Harold Senkbeil is executive director emeritus of Doxology: The Lutheran Center for Spiritual Care.
His pastoral experience of nearly five decades includes parish ministry, the seminary classroom, and parachurch leadership. He is author of numerous books, including the award-winning The Care of Souls, Christ and Calamity, and Dying to Live.
Harold Senkbeil is executive director emeritus of Doxology: The Lutheran Center for Spiritual Care.
His pastoral experience of nearly five decades includes parish ministry, the seminary classroom, and parachurch leadership. He is author of numerous books, including the award-winning The Care of Souls, Christ and Calamity, and Dying to Live.
You're listening to episode 210 of the Pastor Rider podcast conversations on reading, writing and the Christian life. I'm your host, chase Replogel. I'm excited to have Harold Sinkville back on the podcast. I believe it's our third conversation and I've always found his writing to be incredibly helpful as a pastor. When I think about this particular moment and the challenges pastors face, I think Harold's voice is one of the most important pastoral voices on the topic. He's certainly not somebody you will see on conference stages, he's certainly not a celebrity pastor, but he offers a consistent and stable voice, connecting the historical work of the ministry into the realities of the modern world in which we do that work, and he does it with wisdom, with a life actually having practiced what he's written about, and also with, I think, both wise discernment and sensitivity. He really is one of the people that I look up to most and it's always an honor to get to talk to him. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm joined on the podcast today by Harold Sinkville. He's the Executive Director Emeritus of Doxology, the Lutheran Center for Spiritual Care, and his pastoral experience of nearly five decades has included parish ministry, the seminary classroom and paratroch leadership. He's the author of numerous books, including the award-winning the Care of Souls, christ and Calamity and Dying to Live. We were just discussing and before we started recording that I think this is his third time on the Pastor-Writer podcast, which puts him in a soul category I think the only person to do that and he joins me to be able to commemorate the release of the audiobook version of the Care of Souls, which I'm always grateful for another opportunity to discuss. Well, pastor Sinkville, it's great to have you. Thanks for joining me again on the Pastor-Writer podcast.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a joy to visit with you we always have great conversations and I'm certain this one will be as well. And, as I mentioned, we have the audiobook release, which I know you narrated, of the Care of Souls, which I want to get into. But you've also been taking on other writing projects, editorial projects. Maybe catch us up a little bit on your work over the last couple of years.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, I took a little detour in that my wife was quite sick and I ended up caring for her for 14 months on home hospice In the middle of COVID. It was an interesting experience, and so we were able to make the journey that I described in Christ in Calamity together. In fact it's interesting that we read a chapter of that book every night to her during her confinement that she was totally bedbound and she often said at the end of that she said are you sure you didn't write that for me? And I said well, maybe, who knows, got a little nose, maybe it was for us. I think we had derived both of us some consolation from that. So that was a project then, and so I wasn't doing a lot of writing during the time I was caring for her.
Speaker 2:Since then I've been back at it. I've got a book in manuscript form now at Lexham that needs a little bit of tweaking on ministry in a post-Cristendom world, and then I've been doing children's literature now with Lexham. It's been very interesting. Two titles now, one of the Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments is Just Out, which is a whole new realm for me. It's quite exciting actually to see a marvellously gifted illustrator, and so we put together some words that parents can read to their children to pass along the faith to the next generation, and then it's all wrapped in the context of family prayer. So it's a great project.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've certainly been following that and I've got some questions jotted down, so maybe we can get into some of that work as well too, and I'm always grateful. Your writing has meant so much to me, but through these conversations over the years, being able to see the way you've sort of lived those things you've written about as well has just been a great example to me. I think I said that in one of our past interviews as well, and so that continues to be the case. I am curious. The Care of Souls continues to sell that's maybe the simplest way to say it but I think more than that, it continues to resonate.
Speaker 1:Just recently I was in a pastors group and they were listing the most important pastoral books to them, and there were some really classics in there. But the Care of Souls was mentioned more than once by people. As you look back at that book being out for a number of years now, what is it you think about that book has continued to resonate or resonated, and it won so many awards. But more than that, it's really sort of seemed to strike at something pastors were looking for. As you look back, what is it about the Care of Souls that has continued to resonate?
