Is SMP the "Only Option" for Certain Kinds of Churches?

Pastor Zach Zehnder published a video on YouTube today taking exception to the age requirements for the LCMS “Specific Ministry Pastor” program [SMP]. The SMP is a (mostly) non-residential program for pastoral formation that relies heavily on local mentoring and online classes. Advocates for the program (and its expansion) have typically focused on the need for certain “specific ministries” to have someone uniquely suited for a particular context, along with the inability to relocate to a seminary for classes and a one-year vicarage (pastoral internship).

Toward the end of his video (starting at about 9:18 in the video), however, Zehnder says something interesting:

“The large churches do not want to send candidates to the residential program right now - and this is what nobody is saying, that the data is saying - they don’t want to send them to the residential seminary program because they don’t believe that the pastor they will get in the end is a pastor that will work for their ministry. And so the only option is [SMP] - and now that’s not an option.”

The residential programs at Concordia Seminary (St. Louis) and Concordia Theological Seminary (Fort Wayne), Pastor Zehnder is saying, are forming pastors who will not “work for their ministry.” SMP is “the only option” for these churches, presumably because the formation these churches provide is qualitatively different. Is the real issue the mode of education (online vs residential)? Or is there something about the residential program that makes a man ill-suited for a certain kind of church? What is it about these pastors—or their formation—that “will not work”?

Responding to the Transgender Revolution: Brave Men Needed

From the chapter “Responding to the Transgender Revolution” in my book (Dis)Ordered: Lies about Human Nature and the Truth That Sets Us Free (CPH 2023):

“A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.” Never in the history of the world have we more needed brave people to call things what they actually are. A social contagion has spread through the West, causing children to mutilate their bodies and receive hormone treatments with drastic consequences….

The transgender movement … involves the final overthrow of biological reality. It claims that you are not what your chromosomes or sexual organs say you are. You are whatever you feel you are….

When meaning is defined by feelings, childhood is extended indefinitely, and everything is sexualized, confusion over identity is inevitable. This problem is exacerbated by human existence being reduced to gender and sexuality by the sexual revolutionaries. Since this is a matter of will and not body, the transgender revolution is the final triumph of the Gnostic conception of reality, which subordinates the body to the soul and renders the material world something from which we must be liberated. Once one accepts the premise that a biological male can be a woman born into the wrong (i.e., male) body, then it follows that the body is a prison. A person’s true identity is entirely disconnected from creation….

Always with love, God calls Christians to call things what they really are. Men are men, women are women, and these are immutable truths. Jesus is the truth (John 14:6). If what He says is not true, then nothing is. The Nicene Creed confesses about Him, et homo factus est: “And He was made man.” The incarnation of the Son of God is for the healing of the human race. He heals every dysphoria, and His redemption is for every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

(Dis)Ordered is currently on sale at CPH. It is also available at Amazon.

On the Authority of Councils of the Church

Many, perhaps willfully, misunderstand and misrepresent the meaning of Sola Scriptura. It is not an abandonment of patristics or tradition. Rather, it means that all things are subject to God’s own Word. Martin Chemnitz applies this truth to the question of the authority of Church Councils:

The authority of councils is most salutary in the church, as Augustine rightly says, that is, if they judge according to the rule and norm of the sacred Scripture. And when they prove their decisions by means of sure and clear testimonies of Scripture, the church owes them obedience with the greatest reverence as to a heavenly voice. Then also this statement of Christ applies (Luke 10:16): “He who hears you hears Me, and he who rejects you rejects Me.” But when the mere name “council” is heard, it ought not at once turn us into rocks, treetrunks, and stocks, as though it were the head of Gorgo, so that we thoughtlessly embrace any and all decrees without examination, without inquiry and careful judgment. For the Scripture tells us that there are also councils of the wicked, Ps. 22:16; of vain persons, Ps. 26:4; of the ungodly, Ps. 1:1, whose assembly Jer. 15:17, on the basis of the psalm, calls an assembly of mockers, who have their name from their false interpretation. Such were the councils of the ungodly priests against Micah, Jeremiah, against Christ and the apostles. We have, however, the strict command of God, 1 John 4:1: “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

1 Thess. 5:21: “Test everything; hold fast what is good.”

Matt. 7:15: “Beware of false prophets,” etc.

