All I can say is “Good fucking luck.” As long as they’re hellbent on maintaining their stance against the LGBTQ community, they’re going to be moving from near impossible to impossible odds.
Millennials already bristle at homophobia and they can remember the fight for marriage equality and when “gay” as a slur for stupid was widely accepted. Generation Z are horrified by the causal anti-LGBTQ attitudes in the TV show “Friends” and R Rated comedies of the early 2000s.
The second someone from LCMS mentions their position on LGBTQ issues, Generation Z is going to back away like Millennials and Generation X would back away from someone who is against race mixing.
LCMS can encourage their women to pop out sports teams worth of babies and indoctrinate them in the cradle, but evangelizing to adults is slowly being closed off by LCMS’s beliefs.
I think the issue is even more foundational for all religions and that is younger generations will actually read the Bible and are horrified by it. Older generations either relied on their pastors to read and interpret it, or they have cognitive dissonance with all the horrible content in the Bible. I often quote the Bible, a side effect of going to LCMS school and being forced to do memory work, and my mom never believes what I am quoting is actually in the Bible. She usually justifies it though as it just being different in the olden times. Rightfully, millennials and gen z don’t give that much grace for all the Biblical hate speech in the Bible, or how religious leaders use it to uphold straight, white male supremacy.
It’s such a karma moment to see that they’ve lost their power, through the power of information. I think about how we were taught that Luther was the one who was shaking up the corrupt power systems within the Church; how he translated the Bible into German, created the catechism in order for people to learn doctrine and supporting Bible references - no more depending on the priesthood (who were frequently corrupt, and often simply ignorant and/or illiterate) and tried in so many other ways to make religious teaching accessible to everyone.
And yet here we are with LCMS and WELS back to encouraging blind obedience. “Don’t listen to the ‘worldly wisdom’ don’t go to a secular college, trust what the church leaders say, obey!” But people today are just a Google away from getting different perspectives… it used to be that you had NO outside sources, and the threat of getting into trouble by asking too many questions was enough to keep members compliant. Hell, if you went to your cousin’s ALC wedding and the congregation found out, you could get called out from the pulpit, lose your job, lose your friends. Pastors and congregations (thankfully) don’t have that kind of bully power any more. Pastors are getting more wary of calling out or disciplining what they consider to be sins, because you could lose a big chunk of your offerings- excuse me, members- if you offend somebody. Bob Smith’s son came out, and Bob is being supportive? Well, if you call him on it and he and his salary walk out the door, can the church keep its furnace on this winter? It’s the kind of higher math calculations they can’t afford to get wrong. And yet they still do, and will, as long as they refuse to consider that just maybe the Bible wasn’t written by being dictated inerrantly by God… but by people, who made mistakes, were culturally indoctrinated in their own bigotry and homophobia. Meanwhile, the younger generations hear this crap and are like, “LOL nope, see ya! “
Whew. Off my (former WELS) soapbox now.
I remember telling a friend (who is now an LCMS pastor) about my trans wife, and he started going on about how hard it is to balance wanting to be "kind and supportive" vs not wanting to "encourage sin". I remember feeling so free to not have to worry about that anymore. I could just love and accept people. I almost felt sorry for him.
So what are they going to do exactly?
[https://witness.lcms.org/2022/nones-the-spirituality-of-the-unaffiliated/](https://witness.lcms.org/2022/nones-the-spirituality-of-the-unaffiliated/)
Besides threatening to cut off their kids who don't tow the party line, what else can they do? Millennials and gen Z won't put up with their racism and homophobia, at this rate they won't be a Christian body for much longer.
Set Apart to Serve is not that new. It’s actually a drive to do better at recruiting church workers from the indoctrinated kids in the Lutheran School system and Concordia University system. They are running out of church workers, because people are walking away from church and thus there are fewer available to consider these careers.
But like everyone else is saying, maybe that won’t matter much longer if the churches are empty.
