This is Ben and this is Keith.

And this is Main Street Lutherans. And today we are excited to be recording our 50th episode. And so we decided to use this as an opportunity to solicit questions from our listeners and just see if we can answer them. So some of these are church related, some of them aren't, and we'll get into that in a little bit. But first we probably ought to just talk about what this year has been. Been for us as a podcast.

Yeah. I'll tell you, it's been, it's been interesting. We have quite a few listeners and it's been humbling. It seems like at least once a month I meet somebody new that's been listening to the show. So that's been interesting.

You know, I'm going to put in a plug here. The 50th episode is a big deal and I'm glad we're, we're making a little something out of it. But I think the 51st episode could be a big deal too because if we work quickly enough, we could record that while we're both 51.

Oh, my goodness, that would be something.

Right. But you know, a few more weeks and that's going to pass us by.

And our wives are still in their 20s.

That's right. I know.

Have been for a while.

They drink from the sacrament of the communion of perpetual youth.

That's right.

Whereas we do not.

Yeah. So. So the year we've done some, some pretty interesting things. Our, our first at the beginning of 2025, we did our history episodes which were very popular with Mark Granquist. We talked about the, the Lutheran trump cards. That was a big hit episode and, and really inspired me. I think it inspired a lot of other folks too. And so that inspired the T shirt. I'm. I'm wearing a teal colored T shirt, but not our T shirt at the moment, but close. Not that any of you guys can see me anyway.

Right.

But yeah, we did quite a few things. We talked about the churchwide assembly. We've got some stuff coming that we'll probably touch on that a little bit and some of the repercussions from that.

Yeah. We spoke again with our friend and repeated guest, Imran Siddiqui, the vice president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We met Pastor Ollie Berg.

Yeah.

In Alaska, who has his own podcast. And then our last episode was with another person who has their own podcast, Matthew Longfellow. And the mighty fortresses are Pod.

Yeah.

Who is our fellow Capital alum and a fellow Trinity student. My own alumnus there. So, yeah, yeah.

Been a fun year. It has. And I'll tell you where we're at for going into next year. It's a big milestone for us. We've had our first really direct ask to be on the show, and so we'll get to that in a few episodes. But we have some people that have a project and they said we should be on the show, and so we're going to talk to them about something, and it's pretty exciting. What they're doing is really cool, but it's also neat that people are listening and have decided that this is a good avenue to talk about something. And we think it is. And so it's nice that that's being appreciated. So.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's all because of you listening to the show.

They might be a little desperate, but hey, we're willing to.

That's right. That's right. So, yeah, that's our year. So we've been collecting questions the last couple months asking people to tell us what's on their mind. Just small questions. Some of these we're going to punt. We're going to tell you that some of these are going to answered in other episodes just because they take too much time. We're going to try to get through a bunch of questions, and some of them are kind of big questions.

Yeah, some of these absolutely could be an episode of their own, which, you know, may well happen. And some of them we've referred to in previous episodes. So we'll try to point you around in the right direction along the way.

That's right. And at least one has an answer that is. We covered that on a podcast, but we will talk about it again.

Right.

All right, let's start with questions that we got on Facebook from Kristin Olson. Actually, it's just the one big question Kristin asks that her mom and she. They're newly Lutheran and they want to know why there's so much standing during worship.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For folks coming out of other traditions. You know, in my own head, I make up, you know, particularly out of, like, an evangelical tradition. There's a lot of services where you spend the bulk of the time sitting in the chairs, except maybe when you're singing. You know, there's probably different answers to this and there's probably some of them are correct and maybe these answers aren't, but I'm going to give a couple. And, Ben, you can jump in, too. I think that, you know, the first thing that comes to my mind is that Lutherans traditionally stand for the reading of the gospel. And we're not the only denomination that does that. I believe the Catholic Church does that. Lots of other mainline Protestant churches. That is their practice. It's a sign of respect to the gospel message. And it's not to go off on a tangent, but there's the gospel that we read on Sunday out of the Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. But then there's also the message of the gospel, which is really Jesus. And I think our standing is at least as much for that second definition, that we stand out of respect for Jesus as it is standing out of respect for the piece of scripture that we're reading. But that's one part of it. We stand when we read the gospel. We also stand during the consecration of the elements for holy communion. And we should point out, too, that most churches, and Ben, probably the churches that you've been at, as you're supplying around your area now and the churches that I serve at, we always make allowances for people to sit. If standing is not possible for them or is really uncomfortable, people can sit. But yeah, we stand during the prayers. We stand to sing because as a singing body, we just know that it's physically easier to sing better when you're standing. You get more, more air and support and all of that.

And those are pieces that vary more between congregations too, though.

That's true. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, but it does, you know, you make jokes about what you call the Lutheran exercise hours. There's, you know, the Lutheran calisthenics is the other phrase that I've heard. And then I remember a stand up comedian when I was a kid doing this thing about people being in church who are not there very often. And they're all watching the one old woman in the front pew because she knows what to do. And they're just, we're up, we're up.

We'Re standing, we're sitting.

Oh, Neil. Okay. Sit, stand. Yeah, yeah.

Rowan Atkinson has a skit that he does that is based on the Episcopal Church, Church of England, where he's sitting, you know, standing, sitting, standing, sitting, kneeling and getting out a piece of candy.

So, yeah, that's one where he's also singing. Is it holy, Holy, Holy.

Yeah, he mumbles whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lutherans have kind of gotten away from kneeling. I don't know many Lutheran churches that kneel much anymore, except maybe for communion. Yeah. So, yeah.

