This is Ben and this is Keith.

And this is Main Street Lutherans. And this is the second of two episodes in which we have been talking with Imran Siddiqui, the vice president of the ELCA, which is the highest position in our denomination that can be held by a layperson. In the first one, we talked about Imran and his approach to the role of vice president, which he's been in for about two years now, and some of the challenges that he sees us addressing in the future. And in this second part of the discussion, we talked about the various home areas that the ELCA church wide organization is divided into and the work that they do, how those organizations within and alongside the ELCA are structured, and how those relationships work, and how it's all paid for. So it's been quite an interesting conversation.

Yes. So let's get right into it. Thank you so much, Imran. We're going to talk about the church operations. We had a lot on this list, ended up cutting it up into the second episode, too. So you're the vice president of the ELCA, and we talked in our prior episode that you're the, as we would rank them, top lay person in the ELCA, which puts you in charge of the Synod council.

ELCA. Church council.

Church council.

Yep. All over these different levels and all that. All right, I. So how many people work for the church at that church wide level, and what are their names?

Well, there's a lot as a whole. I'm not entirely sure. It's a few hundred. I can't tell you a number. And a lot of it changes in and out. We get notices of people leaving and people coming in, but there are four kind of four major home areas, and then there's subdivid home areas, and then there's people that are working under there. So it's a few hundred folks that are involved in this. And so that's kind of as best as I can give you. I probably should have figured that out before I came on here, but, you know.

So do most of them work in Chicago then?

Actually, a lot has changed where they've allowed for more remote working. So a lot of them used to. I mean, it used to be before COVID everyone would work in Chicago. Nowadays they've allowed for far more remote working. So, for example, the treasurer, Laurie Fedeck, she lives in Michigan and will come into Chicago when she needs to, and she'll drive in, but that's how she doesn't go in all the time. And then I've run into some people that work in, say, Minneapolis or whatnot. So I mean, the church wide organization is transitioning. On the other hand, if you have a new presiding bishop who knows. Currently Bishop Eden is fine with remote work as long as you get your work done. So we'll see how long that continues or what society decides is the proper role of remote work versus in person work. Is that still being worked out?

And we've got an office there in Chicago. Do we have our own sort of. Are we renting in a corporate office or are we in our own little place?

We have our own building. It's the Lutheran center. It's actually very close to O'Hare airport. It's on Higgins Road. And I don't know the exact number of it, but sometimes people make negative references to, quote unquote, Higgins Road. And that's what they're talking about. So there's a building and it's an eleven story building.

Wow.

The bishop and the secretary have offices on the 11th floor and the. And the maintain entryway is on the 11th floor. And it's actually quite a nice view if you've ever been. It actually looks out towards kind of the west. So you see this kind of forest underneath. And if you. Well, if you walk around, you go to the other side, say the secretary's office, you get a view, faraway view of the skyline of Chicago because it's kind of out there by the airport, which makes it convenient for people that are flying in for events. And so over the years, I guess they've used a little bit less of the floors of the building, so they rent them out to other nonprofits. And so that was a little bit easier before COVID I think a lot of after Covid, like I said, people are figuring out what it means to work at somewhere or work at. At home and working at a place. So that's still all being figured out. But no, it's a. It's a nice building over in West Chicago, technically in the city limits, though.

Oh, wow.

And you said there are basically four home areas of the church's operations.

So the home areas, there's service and justice, christian community and leadership, innovation. And I operations is kind of catch up on. Under operations you have office of the presiding bishop, office of Secretary, officer, the treasurer. And those are all coordinated together under operations. And so a lot of things kind of flow from underneath that. So when you're talking about operations, especially presiding bishop under her, you have administration, you have ecumenical and interreligious relations and theological discernment of out of that comes social statement stuff, right. And out of that comes things like ecumenical work, such as dialogue with the Catholic Church, things of that nature. You have people solutions, which is named for HR. You know, you got to have that, right. And you have development, which is basically another word for stewardship. Right. The church organization has to have some way of dealing with folks that want to give personal gifts. This is one of the areas I didn't know existed when I joined. And then I got an email from someone saying, hey, would you be willing to do kind of what they call a fireside chat for some donut? I said, what is this group that you were asking from? And so I had to get like a quick up to speed on it. And now, like, you know, I love this development team. They're really cool folks and they really think interesting things out of the box. And so those involve, that's the office of the presiding bishop, and that's under operations. Right. And then, you know, under admin part administration is another huge area under the office of the presiding bishop. Right. And that involves a little bit of the media stuff, the public relations stuff. And then, you know, you have, let me see, the office of the secretary is under operations as well. And the office secretary includes things like the attorneys. Right. The legal stuff. So Secretary Elca Sue Rothmire, she is supposed to be the expert on the constitution, and she is. And all the legal stuff there unto the secretary also does synod relations. So the folks that kind of hook in with your synods, planned the conference of bishops stuff, that's all under her executive for governance is under her name is Jody Slattery. This is a person that is like amazing. And basically the person I ask like to tell me things all the time because I'm like, Jody, what is this? And she can get me an answer within like ten minutes. So she's a lifesaver, but she's under office as secretary. We have office, the treasurer, which is all the money stuff, right. The finance stuff includes like the controller, you know, things of accountants. But also, interestingly enough, it is under the office of the treasurer. I don't know why all the it stuff is under treasurer Laurie Fettick. That's the treasure.

