Denominations appear to have fallen on difficult times. Theological controversies over core Christian beliefs have weakened some denominations. Others have succumbed to classic liberalism. A handful of denominations have reaffirmed their commitment to theological orthodoxy, but even many once-growing conservative denominations have experienced difficult days. All in all, membership in 23 of the 25 largest Christian denominations is declining (the exceptions being the Assemblies of God and the Church of God).

The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) found that the percentage of Americans who self-identify as Christians decreased from 86 percent in a 1990 study to 76 percent in 2008. Much of the loss does seem located in large mainline denominations. At the same time, the ARIS indicated that nondenominational churches have steadily grown since 2001””and that self-identified evangelicals have increased in number. But it seems that denominations have not shared in the growth.

According to many church leaders, denominations are not fading away””they are actually inhibiting growth. I have heard many pastors denounce denominations as hindering more than helping their churches’ mission. Others carp at wasteful spending, bureaucratic ineffectiveness, or structural redundancies; these objections seem to have gained adherents in an economic climate of pinching every penny. Loyalty to a denomination has declined and in some cases disappeared.

Meanwhile, many of the better-known churches in America today have no denominational affiliation….

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In its August 2009 Churchwide Assembly, the Evangelical Lutheran Church decided formally to leave the Great Tradition of orthodox Christianity for a declining and desiccated liberal Protestantism. The decisions it made””accepting a weak and confused social statement on sexuality, allowing blessings of gay unions, ordaining gays and lesbians in partnered relationships, and requiring Lutherans to respect each other’s “bound conscience” on these issues””crossed the “line in the sand” that separates revisionist Christians from orthodox.

That result was a foregone conclusion for critical observers who had been watching the ELCA carefully since its inception in the late eighties. (Among them, of course, was Richard John Neuhaus, who saw clearly the trajectory yet to unfold.) What had been the promise of a renewed and robust Lutheranism in the merger of the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America was aborted before its birth, in 1988….

In the absence of a genuine confessional teaching authority, the ELCA has followed liberal Protestantism in adopting a working theology sharply different from its classical confessions. It has substituted the “Gospel of inclusion” for the classic “Gospel of redemption” that emphasizes repentance, forgiveness, and amendment of life. The former diminishes the importance of the Law as the source of both repentance and guidance for Christians. The god of self-esteem promises everyone acceptance just the way they are.

But the ELCA is far more interested in pressing forward the liberationist themes issuing from feminism, multiculturalism, anti-imperialism, and environmentalism. These themes constitute the non-negotiables in ELCA church life. The ELCA bishops recently participated in a workshop that featured a presentation titled “Power, Privilege, and Difference.” Being therefore educated about their propensities to be oppressive, the worthy bishops resolved to have “observers” at all their meetings to monitor for “PP&D” thinking. One might note that they employed no monitors for confessional theology, perhaps because there was nothing of significance to monitor.

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Lately, when the Rev. Canon Sally Bingham, president and founder of Interfaith Power and Light, preaches a sermon about the United States’ dependence on fossil fuels and the possible shift toward renewable energy sources she turns to Luke chapter 5 and the metaphor that Jesus used when talking to the frustrated fishermen on the Sea of Galilee.

“When it’s not working, put your nets on the other side of the boat,” Bingham, also an Episcopal priest, said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where Interfaith Power & Light, a national organization with 35 state affiliates aimed at mobilizing a religious response to global warming, is having its annual meeting.

“After a hundred years’ of fossil fuels, it’s time to look to alternatives. Put the nets on the other side of the boat. Wind, sun, geothermal ”¦ just like oil, gas and coal, they are God-given resources. What Jesus was saying was, when something isn’t working, try something else.”

Read the whole article.

After a decade-long clergy shortage in America’s pulpits, Christian denominations are now experiencing a clergy glut — with some denominations reporting two ministers for every vacant pulpit.

“We have a serious surplus of ministers and candidates seeking calls,” said Marcia Myers, director of the vocation office for the Presbyterian Church (USA), which has four ministers for every opening.

The cause of the sudden turnaround: blame the bad economy.

According to PC(USA) data, there are 532 vacancies for 2,271 ministers seeking positions. The Assemblies of God, United Methodist Church, Church of the Nazarene and other Protestant denominations also report significant surpluses.

