This is Keith, and this is Ben, and this is Main Street Lutherans. We have a wonderful, wonderful episode today. We've invited David Loess, who has a rich history in our church, to talk with us about a number of things. We'll get into that here in a little bit. But, you know, something happened a couple weekends ago now, from when we're recording, I had the opportunity to go see a Theologian in Residence program at a Presbyterian church just about a half mile up the street from me. And they had Bruce Reyes Chao, who was a former moderator of pcusa, the Presbyterian Church usa. He said something in his talk which really struck me, and it's been resonating in my mind here for a bit. And he called his congregation unapologetically Presbyterian. This is a mission start that he started in San Francisco. And that's been echoing in my mind a little bit. I've been thinking, what makes us unapologetically Lutheran if that's something we. We aim for?

Yeah, I'm sure that question be answered different ways by different people, and especially, I don't know, good or bad, it might be answered differently by, by pastors versus by congregants. But, you know, I'd have to say that I think what makes us unapologetically Lutheran would be based on our. We start talking about our theology, whether it's about being saved by grace or being both saints and sinners or the priesthood of all believers, whatever that direction that might go. But I suspect that's. That's where Lutherans would start.

Yeah. Very theologically focused. And Bruce Reyes Chao, his. His answer to the question was much more about the denomination itself, that there are other churches in the PCUSA that were nearby enough that people in San Francisco would be able to go to a. Maybe call it a traditional Presbyterian church, but that there is a larger organization that provides some oversight, some resources to congregations in the way of being able to help fund special projects and things like that. And so I actually asked this question further out. I went on Reddit, on the mainline Protestant subreddit and ask that question. I asked, what would make your denomination. What would be unapologetically whatever your denomination is. And so there's an assortment of questions there. And you know, where I think we answer those questions with theology as Lutherans? I think that's just the tendency. Our catechism is full of theology. I didn't learn anything about the structure of our church or how. How our church council operated in our catechism classes. Right. Maybe there was a little bit, but it was mostly focused on the sacraments and such and why we do what we do. But the answers for several denominations are about polity, about how they operate as a church. And so I think that's interesting. And I was afraid that my thought on that would be that they're wrong. Right. That I'm looking for a theological answer to this. But I think these people are answering truly that to them, what makes them unapologetically, whatever denomination is, how it's structured or maybe how leadership is.

And it's funny, too, because I wonder if we might take their answers for granted as being. Well, yeah, we do. We have something like that, too. Or we. Or we don't. And this is why. But this is what we answer about. And, and they might do the same thing. They might, you know, listen to our answers about our theology and they'd say, oh, yeah, well, we believe that too, But. But this is what makes us who we are, and that's why we talk about it. I don't know.

Yeah.

And I, I think we. Part of our conversation with. With Dave Dobert prior conversation here a couple of episodes ago, he mentions that it's not prescribed how our church will operate as Lutherans. There is no, you know, the Book of Concord doesn't say you will have bishops and you will have a triennial meeting where you elect members to the ELCA church council, for instance. Right. Instead, it's about theology.

Yeah. In our conversation with Mark Glenquist showed us that Lutherans tend to adopt church structures that are similar to the governments in the areas in which they operate. So, you know, we're in a democratic nation here in the United States, and so our congregations and our wider church body tend to function in a democratic form.

Sure.

So we elect representatives to the Senate council or Senate Council. Well, Senate assembly, which elects Senate council people, but then also delegates to the churchwide assembly.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, so you're right. But in other countries, then it operates differently. So, yeah, it doesn't identify as. Because it's not the same everywhere.

Right.

Yeah.

So how this connects to our conversation with Reverend Dr. David Lowes is that we get into some discussion about what it means to be Lutheran, how do we share that mission with the rest of the world, how do we march forward as Lutherans, and what does the future of our congregations look like? And so we'll start that conversation now.

