The Elephant Family in the Parlor
South Korea is facing an existential crisis (as are many western and western-influenced nations). What does this have to do with the church? This documentary - though completely secular - has application to us in the LCMS.
As the narrator points out, Korean culture is very much like the dominant Germanic heritage of most LCMS members. We come from hard-working stock. We are a priestly people. We come from a past where tradition was valued, and where family life was revered. And we are living in a time of cultural change and transition. We are seeing very similar population declines in our churches. And even as pundits and social scientists and politicians grapple with the issue in the secular world - and in many cases, offering “solutions” that exacerbate the problem - so too do our church growth experts and those in elected offices in our church body seem to be floundering for answers.
The bottom line is that the baby elephant in the room is the demographics of smaller families. The mother elephant in the room is feminism. And the father elephant is liberalism.
Our pre-boomer and boomer church-growthers are beating the same tired anti-liturgical drum - the latest example being 81-year old former synod president The Rev. Honorary Dr. Gerald Kieschnick’s complaint that if we were only less reverent at the altar and stopped chanting, our churches would somehow grow like mold on a piece of cheese left out in the sun.
President Kieschnick’s contemporary, the self-proclaimed church growth expert, the Rev. Dr. David Luecke, wrote just last year:
In my lifetime, I have seen a major innovation among Lutherans that, judging by results, has not worked out well. This was the introduction of an increasing amount of formal rituals into worship. In the decades after World War II, the slogan was “Liturgical Renewal.” The introduction of liturgies going back centuries provided excitement at the time. But such innovation, in my opinion, has not worn well over time. I will be strongly criticized by others in my church body for saying this, but I think highly formal liturgy is associated with stagnant and declining church life today. It was a wrong turn…
Greater reliance on the sacraments was basic to liturgical renewal. But I worry that increased ritual has weakened their effectiveness.
The liturgical renewal movement brought the more frequent practice of the Lord’s Supper. The goal was every service, and the norm now seems to be twice a month. What got lost is special personal preparation for the experience of receiving Christ’s body and blood.
The 19th-century congregational practice of communion had much to offer. It was celebrated four times a year… Pastors can work hard to make the application personal by explaining the symbols. But why not just make the Gospel personal without the extra layer of symbols and ritual? In practical terms, the more time spent on distributing communion, the less time for preaching the Word in an hour-long service. The recommended sermon length has been reduced to twelve minutes, with the rationale that people now have a short attention span. But the better solution to that problem is to make sermons more effective at holding attention with good illustrations and application to contemporary life.
Our younger, millennial “missional” crowd is pushing similar bromides. While, of course, less hostile to liturgy than their boomer mentors, these younger ‘growthers look to corporate leadership strategies, organizational vision-casting, and the leveraging of technology, along with structural “solutions” - like multi-site campuses, screens in the chancel, and cheap alternatives to seminary training - as somehow being the silver bullet.
But nobody seems to notice the elephant family in the parlor.
And while we like to think that we are immune to liberal ideas, ideals, and ideologies (not being as far down the road as the genderfluid girlboss ELCgAy), the truth of the matter is that liberalism and feminism constitute the very air that we breath.
In nearly all statements and sermons coming out of our seminaries, the word “pastors” has been replaced by “pastorsanddeaconesses.” A glance at our CPH offerings shows a solid commitment to women writing our devotions and theology. And even pointing this out will elicit howls of “Sexism! Misogyny! Homophobia!” Well, not the last one yet, but it’s on the way. I found these thoughts from a writer named Ben Zeisloft, writing from a Reformed perspective, to be applicable to our context as well:
I am by no means against women pursuing higher education, especially when that higher education is distinctively Christian.
But we have seen many institutions which started specifically as a seminaries to train men as pastors start to multiply adjacent programs and admit large numbers of women to their classes, frequently to bring in more tuition dollars.
This is not only mission drift from their original stated objectives and core competencies, but also a serious culture shock which inhibits the ability of men to train for ministry.
We have seen that admitting more women as leaders in our institutions, from corporations and the military to academia and the church, always conforms those institutions to feminine social standards and erodes the ability of men to exercise masculinity, including godly masculinity.
But men training to be pastors must have freedom to train according to their nature.
God restricted the office of pastor, elder, and overseer to men rather than women not for some arbitrary or capricious reason, but because men are uniquely equipped in their natures to lead the flock, guard sound doctrine, rebuke lies and subversion, and make hard decisions in a manner that is more difficult for women, whose natural compassion and empathy is a wonderful asset in other domains but a liability in this area.
The same realities apply when considering why God calls men to lead the family and the state. These institutions need to be led by masculine men, or else they crumble from internal subversion and external threat.
We have long ago submitted and surrendered to the culture of contraception and women in the workforce. We have joined the world in subjectively devaluing the worth of wives and mothers, while honoring women who forge careers in church, state, the military, academia, and industry.
And so, ignoring the elephant family, we tinker around with things that are either irrelevant (like making use of apps in the Divine Service) or counterproductive (like essentially abolishing the Divine Service). We grope around for ways to get more you-know-whats in the pews (or cushioned chairs), ways, that instead of looking to biblical models of family and societal life, are focused on trendy “solutions” (including DEI). If we can only attract immigrants - especially those who are the less like the bad old legacy, Germanic, European stock - the better.
Fortunately, our Gen-Z young people largely seem to know what time it is. They are less influenced by programs and marketing, not to mention baptized wokery. As a rule, they are more interested in transcendence and authenticity (in the real, not fake, sense). They are, again, in general, much more conservative and traditional and liturgical than their elder millennial brothers and sisters and their Boomer and Gen-X parents. They actually want all of those things that the octogenarian experts, the Rev. Honorary Dr. Kieschnick and the Rev. Dr. Luecke, loathe and blame.
They also want to be fathers and mothers. They see through the liberal feminism that poisons the air we breathe in church, state, and society. They are going to face challenges, and we need to be there to support them.
So the next few years and decades will be interesting. But we should not be surprised to see more numerical losses before we see gains. The demographic tidal wave is only beginning. But the rebuilding project has already started. Rome is falling and is overrun by barbarians, but the City of God will overcome even the gates of hell. There will be Benedicts and Augustines and Bonifaces yet to come. But for now, we in the west and in the world, are being judged for being selfishly anti-family and anti-child. But we can take heart, for Jesus has overcome the world.
I would encourage everyone to take a look at this video and consider how much overlap there is with our own contemporary American context of confessional Lutheranism. The secular analysis, and the secular Confucian culture of South Korea, lack what we have: the biblical testimony of what is real, what is true ontologically, in the world of men and women, in the family, in society, and in the church.
We have God’s Word and the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. We are not of the world, but are of the Word. The world increasingly cannot answer the question, “What is a woman?” But we have the Word of God explicitly spelling out not only what a woman is, but showing womanhood in her pre-fall glory: Eve, the mother of her children and helpmeet to her husband. We have the biblical testimony of men and women reflecting the glory of our Lord and His church in Holy Matrimony - with children as a blessing.
And in addition to biblical testimony, we have the example of natural revelation. The elephants continue to reproduce undeterred by liberalism and feminism, because they act in accordance with their created nature, male and female, rather than in rebellion against it.
We can learn from the elephant family in the parlor.