Cash-strapped parishioners — who were already aging and shrinking in number — have given less to their churches, resulting in staff cuts. Meanwhile, older clergy who saw their retirement funds evaporate are delaying retirement, leaving fewer positions available to younger ministers.

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A gay Atlanta pastor and his partner who have been at the center of a battle over the treatment of gay clergy by the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination are being reinstated to the denomination’s clergy roster, church officials announced Tuesday.

The Rev. Bradley Schmeling and his partner, the Rev. Darin Easler, have been approved for reinstatement, the Chicago-based Evangelical Lutheran Church in America said in a news release. The approval came roughly eight months after the denomination voted to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy, and just weeks after the ELCA’s church council officially revised the church’s policy on gay ministers.

Schmeling, who serves as pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Atlanta, was removed from the church’s clergy roster in 2007 for being in a same-sex relationship with Easler. A disciplinary committee ruled that Schmeling was violating an ELCA policy regarding the sexual conduct of pastors.

“I’m grateful that this journey has come full circle and that the church has changed its policy,” Schmeling said Tuesday.

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The Episcopal Church, like other mainline Protestant denominations, is not immune from the seismic political, sociological and economic shifts happening today. Most of us are experiencing “a time of no longer and a time of not yet”–an era of rapid, complex change; chronic anxiety; and heightened ambiguity. The comfort of the familiar is fading, and the movement toward an unknown future can feel terrifying.

In times like these, Christians expect religious leadership to help bridge the gap between the ideal and the real, and to equip followers to live out the Gospel in an environment of extreme polarities, i.e., poverty and wealth, insularity and inclusiveness, hostility and hospitality, homogeneity and diversity. The call “to love our neighbors as ourselves” is being drowned out by a barrage of shrill and hate-filled rhetoric. The distance between what Christians profess to believe and what they do seems wider than ever, creating a gap of dysfunction. There are few trusted religious leaders in the public square, whose rational voices, theological gravitas and moral authority can quell the incivility, incendiary rhetoric, and growing intolerance of differences. At a time when the leadership of the church is most needed, there is silence.

The mainline churches are finding themselves on the margins, declining in membership and donations. Some are in the grip of unresolved conflicts and divisions; others are locked in scandal. The main mission is hostage to a host of distracting issues. In short, the church is experiencing a crisis of leadership.

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The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania (ELCT) has distanced itself from the recognition of same-sex marriages by Lutheran churches in the US and Sweden.

The head of the ELCT, Bishop Alex Malasusa, said during his Easter Mass sermon at the Azania Front Church in Dar es Salaam that the local church did not support the decision because it was against God’s word.

He said Lutheran churches in the US and Sweden had strayed from the Scriptures, and it was up to Africa to bring them back into line.

“ELCT has refused to recognise the decision to allow same-sex marriages because it is against the Holy Bible. It is in direct contravention of God’s word, which has not changed,” Bishop Malasusa said.

Read the whole article.

Immanuel Lutheran Church in Waukee is five miles down the road from Walnut Hills United Methodist Church in Urbandale.

But they have moved further apart, philosophically, since the Iowa Supreme Court ruled on April 3, 2009, to legalize same-sex marriage.

The dilemma for churches didn’t start with the court’s decision. Congregations have been praying and struggling for years. But in this last year, the debate sharpened, not only between denominations and congregations but often within individual churches.

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From here (the vote was 112-5):

Resolution on the agenda for consideration:

Whereas, this congregation believes that – the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith and life (C2.03) and as such must be our final authority in matters of faith and life, and

Whereas, the ELCA adopted at the August 2009 Churchwide Assembly the Social Statement of Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, sections of which are contrary to the orthodox understanding of Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions, and

Whereas, the ELCA adopted at the August 2009 Churchwide Assembly to allow congregations to make decisions about ordination of individuals who are in publically accountable lifelong monogamous same gender relationships based upon bound consciousness rather than Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions, and

Whereas, those changes in doctrine will alter the understanding and interpretation of Holy Scripture and The Lutheran Confessions from orthodox and Lutheran teaching as held by the former ELCA; therefore be it
Resolved, that the congregation of Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church of 126 West Main Street, Dallastown, Pennsylvania, hereby terminate membership in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Lower Susquehanna Synod, thereof, effective at the time of the second congregational vote and be it further

Resolved, that the congregation of Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church of 126 West Main Street, Dallastown, Pennsylvania, hereby requests to be received into membership in Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ.

