I remember sitting in a classroom in the basement of the chapel waiting for class to begin. There always seems to be controversy in the institutional church and my last year at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis was no exception to that perceived reality. As students often do, we were wondering what was going to happen. One student was brave enough to ask our professor his thoughts on the matter, specifically if he thought this was going to be “Seminex 2.0.” My professor wryly smiled and chuckled. “Of course not,” he said, “we will find a new way to tear the church apart.” 

Sitting in my office today, reading articles and open letters about what is happening at Concordia University Texas, my professor is proving prophetic. We are indeed finding a new way to tear the church apart. This isn’t the first time such a thing has happened in the life of my church body. The dreaded seminex 2.0 is a 2.0 because we had 1.0. In the early 1970s, real and perceived mission drift brought matters to a head at a convention in New Orleans. The faculty majority was found guilty of persistent false doctrine “not to be tolerated in the church of God” and seminary president John Tietjen was to be suspended. The events that followed culminated in a walkout, the faculty, terminated for breach of contract, marched across DeMun Avenue, metaphorically into exile, with roughly 2/3 of the student body, some of whom came right back afterwards to eat lunch. Whatever the thoughts are about the walkout, about Concordia Seminary-in-Exile (Seminex), these events in the past are to be lamented rather than repeated. And yet, here we are, finding a new way, reminiscent of an old way, of tearing the church apart.

To be clear, I am not an alum of CTX. My days in undergrad were spent at Concordia University—Chicago. But, as a member of the LCMS, CTX has been and continues to be a school that matters to me. It matters to those close to me too, including the godfather of one of my daughters who is a CTX alum. Someone reached out to me today asking that I help them make sense of what’s going on and if I’m being absolutely honest, I can’t. It isn’t that I don’t know the stated facts or have access to the information provided by both sides (here are links to the LCMS Reporter and CTX describing this present moment). I can’t speak to it because I’m not directly involved. I’m an outsider. As an outsider, I could tell you what I think is happening, what may be going on, but it is all conjecture. It may be well informed conjecture, but it is conjecture nonetheless. 

What I do know is that brothers and sisters in Christ are in turmoil. What the two sides believe and argue is well documented at this point. And what is perhaps most distressing is that we seem to be at an impasse. Bylaws have been invoked. Votes have been taken. Resolutions are being written. We are yet again coming to a convention, and it seems that the new way we will tear the church apart will be to use the tried and tested means of the synod gathered in convention. 

Back in 1973 at the New Orleans convention, CSL president John Tietjen addressed the delegates. “I would like you to know that I stand before you as a brother in the faith, a baptized child of God. I acknowledge that my life comes to me from God the creator, and that indeed he has made me as he has made everything that is. I affirm before you that Jesus Christ is God and man, born of the Virgin Mary, our savior and Lord, who gave his life in atonement for the sins of the world and was raised again for our justification. I affirm before you that I have been called to this faith not by my reason but by the Holy Spirit and that I live by the forgiveness of sins, which I receive daily, through the means of grace, the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments. And together with all of you, I look for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and of our life together with him in resurrection in heaven. The faith which I have just confessed is shared with me by all my colleagues at Concordia Seminary. We seek to live by our ordination vows. We affirm Article 2 of the constitution of the synod. That is not for us a theoretical proposition, it is a fact by which we live day by day in our classroom, and in our Gospel preaching, in our conversation with students in public and in private. I wish you to know that there are many criticisms that have been presented to you which are wrong. These assertions underscore the problem that is before you this night. The faculty of Concordia Seminary has not been heard. In the name of our lord Jesus christ who send his blood for us all, find a better way.”

Tietjen’s words were not heeded. We didn’t find a better way, we found a new way to tear the church apart. Whatever you may think of Tietjen, his confession of faith, his defense of the faculty, or his assertions about not being heard, he was not wrong about at least one thing—he was not wrong to plead for a better way. We are not gathering at New Orleans this summer but synod will gather in convention in Milwaukee. It may not be Concordia Seminary St. Louis being discussed but Concordia University Texas will be. The names may have changed, the narrative should too. Perhaps part of the reason why Tietjen’s words were not heeded then was because he was wrong to defend the faculty majority or perhaps we just didn’t believe him that he was a brother in the faith. I was not there, perhaps I shouldn’t speak on it. I won’t be there in Milwaukee either as I am not the pastoral delegate from my circuit so perhaps I shouldn’t speak on it. 

I may not know where the truth really lies, but I know where my brothers and sisters do, on both sides of the aisle—for and against the actions taken by CTX’s BOR and the CUS/LCMS BOD, for and against brothers in the faith Donald and Matthew. My hope in the days ahead is that we do now what we didn’t do then, we find a better way. I’m not being pollyannaish or naive when I say that either. I think too often we concede to the way the world works, we pretend that in the church and in the world the ends should justify the means. They shouldn’t and they don’t. Too often we give into to the fear that there are threats to the church, from without and within. There aren’t. Let me be exceedingly clear, especially on the heels of the season of Easter—there is no such thing as a threat to the church. If the tomb is empty, if the women worshipped at his feet, if Mary heard her Lord speak her name, if the disciples ate with Jesus, if Thomas touched his wounds, if he was taken up into heaven, if he sat down at the right hand of the Father, then there is nothing that can befall the church he hasn’t already overcome. There are no threats to the church because there is no threat to her Lord. This means that we can treat brothers and sisters in the faith as that, baptized children of God, people for whom Christ died and rose again. We don’t need to retreat to bylaws and votes, we can find a better way because our Lord shed his blood for us all. The names may have changed, the narrative should too. We don’t need to find a new way to tear the church apart, we need to find new ways to live in light of, and not in spite of, our risen and ascended Lord.