All right. Speaking of kneeling for communion, my only congregation that does that, where I supply. Bonnie actually handed me a. She I'll Wave in it by my microphone here with her questions, and I'm going to sort of summarize them. So Bonnie asked. Bonnie is the pianist at this church, at St. Philip Lutheran Church in Trenton, Michigan. She asks when. So these are about the role of leadership in worship to some extent, or just participating in that. She asks why, when the liturgy for worship services uses other people's words to express our faith, how can we better prepare worshipers to express their faith in their own words? She also asked for resources to move from religion to relationship, or along with that, how to make space within the worship experience to listen to God. I think her. Her thing there is that. That often we move from thing to thing to thing, and there's not much time for reflection. And then the third question is about how worship leaders can be more open to the worship experience in worship and focus less on the leading of that worship. So those are all sort of combined. And Bonnie is the pianist in the congregation. And so as sort of the music director there, there is a lot of the focus of the leadership. And as we were talking about this question before, you mentioned that. That sometimes our musicians are much more hurried through the service than even the pastors.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think about organists and pianists and other musicians, you know, who are juggling multiple books, perhaps even juggling multiple instruments, moving from place to place. And the only downtime they. They get is sort of, you know, perhaps during the sermon. But, you know, whether it's even during the confession, they may or may not be able to really tune into saying or even hearing those words because they're getting ready for the hymn that's going to follow or the Kyrie. So, yeah, that I think can. Can truly be a challenge. I think sometimes even harder than it is for a pastor to have a sense of being able to worship while leading worship. I think that it can be even harder for musicians in those settings. But, yeah, you know, there are opportunities where I, as a pastor get to worship without leading. I was part of a. For one, I was part of a staff for most of my ministry where I was an associate pastor, and so there was another pastor. So, you know, even if I was in church, maybe I'm presiding over communion, but I wasn't preaching the sermon, so I got to sit and listen, or if I was preaching the sermon, then I wasn't doing much of the liturgy, so I got to really just kind of be a participant in that. I'm now much more solo in my work. They're not completely. So you Know, I'll be living into that role and see how that changes for me. But I also go to the conference meetings. You know, the pastors around York, they get together on a monthly basis. I'm not the most. I'm not the best at attending those meetings, but I try to get to at least a few every year. And we always start those with worship, typically at least a sermon or a time of reflection on the Scripture and communion. And then it may or may not be fuller or less full, depending on just who's leading and what we felt like doing that particular month. But that's an opportunity to really hear from another pastor and participate in communion without having to lead it.

The question about how to form, how can we prepare worshipers to express their faith in their own words? And my bias on this is that I think our congregations have let go of the idea of adult learning, that our worship experience tends to be the limit. We have social time, that sort of stuff, but we don't do extensive. We don't invite a lot of people out to do other group things. At least that's my experience in middle and small churches. I think the larger churches do have those groups because they have staff people.

To operate them sometimes. Yeah, yeah. I've actually. I remember I used to follow a particular preaching resource, you know, an online resource, but was good at kind of constantly pushing congregations to consider worship as practice for being in the world. And so whether it was some time to reflect and discuss following the sermon, for example, or maybe at the end of the service, or maybe occasionally have people have testimony. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Time to reflect. And again, you know, that works better in some places than others. It tends to work better in a smaller setting where people aren't maybe so intimidated, where they feel they know each other. You know, we have a service that's on the radio. We can't. We can't have dead air during that while people are reflecting. We're not speaking at a microphone, for example. But, yeah, other times that's. That's one possible way of giving people an opportunity to. What would I say in this moment.

You know, something that one of the congregations I'm spying at has done is they've moved their postlude to before the sharing of the piece, which is now at the very end of the sharing of the pieces, after the sending. And so it's postlude sending and then the sharing of the piece with the idea that you share the piece with everybody in the congregation. And then you keep doing that until you come back But I think having that postlude music there, but still more of the service to go, people don't leave during the postlude. And so it's kind of a meditative time.

Right. Comes a time to reflect.

So that might be something to think about. Bonnie, you can see if that would work.

Oh, gosh. I had another thought and it just slipped out of my head.

Well, as far as the resources for moving from relationship, especially during the worship.

This is a simple piece. Pastor Shiveway that I used to work with would occasionally publish questions that would go in the bulletin that were tied to the sermon. And so it was. They weren't answered during worship, but they were just put there for, you know, like an individual to follow up with or maybe a family, you know, like could go out to, you know, a lot of. A lot of people go out to brunch after church. And it could be something that you talk about sitting around the table. So like kind of follow up questions to sort of extend the learning and exploring of the sermon into your own family time, whether it's in the car or at home afterwards or with your kids, whatever it might be. Your friends can be a way of doing that too.

Yeah. So as far as being able to connect worship to listening to God, something I started reading. So Diana Butler Bass just released a book called a beautiful 52 meditations on faith, Wisdom and Perseverance. And it starts the reason she's been doing the rounds on podcasts lately is that it starts with Advent. Right. Advent one. And so she has accumulated writings from her substack and has grouped those together to talk about each of the weeks of the liturgical year. And so it's not specific to A, B or C, but it talks about the themes from those weeks. And so it works really well for Advent. I'm curious how it'll work in ordinary time of Epiphany and Pentecost. But this has been an interesting thing because I can read this. And when we think of the worship service, we think of the liturgical year affecting specifically the readings in our readings for the day, the lessons in the Gospel and the Psalm. But in addition to that, our prayers are affected by the year. And there are pieces of our liturgy that does change that we don't realize necessarily that state have some constancy through the season. And sometimes our hymns reflect some of this too. But so this has been a good way for me to position my mind to look for the things that that week is supposed to mean for us. And so I think that might be A good resource to look into. I think it would also make a good Bible study or a church discussion group because you've got a new topic for each week and it's not real heavy.