Years ago, the only person in the office that needed a computer was the treasurer.

And it just probably. That's true. And then, so some of the other home areas, one is service and justice. And I, you know, I think we've touched a little bit on the previous discussion about some of the LDR is under lutheran disaster responses. Under that also ELCA world hunger is under service and justice. And some people think it's a different organization that works with us, but no, it's actually a church wide organization. There's also where we work with different service projects and different justice organizations. We work with different ethnic associations. It's under service and justice programs around the ELCA. How we do grants is involved in service and justice. And so service and justice does a lot of things around the world. They have desks for african nationals, Asia Pacific, Europe, latino ministries, and a lot of things are going on right now with the Middle East North Africa desk, especially the new, it's called Samud now. But it used to be peace, not walls, healing. And they're dealing with a lot of stuff going on right now in the holy land. And so they're very busy. They do a lot of good work and service and justice. That's led by Pastor Qadr al Yatim. And he was just hired, and I think he's been home all of like a week in the last, you know, five months or so. But he's, he's really fun, really fantastic guy. He's got great ideas, and I think he'll, he'll be very, very good in the role. And then there's christian community and leadership as a home area, and the head of that is Pastor Phil Hirsch. And they're involved in a lot of things, kind of in terms of worship. The senior director for worship is under them. They're involved in mission and looking at missions and providing funds for missions. They're involved in federal chaplaincy. And so every time if you're at a churchwide assembly, you'll, you'll see the chaplains come up and be acknowledged. That's under christian community and leadership. They do education. A lot of little things that you get in your congregations that will help you with education. Things like that comes from christian community leadership. The Yagam program comes through there. That's young adult and global ministry. Sorry, I try not to use it possible, because I realize not everyone knows what I'm talking about. But, you know, there's also, you know, deaf ministries, disability ministries, congregational vitality. You know, if you have congregations that need help that comes from that area, and then candidacy. Candidacy is, is through christian community leadership. And, you know, they, they have managers that are in every region, and so some of them you might run into in your work. And then the, the last one is actually the smallest one is called innovation, which is kind of like this kind of, I don't know, at some level it's a buzzword. But on the other hand, it's kind of this group that's tasked with thinking differently, and they have tie ins with the other home areas as well. They have people that plug in, but these are the folks that are thinking of new ways to do some of the things that we've always done, quote unquote, and figuring out, like, how can we do things a little better? How can we do things a little more interesting? You know, what are some ideas that we can build on? And so the head of that is Ian Chester, and they're involved with coming up with interesting new ways to figure out certain things. And so those are the home. There's four home areas, the operations. One seems like it has like three more home areas underneath it, but it's. That's considered one. So that's kind of how the structure of the churchwide organization exists. And it keeps, and the people keep getting added to some of these roles. Recently, the kind of the group that does statistics and analysis and things of that nature research just added three people. And now it's kind of, it was just one person for a while. And so, you know, some of these things are being built up to better serve the church. There's a lot of great people in it. So, for example, I think I talked about development is something I didn't know existed before. The social statement folks, the theological ethics folks. I didn't realize how much work they actually do and how in depth and detailed their analysis and things are. And that was a surprise to me. And they're fantastic. Pastor Roger Willer is there at Patrick Ryan, and so they're, they're just incredible folks over there. And I think that there are just a lot of good, hardworking people that love God and want to help, you know, synods and congregations do what they need to be effective. And so I have nothing but good things to say about the folks that work for the church organization.

