July 14, 2023 Show with Jamison Hardy on “Pastoral Leadership: Shepherding & Caring for God’s People”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 14th day of July, 2023.

And before I announce my guest today and the theme that we will address, I just have a breaking news report, which is especially important to me since I am a native Long Islander, lived in Long Island all my life, or should I say on Long Island all my life, until 2014 when I relocated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

But an arrest has finally been made of a suspect for the infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings on Long Island, a cold case from over a decade ago, and the murders are believed to go back possibly two or three decades.

And the suspect, a New York City architect, lives only about 10 minutes from my former home on Long Island. So I will be letting you know about updates on this case. I may even have a former homicide detective who is a Christian from Suffolk County, Long Island, on the program in the near future.

That has not yet been confirmed, but I will give you updates as I hear them myself, and you will likely also see them on your own televisions. I think this is making national news. But I am so thrilled to have a first-time guest today.

In fact, you might even want to take the opportunity to call, text, or email, or however else you communicate with those that you love these days, and let them know, especially if they're Lutherans. You might want to let them know that Jamison Hardy is my guest today, who is the 21st president and bishop of the English District for the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, and he is associate pastor of Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church of Heartland, Michigan.

And today, we're going to be addressing his book, Pastoral Leadership, Shepherding and Caring for God's People. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the first time ever to Iron Trumpet and Zion Radio, Bishop Jamison Hardy.

Thank you, brother.

Well, it's great to have you on the program. Why don't you tell our listeners about Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church of Heartland, Michigan.

Yeah, thank you. Our Savior Lutheran Church and School is a member church of the English District of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, a confessional and liturgical congregation off of 59 there in Heartland, a great group of folks concerned about proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, the love of the Father through His Son, and also being engaged in life in witness to Christ as well as in the public square and in all that we do in our vocations where we serve.

And so, just a blessing to be a pastor there at Our Savior with Pastor Chris Thomas, senior pastor, and serving God's people there.

Yeah, and in fact, I have the honor and privilege of interviewing Christopher Thoma, your pastor, next week on Thursday, the 20th of July, God willing. And I'm looking forward to that as we discuss his book, Ten Ways to Kill Your Pastor.

And folks, that is not an actual blueprint or plan on how to actually murder your pastor. It's warnings about how you are possibly doing things that will ultimately kill your pastor so that you will cease doing those things.

But I hope that you mark your calendars for that and tune into that program. Before we even go into your personal testimony of salvation, which is something that we always do with first-time guests, perhaps you can give a disclaimer or a further clarification of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod.

There are many people in evangelicalism from all stripes of theological backgrounds and denominations who are very ignorant of the Lutheran Church in general. And when you mention Lutheranism to them or any particular Lutheran minister or church, they wrongly associate you with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which is also called ELCA and is also notorious for being a very left-wing and, dare I say, apostate group.

And many of us around the country, if not around the globe, were appalled recently when it made the news when an ELCA female minister performed or, should I say, recited a blasphemous, grotesque, and vile creed that she called the Sparkle Creed.

Perhaps you were familiar with it.

Oh, I am.

Yeah, if you could please distinguish yourself and the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, from that horrific group.

Yeah, I appreciate you asking about that, Chris. Even to this very day, about 1 o 'clock this afternoon, my eldest son sent me a text with a link to that Sparkle Creed. He had just heard it, and I would love to just share with you what he said.

He goes, Dad, this is why I spend so much time defending our church, because people do not understand we are not them. Yeah, the distinction is very simply this. There are three mainline, many more overall Lutheran Church bodies, but three mainline, ELCA, ELCA being the largest, Missouri Synod Lutheran Church being the second largest, and the Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church.

And sadly, I will say, the root of Lutheranism, faith in the pure gospel of Jesus Christ, by faith alone, in the pure gospel alone, by God's grace alone we are saved, is the foundation for, quote, unquote, Lutheranism.

Many, many years ago, the ELCA started floating towards a much, much more liberal understanding, and I'll be just as bold as you to say an apostate and heretical position on many, many topics, not the least of which is doing the very thing that the Bible says not to do, and that is change the Word of God.