Speaker 2:Well, it's hard to say objectively, of course. I think it's unique in terms of that genre of literature, if you will, because many of these kinds of books not all of them, but many of them are how-to's lists of these are the formula for successful ministry and so forth. And this book is really nothing like that. It's rather rooted in a much longer heritage. It draws from deeper wells the scriptures themselves, our Lord and His ministry, his Care of Souls, the apostles and then the experience of the church throughout the generations. So it's intended to be classic in its root and foundation.
Speaker 2:Time will tell, of course, whether it turns out to be classic for this generation, but it's an attempt to try to formulate in language, to codify if you will, to capture in a snapshot form what this meant the Care of Souls or the church Catholic in all of its manifestations now in this new millennium. So I've been gratified myself to be able to visit with all kinds of people through the technology we now have available to us. So I've visited with seminarians in Glasgow, scotland, for example, in Pretoria, south Africa, in Vancouver, washington, in British Columbia, and continued to have connections and inquiries around the world. So that's good to see and, as I said in the book, my intention was to take the little that I know about this wonderful, complex and mysterious process called the Care of Souls and dust it off, if you will, for our present generation and generations to come.
Speaker 1:There certainly seems to be something about that, the historical rootedness of the work, the fact that this isn't sort of the book has a broader sense than just the moment we're in. That, I think, actually makes it meaningful for the moment we're in. So many of the pastors I know are needing some sort of stability in this moment and I think the book gives something from sort of its historical roots, the stability that so many pastors are looking for. In these conversations you're having with pastors right now, what do you make of this moment for pastors, the state of pastoral ministry or the task that pastors are wrestling with in this particular moment?
Speaker 2:Of course the temptation is always to say this is an unprecedented time, but of course the truth is every generation thinks the same and it is unprecedented for each generation of pastors because they've never been there in this particular place, this moment in history, this context and culture that they have been. There are broader influences, I think, abroad, to make a point to the impact of the COVID experience on churches all over the hemisphere, really probably all over the world, and that has had an impact and probably will have a lasting legacy, for good and for bad, as most things do upon the church over the years and generations. I think there's some new wrinkles in that. We can't just coast anymore. I mean, I'm 78 years old and when I was a kid one could rely on the culture around you to carry the weight, if you will carry the waters and if you lived in a semi-religious environment, as I did growing up. So you look down the road around the neighborhood and what your neighbors were doing. They were sinners, of course, and there were flagrant violations of God's will, but they were usually found upon by the culture at large.
Speaker 2:These days, the culture has no rootedness and has no foundation and it floats along, kind of drifting and so there's no North Star to guide us, if you will, collectively, and that's new in our experience. I think in America We've had difficult times before and there have been various upheavals in society, and some of them needed and some of them destructive, some of them positive. But I think the confusion, the chaos, if you will, of not knowing who we are according to the natural order anymore, that is unique and so that places a unique pressure, I think, on the church collectively, the pastors and, of course, the dedicated Christians and makeup are congregations. What does it mean to be Christian at this time and at this point in history in this place? That's a continuing challenge, new in every generation, but it becomes a bit oppressive when you can't lean on, if you will, the broader culture to support you and guide you.
Speaker 1:You find that the pastoral task having it sort of I think, as you do well, it's historical roots, do you find that it is sort of consistently the same through time, or do you think the pastors in this particular moment, are there certain things required of pastors or things pastors are expected to do, need to do now, in this moment, compared to moments in the past?
Speaker 2:I'm not a historian so it's pretty hard to speak authoritatively about that. But when you're 78, I guess you're a grammatically historian. I can report that you know from my own memory that there's always challenges and they always appear to be unprecedented. That's the irony of the thing. But as I looked at, as I prepared for the writing this book and as I engaged in it it took me quite a while to produce it I became convinced more and more that really we're not in an unusual situation, an unusual position as the Christian church, because the ancients had the same situation. It was a pre-Christian environment. We are now in a post-Christian environment.
