Belief Series: Lutheran ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Pastor of the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church Pastor Dave Hall followed an interesting path to the priesthood; despite the 30 years he has now worn the collar.

“When I was a teenager I felt that God was calling me to do something different than I was doing,” he began.

“But then after a while I ignored it. I was going to college and quit college to start working. I did that for about a year and a half.

“The pastor that was pastoring me when I was a teenager said to me one day, ‘You know you are never going to be happy unless you quit work, go back to school and go to seminary and become a pastor.’ I wanted to argue with him but I couldn’t find a good reason.”

And that is exactly what he did; he left his job, returned to school and then went to seminary.

First Pastor Hall attended seminary at the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Calif. and then for his last year of seminary he attended Wartburg Theological Seminary in Iowa.

After he completed his time in seminary he began his career within the church, spreading the Good News.

“My first church was in Central Missouri; I spent seven years there, and then went out to California and pastored a couple churches out there for about five years each. Then I moved to Texas and pastored at a church there for 11 years and now I am here.”

He has been in Sidney since April 1, 2012 after getting “a call from the Bishop’s assistant one day and she said ‘I have a church I would like you to take a look at, here is the information, I am sending it by email.’”

He said at first he was a little taken back because like many of the pastors in the area before him, he had never heard of Sidney, Neb. prior to getting the call, so he was uncertain where he was being sent.

“But I was open to anything,” Pastor Hall said. “I looked at it and thought, ‘This sounds pretty good, but tell me where Sidney is.’”

Even though he had gone to college at Dana College in Blair, Neb. he was uncertain of where exactly Sidney was.

“I knew or was kind of familiar with east Nebraska, but west was a mystery to me,” he said. “I looked at it (the church) things progressed. I got excited, they got excited and everything worked out.”

For Pastor Hall to be a part of the Lutheran ELCA synod is to know what grace, the grace of God, truly is.

He said Lutherans know, “What God gives to you is free and will always be free and there is nothing you can do in the world to earn it. How you respond to it is a response out of gratitude and not because you feel obligated.

“The other thing I like about being a Lutheran is Luther had shades of gray. A lot of the other denominations – it’s not like I didn’t check out the others, in fact I attended quite a few as a high schooler and young adult – the other denominations I felt like were saying its either this or this.”

Through his readings and understandings about Martin Luther he came to believe and have faith in the teachings as not being an “either or but a both and a lot of times.”

A principle phrase he found that stuck out to him from Luther’s writings stated, once translated from Latin, that “you are never one or the other but always a combination.”

It is within this he found a great understanding that resonated within him as being true.

Pastor Hall said Grace is the corner stone of the ECLA, an understanding that Jesus died for everyone and it was never something humanity could do to repay or become worthy of.

“We can in our gratitude begin to live in a way that is not only pleasing to God,” he explained, “but makes our life have some purpose and some meaning and some direction.

“The reality is in ELCA, I feel that they have a wide enough umbrella that they accept all people. There isn’t a ‘you must have this narrow definition and follow along with what everything everyone else is doing, saying and being.’ There is a wide enough understanding that it can encompass a lot of thoughts and beliefs.”

He admits this branch of Lutheranism is more relaxed than that of the Missouri synod branch.

He said one of the basic differences in the two branches of the same dogma is the way communion is practiced.

For the Missouri synod, Pastor Hall said communion is only given if the partaker is in his or her faith in the exact same way the rest of the congregation is, but in the ECLA “we believe Christ is present in the elements, the wine and bread, it is Christ’s table and all are welcome, period.

“You don’t have to come in and say I subscribe to this set of principles and I understand it this way, so now can I? But you are welcome, it is for you and that is all there is to it if you will.”

He said there has however, been discussion within the ELCA (all of it) that baptism should be a requirement to receive communion.

“Some that are saying yes some saying no. My reading of it is that although communion is for those who are part of the faith, you don’t have to be baptized to be part of the faith. It is usual but not necessary.”

He spoke of a young man who had been dating a past member of a church he had ministered to, who had been coming to the church with his girlfriend and participated in communion.

“He died in a car accident and I had to say when he was receiving communion he was receiving Christ it didn’t matter that he wasn’t baptized. But that it was open to him and he felt comfortable being a part of it. And in my understanding Christ opens his arms to all; he doesn’t say only if you’re baptized you can come.

“It would be the normal procedure but that would not be exclusively, that you are only able to take communion if you have been baptized.”

The following of the scriptures is another difference perceived within the two branches of Lutheranism, but not quite as big a difference in Pastor Hall’s eyes.

“Everyone follows the scriptures literally, from their point of view. In other words, if I were to take scripture and say this is what it says and it is really important,” he explains.

To further his ideology toward how different doctrines follow the scripture literally in their own understanding he gave an example.

“Seven Day Adventists say the scripture says remember the Sabbath, the Sabbath is not Sunday the Sabbath is actually Saturday. If we were to say that is more important than worshiping on Sunday, which is actually celebrated because it is the day of resurrection, they are being literal and we are not. But in the gospel and New Testament you find the reason it shifted was because it was resurrection day so who is being literal?”

He said it is common practice for all beliefs to take different parts of the scripture and put an emphasis upon them, therefore every faith is taking their understanding of scripture and scripture literally.

“We don’t ignore scripture but we also understand there is more than one way to take some things.”

He admitted that there is a more conservative side to the Missouri synod, but to him it was okay.

When it comes to the version of the Bible Pastor Hall uses to teach his congregation from, he said, “I’ve used all kinds.

“I think officially, I don’t even know if it is official, but technically throughout most of the ELCA the New Revised Standard Version is probably the most important or the most predominate.That’s what is in the pews here, that is what was in here when I came here. Last church I was in we used the Contemporary English Version.

“Just because I felt like when people read the Old Testament it was easier to understand. That wouldn’t stop me from using another translation if I felt it made the point and was closer to what I felt God was saying.”

As with other beliefs baptism is a sacrament with the ECLA and a means of grace.

It too is important within the belief, “It is a means in which God conveys to us the gifts God has to give.

He said within his beliefs the emphasis upon baptism is that “God is adopting us as children during baptism. In some sense it carries on with our understanding of communion. It’s not that we need to understand it but a matter of what God is doing through it.”

Whereas within other beliefs, baptism as an outward sign of a person committing to God an act that has to be made when a person is in a certain understanding of Jesus and God- a decision many beliefs feel cannot be made until maturity.

He admits within the ELCA it is a flexibility issue, and for him he believes flexibility is important.

“We are all different. If we are all created in God’s image that means that all the differences out there God embraces, and so to have a strict you must do it this way and think this way and convey that this way then I don’t think we are being true to the way God created us.”