Fit for the Call: Why the Man and the Office Both Matter
Transcript from Rev. Jason Braaten's interview with Ad Crucem News contributor, Jarryd Allison, about graduating hardened men capable of working and enduring in the Lord's abundant harvest.
In this episode, we sit down with former Marine Special Operations Officer and lifelong LCMS Lutheran, Jarryd Allison, to explore one of the most pressing questions facing the church today: who should be allowed to wear the collar? Drawing on his recent essays “Are Our LCMS Pastors Fit for Purpose and Duty?” and “Does the Man Wearing the Collar Matter?”, Jarryd argues that the pastoral office is not simply another vocation—but a spiritual battlefront—requiring men who are not only doctrinally sound but spiritually, mentally and even physically prepared.
The transcript is generated by closed captioning software and “cleaned up” with AI. For any errors, always blame the AI.
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Welcome back to the Gottesdienst Crowd. This is Jason Braaten.
Today, we have with us a special guest, Jarryd Allison. He’s from Denver, Colorado. He’s a layman, a former Marine Special Operations Officer, and now currently serving as a software engineer.
Welcome to the Gottesdienst Crowd, Jarryd.
Thanks so much for having me, Pastor.
It’s great. I’ve been following your posts about standards for seminary and for serving in the pastoral office. And so I’m really excited to have this conversation with you.
There is a lot of talk now about how we are coming upon a time with a pastoral shortage.
And you hear a lot quoted, pray the Lord of the harvest to send the laborers out into his harvest field.
So often that is understood or interpreted or spoken of just in terms of numbers.
We just need more laborers. And very rarely is it talked about we need laborers.
Like we need people who actually work, the quality of the laborer, not just the number of them.
And so because of that need or that perceived need, there is sometimes an inherent desire to try to either create a route that is fast and easy instead of maintaining our standards or even raising our standards so that we get a higher quality of output from those individuals. But in reading your posts, it sounds like you are advocating for that opposite.
For let’s raise the standards. Let’s make it more difficult. Let’s make sure that we have the best.
Is that right? That’s correct. Now what leads you to think that that is the way?
Well, the first thing that sort of leads me down this path is that’s what’s in the Bible.
I think what was most shocking to me. Imagine being rooted in the Bible. Maybe the most Lutheran thing you can do. But my first article was less about a biblical representation of this argument and more about my experience with high performing organizations and just what I’ve seen.
And I thought the best critique of it was, well, this isn’t a biblical argument. So I wrote a second article about the biblical argument. And which was really nice. I would encourage any Lutheran to read it, disagree with it. That’s fine. Or better yet, just read what Paul says in Timothy and Titus about what that actually means. And he’s kind of holding up our bishops and pastors to be, I mean, one of the words that he chooses is blameless. And to me, that’s as close as a demand for perfection as we can get to be blameless. I write in my article, you have to live in a Christ-like exemplary way such that no one would reasonably expect or accuse you of immorality or wrongdoing.
And in order to do that, we are asking for a very high tier of Christian man for this office. And there are plenty of other requirements. But above all, you have to be blameless. And so as you go down, each of the good requirements, you can kind of tie it back to what is the action of your family?
How do you lead your family? Are you able to teach? Are you holy? Are you just? Are you self-controlled?
All of these things that lead back into you need to be an example so that you don’t in the conduct of your duties start to shake people’s faith. And so when I looked at that, I just saw the similarities between what was demanded of me going through a pipeline and what was demanded for really all special operations units. I’m partial to the Marines because that’s where I was. I think we’re the best. And we can talk about that later as well. But really, there’s a high bar that’s being set. And I think it needs to be even higher for our pastors because at the end of the day, if I fail as a Marine Special Operations Officer, there’s a lot on my head because it’s my life and more importantly, the lives of my men that I am there to lead. But as a pastor, you’re talking about eternal life, you’re talking about the souls of people. And so of course, I would want my pastor to be the top tier. And I’ve been very, very fortunate to have a number of top tier pastors.
And when I started looking at the data, you kind of wonder, what are the standards for going through that?
And our admissions process to the seminary, are they doing the job to look for that quality of individual? So let’s start with that data. I think, and then we can get back to what’s included in that perfection, that blamelessness as it goes down listed in Timothy and Titus that you just mentioned. But what is that data that is that stuck out to you? Yeah, so my experience in Marine Special Operations, and this is kind of across the board, is that you’re generally shooting for an attrition rate of something like 50%. You can only do so much prior to actually going through the training and everything like that to figure out what exactly you’re coming with on the other side. But that so much is a lot. So during the, in my pipeline for MARSOC is the acronym for it, you start out by going to a program called Assessment and Selection. When I went through, it was about seven weeks, and you do the full gamut of selection things. You take a number of psychological exams, you take IQ tests, you take a number of physical tests, you are required to learn things and take written tests. And you go through things like scenarios where you are evaluated the entire time as to your mental acuity, your ability to withstand physical and mental pain.
They restrict sleep in certain instances. They require you to work in teams, switching out the leadership to see, are you able to lead and are you able to follow? And through this entire collection of data, they are trying to summarize something objectively that is very subjective, which is as a special operations officer, if I allow you to take men into a foreign country without any real oversight other than the laws and mission requirements that you were sent out with, are you going to complete the mission? And it’s a very hard thing and they don’t shoot a 100%, but they shoot a very, very high percentage because it’s so difficult to get to that final position of trust and authority. And so, like I said, my experience for officers, and I include the data, I didn’t include tables, I know Ad Crucem loves their tables and their charts, but I included them as links in here and just kind of at the top level, it all bubbles up to about 50% across all of special operations, MARSOC included. And then when you look at the data that’s publicly available for our seminaries, you see their reported five to six year attrition rate of just around 12% and talking to a couple of pastors that have either worked or have been to the seminary recently, if you just push that five to six year range to maybe 10 to 12 years, you’re looking at 90 to 95%.