Speaker 2:But I've often said to people you're going to take a look at the New Testament. It becomes a handbook, if you will, for doing ministry in the very world that we're in. They lived in a pagan environment, and increasingly that's our case as well Now. They didn't fold up and go away. In fact they thrived in that environment, and so I guess it's a time to let our lights so shine, because the environment we're in is a very dark world, and so the light of Christ needs to shine all the more brightly. Perhaps this is a gift that God is giving us in these challenges now and help. We're forced to take a look, an honest look, of what it means to be a soldier of Christ in this particular climate, and I think we'll find we have a lot of brothers and sisters in the biblical world to lean on. We're one with them and we have one hope and one Lord and one overriding promise. I am with you. I will never leave you. No forsake you.
Speaker 1:I had a chance to listen this time to the care of souls. With the new audiobook coming out. I was curious did rereading the book for you? Did it bring anything new out? I always find it's an interesting experience to approach something you wrote a while ago and hear things you wrote, maybe in a new way. But what was the experience like rereading the book and the reception of the audiobook coming out as well?
Speaker 2:Well, my writing style by default is quite conversational, so that's not new for me. In fact, I had a book back in the day, but when we had cassette tapes that was a way to get to live, so reading it to record it was tedious on one level because of the technology involved, but on the other hand I found it encouraging. I think, to say well, this is something I wrote probably six, seven years ago and yet my convictions about it are remain the same and I'm trying to envision the people with whom I'm dialoguing because, as you know, it's written in the first person and I'm addressing the reader as my conversation partner. So it's kind of exciting to think that there would be unknown folks, as there are already, who are finding it useful and helpful in their own ministries.
Speaker 1:I got a chance to listen to the book and there was a section towards the beginning that I went back to my print book and I had not underlined although much of the book is underlined. So I thought I might read a sentence and ask you a question about it, because it really stood out. It's something that has become profoundly important to me. But you write towards the beginning of the book.
Speaker 1:The challenge for pastors in every generation is to link the person and work of Jesus to every shifting era by means of his unchanging word, not to contextualize the message, but to textualize the people into the text of Scripture. Now, that language of contextualizing the message, that sounds very much like the sort of language I learned in seminary. Right, it's our job to read the passage, figure out what it means and contextualize it to the audience, but you instead use this image, this language of, instead of contextualizing the message to the people, textualizing the people into the message or into the text of Scripture. I would love to hear a little bit about what that means to you. It really struck me as profoundly something you gave language to, something I think I was trying to do but hadn't been able to give language to.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, you've touched on something that's really, I think, crucial and important at this particular juncture in history. In fact, that's kind of the central theme of this new book manuscript I mentioned. It's tentatively called the culture of the word. The thesis is that the word of God creates its own culture if we let it do its work, because it is the sword of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies his people on earth by means of the inspired word. So the job of the church in every generation is to listen to the word and then to speak it into its particular context. Now, my co-author and I, lucas Woodford, certainly would affirm that there are.
Speaker 2:There is such a thing as common sense, contextualization.
Speaker 2:Of course you have to take in consideration people's language, their customs, their habits and so forth and then make sure that what you say in this moment fits within their environment.
Speaker 2:And yet the goal is not to take something from the gospel, if you will, and then sort of morph it so it would be a little bit more acceptable to the audience, but rather the challenge that Christians have always had through the centuries is to ensure that the people of God are formed and shaped by the living and abiding word of God, not by the customs of the day.
Speaker 2:So that's what we mean by textualizing people they get them into the text, the text does, it has its way with them and in fact, the historic catechism, the three chief texts that summarize the faith. This is the genius of mission modalities, if you will, to train people in the language of faith, the ABCs of faith, if you will, so they can themselves embrace this, and then they can speak it, they can live it in their own context and be that in whatever ethnic subculture they live in, whatever time they live in. And that's the. I think if you read the New Testament, you'll see. That's how the word of the Lord grew in the book of Acts to embrace people from many, many different people, groups, in many different languages and customs and bring them into that one transcendent and united Christian church, the body of Christ.