Well, thanks for joining us today. We have with us the Reverend Dr. David Lowes, who is speaking to us from his role as lead pastor at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church. In Minneapolis, Minnesota. Previously, he was president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, which is now part of United Lutheran Seminary since it merged with its Gettysburg compatriot a few years ago. And prior to that, he was on the faculty at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. And so we are glad, David, to have you with us today. Thank you for joining us.

My pleasure. Thanks for the invitation.

We've been chatting for a few minutes, and I think it's fair to say we're all still struggling with figuring out what it is that we're planning on talking about in this episode. But I think that, you know, with, with you, David, what we have is a. Is a wonderful resource for talking a little bit about sort of where the church is coming from, where the ELCA is coming from, but more importantly, where are we going? What are we looking to be in the world as it is unfolding before our eyes right now? You know, we can talk about. And, and before we began recording, we were talking about some of the changes in seminary education that you have been privy to over the last many years. And that's just one face of the church, whether it's Covid or our current political times or just the postmodern world or smartphones and the Internet, whatever it is. We have all watched how the church that, you know, at least the three of us in this conversation have been part of for half a century or more. I know, David, you're a lot younger than me and Ben, so I'm.

I'm glad we'll get to places.

So. Yeah, I think that what, what I'd like to. To ask you about is, is this, what is it that the ELCA is looking. And at the congregational level, what is it that the ELCA is looking to message to our world today that can make a difference in people's lives and maybe how do we go about doing that?

Yeah. And this, this did not come up in our pre. Conversation, and I probably should have.

And it's. And it's a really tiny question.

Yeah. Right. Right. Five, six minutes, we should be good.

Yeah.

No, I was thinking I probably should have said this sometime earlier and you could decide if you still wanted me on, but I think it's super important to distinguish between the ELCA and sort of what I would describe as the Lutheran witness. And I know that second one is a little more ambiguous and it's contested. Different denominations embody the Lutheran witness differently, but at the end of the day, I do not care what happens to the lca. And I don't mean that in sort of a snarky or any animosity or negativity toward the denomination. I just think I'm at a congregation that's a little over a hundred years old. You're both probably congregations longer, older than that or around the same. And there have been multiple.

Mine's about 10 years, but yeah.

Okay. All right. Well, that's kind of good to hear or nice to hear, but there have been multiple denominations that have come and gone since Mount Olivet began its ministry in southwest Minneapolis. And, and I think we can get very pulled into denominational survival, which links us to a lot of kind of bureaucratic concerns, which are not illegitimate concerns. But I don't think they're identical to giving voice to the Lutheran Witness. And again, I recognize the LCA represents one incarnation of that witness with which I identify strongly liturgically, theologically, and some ways politically. But that doesn't feel nearly as important to me as what I think is Luther's distinct understanding of what God is communicating to us in and through Jesus, his life, ministry, death and resurrection. And so I'm far more interested at my church, my congregation, in trying to offer that up and out to them, to shape them so that they carry that into their lives with, not with the primary goal that they become evangelists to recruit others to be Lutheran, but that they live with greater integrity and fulfillment, their variety of vocational callings, wherever they might be as parent or volunteer or electrician or doctor, teacher, citizen, which is a terribly Lutheran idea, but it doesn't necessarily grow the ELCA per se. You know what I mean? Like that. And so I think a lot of the conversations or conferences or books I've seen or agonizing feels like it's about denominational survival. And I just don't care if the ELC survives, but I care deeply about the, the Lutheran witness and that those two are in alignment. I will keep, you know, being a card carry member of the lca, but it's a means to an end. It's not the end itself that makes sense.

No, thank you for that. I think that's a really, really helpful distinction. And I, I, and then, so then what that leads me to do is I'll rephrase my question then. What is that? That uniquely Lutheran witness that our congregations can be delivering to the world in a way that makes a difference in people's lives. And then if, you know, once we, once we identify particular what that witness is, perhaps you can share a little bit about how that witness is embodied in the work that, that you're involved in at Mount Olivet, as one example.