Therefore it is right, and it must of necessity be done according to the commandment of God, that we examine the decrees of the councils according to the norm of sacred Scripture, as the saying of Jerome has it: “That is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit: which is set forth in the canonical books. If the councils pronounce anything against this, I consider it wicked.”

Examination of the Council of Trent, vol. 1, p31

"Apostolic Succession" and Forgetting Christ

When the successors to the apostles forget their dependence upon “Christ the cornerstone” and cease to represent Him and His truth, they are not the possessors of a supranatural power which enables them to frustrate all possibility of other men’s salvation and illumination; they are simply shutting themselves out of the Church of Christ.

Georgios I. Mantzaridis, The Deification of Man: St Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox Tradition, ed. Christos Yannaras and Costa Carras, trans. Liadain Sherrard, vol. Two, Contemporary Greek Theologians (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 58.

Opposing Wills Disturb the Peace of the Household

Opposing wills disturb the peace of the household. The solution to this is only found in the prayer, “Thy will be done.” Here it is not the will of the man or the woman that prevails, but the will of Him who made both.

Who Caused the Schism?

The catholics who presented the Augsburg Confession to Charles V were very troubled by the possibility of further schism in the church. What did the confessors at Augsburg ask? Allow the Gospel to be purely presented, and relax certain onerous traditions:

It is not our intention to take oversight away from the bishops. We ask only this one thing, that they allow the Gospel to be taught purely, and that they relax a few observances that they claim it is sinful to change. If they will not give anything up, it is for them to decide how they will give an account to God for causing schism by their stubbornness. (AC XXVIII.77-78)

We pray someday the schism can be healed.

There is no cause for anger

In his book The Sermon on the Mount: The Church’s First Statement of the Gospel, David P. Scaer draws out the true teaching of Jesus, obscured by textual assertions that accommodated man’s tendency to justify himself: there is no place for anger in the life of a disciple of Jesus.

“One who is angry has taken to himself the prerogative that belongs to God alone. The phrase “without cause” does not belong to the original reading. Even if there is a cause for anger, anger must be put aside among the followers of Jesus. There is no cause for anger. Though anger is the prerogative of God alone, in his work of reconciliation in Jesus he has set aside this anger. This makes the offense of anger even more repugnant. By becoming angry the one who claims to belong to Jesus and to know his mind takes an attitude diametrically opposed to God, who is no longer angry. The refusal to be reconciled is the sign that the person no longer belongs to Jesus and from God’s point of view is no longer a member of the community. Here is where excommunication becomes operative.”

— David P. Scaer

Jeffrey Gibbs’ excellent article “The Myth of Righteous Anger” expands on this and is highly recommended.

Ready to Leave This Strange Country

Pascha (Passover) characterizes the life of the disciples of Jesus. St. John Chrysostom:

Let not any one of them that eat this Passover look towards Egypt, but towards Heaven, towards “Jerusalem that is above.” (Gal. 4:26.) On this account thou eatest with thy loins girded, on this account thou eatest with shoes on thy feet, that thou mayest know, that from the moment thou first beginnest to eat the Passover, thou oughtest to set out, and to be upon thy journey. And this implies two things, both that we must depart out of Egypt, and that, whilst we stay, we must stay henceforth as in a strange country; “for our citizenship,” saith he, “is in Heaven” (Phil. 3:20); and that all our life long we should ever be prepared, so that when we are called we may not put it off, but say, “My heart is fixed.” (Ps. 108:1.)

(NPNF 1:13, p165)