Bishops in the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination have approved preliminary steps to welcome a group of openly gay and lesbian ministers as official clergy with new liturgical rites.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Conference of Bishops approved a draft proposal on Monday (March 8) for the new rites, which include prayers and the laying on of hands by the local bishop, according to the denomination’s news service.

The proposal only applies to 17 pastors who had followed normal ELCA procedures for education and ordination, but remained barred from the denomination’s official clergy roster because of their sexuality. The clergy are all members of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, a group devoted to gay rights in the ELCA.

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(The above is my title, you can see his by going to the link below–KSH)

The Christian churches in the United States are in trouble for all the usual reasons ”” human sinfulness and selfishness, the temptations of life in an affluent society, doctrinal and moral controversies and uncertainties and on and on and on ”” but also and to a surprisingly large degree they are in trouble because they are trying to address the problems of the twenty first century with a business model and a set of tools that date from the middle of the twentieth. The mainline churches in particular are organized like General Motors was organized in the 1950s: they have cost structures and operating procedures that simply don’t work today. They are organized around what I’ve been calling the blue social model, built by rules that don’t work anymore, and oriented to a set of ideas that are well past their sell-by date.

Without even questioning it, most churchgoers assume that a successful church has its own building and a full-time staff including one or more professionally trained leaders (ordained or not depending on the denomination). Perhaps no more than half of all congregations across the country can afford this at all; most manage only by neglecting maintenance on their buildings or otherwise by cutting corners. And even when they manage to make the payroll and keep the roof in repair, congregations spend most of their energy just keeping the show going from year to year. The life of the community centers around the attempt to maintain a model of congregational life that doesn’t work, can’t work, won’t work no matter how hard they try. People who don’t like futile tasks have a tendency to wander off and do other things and little by little the life and vitality (and the rising generations) drift away.
At the next level up, there is another level of ecclesiastical bureaucrats and officials staffing regional offices. When my dad was a young priest in the Episcopal diocese of North Carolina back in the late 1950s the bishop had a secretary and that was pretty much it for diocesan staff. These days the Episcopal church is in decline, with perhaps a third to a half or more of its parishes unable to meet their basic expenses and with members dying off or drifting away much faster than new people come through the door ”” but no respectable bishop would be caught dead with the pathetic staff with which Bishop Baker ran a healthy and growing diocese in North Carolina back in the 1950s. (Bishop Baker was impressive in another way; he could tie his handkerchief into the shape of a bunny rabbit, put it flat on the palm of his hand, and have it hop off. I was only six when he showed me this trick, but it was clear to me that this man had something special to offer. Since that time I’ve traveled all over the world and met bishops, archbishops, cardinals and even a pope ”” but none of them made quite the impression on me that Bishop Baker and his jumping handkerchief did.)

Bishops today in their sinking, decaying dioceses surround themselves with large staffs who hold frequent meetings and no doubt accomplish many wonderful things, although nobody outside the office ever quite knows what these are. And it isn’t just Anglicans. Lutherans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, UCC, the whole crowd has pretty much the same story to tell. Staffs grow; procedures flourish and become ever more complex; more and more years of school are required from an increasingly ”˜professional’ church staff: everything gets better and better every year ”” except somehow the churches keep shrinking. Inside, the professionals are pretty busy jumping through hoops and writing memos to each other and grand sweeping statements of support for raising the minimum wage and other noble causes ”” but outside the regional headquarters and away from the hum of the computers and printers, local congregations lose members, watch their buildings fall year by year into greater disrepair, and in the end they close their doors.

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Since the first Protestants rowed to shore in Jamestown, Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, they’ve been in charge. As recently as the 1950s, the president as well as seven of the nine members of the Supreme Court were Protestant Christians. Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal and other so-called mainline Protestant leaders called many of the shots on civil rights, school prayer, immigration, education and other key issues of the day. Then, in the late ’60s, their numbers began to dwindle.

Today, only one member of the high court is Protestant (John Paul Stevens), and President Obama appears to have stopped attending church altogether at least outside of Camp David. Instead of dominating public debate, mainline Protestants find themselves struggling to reach a quorum. Half of their churches have fewer than a hundred members, and in nearly six of 10 congregations, it’s the Church of the Blue Hair. Or No Hair. A quarter or more of their congregants are 65 or older. That’s three times the number for their more conservative Evangelical cousins.