Wow.

Yeah.

Which I need to say because people think that they're kind of a shadow group that wants to get them.

Well, like we've said before, a lot of people just don't know they exist. And then when they find out they do exist, it must be because of some nefarious means, because otherwise they would have known about it.

So there's all those people. But how do we as a church make decisions, you know, be it an ecumenical agreement with someone or, or even just whether to rent more space in the who, to rent that space out in a building or whatever?

So it all comes down to church wide assembly is the highest, let's say, body in our entire church and decides all of the big questions. Right. And so it elects the officers, for one, and it elects the church council, and it elects people on various committees, whether it's on the audit committee, nominations committees, these sort of things get elected. And then, so a good way to look at it. And then after church wide assembly happens, the council is tasked with putting what they've decided into place, as is the presiding bishop. I was going to say a good way to look at it is the presiding bishop is the CEO of our nonprofit. My role would be chair of the board of directors, which is the church council. And sometimes it's good to look at it in that way, in a nonprofit sense, to kind of. And that sometimes it clicks for people. But, you know, part of that is that the presiding bishop works under what's been delegated or given through the churchwide assembly, but also she has the authority to kind of decide on certain things herself, such as, you know, based on our values. So some of the theological discussions he was all about is based on certain things that the assemblies have put forward. Right. We want to engage in ecumenical dialogue, and so that's part of what we've decided. And so the presiding mission decide the best way to do that possible, so. And engages in conversations with other leaders of other churches to figure that out. Like, you know, some of these dialogues have been going on for a long time. The Lutheran Catholic dialogue precedes the ELCA. It started in like 64 or something like that, 1964, I should say, because we're in another century. But, I mean, some of these things have just continued onward, and some of these things are things that, you know, the presiding bishop has decided is a priority as a result of the things that we've done in assembly together. And so a lot of times, I will say people get upset that Bishop Eaton isn't talking about this, that, or the other thing. And sometimes Bishop Eaton realizes, like she said, she's not a pope. And so she speaks based on what we've decided as a church, because she speaks for the church when she speaks a lot of times. So I tell people, if you really want the church to speak on things you want, you think are important, go to your church wide assemblies or go to your senate assemblies, get elected to your church wide assemblies, and push for these things to be done at churchwide assemblies. But that's kind of where a lot of, like, almost all the authority comes from. There's a churchwide assembly, and then you have stuff that was, that's in the constitution from the beginning. And a lot of people don't realize, because they've never read the constitution, that a lot of these things are in there and have been. One of the things is the conference of bishops, which I don't think, you know, a lot of people get completely wrong. The conference of bishops is an advisory body. They have no authority over the churchwater organization. They have authority over their own synods. And sometimes when they get together, they come up with things that may benefit their own synod and they may agree together to do things. But when it comes to things that church council is looking at what church wide assembly has done. They can give advice, but they have no vote on actually doing these things. And this is listed in the constitution, specified exactly in the constitution. There are other things that the church does that are in the constitution. I was in a conversation with someone who wondered, why do we do things or why do we lift up some of the stuff that Lutheran World federation does? Right. That's in the constitution, that we're a part of the Lutheran World Federation. And that's kind of part of, part of our reason for existence is that we're a part of that group and that's, you know, that we work with them and that's in the constitution. So decision making comes from, you know, these polls, right. And we believe that, you know, when we decided the constitution, when we meet in Churchwide assembly, that we are asking the Holy Spirit to guide us, and the Holy Spirit has guided us in creating the documents that we rely on and also the votes for the resolutions that we decide on on church wide assembly. And so then we prayerfully decide which way to go forward after we've gotten those things together. And how do we do what God wants us to do and follow the spirit of both the Constitution and the Churchwide assembly decision.

So the conference of bishops, is the presiding bishop a member of the Council of Bishops?

No, the conference of Bishop, the presiding bishop is a member and the secretary is a member. That is something I did not know until, I mean, it's, and it's literally spelled out in the constitution. I did not read that. And then I was like, why is the secretary member? And then I read, went back to read the constitution. I said, oh, okay, it's been like that since the beginning, which, I mean, it's kind of funny because the, you know, the secretary is not a bishop, and a lot of, a lot of times through our history has not been a bishop. And so, but they're they're supposed to be, they're a member of the, of the group. So.

