This is Ben, this is Keith, and.

This is Main Street Lutherans.

So for our starting segment, I just. Today is the 28 November. And I watched the memorial service for Rosalind Carter today in Atlanta, Georgia, at Emory University. It was just a phenomenal service. The music, the stories. There were just amazing things told about her. Grandson got up and talked about the last time he saw her. They were at the hospital. The whole family went to the hospital because Jimmy was in the hospital for something urgent. And I'm sure the family gathered just in case he might have passed from this. And he tells the story that Rosalind got up and she needs to practice walking, because if she doesn't walk for some period of time, she might not be able to walk again, being at the advanced age she was and with the dementia that she was suffering from. So she gets up to walk, and he hands her her cane, and she says to him, that is not a cane. That is a trekking pole, just like the women that hike to the South Pole use. And so he said he followed her with her trekking pole down the hallway and said that he hoped that we would all follow her on her journey. And it was just a great story. But the music was things that I remembered singing in chapel. Choir, wondrous love. I looked it up. It's the Paul Christensen arrangement. Probably many, many churches have sung it and many school choirs, but it was just an amazing service to see.

That's really cool.

Yeah, that was amazing. And one of the things that stuck out to me was that Rosalind Carter was raised Methodist, but when they married, when she and Jimmy Carter married, they raised their family Baptist, and she's known as a Baptist. But her funeral, at least the way the tv told it, she had a Methodist funeral with lots of participants from all different sorts of religious backgrounds. But that she went out with a Methodist funeral was interesting to me, and it added to what I was thinking about for this week's episode, which is why you and I, in particular, why we are Lutheran at all, why we are Elca Lutheran, and some of the questions that go along with that.

A couple of years ago, the church I serve at in know we were right next to a Methodist congregation and right across the street from a Roman Catholic congregation. And so every once in a while, we managed to get the three churches together for an event or a worship series or something like that. And in 2017, which was the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation in Germany, we did a bit on the history of the reformation, each from our own denominations perspective, which was really fun.

Oh, I bet.

Yeah.

And one of the things, when St. Matthew was up and we were talking about the history of the lutheran church, we did a little bit of a trivia thing as part of it. And you know, if a Catholic wants to get married to a Methodist, where do they get married at? The answer, of course, is at a lutheran church.

Sure. Is that how St. Matthew's gains.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah.

When somebody from Calgary next door in St. Rose across the street, when they get hitched, they come and call us.

Now on the island I live on, it's the Presbyterians and the Catholics, and the church just happens to be about halfway between them too, so that's helpful.

There you.

Yeah, yeah. Pretty, pretty wild.

So ben, why are you an Elca Lutheran?

Well, I was born, know I'm not even sure which fraction, denomination I was born into, but it was in Bakkins, Ohio. I think it's St. Jacob, which is also my middle name, not the saint part. But our house was two doors away. Actually, come to think of it, my grandparents, my grandmother, was Methodist and my grandfather was Catholic. Or actually reversed that. Grandpa was Methodist, grandma was Catholic, and so they took their kids to the lutheran church.

That's why you're a Lutheran.

And I guess that's why I'm Lutheran. Come to think of it, I'd forgotten about that. So I was baptized by Reverend Hirschberger. Now this is important. At one point my mom mentioned that all the lutheran churches we went to were diverse. We had diversity because we had Hirschbergers and we had burgers and we had schroederers and sheddingers and we had all those kinds of folks. Of course, all different varieties of German.

Right.

But she said we've got diversity. And she did say it jokingly, so that's good. But we lived in that kind of community too, very german based communities. In fact, when we moved to Marysville, Ohio, which is now known for other things, but it had one german church that started, and 50 years later some people got upset about that church, split off, took their church to downtown in the nearby city and started the church I was a member of. 50 years after that English Lutheran church was started because the other two churches were still speaking German. And so the oldest church is the Missouri Synod church. Church I was part of, Trinity Lutheran Church in Marysville, Ohio, that I was confirmed in. One of the pastors, well, he was on the roster as a visitation pastor was Reverend Hirschberger. So he followed our family to that church. His wife was my kindergarten teacher, and then after I was confirmed the next vote. I think it was just a few weeks later. So my very first vote as what I considered myself to be an adult was to vote for the merger of the three churches, the ALC, the LCA, and the AELC. And we'll talk about all of those sometime in the future here. But that merger vote would have been.

