I’ve been struggling what if anything to write about our Synodical Presidential election. I suppose I will start with the simple facts. Matthew Harrison, who has been Synodical President for 16 years/5 terms, has been reelected to a sixth 3 year term. To anyone handicapping the election that result would not have been a surprise. The surprise was in how that came about. It took three ballots. He won on the first ballot his previous times often with vote shares approaching 60%. This time his share was 50.1%. He got 4 votes over the absolute minimum on the 3rd ballot. Now after 16 years the “time for someone else” vote is going to grow naturally. But this particular vote was not just that. Todd Wilken, the host of Issues, Etc, I think has it right. “The Venn diagram of voters against Harrison often had a single point of overlap – anyone but Harrison.” There were people in the Synod mad over the closure of various Concordia System schools and various lawsuits around those schools. There are people mad because they want expansion of ways onto the ministerial roster. There are people mad because they want a reduction in the ways onto the roster. There are people mad over Harrison talking more explicitly about the order of service and Lutheran distinctives. There are people mad that he doesn’t cast out of the synod those who are not using “our hymnbook.” And behind all of this anxiety is the fact of decline. Peak reported membership was around 2.8M in 1970 – the year before my birth. The last published reports (2026 Lutheran Annual) that number is 1.6M. And of course membership is not attendance. On any given Sunday the last reported attendance numbers were a little over 500K.
Something that I believe to be the truth that impacted this election, and impacts what this summer’s convention is going to debate, falls under Hemmingway’s observation about bankruptcy. How did it happen? Slow, then fast. I think the reality is that many congregations within the Synod have reached that “fast” part of the decline. And there are a variety of reasons. There are congregations on the great plains that are just the victims of their emptying out. What used to take 100 people to farm now takes 1. The town I grew up in at that time had a population of 6000. Today it is 3000. In more populated areas either you have congregations spaced before the advent of the car, or based on assumptions rooted in 1960s attendance and growth, we spaced congregations too close. And when those assumptions didn’t pan out, you’ve had undersized, undercapitalized and in competition with each other congregations for decades. All of that exacerbated by other changes, like the wholesale move of women into the workforce. Congregations that responded by hiring people to do what used to be done by volunteers benefited. Those that did not saw entire generations leave. And none of that incorporates all the one off church fights that blighted otherwise healthy congregations. And none of that even touches doctrinal rails or failures.
All of this reflects our Old Testament lesson this week too much for my comfort. You’d have to back up to the start of the chapter – Jeremiah 28. It takes place before the full exile, but the King of Judah and the temple artifacts – ark, candelabras, etc. – have been deported to Babylon. Jeremiah has been prophesying this – absent repentance, absent change – for more than 28 years. But Hananniah, a temple priest stands up and says he has a word from the LORD. The King and the temple vessels would be returned within two years and peace would be established, that Babylon would be broken. It reminds me of what many a Synod President has said over the years. That everything is fine. Everything will be fine. That nothing large needed to be done. Many congregations have heard that over the decades. Meanwhile Jeremiah hears Hananiah and responds. “Amen! May the LORD do so.” It is not that this wouldn’t be nice. But Jeremiah points everyone back to the authentic prophets that everyone accepts. Is it ever that easy? They all prophesied something like “rend your hearts, not your garments.” They all prophesied absent doing something hard, returning to the LORD your God, returning to you first love, “war, famine, pestilence.”
God works in a peculiar way his wonders to perform. He works by death and resurrection. He does a new thing, and the old thing often has to die for the new to come in. Whether that death is the death of the old Adam in ourselves that often stands in the way of the Kingdom, or that death is not just the loss of the temple artifacts, but the temple itself, it happens. But the Kingdom ours remains. Because the Kingdom is not of stones – even such great stones as the temple. The Kingdom is the living stones built on Christ. And God has placed that stone. It shall not be moved.