But the presiding bishop isn't the. Of the council, right?

No, the presiding bishop is not the head of the conference. The conference decides their own chair. So right now, Bishop Curry from Metro Chicago is the chair of the conference of bishops. And so. And that chair decides, you know, kind of makes the rules for what's going on. So the presiding bishop is just a member of the conference.

Cool.

Yeah.

So now we have other organizations related to the ELCA. We've got a publishing wing or publishing house that's associated with us, but our denomination doesn't control. Right. So 1517 publishing did. It used to be. It used to be Augsburg fortress or Augsburg Fortress is part of it. I don't know the history on that.

But, yeah, I think that they're the same thing. But I don't know when one thing came out of the other thing. And I don't know if they thought 1517 sounded cooler than Augsburg or whether Augsburg was the first or 1517 came first. I'm not entirely sure. But you got it right, that it's a separate company that is linked with the ELCA. But, like, for example, we can't tell them what to publish. Like, why doesn't 1517 do this? Can't you tell them? And the answer is that, no, we can't tell them. I mean, we can suggest that they do this and this might be, you know, welcomed, but, you know, we, we don't really tell them how to run their business because we don't have that authority. They can just, you know, tell us to kick rocks. They're like, we don't think congregations are going to buy this, so.

Right. Yeah, but they are considered the publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Yeah.

Yeah. So there is like an official church to church organization relationship there. One doesn't exist without the other.

Yeah. They're called, well, internally they call it a separately incorporated ministry, but they're separately incorporated. So they have their own board and their own, you know, the folks that decide, you know, their own CEO and all that sort of thing. So they work in tandem with us, but they're. They're run separately. Yeah.

Okay. What about lutheran war relief?

Yeah, lutheran war relief on another way is also kind of a separate organization. It's not a church wide thing, you know, but we help. We work with them. Right. So, yeah, so, yeah, they're an organization.

That'S, you know, there are other lutheran bodies besides the ELCA that, that relate to them.

Right, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, and it's. Yeah, they don't say Elca world relief. Right. Or anything. They're lutheran world relief. So it's. It's a bunch of different lutheran churches and they work all around the world, and so we tie in with them, but we don't, you know, control them.

Yeah.

And some. And then. Similar to the Lutheran World Federation.

Yeah.

It's sort of a. Just a lutheran body.

Yeah, an overarching lutheran body. And then, I mean, like I mentioned where in the constitution says that we are a part of the Lutheran World Federation and we have people that serve on the, on their central committee. And so I think they had election or they had a. Yeah, a few years back, but we have about ten people that serve on their central committee, but it's Lutherans from across the world. And so they, I think their headquarters are out in Geneva, and so they are kind of this body that is, they recommend things and they can't. I mean, it's almost like our polity. Right. Churchwide can't tell senators what to do. Lutheran roll Federation can't tell us what to do, but they can suggest things. There was something that came out recently that was slightly controversial, which is they were in conversation with the orthodox churches about the filique, which is not to get too much into the weeds, but is part of the Nicene Creed. And so the Eastern Orthodox does not believe in this addition that the roman church added that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. And so the lutheran royal Federation said, when we do the Nicene Creed, like maybe we should think about removing and the Son in that part. People got very mad about that. But I, we had to point out, they can't make us do this. They're just telling us, you know, this would be nice if you did.

Yeah. And then, and then there's the councils of churches. We've got a national council of churches and a world council of churches. So, yeah, we participate the same way.

We participate in both. I am actually a member of the central committee of the World Council of Churches. They have kind of.

Is that a role, just to be nosy? Is that a role separate from you being the vice president of the Elca?