Like, 1986 or 780. I think we have became legal in 89. The votes happened.

Yeah.

I think the vote would have been 88.

Yeah. Wow.

So the very first vote, as a voting member of my church was to vote for that. And it was really important and had some big conversations, my mother, about that, because we had to change our constitution. We had to change the constitution to allow people to be members of the Elks and the Moose and fraternal organizations.

Right.

Which secret, really, what we're talking about were secret societies like the. The. Some of the denominations, I'm not sure. So obviously ours. I think we were ALC. Well, we were either Alc or LCA, but one of the big denominations, one of the larger ones, didn't allow secret society memberships, and the other one did, I think, right. So they had to equalize that. And so that was one of the things that had to be changed in our church's constitution. That's a long story. To say. I feel like Lutheranism is at my core. I grew up in that environment, born and bred, cradle to grave is probably what it'll end up being. I feel intimately tied to the creation of this denomination, even though I left for a while. We'll talk about that in a bit. But, yeah, I feel like I own part of it. It's ingrained with me.

Yeah, that's really cool. I have also been a lifelong Lutheran, and while, because you and I are, we graduated from school the same year, so born similar times. I don't have any memory of the merger that, you know, I'm aware of it as an adult, as a piece of my history, but I don't know what Zion in Glenrock, Pennsylvania, was, Zion Lutheran church, what predecessor body they were part of when I was first baptized. But I grew up know I still am connected to the pastor that baptized me and the other pastor later on who confirmed me. I still have contact with them, and they're important to me. So I grew up in a very small town in Pennsylvania, and the church was a big part of our lives there. In fact, in the. In Pennsylvania, schools were growing as the population was booming, and there was not enough room for all the kindergarten classes in the school district where I was growing up. And so my kindergarten class was actually in my church. And the other thing that was cool about that was my mom at that time in my life was the director of our local senior center, which met in the basement of my church. So I would go to kindergarten in the mornings, upstairs in the Sunday school classrooms, and in the afternoons I would go downstairs and hang out with the old people and learn how to cheat at Domino's. And that was my kindergarten years. And all through elementary school, I frequently would get off the bus, and I'd be down at the senior center for the last hour or so the mom was working, and then we'd pack up and go home. But there was no distinction in those things between what was Zion's congregational ministry and the place that my mom worked at and the place that I went to kindergarten and youth group and other community events that would happen in the church building that weren't really part of the church. But as a kid, I didn't know the difference. It was just part of my home, and that was really cool. So I wasn't aware of any of the distinctions between ElCa Lutherans and other denominations until probably the church. Ben, where you and I met when we were in know, I know we're going to do a segment on this at some point, but what I've learned about these various factions that we have is know my values as a person and as a Christian. My understanding of scripture and my piety match the polity of the evangelical lutheran church in America more so than, say, the lutheran church, Missouri Senate, or other denominations that, again, I'm not knocking them. It's just, it's who I am and it's where I'm at, and I'm sure that one has shaped the other. And vice.

Yeah, that's what you always wonder, right? It's like, well, lutheran theology just naturally makes sense to me, even as I understand that I wasn't taught it properly. And because of that, I wonder, was it when I talked to Duncan, my 15 year old, about this, about faith things, I naturally gravitate toward what I learned in the green book liturgy. Right? I think we had a discussion just recently about the confession and how important the words to me, and I quote these often, I think, and that is that we have sinned against you in thoughtward, indeed, by what we have done, by what we have left undone. We've not loved you with our whole hearts. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. And when I think through that, I think those parts of the liturgy influenced my personal theological thoughts, maybe more than any of the Sunday school stuff or the j beach stuff, the gathering and all those things. I think the constant and those things are core lutheran identity, core lutheran theology. Nobody can mess that up, unlike Sunday school.

