Well, this is Ben and this is.

Keith, and this is Main street Lutherans. And this episode we're taking a look at what does the future of the ELCA look like?

Oh, boy. We're going to look in the telescope and see what's in our future.

Or the crystal ball. Yeah, so, I mean, that's a really broad topic, and we're not to hit like every nook and cranny of what that may be, but I guess we could start by talking a little bit about our own congregations out of our own settings, just as sort of miniature case studies. Absolutely. I'll speak for St. Matthew in York, Pa. St. Matthew was founded in 1888. They were organized officially in 1889. They started as a Sunday school program from another congregation, all of four blocks away, which does still exist. And so that's one of the realities we deal with in central Pennsylvania, is that there are a lot of blue thread congregations, some of whom are doing pretty well, some of whom are not. Not very many seem to be in the middle. They tend to be one of the first or the second one of those categories. So St. Matthew is, for the ELCA, a fairly large congregation, not enormous, I think. Our in person worship these days across two services seems to be running around 180. Let's say I learned as we were processing our annual report for the ELCA that our online viewership is fairly high. According to the way we measure it on Facebook, it's like 418 people in a week. Oh, wow. Yeah. Now, we don't have a lot of direct contact with those folks, so that's based on a lot of congregations are using a metric of impacts. So that's the number that we look at. But that means know shares and tags and that sort of thing. So we don't necessarily have face to face contact, even on Facebook, with those people. But it's a significant source of input. Right. Our annual budget seems to shrink a little bit every year, but it's still a smidge over a million dollars. I think it's about 1.2 for 2024. And yet our staff numbers sort of rub up against that. And that's an ongoing struggle for us as we try to balance how much we're spending. Because the two biggest expenses for almost any brick and mortar congregation in existence is your building and your staff. Sure. Those two things by themselves are probably at least 90% of your expenses. And some people will say that feels weird, like, what about the ministry that you do the programming? Well, if you think about it, most of the ministry we do happens in our building, and most of the ministry that we do is led by our staff. So those two things really are ministry in action from a financial standpoint is the building and its upkeep and the staff and their training and their abilities as a resource.

Yeah.

I'd say we're doing above average.

Yeah, it sounds like it. So unity in Southgate is the result of a recent merger, at least about the time our family moved to Michigan in 2016. I believe it was three congregations that merged together and occupy a building that didn't belong to any of those three congregations, but that was part of the synod.

And that's an interesting dynamic, I think, because that's not frequently the case when it comes to bergers, usually end up in one of the existing buildings, which then kind of has a. It has a dynamic, I won't say.

But it's also sort of emblematic of our area where the ELCA can have a spare church building that they can place a congregation in. That's sort of a bad sign there, right?

Sure. Yeah.

I mean, that three congregations merge into one is kind of a bad sign, too. But congregation budget under $100,000, a lot of it is paid off building. So that's good. But a lot of our revenue comes from renting out a preschool space. Right. A daycare facility. And so we rely on that. We have a lot of programs. We host AA and we host an ESL program that's in the building multiple times a week. We also do a lot of work with immigration, since we're just probably two or 3 miles from the river, we're near an international border, and we deal with a lot of immigration stuff in the city. And so we have people who have given their ministry to that. We have a lot of connection there, and I think that makes our church pretty vibrant and gives it a lot of. So today we're going to talk with Elizabeth Friedman. We talked with her before about her campus ministry at University of Michigan, and we talked about what it's like to be in that situation, what it means to be Lutheran. What's the lutheran identity that they have for college kids? What we're going to talk about today is the future of the church. And you're going to see that Elizabeth is a member of the commission for a renewed lutheran church, CRLC. And we'll talk about that at the end of that talk, and we'll learn more about that here. So here it is, my talk with Elizabeth Friedman. Well, today we have Pastor Elizabeth Friedman from Lord of Light Lutheran Church in Ann Arbor, part of the campus ministry, actually the lutheran campus ministry program for the ELCA in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For the University of Michigan. Today we're going to talk about what does the future of the ELCA look like? And you have a particular reason that you're a great person to talk about this today. We'll get to that later. But I think the reason I'm really excited to have you talk about this is that campus ministry is one of the key places where we see what the future of our church will be like. Hopefully the kids, the young adults who participate in campus ministries are rooted deeply enough in our congregation that when they graduate, they maybe spend some time wandering, but come back to our churches and become our leaders in our churches, our families in our churches, and eventually perhaps even our pastors or our elder folks in our congregations, some 50 years in the future. And so I'm so excited to have you here today.

