Thursday Theology: A Pastor’s Letter to his Small, Gritty Congregation

by Steve Kuhl

Co-missioners,

The Rev. Dr. Steven Kuhl, a long-time leader in the Crossings Community, was serving five years ago as the rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in South Milwaukee. Early that year he sent a pastoral letter to the congregation addressing the financial straits they were in. His aim was to help them respond with faith in Christ and hope in God as they stared at the prospect of closing.

A few months later Steve shared this letter with us as a Thursday Theology post. It’s well worth consulting today, especially by pastors and congregations that are wrestling at the moment with the issues St. Mark’s was facing in 2020. Among these pastors is—guess who?—Steve.

Steve is serving these days at Nativity Lutheran (ELCA) in Wauwatosa, a suburb that butts up on the western border of the City of Milwaukee. Some days ago he sent us the pastoral letter he’ll be sharing this month with that set of saints. If you know of somebody else who is serving a fading congregation—chances are these days that you do—please, share this with them too.

Peace and Joy,
The Crossings Community

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What the Church is For”:
A Pastor’s Letter to his Small, Gritty Congregation

by Steven Kuhl

Dear Christian Friends.

On Epiphany 2025, it dawned on me again that the Epiphany season is all about mission, that is, God’s desire to make Jesus known as the Son of God and the redeemer of the world. Indeed, that’s why the season is called “epiphany,” a Greek word that literally means to “make known” or “manifest.”

Nativity Lutheran Church, Wauwatosa, WI
https://nativitylutheran.us/

Matthew is especially clever in the way he makes this a central theme in his Gospel. He does it by beginning his Gospel with the appearance of the wisemen and by ending it with the sending of the apostles, the church, into mission through the Great Commission. God makes Christ known to the wisemen by the leading of a star. You know the complex story behind this manifestation. The point is that the salvation of God in Christ promised to the people of Israel (as Micah prophesied) is for all people, Jews and Gentiles alike. Even though at the time this inclusive promise elicited fear and hatred of Christ in Herod and all Jerusalem, as the story unfolds God gets his way. God’s will is done. God makes sure the wisemen—the stand-ins here for all gentiles— get to the Christ child, behold his glory, give homage through their gifts, and return home safely by another way, a way that bypasses Herod.

But as the Great Commission “makes manifest,” God’s ordinary way for making Christ known to the world is not by stars or other natural phenomena. Christ is made known ordinarily through God’s commissioned and sent apostles, the community called church, which they carry out using the divinely established resources we summarize as Word and Sacrament. Matthew puts it like this: “Go, and make disciples of all nation, baptizing… and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19). This great commission continues today wherever people congregate around Word and Sacrament, no matter how large or small the congregation.

It is especially important to note that this commission is given to a community, a fellowship consisting of Christ and his disciples. While individuals certainly witness to Christ through the give and take of daily life, they do this not as isolated individuals or lone rangers, but as part of a fellowship of faith, whose true identity is “made manifest” as they gather around Word and Sacrament. That becomes especially clear when we remember that disciples are “to love one another as loves .” The mutuality of this “new commandment” establishes fellowship/community. Therefore, one of the gifts of the gospel is the creation of a fellowship that is rooted not in law and compulsion (like the nations from whom it draws), but in forgiveness and freedom. This we confess in the Creed when we say together that “we believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” The church on earth, which is a creation of the gospel, is not an end in itself, at least not an institutional end, but a means to the end of extending to all the love of Christ and inviting all into his fellowship of faith.

Therefore, as we gather for our annual meeting we do well to remember that we who gather as church at Nativity are not an end in ourselves. Concrete, physical gatherings of the church come and go. What endures is the Word through which the church is gathered. And whenever the church gathers to this Word, that gathering is always a means for sharing anew in the love of Christ and being sent anew into the world in mission.

Paul put it like this. The church (which he describes as the body-of-Christ that is always active in ministry through “apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers”) is a means to further that ministry in the world. How? “By equipping the saints,” ordinary saints like you and me, “for the work of ministry and for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12).