So I'll throw one more out there then too. When I was in seminary, I think it was my senior year I took a course at the Methodist Seminary in Columbus which we had a close student exchange program with and working relationship. And it was specifically on, it was called the Ministry of the Laity. And the direction of it was how to help. You know, it was still geared for church leaders, pastors and others. The class, but it was to help us to. In a congregational setting. How do you go about equipping people to be Christians in their daily lives, regardless of what kind of work it is that they do, or if they're a stay at home parent or retired or whatever. Anyway, one of the books that we read during that was called the Monday Connection on being an Authentic Christian in a Weekday World. It's written by a gentleman named William E. Deal, D I E H L. And I still have that book in my office. And it was a great book and a great class and it did try to. It would be another good book for a book study group to discuss. So you go to church on a Sunday and then what, what's the other, what's the other six days of the week about? And especially kind of in your work life. And so that's where the title comes from then, the Monday Connection. How do you connect what happens on Sunday with what you're going to go do on Monday and then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday afterwards? So there's another possibility.

Yeah, so the rest of the questions get a little bit shorter as far as answers go, so. Well, some of them do anyway. So our next question is from Carol Johnson, who gave us some more questions that we'll get to at the end here. What is an assisting minister? That's a minister. That's very helpful.

Yeah, yeah, Assisting ministers are great. And when I, when I worked as a, as a team pastor, I frequently didn't have the opportunity to use assisting ministers because you've got multiple pastors in worship and so it seems not superfluous, but you start getting in each other's way. But now that I again am serving solo, we started using assisting ministers in worship again recently. The classic, I mean the term assisting minister can mean different things in different contexts, but sort of the classic definition in most Lutheran settings is the assisting minister is a layperson, a member of the congregation who has some of the speaking parts of the liturgy. The traditional pieces are. It's mostly around the prayers and Communion, so St. Matthew. Anyway, after the hymn of the day, which follows the sermon, we recite a creed, either the Nicene or the Apostles Creed, depending on the day. And then we go into the prayers and the prayers are introduced and primarily led by the assisting minister with the congregation speaking their responses after each petition. And then the presiding minister myself just closes out the prayers as the last statement before we say the Amen and then go into the peace. And then at Communion, the assisting minister reads or leads the offertory prayer. They help set the table for communion, they help distribute communion, and then they say the prayer or lead the prayer after communion with the congregation before we get into the benediction. So they have. So it's a great way for the congregation to see that worship can be led by both ordained clergy and lay people as well. I also know lots of people that have gotten their first taste of leading worship as an assisting minister and then felt a draw to going into becoming a pastor themselves or a deacon. I had a little bit of that experience of my own back in Columbus.

And there could be multiple assisting ministers that, you know, all those things can be split up quite a bit. I think when Nadia Bulls Weber released that. That first book of hers, Pastorates, she talked about having worship folders that you just picked up. And if you felt like being the. The reader for the day you picked up that folder, if you felt like being the assisting minister, you could pick up that thing and you could divide those out however you want. We don't have a forced way of doing it. And I'm not sure it was clear that when two pastors are sharing the service work, there is the presiding minister who does. Whoever does the communion rite. That is considered the presiding minister. And the other person is then technically assisting, but it might be the preaching minister. But, you know, that's sort of how we divide that out in function. But the assisting minister doesn't have to be ordained or have the blessing of the church in some form to give communion, right?

Yep. Yep. And Right. There are other places that lay people can lead worship, too, in reading the lessons in providing music. But, yeah, that's sort of the sort of classic definition of the. The specific role called the assisting minister tends to do those general functions.

Then we also got an email from Eric Stone, who asked questions about the association of Synod vice presidents and what their intention might be for lay leader development. And I think we're going to punt on this. I Think one of the things that he mentioned in his email was that he thought that maybe it was too early in its formation and it did get formed in August officially. Well, I think a little before August.

Their first fusion of Senate DPs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I don't think they're, they're, I don't think one of their, and I may be wrong, but I don't think one of their charges is lay leader development. It may be, but synod vice presidents are the lay leadership within or they're the top lay leader in a synod. And so, so that's kind of why they need it. They want an association so they can meet and talk about what that role is in each of the synods. So I think. But we'll find out. We'll find out, all of us together. I also asked on Reddit for some questions and so we've got, we've got a bunch of stuff from there. No type 119 stated. So a lot of laypeople seem totally confused by the process the ELCA uses when it composes social statements. Can you break that down? And our short answer to that is episode 10, 40 episodes ago.

Right. Although we did talk about getting back to doing some more episodes on some of the specific social statements and social messages. And I'm sure we'll recap some of that there.

Yeah, we're going to make sure to do that for sure.

Yeah. But briefly, you know, I can see why it's confusing. I found on the ELCA's website a 32 page document that explains example exactly how the social statements come about. But the cliffnotes version of it is that there's social statements, there's social messages and there are social policy resolutions. And the big bad out of all of those are the social statements. They are the ELCA's primary teaching documents. And they get, usually they're instigated by a churchwide assembly that says, hey, we need to know more about X, where we need to have a stand on X. And so they create a group that researches and prays and discerns and that takes several years of putting together this information.

And it's ELCA Church Council that does the forming of the group.

Yeah. And then they come back to an ELCA churchwide assembly. The social statements have to be adopted at the assembly by a 2/3 majority vote. The social messages aren't as heavy, they're more focused and they can be created more quickly. They just get adopted by the ELCA churchwide council which meets in between the churchwide assemblies.

We talked a little bit about that. In addition to episode 10. We talked about that with Imran Siddiqui. I think on. He's been in three episodes. I think it came up a little bit in each one of those.