Thanks for having me. Great to be with you.

So I think the best way to start on this, as far as what the future of the ELCA is like. What is the gospel that we, as the church, the ELCA and as a christian church, but with our flavor, what is that gospel that we have to share with the world?

I think the thing I hear the most often from folks for whom this is a brand new thing, because a lot of our students are either new to Christianity entirely or new to the ELCA. This particular version of Christianity, number one, this idea that God would choose not to stay away from us, but love us so much, that God would choose to come and live with us, live among us, understand life from actually living it, and that there's no place in our lives that God will not go. There's nothing that God doesn't understand about our lives and that God isn't just far off. That would be thing number one. The other thing that I think is particular to lutheran theology is the idea of grace abounding, that there is nothing that we can actually do to earn God's love. That rather than doing good things or even believing hard enough that in order to earn our salvation, it's the other way around. We know that God loves us so much and so dearly that then the good things come out of us. They're God's work done through our hands. And so that, I think, is really beautiful and life giving and different from what a lot of people experience.

Yeah, I think I've heard it. Another way I've experienced this message is that there's nothing that we can do that is so bad that will drive us away from the love of God. The love of God is something that is universal for us. We can't run away from it. We can't be blocked from it. We can be blind to it, but it does not stop happening.

Right.

And I think that's just a wonderful message. In your estimation, how are we doing at sharing that message?

Not great. I think probably on an individual level. And individual churches, that's great. I think we are not currently invested well enough in the kinds of ways that people actually interact with media and across generations. We're not figuring out how to actually reach people where they are. We're expecting them to come to us. And the thing is that other people are reaching people where they are. And so when folks are out looking for certain messages, they are not getting necessarily good news. And I think that we could be that good news or we could provide that good news either in people's mailboxes or in their social media feeds. But we are expecting people to come to us. And I think that model, it doesn't work for campus ministry, certainly. I can't imagine that it's going to continue to work very well for churches if it is anymore. I could tell a quick little story. So I was searching for adorable animal videos to put in our social media feed during finals so that students would have a little mental health break. Like, here's an adorable beaver eating carrots or whatever. And I came across the Instagram site for a place in Seattle called the Necco cat Cafe. And it's just a cat cafe, but it has a phenomenal social media presence. And if you are on Instagram, I highly recommend going and checking it out, especially if you do like cats.

We'll put a link in the.

They. Whoever runs their social media is just absolutely incredible. I found a couple of these videos, and then I showed my husband, and I was like, this is really funny. And he was like, oh, that's really funny. And then here we are, a 43 year old pastor and a 43 year old paleontologist looking up the neck of cat cafe at night before we go to bed so that we can see if they've posted anything new recently. And then when we were in Seattle to visit my brother in law, one of the days that we were in Seattle, we said, we are going to this cat cafe. And we went. We spent money on tickets to go and hang out with these cats whose backstories we knew. I mean, fake backstories, but they're great. They have entire biographies. And then our kids had a blast. And then I was looking for ways to spend more money in the gift shop so that I could help support them because I want them to continue the good work that they're doing, because what they effectively do is they get cats from shelters and then rehome them.

Sure. So you already know the baggage the cat has before you go into the adoption.