I think the ELCA also is more concerned about popularity rather than they are to biblical fidelity and confessional integrity. And that's what the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod prides ourselves on.

We believe that the Bible is God's Word to his people unchanged. We hold to the inerrancy and the infallibility of the original Greek and Hebrew, and we hold to the clear gospel witness that Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, both God and man, born of a virgin, came into this world, died on the cross, rose from the dead, descended into hell, and conquered sin, death, and the power that Satan has.

And that is, you know, really traditionally the Lutheran understanding. Being children of the Catholic Church and the Reformation of Martin Luther, the gospel is the central focus, you know, the grace of God through the merits and works of Christ alone.

And yeah, you know, Chris, it really is problematic in my life because I'll be on planes traveling all over the 21 states that the English district covers, as well as Canada, the Ontario province of Canada, where I have a number of churches.

And people will often, when they find out what I do, they'll ask me questions like, Are you those Lutherans? And my answer is, by the grace of God, never will we be.

Praise God for that. And I can recall decades ago, I was at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, which is a Calvinist conference. I happen to be a thoroughgoing Calvinist and Reformed Baptist.

But I remember seeing in attendance, I think it was on the registration line, a gentleman with a clerical outfit on and clerical collar, and I just greeted him and said, Where do you pastor? And he leaned forward and whispered, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

I said, Really? And he said, There are some of us who are still believers, a tiny remnant, but we do exist. So I guess there are like many denominations. I even recently interviewed a pastor, believe it or not, in the United Church of Christ, who is a thoroughgoing Bible-believing Christian, but he is in the process of leading his congregation out from among them.

So that is also good news. But you'd be shocked sometimes, folks, when you do find a Bible believer, even a pastor in a very left-wing and even apostate denomination. And I hope that most of those men eventually make every effort to leave those groups.

But if anybody who either lives in Heartland, Michigan, or is passing through there, visiting there, or if you have family, friends and loved ones there, I would recommend that you look up their website so that you can visit this congregation.

And that website is OurSaviorHeartland .org. OurSaviorHeartland .org. And by the way, am I pronouncing Heartland correctly or is it Heartland?

Yeah, it's Heartland. I mean, it's just Heartland. You know, it's ironic because when I was a young boy, I grew up at St. Matthew's in Westland, Michigan, and I was attending up in Flint, which is north of Heartland.

And as a young eighth grader, Our Savior in Heartland used to have a building close to where we are now. They had a carpeted gym. And as a young boy, I competed in basketball in the old church gym, and now I'm a pastor of that church.

So it's really a small world we live in, and Lutheranism really is a small place when it comes to connections.

Yes. Well, as I said earlier, we have a tradition here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest provide for us a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

And I'd love to hear your story.

Yeah, well, thank you. You know, being Lutheran, I was born into a Lutheran family in Bay City, Michigan. And as such, we believe that in infant baptism, my mother and father brought me to the waters of holy baptism as a young child and was given the gift of the Holy Spirit there in the sacrament of holy baptism.

And I grew up in a family, in fact, an extended family. My great-grandmother had six children, and those six children averaged three children, and then my father's generation averaged three children, and now my generation.

And at my confirmation in eighth grade, at my confirmation, public confirmation, my grandmother, who was a German speaker still, was sitting in the front row. And my pastor, Ralph Fisher at the time, could speak German, and he spoke to her, and they had a conversation how at that time, my great-grandmother was responsible for 176 direct descendants, either children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren in the church.

And so for my family, faith is kind of a legacy in terms of, you know, parents bringing their children to hear the Word of God. And we believe very firmly in the sanctity of life as well. And, you know, from the very moment of conception, we encourage our mothers, especially carrying children, to be in the house of God.

Testimony to that is Mary, the mother of Jesus, visiting John the Baptist. And the biblical text there, as you know, says when she entered the room, the baby within leaped for joy at the presence of the Savior.