Yeah, I think. I think at its core, I would describe the Reformation not even primarily as a theological reformation or revolution. I mean, it is. Luther cares about theology, but almost at a deeper level. I think it was a reformation of the imagination. That is, how do we imagine God? What do we imagine God to be fundamentally? And I think. I think almost everyone still in a relatively secularized culture carries around some idea of what God is like or what the ultimate is like. And if you go to church, you definitely carry that around. And you probably never think that hard or make it that conscious, but it shapes the way you think about yourself, about your church, about your neighbor, about the people around you, about what the Christian life should be. And I think Luther was inviting a different imagination about God. And that imagination is a fundamental shift from. Think of the variety of images in Scripture, and they're all sort of valid, but which one is foregrounded or which one carries the most weight? So you can talk about God as, in a monarchical sense, as king or creator. And king has with it a sense of different senses of justice or laws, or what is your relationship to the monarch. You can talk about it as creator, and there's sort of elements of power that one might think about. You can talk about it as judge, and there are images of God judging the nations and Israel. And you can talk about God as. As parent Jesus praying in the garden, Father Abba, Father Papa, or Paul, when the Spirit induces us to cry out Abba. And I think that fundamental shift to a parental, gracious, loving, accepting as what is foregrounded in Luther with the kind of unconditional acceptance of you as you are without needing to change or toe the line or get in shape or even. I think it's even prior to repenting, confessing. I think that fundamental God being in front of you, saying, you are enough, I accept you, I love you as you are, is the thing that we have that's most important to offer.

So we're recording just after the super bowl, and there's a lot of talk about the. He gets us commercials, which has been super bowl commercials for the last probably three or four years now, right?

Yeah.

That's the message that's in those commercials, right?

Yeah.

And yet our denominational reaction to it is based on who funds it.

Right.

That's funded by evangelical, or I would say fundamentalist folks that have a very different message about God than we do. And yet they're giving the message that we would give if we had the money that we would choose to devote to spending on a Super bowl ad instead of on a food pantry or something. I mean, $8 million is the number that's going around right now about it for 30 seconds.

Yeah.

An $8 million spot to say God gets us could feed a lot of people. And so we choose not to do that sort of thing. But they've sort of stolen our tagline.

Yeah.

So what do we do with that?

Yeah. I'm so totally trained and conditioned to be suspicious of those commercials. And at the same time, I love those commercials.

Right.

I think. I think the question would be.

I think it's, you know, it's worth pointing out, too. I think most of us, as ELCA pastors have that same reaction, but I suspect that most of the members of our congregations do not.

Well, and.

And because they're not trained to be suspicious, they just love them.

And folks who aren't familiar with that that are listening to the podcast. The reason. The reason we say this is because the. The funding for that organization, at least at first, came substantially from one of the founders of Hobby Lobby and that family and. And their very public. Public statements about religion in public life, specifically going up to the Hobby Lobby decision involving health care for their workers at the Supreme Court. And so that's the background for this, is that. That attaches this. This theme of he gets us to something that is very much in opposition to what we, as Lutheran people stand for.

Yeah. And a minute ago, you. You had named it as. They've. They've grabbed our tagline.

Yeah.

And so I think the question for me, like, I can love that tagline, and I can think that commercial gets. Gets it right. Not just gets us, but gets it right. But I think as you live into the community making that invitation, I think you see very quickly, is it just. Is it a tagline or is it embodied in an authentic and genuine way that permeates the ministries? I mean, none of us do that perfectly. But pretty quickly on, I think you will discover is, does that grace go further than the invitation? I mean, it is. It is. Once, you know, it is said. I don't know if this is true. Many things were said about Martin Luther. Many things were said about Karl Bart. Billy Graham was doing in one of his evangelism tours in Germany, and someone asked, you know, herr Professor Bart, what did you think of Billy Graham's message? And Bart supposedly said, it sounded to me like the gospel at gunpoint. And I think that, like, there is this loving gracious God who wants to love and accept you as you are. And if you don't accept that God, you're going to hell forever and it's a place of torment. Well, okay, yeah, those don't seem consistent to me. Right. And so I don't know what happens when you get to the church that helped sponsor. He gets us. But I still love the commercial and I wish that it permeated those traditions more. But I do think, like, yeah, that's a pretty, pretty vivid, embodied, winsome way of sharing what I think is the heart of the gospel.

