The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for May 16, 2024

Permit me to venture this thought: Without awareness of what’s going on in the lives of people outside your every Sunday come to church folks, your congregation will slowly decline.

Close to home research from George Barna: “Only 6% of Christians have a biblical worldview.” That is being passed onto children. “Five beliefs central to the Christian faith are being widely rejected by children in the 8-to-12 age range.” 1. “The Bible: “America’s children are receiving an inadequate introduction to the Bible.” 2. Absolute Truth: “While a robust 97% of 8-to-12-year-olds believe that there is an identifiable difference between right and wrong, a paltry one out of five (21%) believes that absolute moral truth exists.” 3: Means to Salvation. “One out of every three preteens (36%) believes that the means to eternal salvation is by confessing their sins and asking Jesus Christ to save them from the consequences of their sin. That is the same proportion as found among adults (35%). 4. Life Purpose: “Only one-quarter of preteens (27%) identified knowing, loving, and serving God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength as their chief purpose in life.” 5. Success: “Only one out of six (17%) consider the most accurate definition of life success to be consistent obedience to God.”

Barna: “Children are intellectual and spiritual sponges in their preteen years. They are desperately trying to make sense of the world, their identity, their purpose, and how to live a meaningful and satisfying life. Parents, in particular, have a duty to focus on and invest in the development of their child’s worldview, which is simply their decision-making filter for life. If parents do not fill that vacuum, other sources—such as the media, the schools, and even the child’s peers—will influence that worldview construction.” (Culture Research Center, Arizona Christian University)

I’ll bet you the family farm that I can find young parents in our congregation who don’t have a Christian worldview. Sense of urgency, anyone?

he Meyer Minute for May 13, 2024

Our town of Collinsville has a fine Main Street, filled with restaurants and businesses. One business specializing in quilts has the clever name, “O’ Sew Personal.” That name reminds me of one of the sweetest stories about mothers in the Bible.

A man named Elkanah had two wives. (Some men did that back in the days of the Old Testament. In our New Testament times, it’s only one man and one woman. One man, one woman symbolizes the union of Christ with His bride the Church). Wife Peninnah teased and mocked wife Hannah for not having children. A pious woman, Hannah took her heartbreak to the Lord in prayer. Rev. Ken Klaus of The Lutheran Hour used to say that when you pray, sometimes the Lord’s answer is “yes.” Other times the Lord says, “no, but I’ll give you something better.” Well, the Lord did give Hannah a child, Samuel. In profound gratitude to God, Hannah literally gave Samuel back to the Lord. When Samuel had been weaned, Elkanah and Hannah took him to live with the priest Eli in Shiloh. Now, here’s the sweet verse. “Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy clothed with a linen ephod. And his mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice.” (1 Samuel 2:18-19). O’ Sew Personal!

There may be some philosophizing and theologizing about motherhood, but I suspect most people observed Mother’s Day by thinking of the little, personal things that mom did for us. Sewing. Cooking. Disciplining. Worrying. Loving. And for many of us, leading us to Jesus and His Church. The first great commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Hannah knew that. Making a little robe for her son was honoring God’s second great commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18; see also Matthew 22:34-40). If you think of our relationship with God as vertical, the little, often unnoticed things we do for family and others, is the horizontal. Both are true worship of God. O’ Sew Personal!

The Meyer Minute for May 9, 2024

“American religious belief and practice have been overtaken by a spiritual ennui and drift” (Brent Orrel, The Bulwark). Fancy word, “ennui.” It means, “a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction: boredom” (Merriam Webster Online). That describes the disheartened spirit of many congregations, just going through the motions.

Sure, there are cultural explanations, but I believe we pastors could do more. Not only talk about resurrection, we should speak much more about Christ’s Ascension and what it means for us in the challenges of everyday living. In Romans 6:1-11, Paul says Christ was raised, that’s history, and we will one day be raised, obviously that’s the future. What’s now? “We too might walk in newness of life.” That’s about you and me; but where is Christ right now? He is ascended, exalted, Lord over all, leading us by His Spirit (see Romans 8:9-17).