Amen. And so, you know, the idea that faith in my family has always been legacy-driven from the perspective of it's an expectation that we participate in our life of faith. And I'll say again, too, when it comes to my life in faith, it is a life in faith, not a Sunday morning activity.

Faith is not something that rises up when the bells toll at church. It is something that we live with on a day-to-day basis. We live under the grace of God. And for me, you know, I've just been a faithful child of God by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit since very, very early on in my life.

And so, you know, that's the glory of being in the church.

Calling to the Ministry and Becoming a Bishop

Now, when did you realize that God had placed a call upon your life to become a pastor, and not only a pastor, but eventually a bishop?

That's a great question. My pastor told me in third grade that I was going to be a pastor, and I told him, never. I'm going to play football for the Detroit Lions. And thank God that didn't work.

And that could only be because you live in Michigan and for no other reason.

I mean, I wish—I mean, that would be a great story if I could tell you I played for the Lions. But I'll get to my Lions connection in a second because it's pretty cool. He told me in third grade, and so I went to Concordia University in Wisconsin, where I was a two-time national finalist wrestler, captain of the team.

And last—October 21, by the way, I was inducted to the Hall of Fame for wrestling. And so it's one of our church colleges. And currently, Concordia, Wisconsin, is owner and has a second campus here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at Concordia University, Ann Arbor.

And I went for teacher education. So I have an undergraduate degree in broad field social science. I was going to be a Lutheran high school teacher. And I've had people ask me that question, Chris, you know, when did God give you the call?

And I said every time he called, I hung up. And I just—it was never—there's no dramatic, emotionalistic kind of revelatory moment except this. I was doing youth ministry at Concordia, Wisconsin, my sophomore year in the summer.

And I was the designated driver from this perspective. I got an hour nap because we did these overnight lock-ins, right? So I got an hour nap so I could drive us back to the university. And I got up from my hour nap, and we were driving back to the university early in the morning.

My colleagues were all sleeping. And I realized I did not want to do this the rest of my life, meaning youth ministry, you know, lock-ins. And it just wasn't the gift God gave me. And I thought to myself, what can I do to still serve?

And I kind of realized that God gave me the mouth and he gave me the heart and the mind and that he wanted me to use my gift in proclamation of the gospel. And so from my junior year at college forward, I wasn't pre-seminary.

I was teacher education, but I knew I was going to the seminary. And so I enrolled at Concordia University—excuse me, Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And my senior year, I became a part of the pre-seminary group.

So I was not in that school at the university, but I was brought in when all the recruiters were there. So, yeah, my revelatory moment was very minor in that it was just that I realized what I was doing in terms of youth ministry was not what God wanted me to do in becoming a pastor was.

And it goes back to my third grade year when Pastor Fisher said, you're going to be a pastor. He planted the seed and the Holy Spirit watered it. And by the way, I'm joyful to say I was his 38th disciple that went to the seminary and he passed.

I have six that I've gotten so far at age 50 to the seminary, and I'm well behind my pastor. But by God, I continue whenever I visit my churches to see young men and to say to them, the Spirit rests on you.

When are you going to go to the seminary? And he did it to me, and I try to do it for others because the revelation for me was later on in life when I realized, yes, I am doing what God is asking me, and he gave me these skills to be able to do this.

Now, how did you become a bishop? In fact, I didn't even know until fairly recently that Lutherans had bishops. I had an interview, I can't remember how long ago, it wasn't that long ago, with Matt Heisey of the Lutheran Heritage Foundation on his book, The Gates of Hell.

And during that discussion, he had mentioned Lutheran bishops, and I didn't even know that you guys had them. So why don't you tell me about how you became a bishop, and what would your function and roles be?

Well, yes, and you correctly, at the beginning, I am president and bishop. And there's 35 districts in the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod, most of which are geographical. My district is non-geographical.

And how me, the English district, and the SELC district of the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod are non-geographics. And here's how it happened. In 1911, the English-speaking Synod was a mission of the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod for about 15 years before.

And like good Germans, of which I am, heritage-wise, Germanic, they wanted the gospel to be spoken to English people, but they didn't want English people in their churches. So they created this English Synod, where they spoke the church gospel in English.