Yeah. So what can we do? And, and this might, this might go in a different direction than, than our podcast episodes typically do, because most of the time we're trying to direct these at lay folks who may or may not have a real strong sense of, of what a Lutheran church is, or if they, if they have their own congregational experience, they're trying to learn perhaps maybe a little bit more about what the ELCA is. And I realize that this question is more pointed towards pastors and church leaders, so I just want to make that caveat. But you know, what, what could we do as pastors and church leaders to do a better job? You know, maybe we can't get as good as the super bowl commercials, but maybe, you know, there are things that we could be doing in our congregations to help folks hear that, that witness themselves and equip them to share that witness with others. What could we do differently? Better?

Yeah. And I don't, I don't want to sell short what we, what those things are that we can do just because we're not spending $8 million to do them, you know, or it's not the Super Bowl.

Yeah.

Because that's still a 30 second spot. And I watched the game and, and I'll be honest, I loved it, how dominating Philly was.

But how would you have felt if Detroit was there? Be honest.

Oh, I'm never going to root for Detroit.

Exactly.

Ever. Personal NFC North. Come on. I always say, anytime Philly is not playing the Vikings, I root for Billy Bloom. Where you're planted, baby.

There you go.

Anyway, Yeah, I. So we're not on the Super Bowl. In some ways, a conversation where you feel heard and seen, way more important than a 8 million dollar 32 spot. Oh. What I was going to say was, I watched this revolt beginning to end. I don't remember seeing that. So maybe I was going to the bathroom getting, you know, another something to drink or eat or whatever. Like I missed it. $8 million. That did not impact me at all. But I did not watch the super.

Bowl, and so I missed all the commercials as well.

Meaningful conversation I have with someone where I walk away and feel like that person cared, that's way more impactful. You know what I mean? So not to minimize what we're doing, because it's not on the Super Bowl. I think. I think at heart, two things I think in terms of churches and ministry. I think it is relentlessly asking whatever form of ministry you are currently doing or thinking about, in what way does this communicate that gospel of love, grace, and acceptance as clearly as possible? And I think in our congregational setting, we have lots of people who know a lot about their faith and believe a lot of things, but do not necessarily understand them that well. And my maxim, my lifelong maxim for parish ministry can be boiled down to this one sentence. People love to understand what they already believe. And what I mean by that is, when they confess the creed, they believe it. When they sing the hymns, they believe it. But do they understand it in a way that. And I don't mean, like, in an evaluative way, like, you don't understand. You know, I mean, more like, do they understand it enough so that it permeates their lives? It makes a difference. It penetrates. It helps them live their lives better. And this became super, super concrete to me really early on. I met all of it. It was epiphany. Sunday happened to, like, the feast of epiphany happened to fall on Sunday. So I decided to preach a little bit more on epiphany. And it was like a paragraph. And this is what epiphany is. This is what epiphany celebrates. And the number of people who came out and said, that was so interesting or that was so helpful. And I realized, oh, they've known, you know, known epiphany their whole lives long with no idea of what it might mean to them or how it might be interesting, helpful. And so now, pretty much all the time, I'm just like, what little. I mean, I think it's like, if I go to a museum, like, I love art, but I don't know much about art, and I will recognize paintings, painters, names, or I'll see paintings and be like, that's beautiful. But when the docent goes along or I'm on a guided tour and they explain, like, what's going on in the painter's life or what technique they were using or how this painting compares to this painting, I'm like, that is amazing.

Right?

