Free food (for thought)

I picked a good day to not bring a lunch to seminary yesterday. I had forgotten that it was one of those "free lunch" days. And it was a particularly good lunch, with a sandwich, potato chips, fruit and a cookie.

As we are all told, there is rarely, if ever, such a thing as a free lunch, and there was indeed a catch: Once we sat down, we were expected to discuss some important church-wide issues. This came on the heels of a Friday-morning session, which I had missed, with Ken Inskeep, director of research and evaluation for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This was all tied into the seminary's strategic planning process, which is probably too exciting for me to explain in this blog. The basic goals for the lunch were to identify challenges facing the seminary and the church at large and to look toward ways to address them.

Coming in a bit late to the lunch, I ended up at a table with a particularly interesting group of people. There was Dean of Students Patricia Lull, Mr. Inskeep himself (I gave him my cookie) and Assistant Professor of New Testament Matt Skinner, who teaches my Synoptic Gospel course, and who apparently keeps track of when he is mentioned in my blog. But the one who made some of the most striking comments during our discussion was a student named Ioan.

Ioan made an observation that seemed to sum up one of the biggest challenges facing the Christian church and one of the biggest reasons I determined to pursue the ministry. He argued that our piece of our generation — basically the just-out-of-college bunch that stretches into their 20s — is a group largely defined by its apathy. He questioned what it would would take to change that apathy and just how many decades it might take.

This was the first time since I came to Luther that we at the church-leader-factory really dug into the problems of reaching the outside world. We focus a lot of our studies on how to become churches where God's mission to the world is the heart of everything we do, but here we were coming to terms with our disconnect with where the world is heading.

As we discussed at our table, the Luther Seminary community does not reflect the mindset of much of our culture. And I think apathy is a big part of that outer mindset. It often takes a good deal of caring — about both one's self and about the people who surround him or her — to make someone appreciate God or even want to believe in God. There also seems to be a general lack of initiative in our society to serve the greater good. I have a number of good friends who don't see much reason for seeking something better, much less seeking something better for others.

These won't be easy issues to solve, but there's some agreement that we as the church need to come to a better understanding of people outside our congregations. At my beloved hometown newspaper where I used to work, we had a corporate-wide initiative called "Real Life, Real News," in which we sought to better understand what our readers wanted. It seems we at Luther Seminary could be headed toward something along the lines of "Real Life, Real Church." If so, I hope they come up with a better catch phrase.

I realize that not a lot of people respond to my blogs. Assuming that people at least read them once in a while, I'll ask you in this entry: What are your thoughts on the challenges and needs that the church faces outside its congregations? I know I've only scratched the surface on what has been discussed and what needs to be discussed far into the future.

You may be wondering what the picture of Ronald McDonald with my wife and me has to do with any of this. This picture is from my other free meal this week — at the new Farmington, Minn., McDonald's community sneak peek. I suppose I could make some connection about how we as Christians should be as energetic and friendly as Ronald McDonald or as obvious about what we represent. But the truth is, he just looks more interesting than anyone at the Luther lunch.

Note: Please click on "comments" below. Someone hit me with a good argument. Feel free to continue the discussion.