So what happened? How did America’s most influential religious group become so marginal?

The conventional wisdom has been that the more conservative Catholic and Evangelical churches simply won over the hearts and minds of the American people. And, if there is a culture war, these more liberal Protestant groups surely must have lost.

But not so fast.

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Four theologians began discussions in Geneva, Switzerland this week to define the guidelines of a new project promoted from within the Conference of European Churches. The initiative hopes to study how the different Churches understand unity.

According to a statement released by the Conference of European Churches (CEC), the project is investigating church unity as it relates to church identity at the theological, theoretical level as well as in church practices.

The four theologians taking part in the discussion are British Anglican Dr. Paul M. Collins from the University of Chichester, German Catholic Dr. Myriam Wijlens from University of Erfurt, Finnish Dr. Minna Hietamaki from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and Orthodox Dr. Viorel Ionita from the CEC’s Churches in Dialogue Commission.

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(ELCA News) Earthquake damage is said to be extensive in Santiago and Concepcion following the Feb. 27 severe earthquake in central Chile, according to Karen Anderson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Global Mission staff in Santiago.
The Feb. 27 earthquake measured 8.8 on the Richter scale. The Chilean government has reported at least 147 deaths in all of the country. A tsunami warning was issued for the entire Pacific basin as a result of the earthquake, including Hawaii and U.S. territories such as Guam and American Samoa.
According to news reports in Chile, the earthquake damaged 1.5 million homes, 500,000 “very seriously,” Anderson wrote in an e-mail to the ELCA News Service. Phone service was not available.
“Many homes, especially in older parts of Santiago, were destroyed,” she wrote. The international airport there suffered “major damage” and is closed, Anderson wrote.

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Until a few weeks ago, the Rev. Gail Sowell was pastor at two Lutheran churches in the small Wisconsin town of Edgar. That was before members of both congregations jumped headfirst into the simmering debate over gay clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

“It was pretty gruesome,” Sowell said, recalling shouting matches inside the sanctuary; the mass resignation of one church’s council, save one member; even whispers around town that she was a lesbian. “For the record, I’m not,” she said.

When the smoke cleared, the congregation at St. John Lutheran Church narrowly voted to not leave the ELCA. Across town at Peace Lutheran, they voted to leave and fired Sowell. “Fortunately, I’m thick-skinned,” she said.

Not all ELCA congregations have seen that level of turbulence over the ELCA’s decision last August to allow pastors in committed same-sex relationships to serve openly. But by most accounts, it has been a confusing and murky time in the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination.

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Saying they’re done with efforts to reform the nation’s largest Lutheran body, dissidents have unveiled blueprints for a rival denomination, the North American Lutheran Church.

The new body, which will hew to a more traditional line on issues of human sexuality, is expected to be formally launched in August as a conservative alternative to the 4.6 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

So far, at least seven Evangelical Lutheran congregations have voted to leave after the Chicago-based denomination lifted restrictions last summer on non-celibate gay clergy. An additional 28 congregations appear poised to leave.

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Just what we needed. Another Protestant denomination. This one to straddle the biblicism of the Lutheran Church”“Missouri Synod and the bibliphobia of the ELCA, presumably with its ratio of traditional exegesis/engagement with modernity balanced so precisely that an ambitious busboy could lay his tray of half-eaten cheesy nachos on its presuppositions without fear of tippage.

I sympathize with those Lutherans who could no longer suffer the leftward march of their denomination into the abyss of irrelevancy, and those who find the denomination of my youth tiresome in its calculation of how grizzlies managed the voyage on the ark without their Dramamine. Yet another denomination can only spawn yet another denomination and so on, until there are so many congregations and so little coherence that only a swift end to history can stifle the cacophony of competing theological claims.

And so I have vowed to give up organized religion for Lent. I remain neither spiritual nor religious, but a Lutheran, sans pew.

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We’ve been waiting several months now for this new “reconfiguration of Lutheranism in North America” promised us by Lutheran CORE, which is overseeing the formation of an alternative to members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The ELCA, as you may remember from last August, voted back then to allow gay clergy and opened the doors to same-sex unions further down the road.

