EXPECTATIONS More fruitful than our

By President James Nieman

WOULD YOU BE SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT SOME PEOPLE WERE NOT EXACTLY HAPPY AT THE NEWS OF OUR RELOCATION? IF YOU KNEW OUR SCHOOL, YOU WOULDN’T BE.

It wasn’t the majority view, but it also wasn’t a mild one. We are, after all, a place of big feelings and strong voices. So when this first came to light, I took the pushback as evidence of our usual scrappy charm – raising questions, testing decisions, seeking answers. This time, however, felt a bit more raw and edgy than usual. As I thought about it further, the reason for the reaction tells a story about this moment in our life together, what we’ve come through lately, and what happens next.

At the middle of this commemorative issue and the midpoint of our transition, my essay should surely offer reassurances. “We’ve been here before” might be one of those–previous experience has given us insight. “New vistas lie ahead” could be another–opportunity is just around the corner. “Boldness is needed now” would be one more assurance–so let’s summon the will to act. These three claims are to some extent true, and I’ve said them myself. But the reaction I noted earlier hints that we may not be as completely ready and eager and active as such bright boosterism tries to promote. Have we simply lost our nerve?

Or maybe our nerves are frayed. It’s been four years this spring since our board first discussed moving. Have we fully grasped what has happened since then? Right here, right now, we still reel from the after effects of a global pandemic as well as a swirling storm of conflicts around the world. Within this country we are still buffeted by winds of political instability and social discord. Churches of all kinds still rapidly slide into decline, leaving many of their schools endangered. I challenge you to name just one thing from four years ago that still stands unscathed. And even if you can, is it more than a triviality?

We crave a history with patterns, signs of stability and order that make sense of the mess around us, whether in the last few years or since the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago began. This essay is supposed to note such patterns in order to reassure you

(again) that we’re ready and eager and active. But the fact is that LSTC’s history has always been one of profound, sustained, traumatic disruption. It’s not that we made good plans or had fine values and so weathered the storms. It’s more the reverse. Our institutional life was repeatedly disrupted in ways that exposed our proud values, reset our clever plans, changed who we thought we would become. In some supposed calm, we like the idea of having a clear vantage point today, rising above sea level to make sense of the past and plot the future. But our present day is the direct product of the unpredictably disruptive. It is no stable place of serene pondering. These times are not controlled but chaotic, where we do the best we can with what we have, still marred by error and misjudgment. This is what I see over and over at LSTC since its founding and even back to our predecessor schools a century before that. Disruption is the given, and acting as if it’s not, as if we’ve got it all in hand, is both false and faithless. What’s this got to do with where we find ourselves today?

Well, one reason people lash out at institutions like ours in times like this is that we can never be what they want–a safe haven, a shelter in the storm. We live in a time of institutional mistrust like never before, which ironically shows how much we expect them to protect us. No wonder we’re so angry and scared when they change. We imagine that institutions under stress are abnormal. If they struggle, then surely someone failed or something is broken. If LSTC sells its buildings and moves elsewhere, then anyone involved in that disruption must be called out. But what if all institutions, including our school, were precisely where disruption is most fruitful, where we learn from whatever befalls? What if we truly affirmed the peculiar success of an institution as it was changing, since only then was it doing its best teaching? And what if by contrast we saw stable and safe institutions as disengaged from reality, failing to challenge our values or show us how to recover? We certainly cannot live in constant disruption, but making it more the regular fare at schools like ours would be better formation for ministry than nearly anything else. Besides, the present alternatives seem by now unhelpful. On the night of his betrayal, Jesus called his followers to remembrance. He wasn’t avoiding the present in nostalgia of the past. As he washed their feet and fed the fearful and beckoned for remembrance, he called them to live in his way toward God’s new day. At his most disruptive moment, he bid them remember how he loved and forgave and served, so his followers might in turn so live and do forever. Remembrance is what we do, the double work of telling the truth fully and then embracing others in mercy. That’s our mission, to form leaders with that dual vision. It’s the school we still are in disruptive days. Right here. Right now.