Oh, you don't know any of that. It's like this cat is named Burt Macklin, FBI, and he is an FBI agent, and they have him down the stairs to train. Yeah. All this kind of stuff. And we don't know a lot about, necessarily about the real history, and it's really fantastic and really inventive. So I'm not saying that we need to be funny, but what I'm saying is, yeah, people are looking for what we are offering, and we need to be meeting that need with creativity, excellence, and being able to be there and be present and say, here is the message that you were actually looking for, and put it in such a way that people can actually find us. Because I feel like a lot of lutheran churches are really well kept secrets. And what I will say to our students and our student leaders is that I'm not trying to trick anyone into coming to be a part of our community. That's not what we're here for. We're not a bait and switch organization. We will tell you exactly who we are. And if this is what you're looking for, that's fantastic. If it isn't, I can recommend several places that might be right for you. But if someone is looking for us, I don't want us to be hiding. They can't find us.

Is it the progressive side? Are we afraid of what? Has the violence that we've witnessed? Has that been a threat? Is that why we hide? Or do we hide because Billy Graham didn't preach the same stuff we were know, I don't think it's. I can't. I can't say recent, the recent stuff as much as anything else, but this is probably a big topic.

But, yeah, I mean, I have a couple of thoughts. One is that as a. Primarily. Not all. I want to say that really clearly, but I think especially in your white ELCA churches, there's this sense, and I've heard it before from people I care about dearly, that well, but there aren't any Lutherans moving to our community anymore. And what they mean know, northern european, scandinavian, german immigrants who are already lutheran, who are going to come find the ELCA church and come be a part of it, because within their lifetime, they remember a time when there was still a norwegian speaking lutheran church or a church still had swedish language services once a month or whatever, and that people would go and find that ethnic specific lutheran church, and that that was just a given that stopped a long time ago, but we were still living into that kind of idea.

Right.

And when the ELCA formed, I cannot remember specifically the statistic, but one of my colleagues at the CR on the commission for the renewed lutheran church brought this up that we were, I believe, over 95%, not just white, but 95% like scandinavian, which is a subset of white America that is just totally separate. And so we have this idea that a Lutheran looks a certain way, and we don't think of it as the kind of church where you have to actually do work to let people know that you exist, because the people will just come. And so I think that's one piece of the heritage. And then, so I remember asking early on in my time at U of M whether anybody had graphic design stuff or, like, slogans, because I was starting in July and I needed to be up and running and have everything printed and ready to go by end of august. I was like, what are the things that you're putting on your flyers and stuff? And somebody responded, well, I find one to ones are the best way to create community. And I was like, well, sure, but what if I don't have anyone to have a one to one with? How do I find those people? And then I got some good suggestions, but there's this idea that we don't do that. And I think that there's a sense that we don't do that because on some level, I think if we're honest with ourselves, it's because we think we're better, but I think it's because we never had to.

Yeah. Keith and I went to Capitol, and one of the criticisms of Capitol has been that you can go all over campus and you never see a cross. Right. The issue is that there is a big cross. It's like 40ft tall, but it's steel, and it's so big that nobody looks up and sees the top of it. Right. But aside from that, there is not that thing, which I actually appreciate, because the whole place is the church, not just the one building, and that we should see that. But the cross was there to do it. But you just didn't notice. Know. Was the school responsible for maybe driving more, know, having more obvious symbols? I don't know. It's a different world, Luther. Certainly. Well, Luther sort of did have his social media. He got the printing press, which everybody was focused on. Unfortunately, nobody's focusing on our newsletters that we're mailing out to folks or sending as pdfs in.

Know, it's. It does require new skills, and it requires adapting all the time, and that is hard. Like, I'm not on Snapchat. I don't do TikTok. That's not my wheelhouse. But I have to figure out how to make sure that if there's an event, that it is on Instagram and it's emailed out. Because I have students who aren't on social media, because there is this backlash among Gen Z against social media entirely. And so you have some people who are really into it, and some people are like, it's unhealthy, and I'm done. And so you also have lost one easy mode of communication. So I have students who will only check Instagram, and I have students who never check their email. And then I have students who are not on social media at all, but they will get an email. And then if I really want somebody or I really want something from somebody, I have to text them. And so I just know that this is the way that it goes.