Today, on the anniversary of Martin Luther’s death (in 1546), CORE has announced the denomination-to-be will be called the North American Lutheran Church (NALC). More concrete deliberations will happen during Lutheran CORE’s 2010 convocation Aug. 26-27 in Columbus, Ohio, so for now the proposal is on the table for discussion.

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The meeting with [Rowan] Williams, leader of the world Anglican Communion, was the first major meeting for the ELCA delegation.
Williams greeted the ELCA delegation briefly after meeting with Hanson.

[Mark S.] Hanson told the ELCA News Service that the discussion of strengthening Anglican Communion relationships focused on existing full communion agreements — in Canada, Europe and the United States. “We talked not only about how this time of ‘reception’ can strengthen the ministries and mission we share, but provide new opportunities for us to be engaged in ways we haven’t even imagined,” Hanson said.

The two world church leaders discussed how both communions can focus on “the pressing issues of the world in which God has placed us,” said Hanson. He said the two agreed there is an urgent need for the United Nations and the U.S. and British governments to find a solution to the conflict in Sudan. The two also discussed commitment and concern for Palestinian Christians, and support for the Council for Religious Institutions in the Holy Land, for Lutheran and Anglican churches in the region and for dialogue with religious leaders in Israel.

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Several disaffected members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) say the decision made at the church’s national convention in Minneapolis in August could prompt a major exodus from one of America’s biggest Protestant denominations.

“I wouldn’t even begin to tell you how many thousands [of calls] I’ve gotten,” said Paull Spring, chairman of Lutheran Coalition for Renewal, or CORE, a national coalition based on traditional values. His group said last month that it cannot remain inside the 4.7-million-member ELCA and will form a new synod.

He is not alone.

“I am receiving every single week dozens of phone calls, e-mails, from pastors of the largest Lutheran churches in ELCA,” said the Rev. Walter Kallestad, senior pastor of Community Church of Joy in Glendale, Ariz., who left the synod after having been “rostered” as a minister with the ELCA for 31 years. “I’ve answered hundreds … from congregations looking to transition out of the ELCA.”

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More than a dozen Lutheran congregations in Minnesota have vowed to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) after a vote in Minneapolis this summer to allow gay and lesbian pastors in committed relationships to serve as clergy. The fifteen churches will join a new denomination called Lutheran CORE and leave the ELCA, the largest Lutheran denomination in the world.

The leaders of Lutheran CORE say the ELCA has moved too far away from the Bible.

One from the long list of I-have-not-yet-had-a-chance-to-post-yet.

I think of Martin Rinkart every thanksgiving; his gift of this hymn is simply stunning given the circumstances in which it was written. Read it all–KSH.

Conservative Lutherans have been distressed since the ELCA’s Churchwide Assembly voted in August to allow gays and lesbians in committed, same-sex relationships to be ordained as clergy. The assembly also voted to allow congregations to recognize and support such relationships.

“The vote on sexuality opened the eyes of many to how far the ELCA has moved from biblical teaching,” the Rev. Paull Spring, CORE’s chair, said in a statement Wednesday.

ELCA spokesman John Brooks said CORE’s announcement was expected. “We are staying focused on our clear priorities and clear mission. More than 10,000 congregations that want to be part of that mission.”

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The split over gay clergy within the country’s largest Lutheran denomination has prompted a conservative faction to begin forming a new Lutheran church body separate from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Leaders of Lutheran CORE said Wednesday that a working group would immediately begin drafting a constitution and taking other steps to form the denomination, with hopes to have it off the ground by next August.

“There are many people within the ELCA who are very unhappy with what has happened,” said the Rev. Paull Spring, chairman of Lutheran CORE and a retired ELCA bishop from State College, Pa.

Read it all.

The way forward embodied in the proposed revisions to the candidacy process that will be considered this weekend by the ELCA Church Council is a ”˜preserve the status quo’ option. It maintains, at least officially, the unity of the ELCA ministerium and treats the crisis created by the action of the Churchwide Assembly as a passing cloud. The concessions to bound conscience are less even than those granted to opponents of the agreement with the Episcopal Church that committed the ELCA to enter episcopal succession. Candidates opposed to episcopal succession can, in certain cases, be ordained in a way that contradicts Assembly-adopted policy. In our present case, individuals involved in decision making within the candidacy process can remove themselves from participation, but no decision is to utilize sexuality standards other than those approved by national policy.