And that’s not terribly indicative of something that is hard to get through. It’s more indicative of when you’re there, you’re going to graduate. And so, that just triggers a question of what are we actually screening for? Do we look for things like, can this man teach? I don’t think that men go to the seminary that don’t feel on a call to go do that. And I think that’s laudable.
That’s a very, very important thing and we should not, we should not crush that just because a man has a stutter, for example, or some sort of nonsensical thing. Like Paul says in Timothy, this is a faithful saying, if a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work.
I do think we need to recognize that. But for example, if you have crippling Asperger’s or autism and you’re unable to speak to people or look them in the eye or teach them, if, I mean, if you’re not a Christian, sure, if you have alcoholism or sexual impulses that are not in keeping with christian teachings and Paul’s requirements, then obviously those are kind of non-starters. But it just leads me to wonder if the attrition rate is so comparatively low for other organizations that I think have already established are not as important as being a pastor.
Then why is that? Is it because our recruiting is so good? I don’t know. But it just prompts the question.
Yeah, so I guess the, yeah, that raises the question, is it the recruiting or that is so good, or is it a failure of the design of the actual program, right? That’s the other side of it.
Exactly. And these statistics are laid against the other statistics that Ad Crucem posted about about the decline of congregational attendance in the LCMS. You have a slightly increasing number of pastors and a vastly decreasing flock. And so if our standards are so good and the right people are going out and teaching Lutheran masses, why are they not coming to church? Yeah.
So that’s what led me to write the first article. And then the comments came in about what is this biblically sound and hence the second article. Okay. So if you’re looking at from your days in MARSOC and the assessment and selection period, you had IQ, psychological tests, physical tests, written exams, based on things that you had to learn. How might you translate those same and similar things to the listings in Timothy and Titus? How would you, obviously there’s not going to be a one for one, right? But generally speaking and trying to abstract that in the best kind of way to application for the Missouri Synod’s MARSOC, which is the pastoral office.
Sure. How do we translate that over? So this is a hard question. And I would hope that if this thought has merit that there would be a lot more people piling in to determine this.
But at the end of the day, MARSOC is the newest SOCOM element. They were formed, I believe, in 2008.
What is SOCOM? Sorry. Yes. Special Operations Command. So you have Navy Seals, Green Berets, these type of people. Gotcha. And so in 2008, Donald Rumsfeld told the Marine Corps, we want Marines in Special Operations. And so they had to build a program from the ground up. And they used a lot of the information that the Navy Seals and the Army had already done in terms of what makes a good operator. Okay. And then they looked at all of that information and then said, what does it mean when we apply it to a Marine context, which is an ongoing discussion? We can talk about that later about what it means to be a Marine Raider, and if they’re even necessary. But you can look at what a pastor needs to be. You can look at everything from First Timothy and Titus, and really throughout the entire Bible, possibly even going back to Leviticus, I think is important. But really, all of the information that we need is in the Bible. And then you pull in pastors that meet those criteria to develop a list of objective traits that you’re looking for with the knowledge that you’re not going to be 100%. But the effort to get to that and continuous updating every single year after you go through and what you see succeeds and what doesn’t, there should be a review any time a pastor is removed or some sort of horrible activity or something like this. Do a review of what happened? How could we try to figure this out going forward? You know, the call of a man into the seminary is of the Holy Spirit. I do believe that. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the responsibility to limit or redirect that man towards other godly works, other godly vocations, just because we say the Holy Spirit will do it and that’s fine. If that were true, Paul would have written any man can do this if the Holy Spirit leads him to it. But he didn’t. He gave us a very specific list of these requirements. And that’s very translatable to a checklist. And I think that there’s some subjectivity that you can put into there. I like the idea of situational evaluations.
That was a little bit of a shock for me at MARSOC where they’re going to put you in a situation and give you some sort of mental or ethical dilemma to work through. And they do that a number of times to see do you have an ethical code? And can you talk to someone who fails to share your ethics and reason with them to get out of a non-ethical situation into an ethical one?
And that’s very important for special operations because as I mentioned, there’s no real oversight and sometimes the mission can be a little hazy. I mean, there are repercussions, but nobody is sitting in on this conversation between you and this other person. And they need to trust that you are going to do what is ethical, what is right, what is just, and also what is best for national security.
And I think saying that we can’t or should not do that because we need to be nice or because a man desires a good thing and therefore we should let it happen is really irresponsible.
So it sounds like, too, that this might not be completely laid at the feet of the seminary. It could be at the whole church itself. That’s exactly right. And like in other words, if you have these ongoing evaluations in your former life in MARSOC, what kind of ongoing evaluations is happening in the pastoral office sphere that takes the data that we see when guys burn out or guys leave and why do they leave and taking that kind of information into account and then saying, all right, here are the commonalities with those things and then designing, going back to say to the seminary, hey, this is what we’re seeing. Can you help design or recruit for this particular thing? That’s exactly right. Okay. And yes, the pastors that are out there are going to inform the recruiting and the training efforts of what’s coming behind them. It’s continuous knowledge loop because the Bible is true. The world and culture is ever changing and we shouldn’t conform to it.