Yeah, yeah.

Because the vice president of the ELCA runs the ELCA Church council.

Yep. So yeah, that's social statements and social messages.

Yeah. So then we've got our redditor, Dan Burke. If the ELCA was forced for budgetary attendance, declines, et cetera, reasons to merge with another mainline denomination, who do you think would be the best fit or the most likely?

Ben, you suggested before we started recording that this was a message designed to get us into trouble.

That's right. And so we're just gonna be quiet.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know though. I think it's an interesting thought exercise, you know, knowing that I don't think anything I would postulate could possibly happen, you know, because there's, there's so many parts to denomination. There's your theology, there's your polity, you know, how you are structured in a logistic kind of way. There's, you know, just the. Where are you located? You know, where are your congregations located? Where are the, where the bulk of your population, you know, all of that fits in. What's your worship style like? And so, you know, any one of those might seem like a closer or more distant match to any of the number of, of the denominations, but, but you're not going to find anybody that fits them all. You know, some people would say that maybe polity wise we are more like the Episcopalians than anybody else. I don't know if that's entirely true, but.

Well, you know, you know, we talk about the Moravians, but they're not really big enough to solve any of those problems. Right.

Yeah, they actually are. Probably the one that we are the most like would be the Moravian Church.

Yeah.

But they're significantly smaller than we are. And so if we're struggling budgetarily, they aren't going to try and rescue us. Right.

You know, when we talked about this before, I didn't think of this. Maybe it's likely that we'd actually just. We'd broaden behind the United States so we might merge with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. Maybe we would unite with some of the other members of the Lutheran World Federation and have, you know, be more global in scope.

Yeah.

Instead of regional. I think that's probably the more, that's what I think would make more people happy. It would harm the Fewest people maybe. I don't know. But we have so much distinctions. I think other denominations would find it easier to merge. Say Disciples of Christ and the PC USA could probably find merger possible because they come from the same tradition. You know, there was a, basically a division in there somewhere. The, the Methodists could possibly find, find it in there too because you know, they come from, they come out of that tradition. You know, the reformed churches that split out of there could, could come together. The ELCA are options are on the other side of the globe from us on our attitudes on Scripture, our attitudes on interpreting what the Book of Concord says, all those things. We just have fundamental disagreements about that. In order for us to merge with a congregation that does not line up with or with a denomination that doesn't line up with the Book of Concord, we would have to find some way to say it's okay that we are merged with a group that doesn't honor these documents.

Right. We've had a hard enough time getting into full communion relationships with other denominations, but only trying to merge with one. Yeah. So that would be rough.

So if I think for any reason you should have a reason to discipline either. Keith and I just remember we tried to be quiet.

I think it would be more.

We.

Might have a better luck predicting. Let's say the ELCA were suddenly to dissolve tomorrow. Yeah. What denomination would absorb the largest portion of our former members?

Yeah.

You know, are they going to join Methodist churches or are they going to join UCC churches or lcms? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, our worship. You know, a lot of people from the outside look and say our worship looks more like Catholic worship than anybody else, but I don't think that's going to happen. No.

No. All right, so let's see. We'll move into more friendly territory. NPASS 1982 from Reddit. Love the podcast. I wonder if there's someone you could talk to who can discuss how the ELCA is working in different parts of the country. California seems so far from Michigan and Pennsylvania. Yeah.

I think though that the people that can best answer that question, like the people that could answer what's the ELCA doing in California probably aren't actual church wide folks. They can always speak at a high level. People that know what's going on on the ground are going to be folks in congregations or maybe nonprofits. And we could speak to somebody from California and know what's going on there. And then we could speak to somebody different about South Carolina and what's going on there. Et Cetera. And that would be probably a good thing for us to consider doing. But I don't know if there's any one person or office that can actually answer that question very effectively.

I think on a topic by topic basis, if we wanted to talk with somebody who knew. So we have. We have organizations. One of the groups that we are planning to talk to next year is actually two groups that are. That are aligned very well. One is the African Descent Lutheran Association. And so that's a group that is very strong in advocating for African American and African American descent folks who are members of our congregations. And they're very, very good at helping our leaders from those backgrounds get recognized and do some really cool things. There's an event coming up in January. We'll try to talk about that before it happens, maybe. So we're trying to do that sort of thing. So there are people within that organization that know. That have a broad understanding of what people in that, for lack of a better term, diaspora. Right. No, trying to remember the, the. The gentleman that does the Native American work, but he has a very good grasp of what. What's going on with Native American programs across the country in the lca. But it's very specific focus. Right. So there are people like. Because we haven't mentioned him yet in this episode, Jack Eggleston, he's very in tune with immigration and Palestinian efforts. So both of those things are his. And he travels around the country to be part of movements and actions that happen. Not that he's a leader in the whole thing overall, but he's in communication with people on the ground in different areas doing things. It has a reputation for that. So I don't know that we could find somebody that knows all those things because our congregations all have different focuses in different ways, and we're all doing something. And so we have people at the synod level that have a good understanding of how their synods are operating. But there are 65 of those. Right. And so they're potentially the smallest group that we could probably get that broken down to. Might be. You know, we might be able to put together a group of a dozen or maybe 20 people that that group would have a very good understanding of maybe what 80% of the church is doing in the United States. That's probably the closest we could get. That's my estimate. Yeah.

Yeah.

We're trying to get, as a thought experiment, that's sort of where that goes, I think.

Yeah. To get the. That smattering of people from all over the. All over the country to get a better handle on what's happening in their part of the world anyway, and then just get enough of those together and we get a better picture. It's a good thought.