What would an alternative look like, an alternative that embodies the promise of the Task Force to respect the consciences of synods, bishops, candidacy committees, etc.? It would not be pretty. It would severely compromise the unity of the ELCA ministerium; the ELCA would cease to be a single church in the traditional sense. But that result was built into the Report and Recommendations of the Task Force, as is discussed in the paper to the right (here). That Report was never repudiated by the church leadership. It is late in the day now to say “Oh, those results would be too radical.”

An alternative that avoids chaos as much as possible might look like this….

See what you make of his proposal.

St. Nikolai Evangelical Lutheran Church hasn’t changed much since the 16th century. Bach once played the organ here and the music remains alluring, but it is the church’s more recent history in the last days of the Cold War and its role in the fall of the Berlin Wall that draw tourists today.

The Rev. Christian Fuhrer became the pastor at St. Nikolai in 1980, when the world was divided by the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. Germany itself was split in two, most visibly by the wall the East German government ”” the German Democratic Republic”” built in Berlin in 1961 in an attempt to keep its people from fleeing to the West.

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No method of resolving disputes within the church can function without the support of an underlying sensus fidelium, a common mind among the faithful. Even a teaching office on Roman Catholic lines can only settle disputes successfully if there is a shared perception that the office deserves respect. This can never be wholly a matter of recognizing the formal authority of the bishop or the Pope, as in the slogan “Rome has spoken ”“ case closed.” It has to include a perception that the actual decisions made by the teaching office reliably cohere with central Christian beliefs and practices. Only so can a sense be maintained that obedience to the teaching office is an authentic form of discipleship. But for that to be the case, the teachers and the faithful must share a common formation in faith and life. They can only meet, so to speak, if they live in the same Christian universe.

The root of our problems with authority in the ELCA, I would suggest, is the confusion, weakening, and consequent fragmentation of the sensus fidelium, the common mind of the faithful. This confusion and weakness are by no means all on one side. We’ve all been affected by the biblical illiteracy, thin catechesis, clueless educational programs, and unfocused preaching that are widespread (I’m not saying universal) in our denomination. Seeking scriptural resolution to a passionate controversy on top of such weakness, confusion, and fragmentation is like trying to ride up the glass mountain in the fairy tale: no matter how strong your theological horse or how well you ride it, you’re never going to get traction.

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The Lutherans aren’t sitting around for three years like the Episcopalians did. For them, the writing clearly is on the wall.

“One of the messages we heard loud and clear from the Episcopalians is that by waiting several years, they lost some of their best and brightest lay people,” Mr. [Ryan] Schwarz told me. “We intend to have our plans in place a lot faster.”

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[Gerald] Kieschnick wrote to the ELCA bishops about an assembly action which directed the ELCA to change policy to make it possible for Lutherans in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships to serve as ELCA associates in ministry, clergy, deaconesses and diaconal ministers.
“Bishop Hanson and Conference of Bishops, I share this letter with you to confirm what I have already stated, namely, that this is a very serious matter, one that we cannot ignore,” a portion of Kieschnick’s letter said. “To the greatest extent possible, it would be a blessing to our ongoing cooperative relationships if the actions taken at the ELCA Assembly were not implemented, nor given influence, in the context of inter-Lutheran ministries involving the LCMS and the ELCA, so that these relationships would be neither damaged nor destroyed.”
“Out of deep concern for the people who receive ministry from such organizations and for the continuation of those ministries, I share with you this letter and pray that it will be received in the spirit of fraternal, collegial dialogue with which it is sent,” the LCMS president wrote.

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The Church Council of the Silesian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession, Czech Republic, wrote to the bishop of the ELCA Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod to report it will propose ending its companion synod relationship with the synod because of the assembly decision. Next month, the church’s assembly will consider the proposal, said the Rev. Rafael Malpica Padilla, executive director, ELCA Global Mission.

“We are still in conversation with that church to see if this means severing the relationship with the ELCA or the companion synod,” Malpica Padilla told the ELCA Conference of Bishops, which met here Oct. 1-6. The ELCA’s 65 synods maintain more than 120 companion synod relationships, through which the synod and its international partner pledge to support each other, share resources and engage in mission.

One international congregation, the Lutheran Church of Guam, intends to end its ELCA relationship because of the assembly decision, Malpica Padilla said.

Read it all.