But there are lessons to be learned. And if those lessons are being learned and not applied, then they die with whoever learned them, which is not great. And it goes even deeper than just the seminary or the synod level. Individual pastors should be able to read these things and continuously reflect on themselves. And that’s good. And I think that’s happening. And I think that’s wonderful.
But what I don’t think is happening as much is layman also reading these things and thinking about how can I raise my sons to these standards? How can I help be a standard for my sons? I may not be a pastor, but I am a Christian man and pastors come from Christian men. And if they start thinking about themselves in this way, you start thinking about the congregation in this way, the congregation can swoop in as well and support their current pastor so that he is not affected as much by these lessons that are learned by what has happened elsewhere. And that’s sort of the extension of the thought process in that the synod may be able to do some things. The seminary may be able to do some things.
But at the end of the day, the layman, the congregation and the pastor there are kind of at the forefront of this effort. It is, you know, so most of the meetings that I have here within my congregation, whether it’s like the board of ed or the board of elders, usually one of the last things like for my report or even before we close the meeting, not every time, but oftentimes, I’m asking things like, you know, what are things that I need to get better at? Or that I’m not communicating that I think I am? Things that are blind spots for me that you guys see in the pews or you hear about that isn’t being communicated back to me. Like, so, but there is a reticence for the laity to offer those kinds of critiques. And I don’t know how to fix that other than just keep asking. And I think that’s right.
It is a hard thing because the laity love their pastors for the most part. And certainly the faithful church of God who is being served by their pastor should love them. That is a good thing. And love is patient, love is kind. And so you don’t want to bring negative things to your pastor, I think.
Now, there’s also a sort of awe, you know, we are not consecrating the elements. There’s an altar up there that we don’t really approach. But still pastors do need help. They are men, they are fallible for sure. They should be blameless, yes, but they are still fallible men. They should be blameless before men, understanding that they are not and cannot be blameless before God. That is, that should be understood. But I like what you do in that you ask for it because asking is going to break down those boundaries. And also let them know that you cannot know everything. And hopefully, that also brings them into the fold of understanding that there are things that the pastor cannot do.
There are things that he should not have to do. And be a part of that congregational effort towards, hey, let’s have the marks of the true church here. Let’s be the true church. And I think just having that conversation is a great first start. Every congregation is different. But being willing to, and not getting angry, I think fighting for what’s right, if the congregation is wrong, is a good thing.
Yes. But I think accepting that, hey, this is good feedback. And I like that. And I want that because I can’t know what is going on set. I can’t know that.
I mean, there is a usefulness in trying to read people’s faces and reading the room. And some people are really good at it. And some people are less good at it. But there’s only, that only gets you so far because some people are either emotionless in their faces when they’re listening. And some people are more so. And so if some people are not, you can’t gauge, right?
There’s a limit to what you can gauge from reading the room. It’s the German in us. I think no emotions, no laughing. And so sometimes you can get the sense, like, oh, they’re looking at me like I’m growing a head out of my ear, like I’m not making any sense at all. And sometimes you get the sense that, okay, they’re with you, but sometimes you just get nothing. And open to those kinds of questions and asking for feedback is really helpful. And it’s really helpful when you get it.
Right. So that might just be an encouragement to laity in general that, you know, give feedback to your pastor. You can do that in a loving way without it, you know, being, you being considered, you know, some fly in the ointment or something like that.
That’s right. If you’re unsatisfied by something, yeah, say, say something to your pastor. He loves you and he cares about you. And he wants to teach you. And it’s possible that you’re wrong or he’s wrong, whatever. But having that conversation and being a part of that solution, I think, should be encouraged as much as possible. Yeah. Yeah. So at the laity level, there’s some failure there.
Like, what about in like the circuit district level? It seems like that’s also something that could be beefed up. I think so. So I have participated in exactly one circuit meeting, which is where I found out that we have circuit meetings and representatives and this whole slew of sort of bureaucratic processes that happen. But as a layman still now, and this is a gap in my own understanding, I am not entirely sure how they affect me and my congregation and my family other than they decide who goes to the district and synod conventions. Other than that. And this is not a dig on the process at all. It’s a dig on my education, so myself for sure. But also maybe, and this could be very localized. I don’t actually know. But what are those processes for and what do they do? Are they for the pastors? Are they for the district and the health of the district? All of which would be fine things. But I think I would speak for the majority of lay people when I say we don’t know they’re happening generally.
And we’re not entirely sure why they happen. And that could be just me. But I think it’s true for a lot of a lot of Lutherans. So you like these circuit forums? What you’re talking about? That’s right. Yeah.
That’s right. And you know, this is a good thing to highlight for kind of what we’re talking about in that. That is a great venue for talking about issues that may have arisen new criteria for how do we talk to young men or who are we who are you looking for? What sort of personality traits? I think that’s probably where that would happen at an organizational level, the dissemination and the collecting of new pieces of information to kind of synthesize into, okay, this is this is our current picture of who we want to recruit and what we are looking for. Not only prior to attending seminary, but also during seminary, we are we are looking for a continuation of these traits or a strengthening along these lines as we move forward in this process of training and educating a pastor. Yeah.