Well, in 1911, after much debate and many synodical conventions where they said no, they accepted the English Synod in as a district, or in the Catholic terminology, a diocese, an adjudicatory of the body.

And so since 1911, we've been a district of the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod. And every three years, we have elections for officers, and they elect the president and bishop of the district, along with vice presidents, treasurer, secretary, and all that stuff.

I was actually elected at 40 and a half years old to the position of bishop and president of the English district, which is the youngest ever in the district's history, and at that time, the second youngest ever in the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod.

And it's done in a very electoral way, and nominations, and then the General Assembly elects. But there are two districts in the Missouri Synod that officially call their district president, bishop, and president, and it's mine, and then from your home area, the Atlantic District, which is the greater city of New York in the lower southern part of New York City.

And so there's a big movement in the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod to return to the biblical verbiage of bishop as an overseer, not in a ecclesiastical authority way of saying, Chris, you're a pastor, you're going to move over here.

I don't have that authority. I have the spiritual responsibility for 157 congregations and all called workers in the English district, and that is the ecclesiastical power that I have to be able to put people on suspension if they're having issues and become no longer above reproach, according to the New Testament.

But truly, I'm not like a Catholic bishop in that way. I don't have authority over the properties of the congregations. I can't tell my pastors where to go. They get individual calls from congregations.

But it's a joy because my people understand me as the shepherd to the shepherds who shepherd the sheep. And so I'm one of few district president and bishops in the Missouri Synod who also has a call to be a pastor.

So as you articulated, I'm an associate pastor at Our Savior in Heartland, and I teach in the school every week. I'll be preaching this Sunday at Our Savior, but I'm on the road about 80 percent of the time.

So eight out of 10 Sundays I'm on the road. And so it's just an ecclesiastical term, and I think people are starting to understand that it's better that we use the direct words that the Bible uses rather than man-made words.

And so I'm the president of the Corporation English District, and I'm the bishop of the adjudicatory, which is the body called the English District in the Missouri Synod.

Lutheranism, Rome, and the Authority of Scripture

Now, it might be also wise, just as I had you do earlier, contrasting yourself with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which you and I agree is very leftist. In fact, it is neither evangelical nor Lutheran, nor would I really categorize it as a church either.

But another thing that people will commonly say to me when I have any kind of a discussion where Lutheranism is brought up, another thing that will be said in ignorance by many evangelicals is, oh, they're just like the Catholic Church except their priests get married.

That's not the case either. I know that especially two of the Solos of the Reformation, of course Lutherans believe in all of the Solos of the Reformation, but the two that Lutherans are known for championing, especially those who are in conservative Bible-believing Lutheran denominations, are Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura.

And those are both despised by the Church of Rome. The Roman Catholic Church sometimes will give lip service to the other Solas as if they are in agreement with them, but they could never be logically consistent if you were to pursue a cross-examination with them on that.

But the ones that they clearly object to are Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura. Why don't you pick up the ball there and contrast Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, with the Church of Rome?

Yeah, well, let me first say about ELCA, you brought that up. The truth of the matter is that you are right. The despising of faith alone through Scripture alone cannot be compatible, like you were saying earlier, with something like the Sparkle Creed.

And it cannot be compatible with openly homosexual lifestyle when God made them male and female. Now, I will say, not in disagreement in any way to what you said, but in maybe a little bit of a contrast to say this, the Roman Catholic Church actually does have a confession in inerrancy of the Scriptures.

Of course, of course. But Sola Scriptura, though, is something that they openly reject.

Right, because they add the pontifical or the papal decrees as co-equal. And so, yeah, we don't do that. I mean, we stick solely to Scripture alone, as it is written. As I say, we hold to inerrancy of the original Greek and Hebrew.

And, you know, in terms of bishop power, the Roman Catholic bishops and, may I say, too, the ELCA has bishops, and their bishops actually have authority over the property and over everything in the Church.