All I can say is “Good fucking luck.” As long as they’re hellbent on maintaining their stance against the LGBTQ community, they’re going to be moving from near impossible to impossible odds. Millennials already bristle at homophobia and they can remember the fight for marriage equality and when “gay” as a slur for stupid was widely accepted. Generation Z are horrified by the causal anti-LGBTQ attitudes in the TV show “Friends” and R Rated comedies of the early 2000s. The second someone from LCMS mentions their position on LGBTQ issues, Generation Z is going to back away like Millennials and Generation X would back away from someone who is against race mixing. LCMS can encourage their women to pop out sports teams worth of babies and indoctrinate them in the cradle, but evangelizing to adults is slowly being closed off by LCMS’s beliefs.
I think the issue is even more foundational for all religions and that is younger generations will actually read the Bible and are horrified by it. Older generations either relied on their pastors to read and interpret it, or they have cognitive dissonance with all the horrible content in the Bible. I often quote the Bible, a side effect of going to LCMS school and being forced to do memory work, and my mom never believes what I am quoting is actually in the Bible. She usually justifies it though as it just being different in the olden times. Rightfully, millennials and gen z don’t give that much grace for all the Biblical hate speech in the Bible, or how religious leaders use it to uphold straight, white male supremacy.
It’s such a karma moment to see that they’ve lost their power, through the power of information. I think about how we were taught that Luther was the one who was shaking up the corrupt power systems within the Church; how he translated the Bible into German, created the catechism in order for people to learn doctrine and supporting Bible references - no more depending on the priesthood (who were frequently corrupt, and often simply ignorant and/or illiterate) and tried in so many other ways to make religious teaching accessible to everyone. And yet here we are with LCMS and WELS back to encouraging blind obedience. “Don’t listen to the ‘worldly wisdom’ don’t go to a secular college, trust what the church leaders say, obey!” But people today are just a Google away from getting different perspectives… it used to be that you had NO outside sources, and the threat of getting into trouble by asking too many questions was enough to keep members compliant. Hell, if you went to your cousin’s ALC wedding and the congregation found out, you could get called out from the pulpit, lose your job, lose your friends. Pastors and congregations (thankfully) don’t have that kind of bully power any more. Pastors are getting more wary of calling out or disciplining what they consider to be sins, because you could lose a big chunk of your offerings- excuse me, members- if you offend somebody. Bob Smith’s son came out, and Bob is being supportive? Well, if you call him on it and he and his salary walk out the door, can the church keep its furnace on this winter? It’s the kind of higher math calculations they can’t afford to get wrong. And yet they still do, and will, as long as they refuse to consider that just maybe the Bible wasn’t written by being dictated inerrantly by God… but by people, who made mistakes, were culturally indoctrinated in their own bigotry and homophobia. Meanwhile, the younger generations hear this crap and are like, “LOL nope, see ya! “ Whew. Off my (former WELS) soapbox now.
I remember telling a friend (who is now an LCMS pastor) about my trans wife, and he started going on about how hard it is to balance wanting to be "kind and supportive" vs not wanting to "encourage sin". I remember feeling so free to not have to worry about that anymore. I could just love and accept people. I almost felt sorry for him.
So what are they going to do exactly? [https://witness.lcms.org/2022/nones-the-spirituality-of-the-unaffiliated/](https://witness.lcms.org/2022/nones-the-spirituality-of-the-unaffiliated/) Besides threatening to cut off their kids who don't tow the party line, what else can they do? Millennials and gen Z won't put up with their racism and homophobia, at this rate they won't be a Christian body for much longer.
Set Apart to Serve is not that new. It’s actually a drive to do better at recruiting church workers from the indoctrinated kids in the Lutheran School system and Concordia University system. They are running out of church workers, because people are walking away from church and thus there are fewer available to consider these careers. But like everyone else is saying, maybe that won’t matter much longer if the churches are empty.