Speaker 1:When I first read that I immediately thought of the pastoral work I have textualizing people. But what does it look like as people who first come to the text ourselves, as ministers? What does it look like to contextualize your or to textualize your own life into the culture? I love that idea of the word producing its own culture. How do we learn to live in that culture of the word ourselves so that we can take up that task of leading a congregation to that word?
Speaker 2:Well, it's to pay attention, to listen carefully to the word itself. That's where the Training of Pastors ideally actually grab the hold of the word by means of its original languages, and so you can use the tools of exegesis to understand the text, to wrestle with it if you will I like to use the term. You need to interrogate the text and ask it what it really is saying, pay attention to it, listen carefully and then, once you've absorbed that, then, of course, to apply that to yourself and we pastors are also sinners we have to be courageous enough and bold enough and honest enough to admit where we have failed to confess to our Lord and perhaps to a brother, or where we have erred and gone stray, and then make the adjustments by God's grace and by the power of His Spirit, to live a new life that's called repentance. So, pastors themselves wrestling with the Bible. Well, of course, the preaching task, but also every aspect of the ministry, teaching, teaching is so very important, especially in our time when there's such an abysmal ignorance regarding the Word of God, even among the people of God, but along the culture that we live in.
Speaker 2:But this, again, this is nothing new, you see. That's also in the book of Acts. You see that throughout church history we just had Reformation Day yesterday Luther did an exploration of visitation of the churches in Saxony and he almost despairs. Some of the pastors don't even know the Lord's prayer, let alone the people of God. So you start from the basics and you keep going from the basics and then you develop maturity, growing up into the one who is the head and singing the roots and deep down into Him, into Jesus, our Lord, who is the head of His body, the church. And then the church grows and multiplies, as it says in Ephesians, as it's nurtured, rooted and nurtured in the living Word of God.
Speaker 1:One of the things that's always helped me about your work is how Word-centered your view of the pastoral vocation is. We were talking before about Eugene Peterson. He had the idea of the pastoral imagination or what we sort of imagined the ministry to be, and these days so much of that imagination seems to be gobbled up by leadership, by organizational skills, by practices and processes and pipelines and sort of all the words many pastors will be familiar with. And I always think that there are certainly organizational responsibilities of pastor bears and there are responsibilities beyond preaching and teaching a pastor certainly bears. But your way of finding, even in those tasks, a path of being Word-centered has been really helpful to me. Maybe you could articulate how a pastor stays Word-centered in this sort of pastoral imagination where it tends to drift quickly towards pragmatics and leadership and organization.
Speaker 2:And well, I'd like to think that faithful ministry of the Word is pragmatic and it is effective. So we can certainly lean on neighboring you should say neighboring different disciplines that are not directly related to the ministry. So industry, business and industry can teach us something about leadership. Certainly communication technology We've got to learn there. We had to learn at a very steep learning curve during COVID many of us and so there's a lot of things that we can borrow.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like plundering the Egyptians. We take things from the world around us and we use them in service of the Word of God. We want to derive our identity not from these technologies or approaches, but rather from the fact that we represent, that is, that we are a minister, a representative of the Lord Jesus Himself. I want to speak not words that come from us, but words that come from Him. So that's the continuing challenge. So I think it's not a matter of either or it's not a matter of. I'm not contending that we have to turn back the pages of history. We don't live.
Speaker 2:I mentioned, I think, in my book. It would be ideal in my mind, at least, my pastoral imagination if I could be transported back to be an English country person in the 18th century, you did nothing but the Word of God. Your entire ministry was just visiting people from house to house and then the worship of the body of Christ together. But we have all kinds of other things that are necessary now, and the trick is to always make sure that these are subservient, that the tail does not wag the dog, so to speak. And, if you don't mind me plugging the series, we have a whole series of books that came out of this one Alexa Ministry Guides, which are an attempt to try to articulate various different aspects of ministry, what this approach means for the care of souls rooted in the Word of God.