And I think we have that opportunity in spades. In biblical stories and the hymns we sing and our stained glass windows and the creeds we confess and the, you know, it is, we are about confirmation for life. Like it does not stop in eighth or ninth grade. In fact, it maybe it does, but that's why we have so much opportunity, you know, so that's. I, maybe it's simple, but I just sort of like I am regularly examining what are we doing and how do I do it. Again, in a way that helps people have that museum guided tour experience. We're like, wow, that means something new to me. Different to me. And I think the beauty of that is lifelong Lutheran, recovering evangelical or Roman Catholic or straight off the street curious about this church, but don't know much about. Kind of applies across the board. Yeah. And it's not dumbing it down. It is again and again getting to the existential gospel core of this thing we're talking about and doing it with a level of kind of fun and joy. Anyway.

Yeah.

Careful.

Oh, thank you. That's wonderful. Thank you.

And so I guess to summarize that then, so the way a church, a congregation reaches out is by making sure that everyone is able to bear the witness.

Well, yeah. I mean. And what would that mean? I. Yeah, I have this tradition, this theological tradition that I have absolutely fallen in love with, honestly. No kidding. Luther's understanding the gospel makes it possible for me to be a Christian. There are varieties of the telling of the Christian story that's like those charitable ways I can describe these differences, many of which I wouldn't, I would not want to be a Christian if that were the only version of the story I heard. So this is a tradition that I find life giving, life saving. I love it. And I think the comparison of evangelism, we all get very nervous about that in part because we're used to a tradition of evangelism which is more or less, do you know where you're going to spend eternity or, you know, something along those lines, Gospel.

If it's not that it's a membership drive or.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so we think in the lower Midwest that's kind of where we're at.

We get super nervous about that. Yeah. But you know, my folks have no trouble evangelizing about the merits of the wild hockey team or hockey in general. They're willing to commit a whole lot to make sure their kids make the seven or eight year old traveling team or we'll talk about our favorite music or our favorite books. Like we have the Capacity to share about what we love. And so I think in some ways I am interested in how can my people fall in love with this tradition the way I and a lot of my colleagues have. Like, we do this because we love it. How do we help them fall in love with something that they are kind of wanting to share? Because it's hard not to share the stuff you love.

Right.

So. So I worry or I think more about that. How do I offer something like Bonhoeffer would describe preaching as holding up a shiny red apple that the person just wants to bite into. How do we do that? Rather than worrying about evangelism or equipping them to share the gospel or like, I just wanted them to fall in love with it first. And typically when you have fallen love, it's really hard not to share that others. Yeah. And I think the flip side of that is beyond a kind of formal sharing what you have fallen in love with. How do you see. And this is like the flip side of justification is vocation. And it's one of the most widely shared theological terms, loci, whatever, like across denominations and traditions. And I think most leaders in, in religious traditions, we think of how important vocation is to us. We think it's at the heart of what we're preaching and teaching. And what I've discovered is that most of our people in Lutheran churches. I had a chance to do a grant when I was at Lutheran seminary run a grant. And it was across five different traditions. This was true across all of them. All the leaders thought this was so important at the heart of what we're doing. And our people by and large felt next to no sense of calling, just no sense that God was present, interested, involved in what they do day to day. And it's a super easy mistake for clergy to make because our faith and our work are so intertwined and our relationship life is so intertwined in that as well. It's easy to assume a lot of people have this. And the truth is most people wonder if God cares about what they do not only in their work, but in their relationships or volunteering, helping. Helping professions have it a little easier. But by and large, you know, so I'm really interested in that too. How do I. And this is the long game. I mean, eight years in and I'm like, scrap. Feel like I'm scratching the surface at creating a sense of what calling is about. And when I've seen that take hold of a congregation, lots of other things, concerns like about worship kind of fade away. Because if your hour 42 minutes. The worship service gives you a sense of being called and forgiven and equipped and sent with a sense of purpose to wherever it might be. Your work or your relationships, your volunteering. If that hour makes the rest of your week better, you will come back again for that hour. So anyway, those, those.

You'll tell somebody at the water cooler.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or just doing your job and feeling like what I do matters.

Yeah.