Gotcha. So what happened was that there was. Carlos Pena was a member of the World Council of Churches. And so I was asked by Catherine Laurie, who is the head of the theological. She has a long title, but the ecumenical and theological part of the. Of the ELCA, she asked me if I would be willing to serve in this role. And it's a ten year term, completely separate. But I would be representing the Elca. ELCA has two designees on the central committee. And so similarly, a bunch of churches get together and a lot of lutheran churches. I mean, there's right now the head, what they call moderator, but it's basically what we call chair. Central Committee comes from Germany. He's a Lutheran from Germany. And so there's a lot of lutheran churches from Scandinavia, from Germany, from Africa, and then there's a lot of orthodox churches as well from, you know, all of the eastern part of Europe. There's Russian Orthodox and Ukrainian Orthodox, and that got a little bit squirrely, apparently, when the invasion happened of Ukraine. But, you know, they're all around the world, and there's, it's a really interesting experience just to see what worldwide Christianity is dealing with. But, yeah, they also decide on things that are not binding on the ELCA, but we might take into consideration. I mentioned the Thursdays in black thing. That's something that they promote to promote awareness of abuse of women. And so that's something that we will do. But there's also other things like they condemn russian invasion of Ukraine, and that's something that they said on behalf of the World Council of Churches. That's not something the ELCA has to say that we adopt, but we might do so anyway. Right. So National Council of Churches is somewhat similar, and a lot of the people in the national council churches are in the World Council churches. And so it's interesting to see in the US other churches that we kind of talk to. ELCA is known for being a very ecumenical church. Right. And so what we have a lot of times is when we have, like American Baptists and we have Methodists and we have Episcopalians that we will join with to talk about things of national importance. And so the National Council of Churches exists in that same way.

So how do we pay for all this stuff? So, of course, we don't pay for those organizations, but we've got all these folks in Chicago that, and then, and then all the travel and all the other things, how it's hard to imagine that my church with a, you know, our budget is, you know, somewhere, I think, right around $100,000 a year. Right. We may give, I don't know, probably, probably. Probably close to $10,000 a year to the synod. Right. And then the synod is sharing a substantial portion of that to the national church. It's really hard to see from my level how the church could possibly even hire two people right, right.

Well, so that's kind of how it works, right? You have all these congregations that give money to their synods and part of that money that goes ascendance is supposed to go up to church wide and historically it was around 50%. So you'd give 10% the Senate. The Senate would give 50% of what you gave to the national churchwide organization and keep 50% for ministries themselves. Over the years this has changed, especially recently. You know, there's some law churches that don't give 10% to their senate, or as we call mission support, there are synods that don't give 50%. I mean there are the vast, I think the vast majority don't give 50% to the churchwide organization, try to keep it local, but that's what funds all. The last budget that we passed in 2022, I think was around 68 billion. That comes from mission support but also comes from individual donors. But also there's a separate group or separate area that's not in that 60 million for ELCA world hunger, there's a separate budget entirely and that's like 20 something million. So all of that money, I mean a vast majority of the money comes from mission support, from all these churches giving their $10,000 and the Senate pooling that money and putting, taking up a portion of that closer to 45% these days up to church wide and then individual donors giving it churchwide. And then, you know, we also invest some of the money. Right. And make some funds on that one. So that's kind of how it gets funded. Now, just like in your individual congregations, people are giving a little less and less money is coming to church wide organization and the church wide organization has to consider what's important. What do we fund on? A lot of that comes up during your church wide assemblies and we vote on a budget and there's robust conversations about budgets. And I know people get sleepy and don't want to talk about numbers, right? But that's how we fund things. Or we decide this is the pool of money we expect to get, how should we spend it? And you can go to a churchwide assembly, provided you get elected to it and speak on. I don't like how this is broken up. I think we should give this to this. Right, but that's how we decide how to pay for things. And it comes down to mission support mostly, and then it comes down to how the assembly decides to take that money and break it up.

You mentioned that the churchwide organization has somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred people employed by it. Are those folks all paid by the churchwide organization? Yeah. So they're not, you know, being funded, you know, separately, that's, that's part of that budget that you were just referring to.

So the only difference, the only difference is dems, which are kind of half paid by Senate, half paid by church wide. Right. And it depends on what. Some people characterize that as churchwide employees. Some people characterize them as Senate employees. And you can do whatever way you want, but those are the only folks that are in not fully paid by mission support or donors or investment.

Right. These are directors of evangelical mission that relate to some sentence. Yeah. Hey, so this is not really a fair question, but I'll just ask again. You work in labor law, so I think this is relevant to you anyway. Do you feel that the church wide organization, whether we're talking about, you know, the presiding Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, or, you know, a, somebody that works in the computer department or as a secretary, do you feel that these people are adequately compensated for their work?