Significantly, Christ places nothing on his church but this commission, this ministry of making disciples. The church is free to organize this ministry (using the divinely given tools of Word and Sacrament) as times and circumstances seem fit and as the Spirit of the Lord moves it. (See Acts 15:28.) The church, in other words, has institution, but is not institution. True, the church organizes itself for the sake of its mission, but that organization is always secondary to the mission. The Church’ institutional form is by nature historically contingent and, hence, adaptable and even expendable when need be for the sake of mission. Mission and context determines institutional form, not vice versa.

This view of the Church, I think, is very comforting, especially as we live in a time when past institutional arrangements no longer seem viable. Today, we the Church are witnessing the contingent nature of the institutional forms to which we have become so accustomed. I can tell you that I have personally outlived many of the institutional arrangements that have shaped my life. The seminary I graduated from is no more. The church body I was ordained in is no more. The seminary and university I taught at are no more. The lesson? Institutions, even religious ones, come and go, but the Word of God ensures forever. The Word of God endures forever, often times by creating new organizational and institutional forms when old ones decay away.

If we don’t realize this contingent nature of institutional forms, we may be tempted to think that unless we can maintain past institutional arrangements, we have failed not only our forebears, but God. But that is not necessarily so. What is the same yesterday, today, and forever, is not the institutional form of the church, but the apostolic ministry of the church, the great commission to make disciples, the new commandment to love one another as Christ loved us.

As we organize our life as a church for another year of ministry at our next annual meeting, I ask that we keep this apostolic view of church and ministry in mind. Given our circumstances, how is God calling us to live out the Great Commission? What changes might we be called to make? Whether we are institutionally thriving or dying, the call to ministry is always a call to carry the cross. It always entails the call to bear one another’s burdens. But the good news is clear: We never bear them alone. We bear them with the Christ who died, who rose and who promises the same for us.

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Nativity Lutheran Church, Wauwatosa, WI
https://nativitylutheran.us/

I began my ministry with you on April 14, 2024 under the designation of “Consistent Supply Pastor.” This seems to be a new “institutional” category designed by the synod to fit the needs of congregations in the kind of circumstances we at Nativity finds ourselves in. And what is that? We, who once were thriving in numbers and activity, now average 8 to 10 worshipers on Sunday. That means that the work of organizing the congregation’s ministry falls on very few people. But what’s impressive is this: everyone who worships is also in some way engaged in an aspect of the work of ministry in the congregation. For this I shout out: Thanks be to God for you and your commitment….

Given the small numbers, I think we do well in our worship practice. We have a decisive focus on providing good liturgy, good music, and good preaching. We also seek to draw people to our parish by hosting two free concerts a year, one for Halloween and one for Christmas. What we especially need to work on is communication and outreach to the neighborhood, both in terms of letting them know we are here and inviting them to activities we host. This will be one of the topics to be discussed at our annual meeting, along with evaluating what might be the best way for us to support the Great Commission of the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church in the future.

I look forward to both the fellowship and the ministry discussion that we will have on Sunday, January 26 at our annual meeting. As we gather in prayer at that meeting, we trust that the promised presence of Christ and his Holy Spirit will guide us though whatever doors to the future they open.

In Christ’s Service,

Pastor Steve

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Author

  • Rev. Dr. Steven C. Kuhl is a retired pastor in the ELCA, presently serving at Nativity Lutheran Church, Wauwatosa, WI. He received his M.Div. from Christ Seminary-Seminex and a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where he studied with Crossings Co-founder, Robert Bertram. Steve has spent most of his years in ministry in the Milwaukee, WI area, serving 10 years as the Pastor of Mount Olive Lutheran Church in Mukwonago, 12 years as Professor of Historical Theology at St. Francis DeSales Seminary and Cardinal Stritich University in Milwaukee, and 10 years as the priest at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, South Milwaukee. Over the years, Steve served as a member and president of the Crossings Board and as the Executive Director of the Crossings Community. He has published in various venues, including Ecumenical Trends, ITEST Proceedings, Preach, and the Crossings Sabbath Theology and Thursday Theology publications.

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In the early 1970s two seminary professors listened to the plea of some lay Christians. “Can you help us live out our faith in the world of daily work?” they asked. “Can you help us connect Sunday worship with our lives the other six days of the week?”  That is how Crossings was born.

 

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