Well, I know like within the three-year cycle that the Missouri Synod has in terms of choosing either Synod president or having a district convention, there’s always an off year and that off year is set aside according to our bylaws for circuit convocations such that the circuits are to get together and have or the churches within the circuit are to get together and offer a convocation for all the members of the Missouri Synod in that circuit. Whether that’s, you know, includes some sort of teaching thing or a service together, I mean, that is kind of left up to the circuits to form. Sure. But that is something that is in those off years where there’s not a district convention or a synod convention, the circuits themselves are together together or the circuit congregations within that circuit are together together for a convocation. Yeah, I like that. And sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn’t and I don’t know how widespread it is, right? Right. And I think that’s that’s fine. You know, the Synod is not all powerful. It’s not a centralized government. Right. So it’s right. So they don’t have to, I don’t know, the Lutherans love saying I don’t have to do this, you know. Right. And so do I, that’s fine. But yeah, and you’re talking about a great venue for churches to come together and sort of share these thoughts about, hey, I have a really great pastor, he does this or, you know, we sadly just had to let our pastor go because of X, Y and Z, whatever. Hopefully that happens less and less often. But if we, if we as a collective synod are not gathering that information up and using it to strengthen ourselves rather than just kind of shrug it off or isolated or not disseminate that sort of valuable information, then we suffer as a whole. And I think that’s unacceptable. I mean, a lot of effort at MARSOC was put into these lessons learned every mission you go on, you come back and you do what’s called a hot wash, you talk about what went right. Usually that’s very little of that. You talk mostly about what went wrong because there’s no use patting yourself on the back. It’s what went wrong. That is the most dangerous. And that’s what you want to focus on.
And after every deployment, you come back and you write up a huge document that is then put into an archive that people can access later on. Whether they access it or not, I don’t know, but I do know that I wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages about what I learned during my time because those are all things that are valuable. And if we’re not doing that as a synod and we’re not more importantly, we’re not making it available, then what happens with that knowledge? It dies with the congregation or the individual and that’s unhelpful to us, I think. Okay. So, okay. So it gets back to like the seminary assessment and selection. You mentioned that in the assessment and selection of your special operations, you had IQ tests, psychological exams, physical exams, and then these written tests based on classes or books or things that you had to learn. What were the qualities that they were evaluating through those things? Yeah. So they are looking for a very specific individual. So they obviously value physical fitness. If you cannot perform physically, obviously, you’re immediately out.
And I’m not talking like regular physical fitness. I’m talking you’re at the top tier. You do, you’re not talking about me. I can do like five pull-ups and you know, sure, right? That’s not what you’re talking about. No, it’s extremely, extremely physical. The first thing you do there is a regular marine physical fitness test. But then it goes on to things like 12 mile ruck runs with 55 pounds on your back and a full combat load. Oh no.
There’s swimming involved and just constant physical hardships. And it doesn’t necessarily stop at assessment and selection. You do that for seven, eight weeks, whatever it is now. And then you go through individual training course where you’re continuously being evaluated by those same standards as you are being quote unquote taught how to be a special operations officer or critical skills operators, what they call in guys on the enlisted track. And so the point is that you get through this very rigorous physical standard. And then they’re also looking at, are you psycho? You know, I don’t, I’m not a psychologist, but they’re, you know, you go through 650 questions or something like that.
And they’re looking for whatever their data has said about anyone who’s ever taken that test. Are you are you psychotic or something? I’m not, not entirely sure what they’re looking for. I just put in the bubbles of whether or not I thought I was Batman. And then IQ, similar, very similar thing.
You know, can you can you solve this math problem? X, Y, and Z, whatever. Yeah. IQ is kind of an interesting one because in MARSOC at least, I don’t know if this extends to the other other elements of special operations command, you know, the overarching umbrella. But they didn’t want someone who was too smart.
So there’s a perfect range of IQ. And if you’re well above that, they believe it leads to sort of independent thought that’s not necessarily in keeping with an organization that is, that is like the military sort of top down directives. Yeah. I can only give you so much of a leash, you know.
That can be offset with better physical fitness and really good peer evaluations. But they are looking for a specific range of IQ, which is, which I thought was interesting at the time. Yeah.
And they also put a lot of stock into your peer evaluations. So they understand that the instructors are only there and you can put on a persona in front of an instructor who is only there for a certain amount of time. So they also ask your teammates, you know, rank everybody, one to 12. And if you’re consistently in the bottom, you’ll get boarded and they’ll look at you from an objective standpoint, a lot more harshly because your peers are consistently saying you’re the worst one on the squad.
That’s not necessarily going to get you removed, but it will give you closer inspection to see why.
Boarded. What does that mean? Yeah. So a board happens after a period of evaluation. So at assessment and selection, let’s say you’re doing a 12 mile ruck and you fail to finish it in the time allotted. Well, then you’re going to go in front of a review board where you have enlisted an officer representation that looks at you critically and says, okay, is this grounds for dismissal or not? And then in the training course, they’ll do the same thing. Each course of instruction based on your performance and your peer evaluations, should you continue or not? And they’re just looking at, you know, the objective and subjective data that they’ve collected to say does this person have what it takes? Yeah. So they have the arrange for IQ because too high might indicate, you know, unleadable that’s right. And that’s not like I said, that’s not that alone may not get you removed.
Right. But it’s certainly going to raise eyebrows because you’re not inside the target area.
You know, they mean. Yeah. It’s like when you, you know, get your cholesterol checked and they’re like, you know, you’re on the bubble and they’re like, it’s not bad, but it could be depending on the rest of the stuff. Exactly. Exactly. And so the same thing with the psychological exams, they’re looking for the extremes. Yes. Are you in one of these extremes? And if you are, that tends to be on the whole and for the most part, not fit for this, but if everything else is in line, maybe this is not as bad as we thought it is. Exactly. And these are, these are low hanging fruit. They are ...
were attacked the entire time and very little sleep. And that’s a perfect representation of, can you, when you start hallucinating and you will, can you still move forward with trying to accomplish what you’re doing or are you going to break?