Let's see. So we also got some appreciation from Reddit and so kiltedfatman85 I just wanted a reason to say your Reddit handle there.

That's a great handle.

Said he loves the podcast and that's all he wanted to tell us. And then actually Bumdihar or Bumdahar B U M D H A R from Reddit and also Phoebe Z from Reddit learned about the podcast from the post, about the questions. And so welcome to the podcast. Hopefully you're still listening. If you have any questions, go ahead and send them in. And that goes for everybody. We're open to questions all the time. It leads sometimes to conversations about. About things. In fact, it happened a few times in the last year where people sent us messages about stuff and like, oh, this happened because of listening to the podcast. And then we, we kind of got looped into something new that we didn't know about because of that. So. So keep sending, keep sending questions or, or comments about what we've done wrong. We're open to it. So.

Absolutely.

Our last segment, of course, is better. No. And for this episode, it is better. Know a podcast host, Carol Johnson, sent us a whole slew of questions. And Carol ended with, don't be shy. You've been a big part of my journey. Let's hear yours. And so we're just going to start at the top of this, maybe. So she says, we want to know more about you, tell us your spiritual stories.

So for that one, we could go to episode. Was it two?

Probably why you were a Lutheran.

Yeah, yeah. Which I think we both kind of shared our backgrounds pretty well and sort of how we got from A to B. Yeah, yeah.

I bounced around between lots of denominations while, you know, between college and a few years ago just because I kind of got disconnected from church for a few different reasons. And then you bounced around after being ordained a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Always with your toes still in there. So.

Right. Yeah. What do I like best about being Lutheran? I don't know. I've never been anything else in some ways.

Yeah.

But.

My favorite thing about being Lutheran or going to Lutheran worship is the confession and forgiveness.

Okay.

I didn't realize how much I needed it until I went to churches where it was not a regular part of the service. It was considered superfluous. And that was really Difficult. And I found myself explaining to a pastor in the Presbyterian Church why that was so important to me. And he was just, oh, wow. I could see how that would be.

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Back to the worship leader worshiping question. One thing that I. One of the things that I appreciate the most about the Lutheran worship service, just the rite itself, is the distribution of communion. The time when person after person after person is receiving the sacrament. And when I am distributing communion bread or wine, as I almost always am, those are very brief but really intimate personal connections with each person that's coming forward. And that's great. And I appreciate that pastorally especially. You know, it's like every time I'm giving a piece of bread to someone, I'm usually reminded sort of subconsciously of whatever it is that I know is going on in their life. Maybe it's the last conversation I had with them or. Or the last prayer request they made or something like that. And those are touching, intimate moments. However, when I have the opportunity to not be distributing communion and I've gone forward myself, I've received the sacrament, I've gone back to my seat, whether I'm sitting in the congregation or even sitting up in the chancel. And just for whatever reason, I didn't need to distribute bread that day. And I just sit quietly and I pray, and I'm aware of the movement of the rest of the people, the people going forward and going back to their seats, hearing the little quick mumbles, the body of Christ given for you. The body of Christ given for you. And just. I don't know, there's this. For me, there's this beautiful moment of interconnectedness between myself and every other person receiving the sacrament in that moment. And then even beyond that, to the cloud of witnesses that we hear about in Hebrews. And that is a really special moment for me that I don't frequently get to appreciate, but when I do, I really tune into that. That's really deeply meaningful. But honestly, the answer to what do I like best about being Lutheran? Would be. Be. Of course, you know that the way we harp on grace and the way grace harps on us.

Yeah. Can't run away.

Yeah.

Favorite Bible book. Do you know what mine is?

Well, there's not a book of Benjamin.

The Benjamin story is really bad. It's Tobit.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

My favorite.

I forgot. But yeah. Yeah. Like, so. So many of them. But it's kind of like being asked your favorite color. Sometimes it's just hard to answer. It depends on the setting. I Think, though, that I would. I would probably either say John or Jonah. I really like the book of Jonah. Yeah. Talk about causes dear to your heart.

I have a lot, actually, right now. Part of it's what I do at work. But. But right now, the black experience in America, anti racism, that stuff is really at the top of mind for me right now. I don't know that it's. Yeah, that very much is. Is it? And it's. As a suburban white man, I feel like I need an explanation of why that is. And it's a long one, and maybe we'll get into that at some point. But the things I'm learning. I'm listening right now to White Lies, a podcast by NPR about the murder of Reverend James Reeb in Selma, Alabama, March of 1965. Between Bloody Sunday and the successful march and the announcement by Johnson of the Voting Rights act, the podcast had two seasons and ended. And so I'm. But I'm listening to that in preparation to tell the stories of selma, Alabama, from 1965. They're moving. Our black friends, colleagues, brothers and sisters have undergone a tremendous horror just to be here. And. And that they would. I mean, I. It's. It's a lot. And the least we can do as a church that is not. Not historically black is show up and help their. Their struggle has gone on for hundreds of years, and popular white culture in America has just scraped the surface of what that means. And so it is. It is as. As friends have said, black friends have said in that movement, they've gone as far as they can. It's. It's often up to us white people to. To. To move that movement forward with the people that won't listen to black people.

Right.

And so that, that meant a lot when I heard that, and that changed my whole appreciation of that experience. And so, so I'd say that's obviously, it's. It's dear to my heart.