N.T. Wright: The Ascension is “a central and vital feature without which all sorts of other things start to go demonstrably wrong. What happens when you downplay or ignore the ascension? The answer is that the church expands to fill the vacuum.” It would be revealing to study church publications. How much do they promote what the church is doing versus talking about Jesus? Wright: “Only when we grasp firmly that the church is not Jesus and Jesus is not the church—when we grasp, in other words, the truth of the ascension, that the one who is indeed present with us by the Spirit is also the Lord who is strangely absent, strangely other, strangely different from us and over against us…only then are we rescued from both hollow triumphalism and shallow despair” (Surprised by Hope, 109. 112-113).

Leonard Pitts, Jr.: “Small wonder the church is shrinking. And yet, even when they feel let down by the church, seekers don’t stop seeking. Note that Gallup also reports that…as many as 87% of us still profess belief in God. That’s a minor miracle. You might even call it good news. And it speaks to the challenge – and opportunity – facing every preacher watching a congregation dwindle…. Yes, the church is shrinking. But they know God is not.” (The Miami Herald, in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 7, 2021, A11).

Today is Ascension Day. How is your church observing it? And not just today, pastors, please preach Ascension throughout the year!

The Meyer Minute for May 6, 2024

“Is America a Christian country?” That’s the title of a new Bible class series I’m leading at our church. It is NOT about contemporary politics, but about the history of church-state relationships in our country.

God’s people in the Bible lived under various forms of government, theocracy, anarchy, monarchies, and dictatorships, but not under democracy or a republic. In England, Anglicanism was the established state religion. “English ecclesiastical law formally required use of the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible and of the liturgies, rites, prayers, and lectionaries of the Book of Common Prayer. It demanded subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith and the swearing of loyalty oaths to the Church, Crown, and Commonwealth of England. When such ecclesiastical laws were rigorously applied…they led to all manner of state controls of the internal affairs of the established church, and all manner of state repression and coercion of religious dissenters.” (John Witte, Jr., Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment: Essential Rights and Liberties, 51)

Given their European experience, dominant Christian groups in the thirteen colonies (Congregationalists, Quakers, Anglicans, Protestants), gave legal preference to Christianity, aka Protestantism. “In eighteenth-century America, government patronized religion in a variety of ways. Officials donated land and personalty (moveable property) for the building of churches, religious schools, and charities. They collected taxes and tithes to support ministers and missionaries. They exempted church property from taxation. They incorporated religious bodies. They outlawed blasphemy and sacrilege, unnecessary labor on the Sabbath and on religious holidays. They administered religious test oaths.” (Witte, 53)

You might think that’s appealing, but here’s another quotation, this from the 1641 charter of Massachusetts. ‘If any man after legal conviction shall have or worship any other god, but the lord god, he shall be put to death.” What it meant to ‘have any other god’ was spelled out by another law that warranted the death penalty for anyone who cursed or blasphemed ‘the name of God, the Father, Son or Holy Ghost.’” North Carolina excluded Jews and Catholics from holding office.

Spoiler alert: The Constitution of the United States (1787) did not establish a “Christian” nation, although most Americans at the founding were Protestant Christians. What’s Christian in America today? You and I are, but to be effective we must know both the Scriptures and American history.

The Meyer Minute for April 18, 2024

I wasn’t in a cranky mood last week when I wrote about Jonathon Haidt’s new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” To review, Cell phones became smart phones in 2007. The Internet became omnipresent. 2009 came “the new age of hyper-viralized social media.” And in 2010 phone cameras made it easy to take selfies.

“The tidal wave came to these children during puberty, when the human brain is experiencing its greatest reconfiguring since early childhood….” What you do at that time “will cause lasting structural changes in the brain,” Mr. Haidt wrote. Suddenly children “spent far less time playing with, talking to, touching or even making eye contact with their friends and families.” They withdrew from “embodied social behaviors’ essential for successful human development. It left them not noticing the world.”

Ross Douthat of the New York Times wrote about it. In his column, “Can Those on the Left Be Happy?” he cited a child development scholar, Candice Odgers, who is critical of Haidt’s book. Douthat: “The tone of the review suggested that kids really ought to be a bit depressed… And for an answer to this unhappiness, with neither Providence nor scientific socialism available, Odgers turned to the therapeutic process, lamenting the dearth of school psychologists to help kids process ‘their symptoms and mental-health struggles.’” Good psychologists can help, but is that the best our secular culture can offer? Seems so.