Yeah.

Liturgy absolutely shapes us, I think, in our tradition.

Yeah.

And I don't think I realized that till I got to college.

Our liturgy is so intertwined with our theology. And in the college and seminary liturgical classes, they'll tell you that's what it's supposed to do, that our liturgy is supposed to teach our theology and sort of inculcate people in it. Also, our liturgy is one of the ways that primarily expresses our theology.

Mean, I mentioned my hopping out. I was UCC for a bit after Deborah and I were married, and then when we made a move, and the best fit for us then was a PC USA church. But, Keith, I think you had a period where you sort of put aside the ministry gig for a little bit.

Yeah, I did.

After I graduated from seminary, I took a call in Lansdale, Pa. And I was there for four or five years. I was just at a point in my life, I was about 30, I guess, when I left, there was just at a place in my life where I was, in reflection, really struggling in a lot of ways, struggling with depression and anxiety, struggling with being a young parent. And also I had this sort of unexplored passion, this sort of dream that I'd never quite been aware of as a dream until that time. And that was I had been involved in martial arts for a number of years, really loved classes, really loved teaching, and wanted to start my own school. And so that is what I did. I left my first call. I moved back to my hometown, and I started a karate school. And then I also worked. That was what I did because I loved it. And then for money and income, I was a carpenter and a handyman. That path led me in different directions for a couple of years. And long story short, I did get back into the ministry after about three years, first as an interim pastor and now in the call that I have at St. Matthew. And it's a period of my life where I'm glad that I did it. I learned that I'm really not cut out to be an entrepreneur for that business sense of it.

And I'm glad that I did it.

And I'm glad that I don't do it anymore, because it gave me a sense of perspective to know that my personality, my giftedness as a Christian, as a person, really are to be a professional minister and I, and I know that now, having tried on a couple of different hats, and I've been back in the church now for, golly, almost 20 years. I guess that's pretty meaningful to me.

Yeah. And I think it's fair to say that everybody's first call seems to be rather difficult on them, that adjustment.

Right.

And especially for people that we call pipeliners, that folks that graduate from high school, go to college and then go straight to seminary. And when I was in seminary, that was about half of us. There were about half of the people that were in their early 20s that had just come out of college, were going into seminary, and when they graduated in their mid to late 20s, were going to be going into their first call versus people that had been teachers, nurses, lawyers, whatever, coming out of running their own businesses, working in corporate America, coming out of those fields, and they might be in their thirty s, forty s, fifty s. I had a classmate who graduated in their mid 60s.

So while you were alf, were you still attending church like normal, like a regular parishioner?

I was, and that was an interesting experience.

Yeah.

To be an ordained pastor and then just be a member of the congregation. And it was partly why I wound up at the church that I was at, which was a bigger church where I knew I had some side conversations with the pastoral staff. I knew there were other pastors, mostly retired pastors, that were members of the congregation, and that we could kind of fly under the radar and not be perceived as threat or an.

Know, the church we met at Calvary would have been one of, you know.

Yeah.

Which is really funny because it was a much smaller church, but there were lots of pastors that were happy to be at that place.

Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Missionaries and all sorts.

And I had a six, seven, eight year old daughter at the time that I really wanted to have connected to an active, of course, sets of programming for young people. And so the congregation was important there, too.

That time we talk about the ministry thing, you had your spot with ministry. I almost went to seminary, didn't, and then went off and had a career in way too many things. And now I'm a career.

Like, it's a singular thing.

Well, yeah, to me it is.

I get it.

I'm just Ben. But joining this lay ministry, the licensed lay minister to me was originally, we had an issue at the beginning of the COVID problem, the COVID pandemic that our pastor needed to leave the congregation. And that was in the fall of 2020. Most of the supply preachers that we could get were elderly. And so they were not traveling to a church to do anything to prepare communion or any of that, especially not this far away from their homes, which would have been, for most of them, over an hour, to get to where we are. They don't want to take that risk, and we don't want to make them. So we were really having trouble. And I thought I'd heard about this LLM program, the licensed lay ministry program in the Senate. And I thought, well, if I can get through that program, after all, it's only two years, so I could go through that program, get through it, and then start supply preaching in my own church so that we don't have to look so far.

