Adaptive Challenges

At a recent Lilly conference in Indianapolis, I was treated to a spell-binding presentation by Ronald A. Heifetz about leadership.  Heifetz teaches in the Kennedy School at Harvard and normally does his stuff before CEO's of Fortune 500 companies. [1] But the Lilly endowment thought he would have a lot to say to seminary types, and indeed he did.  Adaptive challenges, in his telling, are those outside of our repertoire.  Technical challenges are like changing the light bulb or figuring out who's going to clean the church.  Adaptive challenges are more like the ones we face everyday in the seminary—and in the parish.  Adaptive challenges require a lot of time and a lot of learning.  People come to (seminary and church) leaders figuring that the leader can fix "it."  The good leader has to disappoint these expectations at a rate the people can stand.  The people with the problem are the problem—and they are also the source of the solution.

Adaptive challenges in the church or in growing up force us to decide what to leave behind, what to continue, and when and how to innovate.  Every meeting of the evangelism and worship committees (or the curriculum committee) ought to decide what to leave behind, what to continue, and where to innovate.  People don't really resist change, Heifetz argued, but they resist the loss that accompanies some types of change.  So what adaptive challenges are getting processed in the following essays?

Kjell Ove Nilsson notes that the real Luther is to some extent forgotten or locked up in a kind of Lutheran prison of narrow understanding.  Anders Nygren urged us to move forward to Luther.  We need to find Luther anew, behind all Lutheranism, beyond all confessional obstacles.  Luther's theology of creation was incarnational, that is, the gospel resounds down here, on earth, in human life.  That is where theology belongs also.  The "naked God" is a metaphysical and abstract God, whom we can never really know, but who can still destroy us.  The "God for us," on the other hand, is to be found in this world, in our kind of life here on earth, in flesh, in Jesus Christ.  The church has the unique mission of painting Christ as the person Jesus from Nazareth, not as the terrible judge sitting on the rainbow.  The human vocation is lived on earth, where it is needed, in its plain human context.  Reclaiming Luther frees us from unnecessary philosophical and emotional garbage and makes us concentrate on real life in the real world.

In the months before his own death, the late John H. Tietjen wrote an extensive review of a recent book by N. T. Wright dealing with the resurrection of Jesus.  The resurrection of Jesus provided evidence that the crucified Jesus is the messiah and the first fruits of resurrection for all who live and die in the Messiah.  In opposition to the Enlightenment, Wright argues that the resurrection of Jesus was historical, an event in history that can be discerned as other events are discerned.  The accounts of Jesus’ resurrection in the gospels provide answers to these questions:  Why did early Christianity begin?  And, Why did it take this shape?  There will be no waiting in eternity.  Because God raised Jesus from the dead, our loved ones share already now in the resurrection that for us is still in the future.

Stephanie Harrison argues that Luke's view of justification, as illustrated in the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, has as much to do with our social location and our willingness to show mercy as it does with an inner attitude of humility or of being right with God.  She presents something of a legal case to discover what righteousness means for the Pharisee, the tax collector, and for Luke.  The Pharisees and the Jesus movement are best seen as competing reform movements within Judaism, the former appealing to an understanding of the covenant as "holiness" and the latter appealing to an understanding of covenant as "mercy."  In the familiar story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, mercy replaces holiness and separation as the true test of alignment with the ways of God.  For those with power, according to Luke, justification involves repentance or a turning back to God's ways of mercy.  For those without power, justification is part of God's mercy being shown to them even when humans show them no such mercy.  The place from which a person prays (the center or the margins) has everything to do with whether and how God justifies.

James Maxey demonstrates that the Emmaus episode in Luke echoes a central theme in the third gospel:  God's plan to liberate Israel through the prophet-Messiah Jesus.  Through the dialogue of a representative disciple and the unrecognized, resurrected Jesus, the narrator presents the point of view of all the disciples and of God.  The disciples' hope of a triumphant Messiah were dashed with the death of Jesus but were then corrected by the teaching of the Hebrew Scriptures that depict a suffering servant.  Once the disciples understand this vocation of the Messiah they recognize their traveling companion as their Lord and Christ.  This episode challenges readers also today to reevaluate their expectations about the role of Jesus in God's plan.  God's revelation comes through the earthy, daily practice of servanthood.  Preachers among our readers may find much food for thought in this narrative-critical study as they prepare to preach on the Third Sunday of Easter, April 10, 2005.

Nathan Montover rehearses the historical context of Article X of the Formula of Concord, that dealt with the adiaphoristic controversy of the sixteenth century.  The Formula resolved the controversy between the Philippists, who were willing to compromise on this question, and the Gnesio Lutherans, who were unwilling to compromise.  Some contemporary Lutherans have invoked this article of the Formula in their arguments about the recent Concordat between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church USA.  The Formula's statements, however, were addressed to a situation in which secular authorities were imposing certain church usages on the church, whereas in the ELCA's recent Concordat the Churchwide Assembly made a legislative decision on behalf of their fellow members.  The provisions of Article X of the Formula of Concord do not seem to apply.

John D. Lottes connects important insights from Sharon Parks about mentoring young adults with mentoring parallels about Jesus in the four gospels.  The evangelists selected episodes and sayings from the life of Jesus that would serve as mentoring encouragement to those facing specific threats to their new-found faith.  Mentors recognize the promise and vulnerability of the young adult life; mentors are supportive advocates and sources of comfort; mentors practice a tough kind of love; mentors serve as a steady, inspiring point of orientation; and mentors participate in the dialogue between fear and trust, power and powerlessness.  Many of our congregations are connecting confirmation and college students and other young adults with mentors.  These biblical reflections about the task of mentoring may offer significant help to those who mentor and to those who mentor the mentors.

Heifetz had a number of good one-liners.  Fifty percent of our DNA is the same as that of yeast, which explains, perhaps, why we inflate so easily.  Ninety-nine percent of our DNA is the same as that of the chimpanzee.  That's both humbling and a reminder that one percent of change can make a huge difference.  And, of course, it took a long long time to add that one percent.  Once more Heifetz:  "Exercising leadership is a way of giving meaning to your life by contributing to the lives of others.  At its best, leadership is a labor of love."

And my advice:  Enjoy your adaptive challenges—that's why you're here.


Ralph W. Klein
Editor