And we believe in the Missouri Synod and what's called individual congregational autonomy, which means every congregation of my 157 churches has individual ownership of their property, has the ability to make deals, can add to, sell property.

All that can be done on their own, whereas in the Roman Catholic Church and the ELCA, that has to be approved by the bishop. And so that's a sharp contrast. And when you start talking about faith alone, you know, this is a very important thing, because in the social fights of our country today, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod's greatest ally, by the way, is actually the Roman Church.

They are one of the few churches left that, with us, side by side, defend the sanctity of life, marriage being between one man and one woman. They still defend these very biblical and scriptural things.

And to be very frank with you, I told my people just a couple weeks ago, I can't even believe in this world today that we are having conversations societally about the truth, excuse me, about the theory that there's more than two genders, let's say.

The male and female. And so when you're in an inerrancy Bible church, like we are, it's catastrophic even in the mind to consider that there's a conversation that can be had where that is even on the table.

And so you move to abortion now, right? And you move to this whole idea of the, you know, the commandments of Christ, thou shall not commit, excuse me, shall not murder the fifth commandment in Lutheran tradition.

And, you know, there's no way around that, right? And then you start getting into all these exceptions because people like exceptions because exceptions become the rule. And that is what's happened in the ELCA.

Look, back in the 70s when the Missouri Senate had our great battle in 1973 over the inerrancy of scripture. If you were watching the ELCA convention about six or seven years ago, all the men at the microphone arguing for these most liberal positions were all the guys that were annexed from the Missouri Senate in the early 70s because they don't believe in the inerrancy of scripture.

And when you don't believe in the inerrancy of scripture, you get to a place where all of these things are not only on the table, they're encouraged. It's encouraged to fulfill every selfish human desire because why would God allow you to have that desire if he didn't want you to fulfill it?

That is to say, eat yourself to death, you know, have sexual unions with people that you're not supposed to, have sexual unions outside of your marriage between husband and wife, killing babies, stealing.

I mean, any number of things are on the table because when you throw out inerrancy, you no longer have the law of God to guide you. And that's where I think even Rome goes wrong.

Yes. And while I agree with you that Roman Catholic individuals are often our allies in the battles of social mores and biblical ethics and so on, and we often vote for the same people and so on. Their Pope certainly is not a reliable individual that we would ever count on for being a voice for even the social and moral issues of society as he constantly declares a very weak position on homosexuality.

He gave the Roman Catholic mass to Nancy Pelosi, who was denied the mass by her own bishop because of her views in favor of murdering unborn children. And we could go on and on and on about how Pope Francis is not only not a Christian in his viewpoints and beliefs and practices, but he's not even historically a Roman Catholic.

In fact, I heard a comedian say not long ago when he said, the phrase is the Pope Catholic used to be a rhetorical question.

Yeah, yeah. Well, look, Benedict, the previous pope, you know, he was much more confessional and conservative in these views that you're talking about. And I agree with you that the current pope is really weak, but it also leads back to Luther's point about the office of the papacy is the Antichrist, meaning that if you place your trust in the authority of one man in the case of Roman Catholic Church to be on par with the word of God itself, you've already lost from the beginning.

Right. And that was one of the things that Luther walked away from when he walked away from the Roman Church. He didn't just give up on everything that Rome had, including the liturgy and including some of these very righteous things.

But he certainly said our allegiance is to God alone, to the word alone, by faith alone, in grace alone. And I appreciate you bringing up the Solos because they're the great Reformation banners. It's the great context in which our church, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, was founded on.

Right. Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for my guest, Bishop Jameson J. Hardy. Our email address is ChrisArnson at Gmail dot com.

ChrisArnson at Gmail dot com. As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence in your country of residence. If you live outside the USA. And since we are speaking about pastoral leadership and shepherding and caring for God's people, I readily would understand that there might be people sending in personal and private questions because of their need of pastoral care and perhaps their disappointment with the way that they have been ignored in their church or not cared for.

Obviously, you would want to remain anonymous bringing up questions like that. But if it's a general question, please just give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Bishop Jameson J. Hardy right after these messages from our sponsors.

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