Well, and folks in college, I'm sure, change from maybe even one week to the next, what they pay attention to.

Oh, yeah. And, I mean, maybe not one week to the next, but certainly from year to year, you find that things are shifting and that a post on Instagram might work well in another setting, or it really might. It, because the formats are just different, and we still are on Facebook, but we're on Facebook for our alums and friends. Really, students don't use it at. It's for. It's for people my age. And so what about friends for people to hear? What'd you say?

Anybody on friendster?

Oh, gosh. That's from my freshman year.

Oh, goodness. Generational divide right there.

Yeah, I know. I'm an elder millennial.

Yeah. So you mentioned the commission for the new Lutheran Church, or is that what it is?

Renewed. Renewed lutheran church. Yeah.

So that's the CRLC now. You're one of the lucky or responsible people on it. As far as how many people are.

On that commission, there are 35 people from across the country. Well, furthest away, I guess I'm far away, too. He's in Alaska. So one of the people on my subcommittee is from Alaska, and they paid really close attention to having people coming from different social economic backgrounds, different ethnicities, different expressions of Lutheranism so that we would have a really good conversation about what kinds of things needed to happen. We've been really looking at the purpose statements. That is our job is to really look at the purpose statements for the ELCA and for synods and for the model constitutions for synods and congregations, because that was the mandate was to look at those purpose statements and see whether they actually line up with what those institutions actually do.

And that mandate came out of the churchwide assembly in Columbus last year? Yes, in 23. Okay.

Yeah, that's correct. And so the bulk of our work, it sounds like, is going to be done by November of this year because we have to present it to church council, ELCA church council. They then have to do whatever they're going to do with it and then translate it into several languages and make sure that all the legal stuff works and then present it at churchwide assembly. And so it will be presented at Churchwide assembly. Our findings will be presented at churchwide assembly in 2025. But nothing that we are doing is binding. It's just these are the recommendations for churchwide assembly. And so we may be recommending. I don't know, it's possibility because this is, and I can say this because this is part of the mandate, we may be recommending constitutional changes, right? Or not. So we actually have a meeting tonight. We'll find out more about what's happening. All of us are on two subcommittees.

Okay, so when this will go before the churchwide assembly, then? 2026, right?

25.

25. Also two years. Okay.

Yeah. So it's a two year commitment, but as I understand it, the vast majority of our work is going to be done by November 2024.

Oh, wow.

So it's a tight timeline to get as much done as quickly as possible. And there will be listening sessions across the country. They're already happening right now, but if there is one in your area, it'll be good to be a part of it. I need to get on it. Organizing it in our synod, too, right?

Yeah, we'll have links in the episode notes for that, for the committee or the commission and all the things that are coming from that. I believe the commission has already asked for input from folks and that will probably continue as developments happen there.

Yeah, absolutely.

Pay attention to that. What gives you hope?

Working with young people gives me a lot of hope. And I mean, that is a constant thing. Not only are they excited about being part of this community and a part of the church in general, but they are doing amazing things like working on pulling carbon out of the ocean. And it is just absolutely incredible to be around these people who are figuring out how to change the world and the ways that you've been equipped to do that. And so that's really beautiful. Another student who's really into soil conservation, and it's just so cool. I think our message is so good. I think an institution is really important for many reasons. One is that it provides continuity so that it's not just one person's ideas. It's like we're all together and we're all pulling together to do this. That means that sometimes things move a lot more slowly than we'd like them to.

Oh, sure.