Right, Right. Yeah. Yeah. For me, not unrelated to that is St. Matthew, just the beginning of this year, 2025, became a reconciling in Christ congregation. So openly affirming and welcoming of the participation of LGBTQIA persons in our congregation. And then that also, that designation of reconciling to Christ also includes their commitment to racial justice. And so it's really an affirmation of sort of the non white straight cisgen experience in our congregational settings. And, and so one of the ways that that's played out is actually in this last year, we have had a slow trickle of immigrant families, you know, not necessarily terribly recent immigrants, although in one case it is people that just came to the states in 2024. But you know, we're talking like still first and second generation folks from different parts of the world that have come into St. Matthew, whether it's to worship, in need of a place to hold a family funeral, in need of, you know, some sort of, you know, kind of tangible support, you know, help finding a place to live, help, help moving furniture, financial assistance, whatever that might be. And so that's a slow growing edge. Well, it's something St. Matthew has had on the radar for a long time, but it kind of comes and goes in waves. And so we seem to be on an uptick wave at the moment, which is really powerful for our congregation. So I appreciate that very much. Yeah, cool. Who are your favorite content creators? You should really answer this one, Ben, because you actually listen to podcasts.

You know, somebody, a friend of mine just commented on John Green and his about, I think one of his books was declared the most banned book in America, one of his young adults fiction pieces. And someone else commented on how, you know, his, his non fiction is really good too. And he's got lots of podcasts. He and his brother Hank started Crash Course which covers all sorts of topics. It is free, a lot of schools use, is well researched. It has a lot of good content there. In fact, the museum I work at, it has been recommended to us to use their, their African American history Crash Course series as authoritative because it's that well researched. And so definitely some of my favorites they have John and Hank. And John have a podcast called Dear Hank and John where they get together as brothers, have a podcast and they answer questions and they finish with news about Mars and AFC Wimbledon. So I like to, I enjoyed listening with my kids when I picked them up from middle school. One got out a half hour or an hour earlier than the other and we'd sit in the parking lot and listen to the podcast. But it's a conversation between two brothers and having two, two sons who are, they're two years apart. Well, a little less than two years apart. I enjoyed the idea of brothers having a weekly conversation that was recorded for to share with other people and they, they help people learn about things, things like tuberculosis. So.

As I've mentioned, I don't follow a lot of podcasts or, or YouTubers or anything like that. There are, are a couple I really like this guy Scott Walsh who does woodworking and you know, he talks about carpentry and that's really Fun. And there's a woman that I like to listen to that I got connected with through my wife. Her name is Monty Mader and she's a former white Christian nationalist coming out of the evangelical world who has, you know, kind of had an about face. Not, not in losing her faith at all, but certainly in changing directions sort of theologically and politically. She is definitely not for everyone. But I really appreciate her wisdom and her insight and her willingness to speak her truth. And I think she's pretty amazing.

Yeah. And as far as religious content stuff, there is. I can't remember his name. There's a guy from western Wisconsin who's got Paul Dries. That's it. His, his. He started doing Tiktoks and I like his content. It's, it's short, it's brief. Hopefully we can get him on the podcast. I sent him a note. Paul, if you're listening, maybe you listen. Come on, on. Let's, let's, let's, let's do this. The, the other, other Bible sort of stuff Pete ends. And the Bible for normal people has some really good stuff.

Yeah.

Entertaining. I like listening to straight white American Jesus. They do some, some current event stuff, but they also do some deep dives into some like defining how white Christian nationalists and, and high control religious groups define words because we use the same words as they do, but we use them differently many times. And so that's an interesting one. And they're connected in lots of ways to people who are doing on the grounds work countering some of this stuff that's happening in our world here. And so I really like their stuff. Of course, I'm a big fan of homebrewed Christianity. Met him last year and that was impactful. He has some really good stuff on there. So lots of different things there. Yeah.

Trip Fuller, right?

Was that Trip Fuller? Yeah. And, and of course my wife makes me like college basketball, particularly Purdue. And so I listened to field of, field of 68 because we're big fans of, of Robbie Hummel and, and so there you go.

All right.

That's a big question.

Yeah. Favorite Sunday school curriculum. So I don't know that this is necessarily a Sunday school curriculum, although it could be. There is a very famous former Lutheran writer, he's passed away, Daniel Erlander. And Daniel Erlander's books, you know, he, he creates books in sort of like a, like a 70s era pencil sketch, not exactly cartoon, but, but pencil sketch drawings with kind of part prose, part lists, kind of in a sort of a comic book format at times. And the thing is that he writes in a way that can speak to people of almost any age or any place in their faith journey. And because he was a Lutheran pastor himself, you know, he gets really good, solid Lutheran theology in there, and it's just great stuff. And, you know, it's funny because it looks like stuff that was created in 78s, because it was. And yet I'm not sure that anybody's really topped it yet just in terms of the versatility of the material. So he's got a couple of books. You know, a lot of them focus right around Lutheran sacraments and Lutheran worship. And so if you're wanting to, you know, learn about baptism or communion, or if you're wanting to understand Lutheran liturgy or some of the key tenets of Lutheran theology, one of the ones that he wrote for adult classes is called Baptized, We Live. And then he's also got a book called Manna and Mercy, which really explores, like I said, you know, kind of some of the. Some of the core tenets of what it is to be a Lutheran. And so they're just real, really solid, great, great books. Yeah. And they're still in print because, like I said, ain't nobody done anything better yet.

Yeah, I actually think, you know, we talked about the Lutheran trump cards. I think that's an excellent book.

Absolutely. Yeah.

For adult Sunday school stuff. Anyway, so favorite Marvel movie.

For me, it's the first Avengers film, but then it's really anything with Iron Man.

Yeah. So Avengers, where they end in the shawarma shop.

Yes. Yep.

Yeah. Since Deborah interviewed for her Ford job in Dearborn. After the interview, we went to a shawarma shop that looked an awful lot like that. Of course, it wasn't in New York, but we went to an incredible shawarma shop because of that movie. She felt like she'd overcome something there. So.