Yes, but, and I will say this. So I'm, as a government employee, I'll say, I mean, the same, same way. I think that the folks are compensated well. However, they probably could make more in the private sector. That applies to myself as a government employee as well. I could, you know, people were saying, you know, oh, if you went private, you could have made double what you were making or something. And yes, that's probably true. But when it comes to, say, nonprofits, you know, I think they're being, we're trying to pay them what you would pay someone in a nonprofit, you know, because based on our amount of money, we take in and kind of the status we are in as a church, we try to pay well, but we know that we're not matching private sector. So I wish we could offer them more. I wish we could, you know, give them what they might get at a private sector. They probably have, I don't know, I should say maybe a better work life balance, maybe a better kind of, you know, experience working under in the churchwide organization than they might at a Fortune 500 company that might, you know, be asking you to do 90 hours and those sort of thing. But I mean, I think we try to do as best we can. We try to pay people fairly and we know that sometimes that it's, we're not going to match the private sector. And we hope that we could make it up in other ways in terms of the quality of life that you have with the job and, you know, more remote work helps with that, too, right? Advocating for more remote work that you don't have to live in the high cost of living area in Chicago, you can live where you live now and do the work of the churchwide organization and have a lower cost of living. So I think that may be helpful as well, especially as a lot of private organizations start mandating people come back into the office. So probably not a satisfactory answer, but that's the best I can do.

No, I appreciate you sharing your insights along with what you're sort of a mixture of perspective and what we know is true. So a follow up to that, then. I know, let's say folks that might, a layperson decides to go to seminary, maybe consider becoming a pastor or a deacon. And in that first, I don't know, year or so in classes, there's sort of that expression of when you start seeing how things work in the kitchen, in the restaurant, how does it change your perspective, having eaten in the restaurant? So you as a layperson, just whether you speak to yourself or just other folks you come into contact with. You mentioned, though, you think that people have a good work experience in the, the Elca, at the churchwide level. What is that like to come from? And I realize that you're not an employee, but you're working closely with a lot of folks who are. So what do you think it is like for people that come from lay, people that come outside of the churchwide organization come in to work there? Is it jarring for them? Is it a surprise about how, you know, what that, what that world is like? Is it not like what they thought it would be? You know, that the church is, maybe there's a vision or an expectation of what that's like to work for the church and then to discover something different.

I don't know. I don't, I mean, I don't know if I could answer that, really. I mean, I don't, I don't really know. I mean, and I'm being honest because I don't know. Like, I haven't really talked with folks that have been coming in new, so I don't really have the frame of reference, and I haven't. Yeah, I haven't talked to people that have come in since I've come in. Right. And say, you know, how is this different than what you expected in the work to be? Yeah. People usually ask me that question, and I have a very not satisfactory answer when they say, is your impression different than what you thought? I probably should ask that question, but I don't I can't, I can't answer that one for you, unfortunately.

Oh, thanks for considering. I appreciate it.

So for the amount of volunteers we use, are we, is there such a thing as being too dependent on volunteers for this kind of work? Other people doing volunteer work that should be paid?

I mean, that's, that's kind of a big issue. Like, we're using a lot of unpaid labor. And I don't know how many people realize this. I mean, or they might think that's normal because in your congregation, most of the work is being done by unpaid labor because people love their church and they think they're doing what God is asking them to do in their community.

And it would be their money paying themselves anyway.

That's fair. I mean, for one, people get, people get really surprised when I tell them I don't get paid. The church organization pays for my flights and my hotel room on official business. If I go to a Senate assembly, they pay for my flight and the synod pays for accommodations, but I don't get paid any stipend or anything like that. I mean, I get the churchwide organization. Some people might be confused. Churchwide assembly did pass something saying the vice president could get paid, but it said, provided the church council does it and the church council hasn't done it yet. So that's one thing. Like, I don't get paid. And I said, most of the vast majority of people that are on church council do not get paid for their work. There's volunteers all over the place that are doing things. So I'm glad that we do have as many people in the organization that do get a salary and do get paid. But we rely a lot on unpaid labor and maybe the folks that do take their time to work, you know, being an officer of the church or being a church council member or being a synod council member on the senate level, deserve to have some sort of, you know, stipend to do that with. Because one thing I realized, and I've had this discussion with some other people on the church council, it's really hard to do that if you're an hourly worker. It's really hard to do my job if you don't have flexibility of, say, a garment job where I get a lot of paid time off. And I can ask my manager, you know, hey, I need to take a week off next year to go to Phoenix for a church wide assembly. Right. Or people that are wealthy. Right. You either have to have lots of flexibility or you have to have enough money where it doesn't matter and so if you ask somebody, hey, can you serve on Senate council? Might be a little better because in the southeastern synod, the synod council only means three times a year. I know in some senates, they meet, you know, every quarter or every month, and they take.

