to give them a call, I'm sure.

Absolutely. I've got to talk to anybody anytime. And if you shoot me an email or make a contact thing on that website or whatever, I reply to email pretty well. Try to follow up with things. And I'm always glad to talk to and learn from and share with anyone who wants to chat.

Thanks, Dave, so much for your time today. It's been great to have you on. I enjoyed the Book. I used it, parts of it as the basis for a class that I did back in the fall in my own congregation that was received pretty well. I didn't do all 13 cards, but because it was only a three session class. But the first couple were really handy for that. I really appreciate it. So thanks a lot.

No, thank you. It's kind of fun. I'm still amazed sometimes. I just got an order from a church up in Washington State for 80 copies.

Wow.

They use them with all their new members in their confirmation classes. And then somebody in Michigan just ordered 40, I think two weeks ago. So sometimes I go, wow, that's a big order.

Yeah. You might need to do another edition.

I wrote it. Right.

All right.

Thanks for me, guys. I really appreciate it. I've enjoyed being on with you and thanks for your work.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, likewise. Thank you for yours.

Oh, you bet. Take care.

Well, thanks again to Pastor Dave Dobert for being on the show and sharing some of his insights from Lutheran trump cards. Playing our best hand in the 21st century. It's been really great to. It's, it's just a really helpful way to kind of boil down some of the essentials of what it means to be Lutheran in the world today. And, and, and boil down without dumbing down. It puts it at a level that's very accessible but still has the real meat of these topics and some great discussion to go with it. It's a book that can be used for, for small groups, Bible studies, book groups, whatever, in addition to just being something to read on your own. It's really great to get into a conversation with, with. So it's a, it's a well designed little resource.

So it's a. Yeah.

And we'll have, we'll have links for the book and to his. The date strategies in case you're interested in bringing them in to talk with your congregation too. I think that would, that would be a great opportunity there.

Absolutely. So on to our catechism question. Last week's episode when we were talking about the Lutheran Reformation in Germany, we introduced the following question. Where did Martin Luther go into hiding during the height of the German Reformation? And the answer is in the tower of Wartburg Castle, which is where he translated the New Testament from Greek into German, which was a really big deal for the time and a big moment in the history of not only the Reformation, really the German language as, as his German Bible became one of the fixtures of the instruction of German in years to come.

Yeah. And I think Dave Daubert said he was taking a week off to write another book, so maybe he's going off to his Wartburg castle. There you go.

Maybe.

You never know. Looking forward to that. By the way, we didn't have anybody answer our question online yet. You can cheat, of course, at this point and just email us and tell us Episode Although I I'm our our listeners are some of the smartest people in the world, and so they already knew that. So not that we pander to anybody, but our question for this episode, if you want to play Are you as smart as a catechism kid, what do most Lutherans consider the greatest of God's gifts? That sounds like a Sounds like a family Feud question. Is it the created world? Is it. Is it coffee, the third sacrament of the church? Is it the Holy Bible? Or is it the grace of God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is available to us by faith? Now you can respond to that question on our email, which is mainstreetlutheransmail.com any of our social media spots, even our phone number. All of those are in the episode notes and go ahead and give us your information. Also, include where you're from so that we can give a shout out to your church. All right. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fot, and the show is produced by Phote Media Productions. Find all our contact information, links and a transcript in the episode notes. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.