A Response to the Question: How Can We Do That?

Rebuilding Bridges in the Body of Christ

Offered in the Spirit of Confessional Lutheran Fellowship

Rev. Dr. Tim Ahlman, Ms. Tania Hilton, and the United Leadership Collective have asked an

honest question — how can we do that? — meaning, how do we rebuild the bridge, restore

the relationship, and re-earn a place at the table of our shared mission? I offer these thoughts not as an outside observer, but as one who has served within the LCMS community for more than four decades as a Commissioned Teacher, Minister of the Gospel, and charitable counselor — shaped by a three-generation missionary heritage and a deep, abiding love for this Church and the confession she bears.

The Tension Is Real — and It Is Ancient

What we are witnessing is not merely an organizational dispute. It is a theological tension

as old as the apostolic Church itself: the friction between those called to extend the

boundary of the mission and those called to guard the integrity of the confession. Both callings are holy. Both are necessary. The danger is when either posture becomes self-sufficient — when boundary-breakers lose their confessional anchor, or when boundary-keepers lose their missionary heartbeat.

The Lutheran Confessions themselves hold this tension. The Augsburg Confession (Article VII) reminds us that the Church is the assembly of saints in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments rightly administered — not an institution defined by its organizational perimeter. And yet Article XIV insists that no one should publicly teach or administer the Sacraments without a regular call. Order and mission are not enemies. They're meant to serve one another.

The question before the Synod is not which of these values wins. The question is: how do we hold both, faithfully, together?

What Grace Has to Say Here

I have spent years developing a framework I call the Grace Formula— rooted in 1 Corinthians 13 and the conviction that Grace is not merely a theological concept but a Person: Jesus Christ, who is for us and with us in every tension the Church faces.

The formula is this: Grace = Faith + Hope + Love

In the context of this conversation, these three work like this:

• Faith — We trust that God has authority over the formation of His servants. He called fishermen, tent-makers, and tax collectors. He has always raised up leaders from within communities, not only from institutions. To trust Him means remaining open to how He may be working through ULC's model of community-formed, confessionally-grounded pastoral preparation.

• Hope— We hold to the promise that the same Spirit who preserves the confession also empowers the mission. Hope refuses to accept that this impasse is permanent. There is a future in which our seminaries and mission-extending organizations like ULC are not rivals but collaborators — each strengthened by the other.

• Love — Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Cor. 13:7 and Gal. 2:20). In practical terms, love means that ULC does not respond to rejection with bitterness, and that synodical leaders do not respond to innovation with fear. Love is the overwhelming weight of this formula — and it is the posture that makes bridge-building possible at all.

A Concrete Path Forward

To answer the question directly — how can we do that? — I would offer the following:

1. Pursue relational proximity before positional access. The application for a convention booth was, at its heart, a request for visibility. But visibility earned through relationship carries far more weight than visibility granted through a process. ULC's leadership — Tim and Tania — would be well served by seeking personal, unhurried conversation with seminary presidents and key synodical leaders, not to lobby, but to listen. To ask: What do you most fear losing? What do you most hope to protect? Those answers will reveal the real concerns beneath the formal decision.

2. Demonstrate confessional alignment in every public word. The letter from C. Ma referenced the concern that ULC's presence would be "inappropriate and potentially offensive." That language signals that the concern is not primarily about ULC's mission statement — it is about perceived associations and ambiguities. The most powerful response to that concern is not a clariβication document. It is a sustained, public, undeniable pattern of confessionally Lutheran speech, writing, and teaching. Let the theology do the

persuading.

3. Invite the seminaries into the conversation — not around it. One of the most disarming moves ULC could make is to formally invite seminary faculty and presidents to participate in shaping ULC’s formation model — not as gatekeepers, but as contributors to a well aligned, integrated system that LCMS has the ability to Steward in some way that is acceptable. This honors their authority, leverages their expertise, and removes the perception that ULC is building a parallel track rather than a complementary one.

4. Operate with transparency and patience — in that order. The ULC letter rightly raises questions about consistency and transparency at the synodical level. Those are fair questions. But they are most effectively raised after ULC has demonstrated its own transparency — in its βinances, its theological commitments, its process for formation, and its accountability structures. Credibility precedes influence.

A Word Related to Synodical Leaders

With equal respect, I would offer this to those who hold boundary-keeping authority within the Synod:Many men God is calling to lead Lutheran congregations in the 21st century often cannot leave their families, their vocations, and their communities for a residential seminary formation. This is not a failure of commitment — it is the reality of mission in a complex world. The question is not whether the seminaries' residential model is excellent. It is. The question is whether excellence can also be extended — through partnership, through technology, through supervised field formation — without surrendering confessional integrity and the Seminaries rightful sanction within the church-body..

The LCMS has always been a Church that takes both Word and Sacrament and the neighbor seriously. Closing the door to organizations genuinely trying to serve that second commitment — in confessional fidelity — risks communicating that our unity is organizational rather than theological. And that is a message the mission cannot afford.

In Closing

The goal, as ULC's own letter states so well, is not uniformity of voice — but faithfulness in confessing Christ together. That is exactly right. And it is, at its core, a Grace statement. Grace does not flatten difference. Grace reconciles it. Grace does not eliminate tension. Grace redeems it — and puts it to work in the service of the Gospel.

I believe there is a future in which the LCMS seminaries and the United Leadership Collective stand not in opposition, but in the kind of ordered partnership that the mission demands and the confession permits. Getting there will require humility, patience, and love — in that order, and in generous measure.

Christ is Risen. He is Risen Indeed.

Philip Meinzen Commissioned Teacher — LCMS Minister of the Gospel | Charitable Counselor Author of the Grace Formula | Founder, @Jubilee JunctionTM LLC | GraceFlows.org