Okay. Right.

And then when we have a called pastor again, because calling a pastor in 2000 and 22,021 was impossible.

Right.

But if I could be available, I'm thinking this in 2020, if I could do that next step, then I'll be available for other churches in our area, and so they won't have a problem either. And I'm younger, so I can take more risks, I can drive further, do whatever, but leaving that church, then that eliminated that reason. They have a called pastor and that sort of thing, so there's not as much need now. But the program itself is really speaking to me, and I'm really having a good time with it. I think I'm really good, which a lot of people have told me I would be anyway.

Absolutely. And besides, it's a two year program, and you've managed to not quite finish it in a little over three.

Sure feels like it.

Yeah.

It turns out it's more like a two and three quarter year process. But part of that is we did have one class that had to be rescheduled because of illness in the family of the guy who was supposed to teach.

Right.

Well, like you said, the urgency is kind of off because you're no longer at the same congregation.

Yeah. And I think I can unofficially start doing some duties for the internship at least. And I'm learning about that, and then we talk about my family. Right. That's the other part. Is that how your family comes along with this? My family is. We've been pretty low key. One of my sons, actually is a little bit traumatized by church, and I'm not sure if there's an event that happened, if something happened. I know that one of the people that did youth activities at this church here near us is pretty brutal in how he leads youth activities. He wants the kids to be doing chores around the church and berates them a little bit, and it's not the good way to do youth activities.

Right.

And I think that might have been part of it, but there's something traumatic in his experience with church that makes him really resistant, and it's more than just wanting to play video games or something. Now, Duncan, on the other hand, likes it quite a bit, but because both Tristan and Deborah are sort of resistant now, Deborah is very. She's very introverted and doesn't take to people very quickly, and so she really needs to meet somebody that she wants to see there.

Right.

And we had an intern who. She really did have a lot. They did click really well. But the intern is now back in.

I didn't meet your intern.

Didn't I?

You did.

That Sunday I was at worship with you.

Yeah.

Yes. And she likes our pastor. We actually scheduled to have a meeting with pastor Carm and the rest of the family, and they all get along and everything, but it's one thing to be comfortable, and with me not being able to be there every Sunday, there's no tug to bring the family along.

Right.

So that hasn't happened quite so much, and it's unfortunate.

Yeah.

My family is. One of the things that was happening shortly after I left my first call and went into business for myself was that I also got divorced. And we had one daughter, Alice, who was five, six years old at the know church. For me, as a single, know church was still a part of my life, and so Alice was a part of that as well. And then when I was back into ministry, she was along for the ride. And then when I came to St. Matthew, she was confirmed here and went through some of the youth programming that we had, and that was all cool. And she's 24 now and married and doesn't have a very strong connection to the actual church body at this point. But I think she's still sympathetic to what the church stands, so she still shows up here once in a while for things when she's in the area. Her wife, who was from Nigeria, was also raised, I think, in the. And so, uh, you know, there's a lot of overlap in the practices and theology of those bodies, even from two different continents.

That book of prayer is.

Yeah, yeah.

Alice, also as a, has probably the strongest connection to the church he's had as adult, has been playing bass or playing the. In the brass ensemble or in the praise band at different points when we've had a need. And somebody called her up and she said, yeah, sure.

Is that a polka praise band?

It's not. No.

I want the tuba in the praise band.

There's not a tuba in the praise band. She played bass in the praise band. She played tuba in the brass ensemble. It's more of a reformation Christmas Eve kind of gig.

Yeah.