Are you going to just stop? And that happens. That happens. Yeah. And I certainly don’t think pastors need anything that extreme. But the stresses of life are going to cause people to do different things.
And I’m making the argument that those are things you can look for in individuals. Before they apply to seminary or in the application process. But even during the seminary process, you can discover that, hey, this young man loves, loves God, wants to be a pastor, is a faithful Lutheran. But he cannot speak to people. He cannot speak to, maybe he can’t speak to women. I don’t know. But that’s something that should raise an eyebrow and say, say, hey, this is something that we want to work with him on. And that’s fine. That’s good. Maybe it’s a learned thing, right? Maybe. Absolutely.
But at some point, you have to make the call of this person cannot do this. He has a learning disability that we didn’t know about. Yeah. That’s fine. There are other vocations. That’s not going to send him to hell by any means. Right. But it probably means he shouldn’t be a pastor. And that needs to be something that we’re okay with saying. And not just at the seminary or seminary applications process, but at the congregational level. If one of my sons shouldn’t be a pastor, I’m just going to tell him, don’t you shouldn’t do that. Right. And that’s fine. And I think my pastor would do that today. And I’m sure he has done that today. But you wonder if people are rubber stamping it because they believe that there is a dire need for pastors and maybe there is and maybe there isn’t. And we can talk about that. But they need to be less comfortable with rubber stamping and more comfortable guiding godly men into other vocations because they shouldn’t be pastors. And that’s okay. Yeah. So do you get the sense from, you know, you’re familiarity with the curriculum or your discussions with people who have either taught at the seminary or just come from the seminary? Do you get the sense that the, you know, the four years of seminary is designed to find out, you know, that spectrum of person who fits the bill in Timothy and Titus or, or is it not? Does that make sense?
It does. I want to believe that it happens. But I looked very hard online and could not find anything. And after I wrote my articles, I did speak to a number of pastors or hear from a number of pastors that have had examples where and where men got through maybe even possibly entire classes got through where it was well known that either individuals or groups of individuals should not have graduated. Yeah. And that to me is completely unacceptable. Yeah. I think one of one of my proudest recollections from MARSOC was we knew that there was a bit of a manning crisis because a lot of us were getting out of the Marine Corps for various reasons. And the schoolhouse can only produce a certain number each year or each class, sorry, twice a year. And more of us were getting out than we’re getting through the schoolhouse. But the official narrative was there’s no manning crisis. We’re doing fine, which is, which is whatever. But I do know that the schoolhouse was told we need to increase our throughput, which is a sort of tongue-in-cheek way of saying we need bodies. So give me bodies, which again is a tongue-in-cheek way of saying lower the standards just give me people, which is bad, which is really bad. And there are five SOF truths. Humans are more important than hardware. Competence cannot be created after a crisis emerges. So we have these guiding principles of you can’t lower the standards because then you’re no longer a competent organization.
You’re no longer special. You can’t do the special things. That’s one of my favorite quotes is crises don’t build character they reveal it. That’s exactly right. It’s similar to that you don’t rise to the occasion. You fall to the level of training. With the wrong people in place, you get the wrong outcome. And the schoolhouse’s reaction to this manning crisis was to tighten standards. And I think in at least one class they failed 90% of it. I think that class graduated maybe five guys, five or six guys, which is really nice in my mind because then what you saw after that severe crunch was the recruitment changed. They started sending the right recruits.
And that average actually dropped. And in some of the classes dropped below 50% because they found for the right people. And so I think that if the gut reaction is we need more pastors, the right way to do this in my mind. And I could be wrong here. This is sort of anecdotal. But you look at the Marine Corps as an example of this has never had a problem with its recruiting levels.
They’re the tightest branch to go in. And they’re also the only branch that was actively fighting against lowering standards over the past eight, 12 years. And they haven’t had any problems at all. And I think that when you tighten the standards, you may see an initial dip and decline.
But the long term effect of the application of those standards is an actual increase, not only in the competency of what you are producing, but an increase in the recruitment and the general pipeline as a whole. It’s actually healthier to increase standards than it is to decrease it.
But we live in a society that favors a short term outcome. And so it looks attractive to lower the standards. But that is never a good thing that it’s just not worth it. Yeah, you pay for it in the long run. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And we have. We’ve paid over 20 years with a 50% reduction in congregational attendance. And that is unacceptable to me. And I think, you know, there’s a lot more to be said on this topic. The reason why I focused on the seminary is the marks of a church per the Lutheran confessions are preaching and teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. If that is happening, then you can be confident that you are at a true church. But and so if you focus on the pastors that are coming out of the seminary, that is they have the obligation to do those two things. And if you lower the standards and they’re not doing those two things, then why even go to church? It doesn’t matter as much. And I think that’s kind of what’s led a lot to this bleeding away of the Lutheran congregation is they just weren’t being taught and perhaps they weren’t receiving the sacraments. And so they stop coming to church.
Yeah. So well, I mean, that can also be the case of, you know, you have a bit of a mission drift as well. Like and what I mean by that is you start saying we’re here to just train pastors, not train pastors for a particular end or goal in mind. Yeah, I think that’s right. Yeah.