Speaker 2:So that's the very first title, in that the leadership for the care of souls flowed directly out of this text, and it's co-authored by me and the aforementioned Lucas Woodford. Now there we attempt to be very practical, utilizing indeed some of these approaches that we've learned from leadership skills in other disciplines, but always making sure that they are not the main thing. So there are certain things that are helpful or beneficial for the life of the church, and then there are things that are essential. Sadly, in my mind too often, the things that are essential, that are core, namely the Word of God and the sacrament of God, are set aside in favor of these secondary things.
Speaker 1:One of the things I think people could sort of wonder about is the release of kids' books. Maybe that seems like a strange fit, considering you've been taking on these larger. I mean, I'm struck by you have a children's book coming out and a book on how to be a pastor in a post-Christian of society. But as we're talking about this idea of textualizing people and the centeredness of the word, it strikes me that the children's books you're writing are very much a part of this same approach. We, even in the conversations we're having with our children, centered them into the words. I love this story of Luther recognizing the Lord's Prayer was unknown by ministers, but yet you're writing a children's book to help teach the Lord's Prayer. Tell me a little bit about how the children's books came together and how, for you, you see them fitting into this broader work that you're doing.
Speaker 2:Well, I have to give credit to my editor, todd Haynes. This is really his baby. His doctoral thesis At Trinity Evangelical Divinity School was really focused on the, the catechism, if you will, as the rule of faith by which Luther intended all of his ministry to be gauged as interpretation of holy scripture. But in a broader context. The reality is this is far deeper than the person in the work of Luther. This goes back to the very roots of the church's life, because we can see that the, the prayer of our Lord, the Lord's Prayer that appears twice in the Gospels, has always been a part of the life of the church, from day one and to this day. It's probably the last vestige of Elizabethan English that most people know in art in the 21st century, because this prayer has been so often repeated by so many generations. And if we take it carefully, take it and examine it, if you will, and within its context, there in the Bible itself, you see it's not just a prayer, it is a way of prayer. The disciples were asking Lord, teach us to pray. So he said when you pray, pray like this, our Father. He's inviting them to pray along with Him, in other words, like he does.
Speaker 2:And so, first, the apostles, in every generation since, has prized these words because they teach something about God and about a way of prayer. Likewise, the so-called apostles creed, though it's not found in the Bible, is rooted in the scriptures. It was the way the early church articulated the faith in its own context, with all of the controversies and challenges both inside and outside the church in those early centuries. And then, of course, the Ten Commandments are as old as Moses, and this is the way that the Torah, the law of God, was summarized for the people of Israel and, of course, for the church, as a New Testament Israel. And so the Lord, through Moses, gave instructions. You know, teach these words to your children. You know they should be on your lips, they should be. You know you tie them to your doorposts and so forth, and you should speak about them when you're walking on the way, when you're about to daily routine.
Speaker 2:So the word is the word of God, takes root in people's lives then, as, first of all, it's literally memorized talk about imagination. So the language of the faith that is rooted is implanted within the little ones and then it grows along with them as they face increasing challenges, as they are mature to adulthood, the faith goes along with them. I like to think you know, when you raise children, you buy new clothes you don't want to get exactly to fit them right now. That's something they can grow into, and these basic texts of the Apostles Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments is something we can give to our little ones, that they can grow into, and the intent of the books is to help to cataclyse that's an ancient word that actually means to grow into the texts of Scripture, and so that's the process is simply first learning the basic words and then learning what they mean and then applying them in one's life.
Speaker 2:So it becomes like the ABCs of language itself. It's very simple and yet at the same time it's so very, very important. So it was a unique challenge for me. I had to search back into my own experience as a father and as a pastor of little ones to find very simple words, and that's where Todd was so very helpful. We worked at it together to refine it so that the language of the catechism that we have here can be something that can be taught to toddlers before they can even read, and then, as they begin to read, they can read it for themselves, and the marvelous, beautiful illustrations that Natasha Kennedy has put together so wonderfully illustrate how these truths are rooted in the Word of God, and the illustrations are always centered in Jesus and His cross.
Speaker 1:We were talking when this conversation first began before we hit record that I think the pastor at a podcast was the first interview you did when the care of souls came out years ago and it's been such a remarkable thing to watch.