Peggy Noonan thinks Haight’s book might galvanize action on something we all know is a problem (Wall Street Journal, April 6-7, A13). Might it galvanize congregations to action?  Parents to model faith at home? Douthat: “This seems like where a good portion of the American left finds itself today: comforted by neither God nor history, and hoping vaguely that therapy can take their place” (New York Times, April 7; Sunday Opinion, 2). “One generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4). Do we care enough to act?

The Meyer Minute for April 15, 2024

I’ve asked this question several times in sermons: “If I would call on you, could you recite the Ten Commandments?” I didn’t do it, but you could see the fear. One woman at the door said, “I got to the Seventh Commandment.” Was she above average?

Almost every day in Lutheran grade school, we stood at our desk and recited, Bible passages, catechism, and sometimes hymn verses. I assume that’s still the practice. Memory work is a biblical command. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children…” (Deuteronomy 6:4-7).

Reality check: After grade school, I forgot much I had memorized, and Seminary didn’t resurrect much memory. What resurrected old passages for me, and what got me to memorize new passages and hymns, was the work of being a parish pastor. Hospital visits, nursing home visits, leading devotions, teaching classes, preaching… Those aren’t times for opening a book and reading at people. Like a medical doctor, a spiritual doctor should look you in the eye and speak from his head and heart.

It’s not surprising we forgot what we memorized in youth. After all, we went on to live life. But our forgetting weakens personal faith and the vitality of the church. Without a memory soaking in Scripture, you have at best general truths, not the strongest defense against temptation. “Did God actually say?” (Genesis 3:1). Satan cast doubt about words from God. So also, he quoted Scripture when he tempted Jesus, “It is written…” (Luke 4:10-11). Why wouldn’t that be his strategy today, less to attack general church truths and more to undermine the biblical bases of faith?

Memorized passages are “the sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17). I wonder, how can the church make memorization a life-long spiritual habit? “Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them that, by patience and comfort of Your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen” (Collect for Grace).

The Meyer Minute for April 11, 2024

This worries me. Peggy Noonan’s weekly column featured a new book by Jonathan Haidt, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” Picture kids on phones. Adults too.

Background: Cell phones became smart phones in 2007. The Internet became omnipresent. 2009 came “the new age of hyper-viralized social media.” And in 2010 phone cameras made it easy to take selfies. “By 2016 one survey showed 79% of teens owned a smartphone, as did 28% of children 8 to 12. Soon teens were reporting they spent an average of almost seven hours a day on screens. ‘One out of every four teens said that they were online ‘almost constantly,’ Mr. Haidt writes.”

Here's the burden on my heart, and I hope yours too. “The tidal wave came to these children during puberty, when the human brain is experiencing its greatest reconfiguring since early childhood. In puberty, as brain researchers say, ‘neurons that fire together, wire together.’ What you do at that time ‘will cause lasting structural changes in the brain,’ Mr. Haidt writes. Suddenly children ‘spent far less time playing with, talking to, touching or even making eye contact with their friends and families.’ They withdrew from ‘embodied social behaviors’ essential for successful human development. It left them not noticing the world.”

“Signs of a mental-health crisis quickly emerged. Rates of mental illness among the young went up dramatically in many Western countries between 2010 and 2015. Between 2010 and 2024 major depression among teens went up 145% among girls, 161% among boys. There was a rise in disorders related to anxiety as well.”

Mr. Haidt quotes a 14-year-old girl. “I was ten years old when I watched porn for the first time. I found myself on Pornhub, which I stumbled across by accident and returned to out of curiosity. The website has no age verification, no ID requirement, not even a prompt asking me if I was over 18. The site is easy to find, impossible to avoid, and has become a frequent rite of passage for kids my age. Where was my mother? In the next room, making sure I was eating nine differently colored fruits and vegetables on the daily.” (Wall Street Journal, April 6-7; A13)

Much more to say but for now, what’s the church doing?

The Meyer Minute for April 3, 2024

What’s your takeaway from Holy Week and Easter? For me, it’s a growing awareness of my smallness. Remember the movie, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”? The Spirit is shrinking me.

Aging, retirement, declining energy… they’re shrinking me. Yesterday I taught a class at the Sem and led a tour, which is what “president emeritus” means, you ain’t what you used to be. And watching the news, reading the papers, scrolling my iPad, the world is back to being itself, it’s all so self-centered, so vain. This world is charging on without me. No need to read Ecclesiastes, I’m feeling it.