So like with the experience that you’ve had in the Marines then, what sort of suggestions as someone from the outside in recognizing that and we get like we’re not there anymore. We’ve heard we had our own experiences where we’ve heard from others. But what kind of things would you say would you suggest to add perhaps to the curriculum or to replace to say this is kind of this will help in that attriting out. Yeah. I wrote a small list here at the end of my first article. The thing that I like the most I put it at the end. But what I like the most is this mandatory summer hardening program is the word choice that I used. But you know, you’ve got seminarians that are already going to get Greek or I believe it’s Greek and maybe other language prior to actually starting in the seminary. But treating that as sort of a seminary version of boot camp, I don’t want to make it to military. But using that as an assessment period as well, sure you’re learning Greek.
But there are pastors that are coming through talking about these situational things, getting to know these young men and trying to identify as early on in the process at the seminary are do these men appear to have the temperament for this vocation. And that’s really only going to give more time to an evaluation before they start going into this period of intense study and quit their jobs and all these other things. Maybe that’s already happened at this point. But earlier in the process is better than I think doing it at seminary. Also instills a sort of camaraderie for that sort of thing. And I really like that idea that was very helpful for me and a really important part of the program as you go through each of these steps.
Well, I did notice like when I went to the Fort Wayne seminary, I came in with my languages.
And the guys that went through summer Greek together, they were very tight because they went through this eight week course or 12 week course, which is pretty intense to do Greek in 12 weeks.
That’s amazing. And because of that, those guys were like bosom buddies.
That’s right. And they’ve gotten to know the faculty, the faculty have gotten to know them.
They know their strengths and weaknesses and they have a 12 week jump on you.
Yeah. Because maybe you’re too smart to be a pastor. I don’t know. You’ve got your languages done. So I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I’m not like my constant phrases. I’m the dumbest of my friends.
And I love that. There you go. That’s perfect. Yeah.
Because I’m only one in style. But you look at this program and maybe it’s not even just restricted to seminarians. Maybe it’s open to any young man that thinks that they have a call.
And it’s just a good way. And more time with a seminarian candidate prior to starting the seminary is better. That’s what I’m trying to say. What that program looks like. I’d love for it to be hard physical fitness things, situational things here. Try to teach a class on this subject with very little prep time. Answer this hard question from a layman, things like this.
It’s helpful. And it starts to very quickly dissolve the idea that being a pastor is about reading.
It’s about getting your PhD. It’s about being an academic. It’s not. Your hands should be constantly dirty. You should be constantly fatigued because you are the front line in a very real battle for these people’s souls. And the solution is quite simple, really. You need to preach and teach the gospel and administer the sacraments. But doing that in the real world is extremely difficult.
The application of academia is always harder. And it’s sort of putting on this facade of, oh, if you can sit in a classroom and learn and read a book, then you’ll be a great pastor.
That’s not always true. So I really like that idea. I love the idea of a much more transparent process of the objective and subjective standards that are being applied to each of the seminary candidates. Not just at the application level, but what is actually happening at the seminary?
Why would we dismiss somebody? That’s not well known. And I couldn’t find it anywhere.
And making that as public as possible, not to shame anybody. I don’t think you put somebody’s name up there and say, hey, this guy was doing XYZ and he’s a dirtbag. Absolutely not.
But you can say that. What would be the precipitating cause that we would say, you can’t do this.
Can you explain what you mean? Have the list of that standard. If you’re not meeting this, you’re going to be dismissed. If you’re not meeting this. Is that what you mean? That’s what I mean.
And maybe you can publicly say, here are some of the reasons we dismissed individuals in the past.
Have an aggregated general level. But these are things that are very helpful for fathers, pastors, other congregants to understand and not only guard against, but to talk to the young men and the congregation that may be interested. I think more transparency is better and better as you go forward. And that should be a continuous process. And that has the secondary effect of building up trust in the seminary. So not only do you get better recruitment because people know and are better educated on what a pastor is, but you get a higher success rate because the recruitment is better and that’s normal. Yeah. I think your point about like not being academics is really important.
I mean, you have to be capable academically. Yes, of course. But of course. I mean, you are not.
Pastors are generalists. Right. And they’re not in specified fields. They don’t get to, this is my specialization. They might have their interests that they can cultivate. And they have things that they’re better at, particularly in individual gifts. Yeah. But you know, I’ve got to, I’ve got to be competent in a ton of areas, I feel like I’ve got to understand a little bit of politics. And then when I’m outside of what I understand, I have to say, look, I don’t know. I know what the Bible says about these things. But you’re going to have to, you really have to be widely read in some cases.
Absolutely. Yeah. Widely read. And the ability to quickly, I think one of the harder things is to quickly assess a situation and figure out what you’re going to do. And like you said, the answer can be, I need to go figure this out. That’s okay. But being able to talk through that in very important situations and maybe even not very important situations, it’s a hard skill set to learn. Yeah.
And there are ways to assess who might be good at this. Yeah. Well, and you know, I’ve met a number of seminarians or, you know, even talking to my own boys like, this is, there are some things that I have to practice every day. And one of those things is being put into situations where people are either friendly or not friendly to who, you know, what I stand for. And you can practice that simply by starting conversations with the everyday people that you come across. Like, right. You know, if you’re, you know, running through McDonald’s to pick up your, your Coke or your paying for gas or and not at the pump or getting your groceries, like take the time to actually start a conversation, like when you get your haircut, these are everyday opportunities to practice some of those skills to see where it goes. Am I not going anywhere? Am I just, you know, stay at very surface level? But you’re, you are putting yourself out there to try to engage someone else to see what their thoughts are and then respond with your training. Right. Right. Yeah.