Like that's kind of huge. And what I've just. What we discovered is we were pursuing this grant was most people do not have that right. And they can be making a lot of money and still feel like very little satisfaction in what they're doing.

Yeah. People, you know, when you get into a conversation with someone in your congregation about vocation, they, and, and, and God working through them, they might begin to name the things they do at the church. You know, helping out.

Yes.

Pantry or teaching. Sunday school or something.

Yes.

But they won't say, yeah, God works through me because I'm a firefighter or God works through me because I'm a stay at home dad.

Right.

And you know, they'll, they'll. Right, they see it, but they don't. They'll be able to, they'll be able to name that. They won't, they won't deny that the work they do is important and perhaps even fulfilling. But, but to really recognize that, that this is your calling, this is your ministry, a lot of folks won't make that intuitive leap.

I was at a lay leader or a lay minister conference and a question was, what do you and your church do that are not in the church that are ministries? And it was really hard for even people who are semi professional ministers in our church to identify things that aren't the food pantry and aren't. Aren't those things. And I mean, I cheated because, you know, I've got a podcast, but. Yeah, but it's really hard for us to break out of that, that mindset that church stuff is at church and that my faith life is, is beyond that.

Right. Yeah, yeah, we, and it's, you know, as, as with our relationship with God, we sometimes try to contain that to, you know, 42 minutes to two hours on a weekend versus. Right. What we do, where we are every day, no matter what.

Yeah. And I think similarly, if you ask the average churchgoer or Christian, like, what's the most important day of the week for, for faith, for God to God, they're gonna be like, Sunday, hands down.

And I, it's in the ten Commandments. It's in the Ten Commandments.

Well, it's Saturday. Well, we're gonna get technical. Well, and the interesting it would be like, why, why? How does that function in the Ten Commandments? It is a day of rest, right. So that you can have six other days to work and be productive, to do stuff. So even that I think is really interesting. But I think it's sort of like again, to go to the super bowl, like Sunday and worship like that is the big game. And I would love to kind of invert that and say, maybe it's the practice field, maybe it's the locker room. Maybe this is where you get the coaches pep talk. Life is the game. Like, get in the game, get out there. And that's super far from where most of our congregations are. Including, including mine. We're working at it. But it is, it is the long. Because we're reversing centuries of tradition that say this is what matters. You know, the is. And somehow then we're wondering, why don't people see God in their everyday life? Well, because we haven't. We even told them we got them see it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I was.

Until they saw the super bowl commercial.

It's a start.

You're reminding me of a class that I took in seminary that I'm not going to dredge up a lot of content for anymore. But it was an elective that I took in conjunction with a couple of seminaries in other traditions than Lutheran. And it was, I can't remember the class title, but it was, it was something on this subject of helping folks in your congregation to see their, their daily lives as ministry. But I do remember the title of one of the books that we read for the class was called the Monday Connection. And it was the notion that when, you know, that everything that we do in worship on Sunday needs to connect to what we're going to be doing the next day on Monday. And I think that's an analogy for what it is that you're describing, David, about this notion that what we do in church is inspiring, it's formational, it's informative, it's educational. But it also, it also by itself isn't the be all, end all of the Christian life. It is, it is a starting point and it's, it's what reminds us that the be all, end all is of the Christian life is the living of daily life. And it points us, you know, it's the, it's the, it's the shape of our worship. Again, you know, with the gathering, the word, the meal, and ascending that. That sending is critical. It's the shortest of the service, but it's. It's the reminder that we're. We're only here in order to go back out there.