Speaker 1:Not just the care of souls continue to have influence, but this whole sort of volume of work that you've been putting out over the last few years, from the care of souls to Christ and calamity to the entire Lexa ministry guides and now a series of books one you've contributed to on the Lord's Prayer but also the Ten Commandments that's coming out. As a writer number one, I've just found it really remarkably encouraging to watch just the impact that you're writing, your thinking, is having across all of these different projects. But I'm curious as a writer, how this work comes about, what it means to sort of take in some ways it seems to me like this one book, this one big idea that's continuing to get worked out in these various conversations with other authors, with other projects across ages, to see that work sort of continue to spread. What that experience has been like as a writer and as an editor for you.
Speaker 2:Well, on one hand it's humbling. On the other hand I'd say it's quite exhilarating, and I wouldn't ever have imagined that something like this could find such a ready audience. But evidently that's the nature of something when you try to summarize or codify as something that the church is always known collectively, and yet articulate as clearly as you can, people are captivated by it and they're able to take it and go with it. And that was my prayerful intent as I began. Here's something for what it's worth.
Speaker 2:I say that in the preface, introduction to the book. Admittedly, this comes from my own tradition as a Lutheran Christian, but if we believe what we say as Lutherans and certainly all Christians are the same goal we want to simply articulate what the church has always articulated on the basis of the Holy Scriptures. Then anyone can pick it up and utilize it, at least portions of it, in connection with their own convictions and implement it in that particular environment. So I think it's been quite gratifying and I thank God for the opportunity to have us now in these last years of my ministry in life.
Speaker 1:Well, it's certainly been encouraging. It's also been, I found, it, sort of stirring my own faith as a writer and as a pastor, and one of my favorite things as a reader is to find an author that you can sort of just dive deep into, not just a book. But when I find a writer that I love, being able to read everything they've written and the volume of work that you sort of now have and are still producing I can't wait for the next book is becoming something that for any pastor listening you could not go wrong. Just starting at the beginning and working through all of it, I think you'll find, as Pastor Singple described himself, a conversationalist in his writing. I think you'll find a great partner for those conversations around the pastoral ministry. Pastor Singple, I would also, maybe as a way of wrapping up, is there a way we could pray for you as people are listening, as they're thinking about the work you've been doing, but work still to come, just ways we could continue to be able to bless you in prayer for that work?
Speaker 2:I appreciate that. Yeah, as we talk here now, in what? November? Now about 2023, I happen to be at a season in my life, as I mentioned earlier, around widowed. That's a unique thing for me, it's an adventure I guess. I've never been widowed before, I've never been this age before. Aging has its own challenges. I'm recovering now from foot fusion surgery, so ongoing healing would be one of my requests and a piece of mind and heart so that I can devote myself to my God-given vocations as a father, as a grandfather, as a friend and a partner in ministry with those who find my writing helpful.
Speaker 2:I don't know how many more books I'll be able to write, but obviously I've been giving these opportunities and I thank God for them. So I pray that I would be given the words to, I would find the words that I could help people, encourage them in their own personal faith and, of course, especially to encourage those ministers of God's word all around the world who are striving to find ways to be faithful in this uniquely challenging environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, finding ways to be faithful. I think that's what I'm after as well too, and I know you are in your writing. If you've not picked up the care of souls, I would highly recommend it. Pick up the new audiobook that's out the print book, of course probably grab both, as well as the other works we've talked about. I know there'll be an encouragement to you and Pastor Singbo. We will be in prayer for you, for your work, for that continued healing, as well as peace and faithfulness, and again, just as a reader who loves the work that you've been producing, a big thank you, and I'm looking forward to what's still to come.
Speaker 2:Thank you. You've been very encouraging, and God's rich blessings to you as well.
Speaker 1:As always, you can find show notes for today's episode by going to pastorridercom. I have information there on Harold's books, and if you're enjoying the podcast, I would love for you to leave a review. You can do that wherever you listen to podcasts click one of the star ratings or take a moment to leave a brief message. That feedback helps me continue to improve the show. I'm looking forward to some great conversations coming up. It's got a good fall lineup, and so if you're not subscribed, please do. It's the best way to find out about new episodes. Until next time, thanks for listening.