And then my current wife, Debbie, she describes herself as having been raised half assed Catholic. That's her own phrasing for it. Meaning, know her parents both had catholic. Well, her father especially had catholic roots. Her mother had some experience in the catholic church, and they were pretty active when she and her sister were very young and living in Ohio. But after they moved to pennsylvania, not so much. So. So she really didn't have a connection to the church much, really, until we met. What she says is that she fell in love with me, and I happen to be a lutheran pastor, and she discovered that, hey, lutherans are okay people. So she is connected to the Elca, because in the circles that you, Ben, and I are connected to, in the Elca is a church body that Debbie is sympathetic to as well. And so she feels really strongly that some of the same things that are important to the Elca are important to her. And so she's strongly connected in that regard. She's not a person who goes to church every Sunday, but she's here frequently. We have a ten year old daughter who is extremely social, and part of that social connection for her is at church. She has friends here just like she has friends at school. She also has friends at school who go to other churches. And so that serves as sort of a bond for them. And so that's been sort of cool to experience that overlap as well.

Yeah.

For me, as a parent and as a parent who is a pastor, my kids, I think, get a different kind of take on church than they would if they were in a family of strictly laypeople. But I think that it's not a bad perspective. The co pastor, the senior pastor that I work with is my younger daughter's godfather. She calls him g daddy. There's a lot of strong connections there.

Yeah.

Cool. Yeah. So I think we've covered that. So now what everybody's been waiting for, we get to release the answer to the question from last week or from our. Actually, since this is really our first full length episode, maybe even going a little long, what we thought was going to be the first episode is actually going to be our trailer. So from the trailer, we do have the question, and it was true or false, the small catechism is the cliff Notes version of Lutheran's large catechism. And the answer is false.

And yet there is some overlap. And the small always. I do wonder about the names. Did they really choose to call them large catechism and small catechism, or was it just that one was the catechism, and then the other one was the version of the catechism that was either longer or shorter than that one? Anyhow, turns out they're both written. Well, the content developed over the course of probably a decade, but they both, I think, were more or less officially published in 1529. But they had different audiences. The large catechism was written for pastors and for church professors, because Luther and Langthon and some of their fellows were basically control freaks, and they thought that these guys did not have a strong handle on lutheran piety.

In fact, the introduction to the large catechism says, I went touring through the churches, and it is apparent that none of you know what you're doing.

Right? Yeah.

So you wrote the large catechism to basically re educate them and or fill in the gaps of what they were missing from their time in college and whatever.

Well, and to be fair, when they went to seminary, it wasn't lutheran. True. Or as they would say, evangelical.

Right.

Which is a whole other topic.

Yeah, we'll be talking about that one eventually, too. But, yeah, the small catechism, believe it or not, wasn't written for pastors to teach to kids in confirmation classes. It was written for their parents to teach their kids about the basic tenets of the faith. Shocking extension of the ministry of the congregation, not for the congregation to do in their place. So I don't know about you, Ben, but when we teach confirmation at St. Matthew, we ask the parents to come with their kids, and so we end up having a much richer conversation for that, not only because the parents want to be there and the kids don't, and the parents talk and the kids don't, but because we get just lots of different perspectives then on the conversation. So that's a lot of fun.

Yeah.

Confirmation was always our date night.

There you go.

So I don't think we'd go to church for date night. So the answer officially is false, but sort of. So, our new question for this week. Go ahead and read it here. What is the primary purpose of the Ten Commandments? Now, this is multiple choice. A, they are rules we must follow in order to earn salvation. B, they are laws that are given to us by God for use in our courts when they have to be.

Written outside the courthouse.

Right.

Yeah. Or in for some. C, they show us that we fall short of God's demands and that we need faith in Christ for salvation. And d. They had a purpose in the time of Moses, but we are not to use them. The and this is what is Luther's answer for the purpose, primary purpose of the ten commandments? Answer that for us. If you want to email us at our email address, that will be in the following here. Or we might have a link to this on our website, which is mainstreetlutherans.com, and we'll see you in the next episode. Bye bye bye all. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Foat. You can reach us at [email protected] mainstreetlutherans.com or on the socials as at Main Street Lutherans. Right now that's Facebook, Instagram and threads. The show is by foat media productions. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.