But it also means that we have each other and we also have this community together. I also appreciate the accountability that gives us to one another, to treat each other with respect, and to be community together. And so I really, really hope that through the work of this commission, but also that this commission's work will be taken seriously enough that when it does go before churchwide, that it isn't just sort of like shelved and put in a binder somewhere to never be looked at again. I understand that the ELCA has had four reorganizations in the last seven years, and that tells me that the larger organization isn't really sure what to do next or where to put its energies. And I'm not privy to a lot of the when. I've now been through visioning and mission work in two organizations for my own organization at Lord of Light and the Lutheran campus ministry at U of M, and then also for Lumen, which is an organization affiliated with the ELCA, that until last October, or, sorry, October 2022, when we did this vision and mission work, I think we were trying to plug the hole that had been made when the ELCA just decided to completely cut all of its national staff overseeing campus ministry. And how on earth were we going to do that with an entirely volunteer set of people? That was just always an impossible task. And we finally realized that what we were going to need to do was to focus on the practitioners. And so we focus on inspiring, equipping, and connecting our campus ministry practitioners across the country so that they can be healthy and they can do their best work. But we're not trying anymore to oversee all of ELCA campus ministry because that's not our job and it's not possible.

Sure.

And so I don't see that the ELCA has a really strong sense of what its purpose is, and I believe it has a just, it hasn't done the work of figuring out what that actually is so that it can go back to that every time they have to make a decision and say, does this meet the purpose? And if it doesn't, that's a nice idea, but we're not going to do it.

Yeah. And that can really make some people upset.

Yeah. Just for a little context. So my campus ministry, I came on in 2017 and we were almost closed. We're running a massive budget deficit annually. And our website said that we were the campus ministry for University of Michigan, Washtaw Community College, Eastern Michigan University, Wayne State, Henry Ford Community College, and Utah M. Dearborn. Yeah. Our sanctuary comfortably seats 65, and it has four parking spots. And we are directly on the campus of the University of Michigan.

And you're an hour away from Wayne State.

Right. And even though Eastern Michigan is technically right there, there isn't good public transportation between Ann Arbor and Ipsilani. I mean, there's a bus, but it's not great. It's a hassle to get to us. And the idea that I would be running all over southeast Michigan to try to minister to students in all of these diverse locations when there are 45,000 students at the University of Michigan.

Right.

That's just splitting my time in a way that is not effective. And so while we absolutely will welcome anyone who comes to us from another institution, it's unrealistic to think that we would serve all of those institutions well. And so we really had to just say, no, we're going to focus on U of M, because that's honestly enough. And one of the wonderful things that came out of that, out of that clarity of purpose, besides the fact that we got healthier, is that we now have Ben Adams serving Wayne State, at Wayne State Dearborn, I think, and Henry Ford College. So we actually started a new campus ministry. He's doing phenomenal work there and in collaboration with, and, you know, that would not have been something that people even would have thought of if they had thought that it was realistic for me to be also doing that work, which is just ridiculous. And he is able to actually devote his time to growing that very authentic and important ministry. And we work together all the time. And he's a wonderful colleague, and I'm so glad to see that's happening. And now there's also movement on a campus ministry for Oakland. So that's really exciting as well. But up until a couple of years ago, we were the only campus ministry left in.

Well, I think the key to this really is that there is hope. I think a lot of times we see, like, if we see a reorganization in a know, my wife works at Ford, and so when they reorganized, I don't know, just a couple years ago, everyone was know we're going to lose our jobs. And when the church reorganizes, I think we get the fear that how is it going to affect my congregation? Are we going to lose our pastor? Are we going to get closed and reconsolidated? I think it's important to note this is not about the congregations. It's about how our corporate structure feeds our mission and provides help to our congregations, to our members, to the people who depend on us to be there for them, like the students at University of Michigan.

Well, and I hope that it will help all of us to be more grounded in what we really should be focusing on. Because, you know, for instance, we don't have a flashy worship service, but all of our musicians are students and they're doing a great job. But we don't have fog machines and light shows and all of the rest of that stuff. But we do offer authentic community and honest to goodness, that's what people are looking for. I think the other stuff might be nice, but I hear a lot of people thinking that to get the young people these days, you have to entertain them. And young people are entertained so often that that's not the piece of their life that's missing.

Right.

