(ELCA News) Responding to an overall decline in mission support funds, the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) reduced the churchwide organization’s current fund spending authorization for 2009 by $5.6 million to $76.8 million. Its action, taken without comment, resulted in elimination of a number of churchwide staff positions and vacant positions, and affected churchwide ministries.
The council also reduced the 2009 World Hunger Appeal spending authorization by $1.9 million to $18.7 million.
And another mainline noses over …
Always note what [i]doesn’t[i] get cut. There one will see the real mission of the corporation.
Sheesh. “ELCA Communication Services eliminated Grace Matters, a radio ministry which has aired each week since 1947.” And taking out well over a million for their hunger project… where are their priorities? I know the ELCA is merely the Protestant version of TEC, but I was surprised that their people don’t find funding it a priority any more.
Note that our church headquarters has also cut in the area of leadership development and outreach. Like that’s thinking about the future … add to that what will likely happen after this summer when a majority vote will allow local option for gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex unions/marriages.
an ELCA pastor watching his denomination burn down around him.
Brian,
I wonder what former members of the American Lutheran Church (and even the “liberal” defectors from the Missouri Synod) make of the 1988 merger in retrospect. Or am I wrong to think that today it’s the ex-Lutheran Church in America tail wagging the ELCA dog?
I ask as a historian curious to know more about the dynamics of the last flurry of American Protestant organic unity (which started with the UCC merger in the late 1950s – another great ecumenical “success story.”)
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
Jeremy,
If I might chime in, your question is a common perception but I think actually not accurate. One of the reasons that the orthodox in the ELCA had been slow to get organized is that much of the old divisions and suspicions from the predecessor bodies still linger in the ELCA, which never really came together in spirit as a single church. The old ALC folks see “those Swedish LCA liberals” as the locus of the problem, and the old LCA folks see “those midwestern ALC lefties” as the problem.
To some extent they are both right, but also both wrong. There are both orthodox and revisionist cohorts coming out of both big predecessor bodies. In point of fact, a significant part of the leadership of Lutheran CORE, the orthdox coalition in the ELCA, came out of the LCA. (Full disclosure that I am part of that leadership.) If one had to locate the largest part of the origin of the revisionist impulse in a predecessor body, it would probably be in the tiny AELC, formed by those breakaway Missouri Synod congregations. Some were very orthodox “evangelical catholics”, but more were serious revisionists, and they are disproportionately represented in the leadership of today’s ELCA.
So to answer your question directly, I think folks from each major predecessor body think that the merger was a disaster because it brought in all these problems from the “other folks.” I agree the merger was a disaster, but not for that reason.
Ryan Schwarz
Ryan,
I’m obliged. These are the sort of exchanges that make T19 so useful, in my humble opinion. I assumed in the case of AELC (whose initials I could not remember when I posted) that being a liberal in the Missouri Synod of that day still left one fairly orthodox.
I’ve always been intrigued by the story of the Lutheran experience. Its just as ethnically diverse as Catholicism, but there’s so much less written (perhaps because most historians can’t read the Scandinavian languages)
Jeremy, you’ll have a harder time in the future doing any study on the history of Lutheranism, at least in the ELCA. One of the posts eliminated is that of head archivist for the ELCA.
Oh wonderful. When in doubt, eliminate the archivist. Hopefully the papers will be taken in by some university, at least.
I grew up MSLC, switching to ECUSA in college. Having moved to CT, with the “burgling bishop”, I have spent alot of thought on where to go when my orthodox but small and financially troubled TEC parish finally fails (or has a heretic take over). Our local ELCA church leadership is fairly orthodox, but clearly they have their issues a well. Since I’m not willing to switch to a grape juice Eucharist, I’m running out of options. What “interesting times” these are!
Elanor,
The ELCA Bishop of your synod has given her clergy permission to perform same-sex unions and marriages in those states where it is legal. If you’ve found a local congregation that is still fairly orthodox, you have found a gem hidden in a field of cow stuff …