And this goes back to picking the right, the right man for the job that not only has those skill sets or certain skill sets or can be trained in certain skill sets, but also has the capacity to humbly, humbly seek to be better every single day. This is a hard thing. You need the mental, the mental acuity and the mental determination to do it. And, you know, I’m not perfect, perfect at this either. But you know, nobody’s perfect. I’m sure. Right. But, you know, I’m doing this and I haven’t had a call to be a pastor, but you can do this as a layman for sure. Yeah. As a pastor, you’re, you’re kind of held to the higher standard. You should be going through the list and saying, am I blameless? Am I doing these things? Not, not for your salvation, but for the office that you’ve been called into. That is the mark of being a professional is going through that testing yourself.
Continuous learning, continuously diving in. And like you said, getting your hands theoretically dirty by just talking to people around you and seeing, you know, where could you improve? And how can I spread the gospel of Christ to the world? Yeah. Well, I mean, in that way, that’s that like exemplary leadership. Yeah. Right. And I guess, you know, one of one of the things that I’ve done a lot of reading since being out is, which I don’t think I got much training in. And I think it would be helpful for people too is the, just that you being stated, you are like the leader. And what does it mean to lead? And how do you do it? Like people have figured this out. And I felt and maybe it was my own issue. Maybe they did teach it and I totally missed it. Totally could happen. But I felt that the gap in my training was, you know, I got a great education. And I thought, you know, some great training, but I wasn’t necessarily taught how to lead, you know, how to be the front man. Right. It’s very akin to being a 22, 23 year old, who is now the officer in charge of a platoon or a team where the average age is going to be older than you. But the key difference being I went through, gosh, I went through, let’s see, we have the basic school and that’s six months of leadership training.
And then an additional, what was it? About seven months of more focused training after that, all of which are leadership based. Yeah. I mean, sure you learn tactics, but you only learn them in as much as you are going to be the officer in charge and you to organize your platoon to accomplish that requirement. The whole thing is leadership training. And I think there’s a lot to be said to what you said, which is the whole thing is leadership training. It’s about the application of the theory that you’re learning. Learn the theory. Yes. But there’s a whole aspect of being a pastor. And like I said, these are things that organizations know how to screen for these things. It’s known. And the real question is, should we be applying this? And I think the answer is yes. I think we should apply the things that we’ve learned in accordance with biblical requirements to get the right man for the job. Yeah. So, you know, if we’re going to do like curricular reviews or that, you know, credential reviews of the seminaries and then also like pastors are out, you’d want some, someone, you’d want to write like people who are in business, people who have been in the military like you. And other arenas to be able to bring to bear the manner in which that assessment and selection happened or that evaluation happened so that you could bring all of those insights for the pastoral ministry, right? I think so. Yeah. I think so. And you make it as public as possible to get that descent. And, you know, there are going to be things that come out on each list that people don’t agree with. Yeah. But that’s okay. We don’t have to agree on everything. We don’t have to agree on every single, well, we do have to agree on the Lutheran confessions. That’s a requirement. Yeah. Exactly. But, you know, it’s very easy, I think, to come up with a long list of what we’re looking for and tie it back to the Bible into our confessions and say, this is, you can’t really argue with this one. This is just a reality of what it means to be a pastor.
This is a requirement. And here’s why. So, it sounds like, you know, this is sort of a call for, you’ve put forward your thing and you’re asking, all right, you know, CEOs of, you know, Fortune 500 companies, what is your thing? And all right, you know, small business owner, what’s your thing? All right, you know, people in the academic sphere, what’s your list? Let’s put them all together and let’s put our minds together. And then, you know, we all get to cross something off and we all get to add something and see what we come up with and then continue to evaluate and then start applying that. I don’t think that would be a bad idea at all. Yeah. And yeah, even in cross-vocations, there are things to look for. And I think we kind of shoot ourselves in the foot by saying, oh, this only applies to such and such vocation. Yeah, this is special. Maybe, maybe, that’s true, sure. Like, we don’t need our pastors to absolutely know how to weld. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but having it be a requirement is very silly. But there are just, there are Lutherans who care about the Lutheran Church. And I care because I have six kids. I want them to find Lutheran spouses and I want to go to church with all of my grandkids and great-grandkids and receive this sacrament at the altar and share the confessions because they are true. And so, we can pull together and do that by making sure that our flock is being fed with the true marks of the true church. And that’s where it starts. And I think our collective knowledge can do that.
I also don’t think it’s very difficult. We just have to be willing to come to the table and and apply what we know. Yeah. No, I think that that’s a good way forward to at least begin to say, here are the qualities that we’re actually looking for. That’s right. And what is currently in place today? Yeah. Are they doing those evaluations? And if so, what are they looking at? Yeah. I mean, everyone is going to say the qualities we’re looking for are listed in Timothy and Titus. Sure.
But I think it’s appropriate to say, well, what do those qualities look like?
Yes. And can we identify them in a man? Yeah. Yes. Yes, you can. It’s not terribly difficult. You just have to do it. Yeah. Okay. That’s super helpful. And then tailoring that training to bring those things out or to demonstrate competency in those areas or not. That’s right. In very controlled ways, increase stress to attempt to isolate one or more characteristics that you’re looking for.
And I mean, I really do like the situational approach to this. So what’s wrong with maybe during this this 12 week pre-course or seminary or during seminary? Just all of a sudden bring in some, is it we call them role players, essentially actors who are having some sort of disagreement that is sort of scripted, sort of non-scripted, and just see how a candidate deals with that.