But usually it's. It's not more than a couple hour drive.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, depending. Right?

Yeah.

Down in southeastern Senate, it might be.

Might be a couple days.

That was right. Yeah, but it's a couple day meeting. Right. So. But, you know, this is people's time. So they're doing a meeting on a Saturday morning instead of spending time with their family. Right. Or instead of working, if they're an hourly employee, they might have to lose a shift and do work otherwise. Now, I'm not saying we need to lavish everyone with all money for doing these things, like volunteerism is important, but I think people need to understand just how much people are doing by volunteering. Like, you know, our. The way that we function as a polity would not exist if you took away all the volunteers. Senate councils and church councils are made up of volunteers, and they take a lot of time sometimes to do the work they need to do, especially when it's complex stuff. And before the meeting, you got to prepare. So you're reading pages and pages of documentation, hopefully right before you make these decisions. I had someone complain to me once about, you know, the Senate assembly, our Senate assembly down in the southeast end went Friday to Sunday, and they said, I have to take Friday off work if I have to go, and I can't do that. I said, oh, well, that's an important consideration. And so we need to kind of think about these things, especially when we have a situation where our church is declining right now. And, you know, people are. There's a little less people to pull from, and people might value their time a little bit more than those of us who are nutty enough to say, okay, we'll do these things.

Yeah, well, and if we want to. If we want to diversify our church, we have to diversify the leadership. And so that makes it important that we don't just have wealthy folks who have cushy jobs and such. The only ones that are able to make those decisions, of course.

Right. And then, like, our conversation about diversity that we had, you know, last week, how do we. How do we decide, you know, who to listen to? If everyone in the room is a certain class, everyone's an upper middle class person or higher. Right. That's who the church is going to listen to. And what the church is going to do things for.

Well, that leaves us all with a lot to think about and I'm. So we'll all think about it and you won't have to think about it quite so much. That's how that works, right?

Sure. Yeah. I'll just leave it with you. You can write a report in a year or two.

We'll have an episode in four weeks. We'll tell you what we came up with.

That's right.

Well, actually, in all seriousness, Imran, I'm teaching a confirmation class this Sunday on the ElCA and the lower Susquehanna Synod and what they are. It's the first one for this year and I want to give our kids and their families a perspective on that. So thank you for creating my lesson plan. I can just replay this episode for them. That'll be handy.

Well, thank you for doing that because we don't do that nearly enough.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much. This has been great to get to know you and talk and all that. And I'm sure we will be in touch a few more times here before your twelve years is over.

Right.

Now it's more like between, you know, four to whatever, you know, it.

Might be depending on already to ten at.

Oh, man. Yeah, that's true. Who knows? If you, if you make, if you, if you annoy me enough, I might say I'm out of here, you know?

All right, well, thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right. Well, that has been a fascinating discussion with Imran. Two episodes worth now. And we will move on to our catechism questions. So in the last episode we asked about the council of Nicaea. The question was, in the year 325 cedar christian bishops met for the Council of Nicaea to hammer out an agreement on fundamental beliefs of christians. What was the result of this meeting? Your options are nicene Creed, Arius Theonis and Secundus, being excommunicated and exiled, 20 new church laws or rescheduling of Easter. And the correct answer is all of them.

All of them. Yeah, they did a lot. And that's not all. They did some other stuff too, but for this episode. So the reason we're tackling the Nicene Creed is because it was done by a council and Imran is the vice president and the chair of our ELCA church council. And so I thought that was fitting. Also in this episode he mentioned thing about one of the things that's being discussed with the Orthodox Churches and the Lutherans and so that we'd get this in as a timely thing. So our second question well, our question for this episode is what was one of the primary reasons for the schism between the Eastern orthodox and western Roman catholic portions of the church? Was it, a, that the Orthodox Church didn't like italian food? Was it b. That the Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, didn't like greek food? Was it that the orthodox priests wanted to be able to marry? Or was it that the Orthodox Church protested the addition of the phrase and the Son in the petition about the Holy Spirit, which is we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. That's the part. And so pick your answer. Let us know by social media, email, even our phone number, which are all in the episode notes. Main Street Lutherans is is hosted by Keith Farron Ben Fote, and the show is produced by Fot Media Productions. You can find all of our contact information, links, and a transcript of the episode. In those episode notes, until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to goddess.