Maybe my favorite illustration of that that I heard years and years ago in a class, it just kind of emerged as we were talking about it. Someone offered. I was like, that is so helpful. Chronicles and Nia, like, by the time you get to the third book, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it's just Edmund and Lucy going back to Narnia at this point. And they have all these adventures with their despicable cousin Eustace. At the end of their journey on the Dawn Treader, the edge of the Eastern Sea, they meet Aslan, who we know is a Jesus figure. Sorry, spoiler alert. And at one point, Aslan says to Lucy, you know, this is the last time you will be coming to Narnia. And Lucy says, oh, well, I never see you again, Aslan. And Aslan says, in your own world. And she says, wait a second, you're in my world. And then he says, you know, the whole point of bringing you to Narnia for a time, dear child, was so that you could recognize me in your own world. And I thought that is church. Like, there's a clarity of what we do at church that is missing in the world. Like, baptizing a child is a clearer expression of the gospel than doing your taxes. Even though the collecting and distributing of taxes really makes a big difference in lots of people's lives.

Right.

You know, or hearing the. A good sermon about God's love for you is clearer than wrangling with or filling your insurance forms for health care. Even though we have an unbelievably health care, the best health care the world has ever known, which is still really frustrating to work with. The level of ambiguity in the world that makes it hard to see God at work. So it's not just we haven't said it, it's not that our people aren't looking for it. It is ambiguous. But at church, we have a sense to kind of name things clearly and help then look for it, see it outside. So that's. That's what I get excited about in ministry. How do I help people do that? And if we could claim that rather than a denominational identity or an ethnic identity, I think, as we've talked about before we started recording, ethnic identity is super hard to kind of theology is always embedded in some kind of culture. So I get why that's challenging. If we could divorce it from political identity, good Lord, I would love that. That would, to me, be really interesting, and I think the Lutheran witness would have a much better chance.

David Loews, thank you so very much for your time with us to record this episode. We really appreciate your, your insight and your willingness to just kind of engage in a conversation about, you know, this, this thing that we love called the Gospel, which we know is really about God's love, not ours. But, but thank you for, for this time. We're very grateful.

Yeah, super fun to hang out and talk. And thanks for doing a podcast. I mean, to be thinking about different ways of sharing what we're interested in, what we love in a way that other people can, can listen in and maybe fall in love with it, too. So keep, keep it up.

All right. Well, thanks.

Thank you.

Well, thanks again to the Reverend Dr. David Lowes for joining us. Dave does indeed, as Ben mentioned in the beginning, have a broad experience as a leader in the church, as a pastor, as a college professor, as a seminary president, as a writer and theologian. And so we are grateful to have the opportunity to have chatted with him.

And we'll include lots of links to his stuff in the episode notes. So go ahead and check those out. So our last episode, our catechism question was where did the majority of Lutherans immigrate to North America from? And the correct answer, at least according to us, is Germany, Norway and Sweden. So those northern European countries, not Wittenberg, Wartburg and St Olaf, as some people might have wanted. So we didn't get any answers to that. Part of that. Reason for that is that we are recording a bit early. We've frontloaded our schedule this year and so we, we haven't gotten the, the episode prior to this hasn't aired yet when we're recording this. But go ahead and send those answers in and we'll, we'll count up. We'll, we're keeping a tally, don't you know? And so we'll, it'll go on your, on your leaderboard and we'll let you know. Just email us for your, your point count and we'll get it all taken care of.

We will give you a shout out.

That's right.

So for this episode, again, because our recording schedule is a little bit different, we weren't quite sure where to go with this one. So we picked a question based on the lectionary readings for the weekend that this episode is going to air. So that's coming out on March 29, which is, of course, the day before March 30, which is this year, the fourth Sunday in Advent or. Yeah, fourth Sunday in Lent. Excuse me. And so. Yeah, we're not recorded that far ahead.

Yeah, we're not quite that far.

Yeah, yeah. So the fourth Sunday, Sunday and Lent. The reading for this year is the story of the prodigal son from Luke. And so our question for this week is, what happened to the prodigal son when he returned home? Did his father send him back to the pig farmer? Did his father welcome him and his brother throw a big party for him? Did his father take him back as a hired servant? Or did his father welcome him and kill the fatted calf? And we will give you the ways that you can answer that question in our episode notes.

Yes, indeed. Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fot. The show is produced by Phote Media Productions. You can find all our contact information, links and a transcript in the episode notes. So go ahead and check those out. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Ta da.