Yeah, after this shawarma, Right?

Yeah. Okay, let's see. Yeah. Next time. I don't think we did shawarma while you were here. Next time.

No, no.

Favorite part of your current role on the podcast or in your job.

Right. I'm gonna go with job. I mean, my favorite part of my current role was that you do all the hard work in the podcast goes. You know, I. People have heard me make this comment before. I don't know if I've ever said it on the air, but Ben is the host. I am the co host. He does all the work. I show up and record, you know, and that's just. That's a great role in my Current professional role.

Oh.

You know, I just love to teach in whatever capacity I can, whether that's in sermons, in Bible study, in confirmation classes, in council meetings. You know, I love the opportunity to, to teach. It's just something that I love doing in whatever context I can.

Cool.

What about you?

You know, for the podcast, I love that I have all this work to do every two weeks. No, I love that the reason this all happened is because I wanted to be able to put my tools that I have for podcasts. I have run several podcasts. I wanted to find a way to be able to be a resource for the church, and I kept talking about it, and then when Keith just said, let's do it, and so we did. I love that that's made this worthwhile. Right. You know, I spend a lot of money on, like, zoom licensing and music licensing and all this sort of stuff, but I do that for, for all the shows I host. This is the one that makes it the most worthwhile. It's great. We have some sponsors for the show, but. Or people who, who back us, and we really appreciate that. But, you know, this, this is the show that. It's not because of that, that, that I feel like it's worth it. I feel like we've, we've changed. We've, we've, we've explained things for folks. We've helped them find comfort in a church. Some people have discovered the ELCA because they've been pointed to the podcast. And, you know, once that happened, it was worth it. Absolutely. In, in every way we wanted. And so that's, that's probably my, my favorite part of the current role. I make a lot of podcast episodes that hardly anybody listens to. This is not one of those.

Yeah, and this certainly scratches that teaching itch for me. And I, I, I do love coming on and asking questions and hearing responses. I love when we have guests that, that share their experience and their wisdom and. Yeah. And then the fact that, you know, that you and I find this personally edifying, and then we get to share that edification with other people who listen is just really great. And so, you know, this episode of asking people to give us questions, the fact that people did, you know, that shows engagement, that's really, that's, that's quite affirming to us to get this feedback and the opportunity to respond to them.

Yeah. And we sort of answered the next question with that, too, is why did we decide to do the podcast? And then what have we learned? We've learned a lot of things.

Yeah, yeah, we've learned. I've learned a ton about the process of podcasting. I mean, I mentioned that Ben does all this work, but, you know, tangentially I've learned about, you know, the platforms that, that they, that they play on, the, the methods by which we get comments and feedback from people, the interactions that aren't really the podcast itself, like, like the Reddit lists, you know, but. But they're still interacting with the content.

That's.

That's really amazing. Yeah. And you know, of course, every time we have a guest on, I learn about another part of the elca. I didn't know.

Right.

You know, good and bad. But, yeah, mostly good. Yeah. Yeah. So what does your family think?

This is my first rodeo. So, like my, my. My 15 year old who's just about to turn 16 on Friday, so by the time this episode comes out, he'll be 16. His friends learned that I have podcasts and they think it's super cool, and so they subscribe. So just. I don't talk about it on purpose very often, but my main podcast, the one that I've been doing the longest, is called Today is, and it is literally the punchline to a joke. Because when, when the COVID shutdowns happened, people kept saying, I don't know what day of the week it is. And I kept saying, there's a podcast for that. Well, you can only say that so many times, or at least I can only say that so many times before I have to look and find out what that podcast is so I can link the podcast in the comment. Because all this was happening on Facebook, social media stuff. So I looked for it and it didn't exist. And so I couldn't make that punchline if I didn't have a podcast. So I made a podcast. Now that's when I learned that you could host a podcast for free. And when you do that, then you can't schedule it. You have to stay up until when you want it to launch, where you just have to release it whenever. Well, that means if I'm releasing. And this is what today is the day. So Tuesday, you know, December 16, 2025. And this would be yesterday for. We're recording on the 17th. But so yesterday's episode was. Today is Tuesday, December 16th, 2025. That's it. Four and a half seconds. And so I've been doing that for almost six years, and it is ridiculous, but it is hilarious because it has, I don't know, 300,000, 400,000 listens over the course of that because of AI. And we'll talk about. Maybe we'll talk about that sometime if we talk about AI in the church. But that was ridiculous. Any other podcast I make is reasonable in comparison to that one. And so that is part of why my tombstone will say he committed to the bit. So my family thinks it's really cool to some extent because we have some really good recording equipment down here that I've accumulated over time for podcasts about my community and that sort of thing. But that today is podcast caused me to buy better equipment to pay for an account so that it could be scheduled. So I record today is a month at a time. I do, you know, between 28 and 31 recordings and release them, publish them all at once so that I don't have to stay up till midnight and do it each individually. And so as far as this podcast goes, it seems normal to my thing.

Yeah. Yeah. My family likewise thinks it's really cool that we've got a podcast. I still, every time I tell somebody that I do this for the first time, I feel like I'm coming out to them. But yeah, and so I do. But I tell people at church, I tell people in the community, and I tell them what it's like about. And maybe they listen, maybe they don't. But a lot of them do think it's really cool that this material matters enough to me that I'm willing to spend, you know, a couple of hours. Most Monday nights is when we tend to record on a zoom call with my friend Ben, which, you know, is really. Is really great. And I appreciate doing this with you. I appreciate doing this with our listeners.

And.