It’s my own version of a common experience. How many middle age, career stunted people, how many who feel they’ve failed in love and life, how many aged confined to a chair or bed despair? How many young people have more despair than hope? Peggy Lee sang about years ago. “And when that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath, I’ll be saying to myself, ‘Is that all there is?’”

Holy Week and Easter are teaching me to enjoy being little. The world has moved on, and in many ways organized religion has too. Let them go. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). As I’m convicted of my own smallness in the scheme of things, Jesus Christ becomes a greater and greater mystery who more and more commands my thoughts and devotion. He didn’t just die and rise. He is the cosmic Christ. “The Lord make His face to shine upon you.” His face is upon little me, upon little you, but it’s hard to experience that when you’re full of yourself.  

The Meyer Minute for March 28, 2024

See anything troubling here? Diane and I will go to church this Maundy Thursday, receive the Lord’s Supper and get forgiveness. Tomorrow I’ll probably go to Home Depot, always need to get something. Also tomorrow, Good Friday, go to church and hear that because Jesus died, we have forgiveness. Saturday Diane goes to her favorite place, Kruta’s, to buy bread and pastries. And Sunday in church, hear that Jesus’ resurrection gives us eternal life.

I wrote that paragraph carefully. Two things are troubling. First, I described church as transactional. That is, we can easily think of going to church as a business transaction. I go to Home Depot to get something. Diane goes to Kruta’s to get something. We go to church to get something, like forgiveness or the assurance of eternal life. In Latin, it’s quid pro quo, something for something. Or do ut des, I give so that I can get. Thinking of church transactionally is an insidious influence of our American consumer culture. Church attendance is declining in part because Christian consumers think they’re not getting enough for their hour.

The second spiritual danger: Focus on the works of Jesus more than Jesus Himself. These days we will hear much about His servant suffering and triumphant resurrection. Don’t get me wrong, you and I would not have salvation without all these works of Jesus! My concern is we talk about His works, what He does for me, more than Jesus Himself. Page through hymns for Holy Week, as I did, and you’ll see that most of them are directly addressed to Jesus. In my faith family, we talk about being Christocentric, Christ-centered, but often focus most on what He does for us, again transactional. That easily leads to, “Jesus, I appreciate what You did for me in the past, but what have You done for me lately?”

These coming days have been called the Triduum, the three days. Maundy Thursday to Easter is four days for us, but in Hebrew reckoning the day began at sunset, so the Upper Room, Maundy Thursday, was Friday. Three days or four, I pray for you a pulling back from our insidious, smothering culture to being with Jesus. “Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly” (The Lutheran Hymnal, 345:1).

The Meyer Minute for March 27, 2024

A pastor’s job is to interpret reality theologically, said the late Professor Martin Scharlemann. So, yesterday I asked my first-year seminarians how they might preach about the terrible bridge accident in Baltimore. Not that a sermon would be all about the tragedy. Not that pastors in the pulpit should be know-it-all pundits. It’s just that faith in Jesus gives Christians a special way of seeing what happens in the world.

One student brought up Luke 13:4-5. “Those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Back then, it was commonly thought that misfortune or tragedy came to you because of some specific sin you had committed. Read the book of Job. At least they were thinking theologically. I doubt that many people today are thinking about Baltimore theologically, but that’s the job of a pastor.

“Unless you repent…” says Jesus. I go through ritual repentance almost every Sunday in church, but that’s no guarantee the New Madrid fault won’t bring down the bridge over the Mississippi when I’m on it. Jesus always pushes deeper. “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Romans 7:18). Martin Luther: “We are all beggars.” Why should we be surprised when troubles come our way? “…you will all likewise perish.” Jesus is obviously promising something more than earthly life. Repentance is preparatory to life, eternal life. “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54). As a friend told me yesterday, when you have that perspective, you can deal with whatever comes your way.

I asked the seminarians how they could incorporate all this during Holy Week. People naturally want a Jesus of success, but that’s not why we call Him “Savior.” On Good Friday all crashed down on Him, human errors, sinful acts, our naturally sinful being, all crashing down on Him in death. Easter: “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:56-57). Our Savior is our Lord of life, now and forever. Our seminarians understand. Good for us!