And moreover, we offer an intergenerational community, and having intergenerational relationships makes everybody happier. Apparently, there have been a bunch of studies that have come out about this, but that it's good for everyone to have intergenerational relationships and to have people that you can talk to with at a perspective that's totally outside of your own. And that that's just so important for people's well being. And it's important for students, too. It's important, I think, also for our elder members as well, to get to have those perspectives from the young people and to form those relationships. It's such a gift. And I think on the one hand, yeah, you do need to pay attention to graphic design. You do need to pay attention to whether your sign is legible and has the correct information on it and stuff like that. That's really important. You have to pay attention to whether your building is well kept up. And I don't mean fancy, I just mean, do you have buckets in the hallway? Yeah. Is this a welcoming space for people to enter? It doesn't have to be brand new, doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be well decorated. But is it clean? Is it visible? Is it easy to get into? If you were coming here for the very first time, would you know which door to go in? Is the door you think you're supposed to go in locked, this kind of obvious stuff? And have you done everything that you can do? Because I fully understand when our building doesn't function well, but have you done everything you can do to make it look as inviting as possible, but it doesn't have to be flashy.

Yeah. And that's what we're doing as a national, as a church wide church. Right, right. We're trying to help people understand why we exist as a denomination and give them an approach to come in and be part of this gang that I believe has the message that God intends for humanity.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, well, thank you. And I'm sure we'll be talking about other topics here. Not too long. This is great. Really appreciate being here with us.

Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Well, thanks again to Elizabeth Friedman, Pastor Elizabeth Friedman from Lord of Light Lutheran Church. We'll have links to the CRlc and lord of life Lutheran Church in our episode notes, so make sure to check those out. So what do you think, Keith? Any thoughts on the CRlc? It was an idea that was sparked out of your synod, if I remember right.

They can help us in lower Southana to claim some ownership of that. It did come out of a memorial. I can never remember the difference between memorials and resolutions when they come out of the Senate assemblies, but I think it was a memorial for the ELCA to consider at the National assembly, and they did. And here we are. I mean, it does seem to be that structurally we're struggling. I think at least raising the question and having the conversation makes sense. I think it always makes sense to ask questions of is our structure serving us as best as it could be and in any level of the church, whether that's nationally or synods or individual congregations. It doesn't mean that it's an easy process. And certainly there's always lots and lots of opinions on how it ought to be done, what direction it should go in, et cetera, et cetera. But you made the comment off Mike earlier about the folks that you and I each know that are a part of this group are good people and really smart people and have good hearts and good resources and good experience at their disposal. So I'm hopeful. I'd say that I'm hopeful.

Yeah. And I think I can't remember if this was in the recording that we did for episode six, or if this was off mic or any of that. But Elizabeth made a comment that we need creativity. I think it was actually in episode six that we need to have folks that are more creative about how we go about our being the church. And if the folks that are putting this doing the CRLC can help us have a structure that enables our church nationally to be effective creatively and to address the needs of the world, I think that's important. I've been struck recently by how many deconstruction folks are speaking verbatim lutheran theology without knowing that our church exists.

Say a little bit about what you mean by the term deconstruction, just for folks that aren't familiar with that.

Yeah. So deconstruction folks that have walked away from the organized church, usually because of some sort of religious trauma, either because of abuse situation, specifically clergy abuse situations, can drive a lot of people from the church, or that they are turned away from the church because they're of a demographic that churches are not favorable of, particularly lgbtqia plus, but also folks who start to read the Bible and realize that their church, which might be in a church that believes in biblical infallibility, that they see the contradictions and they walk away, because if you believe in infallibility, it's all or nothing. If you find a problem with the scripture, you walk away from all of it together. And so these folks, when we talk about them, they have walked away from the church. They haven't necessarily walked away from God and believing in God. So 20 years ago, we would have called them atheists. We would have called them agnostic. They've chosen a word of deconstruction, which is a word that means other things in other areas. But they chose deconstruction because they have disassembled their understanding of God and the church and their part in it, and are trying to rebuild something.