You know, you could have, I mean, off the top of my head, you could have a couple coming in with a marital dispute, sort of off-hand. Maybe the candidate knows something about it or not.
But you just put them in there just to see, okay, this is kind of, this could happen to you. We know this sort of situation happens. How are you going to react? You don’t need to be perfect by any means.
But are you going to shut down? Yeah. Are you going to run out of the room? I don’t know. Yeah.
You know, I mean, I have heard, well, I mean, just in the most recent, for the life of the world, the magazine that the Fort Wayne Seminary puts out, the, you know, President Bruss and we are looking for the best, gracious numbers. And so like that’s super encouraging that they are on lookout for the best. Now, I can’t remember if he defined that and that’s that next step, right?
That’s the gap. Yeah. Yeah. What does the best look like? You can, yeah. And you can pay a lip service of we are looking for the best and that is good. That is a good mentality. But like you said, if you’re not quantifying that so that people can encourage the best, then you are not going to enact any change.
And I’ll use myself as an as an argument here. I’ve never felt a specific call to be a pastor.
I think it’s a wonderful vocation. I’ve never experienced that. But neither too, when I was growing up, did anyone ever tell me that it was an option? Nobody spoke to me about this at all. And I just think that if there are young men out there who are engaged in other things, but would make a great pastor and it was public, what that meant, then maybe you have more conversations and you get the right men into that vocation. And this is not very importantly, this is not a dig on current seminarians, current pastors, anything like that. Yeah. It’s a dig on the process by which we educate the Lutheran populace about what this is, like you said. And then also objectively look at it, continuously refine it and continuously learn about who can be successful and who’s got these gifts.
Yeah. And when you’ve got good guys as pastors, the kind of qualities you’re talking about, that is a great recruitment tool, like I want to be like that. That’s right. And I want to be the type of father that can raise a young man to be like the standard. Sure. Yeah. Right.
So do you have more articles coming out or did you? Yeah. No, I think so. I think the sort of conclusion of this, this sort of topic is kind of what we’ve been talking about, which is the layman’s requirements in the production of pastors. Okay. And not taking a backseat because in I’m toying with the with the article name, but you’re kind of playing a long game if you’re if you’re upset with something or you think something could be better. Well, your children can do these things if you raise them up correctly. Right. For these things. That’s the game that I’m playing.
I would love it if my my boys became pastors, but they’re not going to if I don’t talk to them about it.
And if I am not the example that they need to be, the pastors role in this is extremely important.
You know, if he’s going to teach confirmation, I also teach confirmation at home. I’m with my boys about 99% more than they are with their pastor. They’re their true example of what a pastor is going to be first their father and then of course their pastor. And so it starts with the lay people.
The lay people are the future of the Synod and that that means something and there are things that that we can do today that are important for the future of the church. Yeah, and I think this raises a really great point to just in terms of, you know, how are we catechizing? Are we making that difficult? Or are we, you know, what kind of standards do we have for for here are expectations when you become a member? That would be a conversation that could go along with all of this as well, right?
Yeah, I think so. It’s a it’s a it’s a good focus area to start the conversation and then let it dovetail from there. I think that’s important. I think you can talk about the conduct of a church as a whole.
That’s that’s a very objective thing from our Lutheran confessions.
The I mean, what you could extend this to what it means to be a Christian father, a Christian mother.
Like you said, catechizing in your homes. What should how often should we be reading the Lutheran confessions? I mean, you know, these are all works for sure. So they’re not salvific. Correct. But works are the output of faith. Right. And there are certain works that can strengthen your faith.
There are things you can do to make your faith stronger. The easiest one is to read your Bible. How many of us read our Bible every day? I don’t read it every day and I should. I know that I’m working on it.
But like you said, you start to you start to look at this and you start to reap the benefits of training people on the things that matter. And you can see that it sort of explodes into a number of different things that are all beneficial to the future of the LCMS. If that’s something that we want to see is an LCMS in the future, then these are all good things. Yeah.
Well, thanks for your work on this, Jarryd. It was great to read these things and then consider like my own training and how can I beef this up now? And even, you know, kind of gets the wheels turning in terms of, okay, so I’m in a circuit. How can I bring this to bear in the circuit to kind of have iron sharpening iron there as well? Right. Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah. I didn’t know what the reception would be and I hope it’s helpful. And I hope also that people understand that I do this out of love for the LCMS and confidence that what we believe is true. Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s always the that should be sort of the default position when we hear criticism. Sure. We should assume that the other person desires the best until proof and otherwise. That’s right. Yes.
Because they don’t always, but until proven otherwise, we should we should kind of start with that like that. They’re actually, I mean, because sometimes sometimes we don’t know the best way to say it.
And so we just say it. That’s right. And it’s incumbent upon us to assume, look, they’re passionate.
They love their pastor and their church and they just want the best for it. So take it.
Just take that how it is. And until proven otherwise, they’re just trying to make things better.
That’s right. Have the conversation. Yeah. Exactly. Well, thanks for this conversation.
And I look forward to the next post that you have coming out. Well, thank you very much. And I really appreciate you having me and for having this conversation. It’s much easier to speak than it is to sit down and write a digestible article. So I appreciate the opportunity. All right. Well, hopefully we’ll have a chance to meet each other in person at some point down the line.
Yeah, I’d love that. That’d be great. All right. God bless you. You too. Thank you, pastor.
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