Yeah. And so, you know, my family, my wife's got a PhD, so she really appreciates research and learning and sharing of information. And so she views this through that lens. And as a person who's not a lifelong Lutheran herself and is constantly learning about the Lutheran Church, she thinks that it's a great idea. She listens to several of her episodes. Not all of them, but when I, When I, you know, when we finish up a topic that I think she's really going to appreciate, I. I shoot the link to her and. And she'll usually play it and. Yeah, and so, you know, Gretchen, she's 12. My, my other kid in California who's 26, they're kind of more, eh, it's dad. It's what he does. But yeah, they don't think. They don't think it's weird.

Um, and yeah, what, what does your congregation think?

It's really funny. There are, there are a number of people who have listened to all or most of the episodes and they really like it. And then every once in a while I'll mention it to someone, they'll be like, oh, yeah, I forgot you said that before. And maybe they've listened to an episode or two, or maybe they haven't. You know, it depends. For some people, it's. If they've never been a podcast listener, they might try this one out and they may or may not listen to much of it. Some of them who are podcast listeners, they will, you know, they'll devour it. They'll just add it to the queue.

And listen to it at double speed and all that. Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah. And then they'll like come up to me on Sunday and they'll say, I listen to your last episode. And then they have to. I'll have to ask them to remind me what it was because, you know, we don't always. Yeah, depends when we released, etc. You know, I was just talking with somebody other day about proofing worship folders and, and the church newsletter and things like, you know, I don't remember when things were released. So like, you know, I just read the last newsletter that got published, but I'll be reading the next one soon. And so then they all get jumbled up my head anyway. So, yeah, then we'll, then we'll talk about, you know, that episode. And that's, and that's just, that's just kind of cool. But yeah, it's. It's still funny to me how many people either don't remember or don't know that, that I'm doing this. I try to put it out there every so often. You know, it's kind of like when I've contributed to Sundays and Seasons, our worship planning resource from Augsburg Fortress. I've done that three or four times now. And if you look inside the front cover at the list of contributors in very tiny print, I think it's like an eight point font. You'll see my name somewhere along there, but, you know, along with 60 or 80 other people. But yeah, I don't think folks remember much.

Yeah, should add. So I was. So I add the podcast to my own queue. So I listen to every episode, even though I've listened to it basically three times through in the editing process.

When I did, I mentioned that Ben does all the work.

So I then listen to it partially because sometimes when it plays, it's got artifacts and stuff that get through there. I also know some podcast hosts who don't listen to their own show. And when something gets messed up, they don't know about it. And oftentimes there isn't a way for their audience to be able to tell them that there's a problem. I remember listening to an NPR podcast once. I think it was their. Their daily morning show. And what. So some of the clips they were sharing were off by about 35 seconds. And so they would. They would introduce a cutaway of somebody talking, and then there would be empty space for, say, 15 seconds. And then they'd continue on as if we'd heard what was supposed to be said, and they'd go on, and then they'd introduce something else, and somewhere in there, the quote or the piece that they were trying to intro would start playing. And then when it was done, you'd have empty space. And so it was so funny, I just laughed and laughed and laughed about it because I knew exactly what had happened. A track had been shifted accidentally, and then it was published. So that's just something that. It's inside baseball. But I've had to tell podcast hosts, hey, you need to check this. Because one in particular was that he had read his cues. So when he messes up, he says a word to let him know when to cut it, because it shows up in the graphic, or he can search for it and find the cut spot in the tool that he uses. Well, he uploaded the wrong file. He uploaded the raw file, and so he had all his bloopers in the middle of this episode. And so I let him know. He's like, oh. And it had been out for two weeks, right?

And you were the first person to let him know.

And I was the first person to let him know. That's great. And so I don't want to be in that position. I want to make sure that everything's running. And so I listened to Today Is, and I listened to our show, you know, our show together every time they come out. And in fact, right now, today is. Is being hosted by my son Duncan, and for this month. And. And so listening to him do it is fun too, right?

We live stream our worship services at St. Matt's and we do not edit them, of course, because they're. They're live streamed. And then. But then they are available on YouTube and on Facebook after the fact as well. And so a couple of weeks ago, I. I did a slight silly goof, and. And. And almost immediately, I realized my mic was still on when I did that. So I Had to go back to the recording and replay it just to hear it. And it made me giggle. What had happened was I had just done the confession for worship that Sunday, so it's about two Sundays ago now, I think. And I bobbled several places in the speaking, and that was fine. That wasn't what I went back for. What I went back for was I went to the assisting minister, whose name was Stephanie, that day. And as you know, we finished up the confession. Now the intro is starting for the hymn. And I leaned down and just kind of chuckled a little, and I said to her, I messed up so many of those words. And then I realized my microphone was still on when I said that. And I know that I didn't say it loud enough to be heard in the room.

Right.

But I know that there's no way it wasn't going to get into the. Into the recording on YouTube. So I went back and replayed it, like, yeah, it's there.

All right. So our last question from Carol, and thank you, Carol, for sending all these. These have been fun. Do you like Lutefisk?

I've actually never tried it, and I know what it is, which is partly why I've never tried it. And here's the thing. I'm willing to eat almost anything. I am, you know, an omnivore for the most part. I'm sure that there are certain, you know, cultural experiences that I would turn down. But, you know, and perhaps borderline on that is when you take a white fish and soak it in lye. I don't know that I want to eat that, but I would try it, but I haven't yet.

Yeah, that's about where I'm at.

Okay.

I think I would probably try.

You.

Know, but we'll see.

Yeah.

So. All right, so that's it. That is our questions. So thank you so much for being part of our experiment here. Maybe we'll do this for number 100, too, and go for it. Yeah.

All right. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fote, and the show is produced by Phote Media Productions with much effort. Find all our contact information links in a transcript in the episode notes. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.