And I hear you saying that we're speaking about folks coming out of many different christian religions, in this case not simply lutheran, but various christian backgrounds. Yeah.

And there are people deconstructing in other religions, too. So this national thing, and as Tripp Fuller would say, this is the largest religious movement since the great awakening. More people have moved from being christian to deconstruction than have moved any other direction in our lifetime, certainly, and probably the lifetimes of the people and then three generations prior to us. So when I hear these people talk about theology, usually they come about it using words that we use in lutheran theological talk. And, for instance, when I spoke to Tripp Fuller about it. He's visiting faculty at Luther seminary right now. But I talked to him and asked him about it, and he said, well, I didn't really look into what the ELCA was until I signed the contract to be at Luther. And so even though the ELCA had published his books, but he was unaware of us. And that's sort of why the podcast exists. But because these deconstruction folks are talking about lutheran theology, it feels like they should just find us and be part of us. And I think about how to fix that, but I think about another thing, and that is, how do we reach out to them to let them know that we have centuries of thought about Jesus the way that they're thinking about it? And when they go to theologians, they go to Luther, they go to Bonhoeffer, they go to Tillic. Right. They're people that are strongly in the lutheran camp. Right. We just have a strong theological background in our church. But how do we reach out to them without making it about membership? How do we decide that what we're doing to reach out to folks isn't just to get them into the pews and get them some envelopes so they can put in our offering?

Yeah, we talked a little before, again, off mic, about what it means to be in ministry with folks in a not just transactional way, where people are hungry and we're offering them food, people are homeless, and we're offering them shelter, and those are fabulous things, and the gospel calls us to do that. But if we do so without establishing any form of relationship with them, then we're missing the opportunity to really share the gospel in a deeper, more profound way. And I think something else stuck with me. What? You were just speaking about something Elizabeth said in episode six again, that when it comes to us as a theological entity, people are looking for what we have to offer, only they don't know we exist and we don't know how to reach them. That seems to be the great conundrum of Lutheranism in the 21st century America.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I don't think this is going to reach them, but I think it's important that we move on to our.

Know enough about this highfalutin talk. Let's go into something.

So I get to cover the last one. The catechism question for episode seven was that Jesus promised his followers, I will be back next Tuesday. That's a. B is I will miss you, c is I will make you financially better off, and d, I will be with you always. And I think everyone can answer that one pretty closely. It's d. I will be with you.

Always really leaning 20. A. I will be back next Tuesday, but if you say d, I'll believe you.

All right. Yeah, I wasn't there.

Question is, Luther thought that his first trip to Rome would be a highlight of his life. This is when he was a young monk and priest. Luther thought his trip to Rome would be a highlight of his life, but instead it became a a good excuse to never eat italian food, b the source of his new tourism show on the Travel channel, c the beginning of his disillusionment with the church, or d the reason he never left the house again, ever.

Wow. That's a little more hard.

Yeah. So that'll be what we come back to next time.

Yeah. So share those with us. Share your answers with that on social media, on Reddit, on the ELCa subreddit, or send us an email. Tell us what you think of the show and share it. Got some notes before we close out here, some things about the this is kind of like the nuts and bolts of the podcast. We've added transcription to the episodes. It's a nice feature that not all podcast players are supporting yet. It should be working in iTunes, and they do certainly work on our website. If you just want to see the transcript, there's a link in the episode. Note I've also added a link to what is called the tip jar that our podcast service offers. If you want to pitch in a little bit of money to help us support the show, we're self supported. We're not going to be starting a Patreon or do a fund drive or anything like that. But if you do feel like helping to pay the bills, it's certainly appreciated.

Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Folk. You can reach us by email at [email protected]. Our website, which has episodes of the podcast and soon some links you might want to reference, is mainstreetlutherans.com. We are on the socials as at mainstreetlutherans right now. That would be Facebook, Instagram threads, and YouTube, and the show is produced by folk media Productions. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.