While “springing my clocks ahead” this past weekend, the phrase, “synchronize your watches,” sprang into my head from various childhood television shows. I guess it’s been used in a variety of contexts, but anytime you’ve got a team attempting some coordinated endeavor, it’s essential that every member be on the same page, with each person doing his own part at the proper time. Much of the church’s work similarly involves lots of “moving parts,” and if all those different cogs aren’t meshing with each other, disaster ensues and damage is done. These are simply practical considerations.
In connection with the time change, one of my daughters shared a brief excerpt from a book, in which the main character was bemoaning daylight savings time and insisting that she was going to operate on God’s time rather than the governor’s. That works fine if it’s a matter of feeding your own chickens in relation to the sunrise, but with long-distance communication and speedy transportation it doesn’t work to say that such-n-such will happen “at sunrise” or “sunset,” or even at “high noon,” since those events occur at different points from East to West and around the world. Clocks are a man-made convention for the marking and tracking of time, in order to allow for business and commerce and all manner of public gatherings, events, and activities to function. Different time zones (and time changes!) complicate even those things, but at least those differences and adjustments can be made and taken into account. Nowadays, atomic clocks, satellite watches, smartphones, and computers keep us well synchronized, and for all the anxiety and chaos of this modern technological world, at least we know what time it is.
Anyway, what struck me as I thought about synchronized watches was the completely different sort of “watch” that pastors are given as ministers of the Gospel. Thinking back to my days at the seminary, I vividly remember my field work pastor calling my attention to the role of the “Watchman” in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel (3:16-21; 33:1-9). These are surely some of the most sobering passages in all of Holy Scripture for anyone entrusted with the Office of the Holy Ministry; not that pastors are Prophets in precisely the same way that Ezekiel was called and sent to be, but there is the sacred responsibility to preach and teach the Word of God – the Law and the Gospel – in all its truth and purity. Those who are called and ordained to this Office are given to watch over the household and family of God, to warn His people of dangers (whether from within or without), and to call them to repentance as often as they stray from the wisdom and righteousness of His Word.
To “synchronize our watches,” in this respect, is to consider the bonds and boundaries of our church (and pastoral) fellowship, and the way those mutual standards and expectations assist us in serving and caring for the people of God. I’ve written before about the significance of the solemn public promises that every pastor makes at his ordination – and at every installation – to conduct himself and carry out every aspect of the ministry entrusted to him in accordance with the Bible and the Book of Concord. To bind ourselves in this way to these norms of all our doctrine and practice is to synchronize our watches, so that our catechesis and confession of Christ, our exercise of Church discipline, and our pastoral care for the lambs and sheep of the Good Shepherd are all in harmony and humming away on all cylinders.
Maintaining that synchronization among the pastors of our Indiana District (and our Synod ministerium) begins with our Seminaries and our agreed-upon process of Calling, Ordaining, and Installing the pastors of our fellowship. But in order to remain “in sync,” it is necessary that we remain in regular conversation with each other, not only maintaining the bonds of friendship and camaraderie (though these things are also valuable), but discussing and debating theology and wrestling with the difficult challenges facing the life of the Church by engaging one another with the Word of God. The role of the Watchman of Israel is to preach and teach what God has spoken, and to do so faithfully and consistently requires a wisdom and fortitude that does not come “naturally” to any of us, but solely by the Word and Spirt of God. In speaking that Word to and for each other, we “synchronize our watches” for the good of God’s people.