Lutheran (EL
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Posted on 08/24/2009 6:02:39 PM PDT by rhema
Last Friday, as members of the nation's largest Lutheran denomination were casting four historic votes recasting the role of homosexuals in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a mop-up operation had begun a few blocks away.
In a hospitality suite on the 12th floor of the Doubletree Hotel, Bill Sullivan's cell phone was ringing and ringing.
Mr. Sullivan, a former ELCA pastor, is national coordinator for the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC), a collection of 226 congregations founded in March 2001 with 25 charter member churches dissatisfied with the denomination's liberal drift.
Now the trickle has turned into a flood.
"It's been going nonstop," he said of his phone.
On Friday alone, he scheduled three visits to ELCA churches in Buffalo, N.Y. Sioux City, Iowa and Jacksonville, Fla., for later this fall. They are thinking of leaving, as were the 15 people who had stopped by the hotel suite that day. Twenty-five inquiries had come in that week alone, and that was before all the vote tallies were in down the street at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
He glanced at his e-mail.
"The train wreck is just about over," he said, reading from a post sent by a delegate on the convention floor. "The first responders need to be ready."
He looked up.
"People have been calling all morning," he said. "They want this to be over. It's been going on for days. A small minority of people are changing 2,000 years of church teaching."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Charleston has blocked out the word "Lutheran" on the large sign in front of its building as its members grapple with a vote opening the pulpit to gays and lesbians.
The Rev. Richard Mahan says members of the congregation spent part of Sunday discussing whether they should leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the nation's largest Lutheran group.
Last week, delegates to ELCA's national assembly voted to allow gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy.
Mahan attended the assembly and voted against the decision. He says it contradicts the historic teachings of Christianity.
ELCA isn’t a church, its a mission field. Not a very promising one, but a mission field.
The problem with dealing with people who don’t actually believe anything is they can’t imagine anyone else actually believing anything either.
Thus the “What do you mean your leaving our church? Just because you lost a vote?” disbelief amongst many ECLA members.
The vote to accept practicing homosexual pastors in “committed” relationships was 559-451.
If they regarded their Bibles as more than a book of helpful, non-authoritative hints, they'd read passages like this: 1Cor. 5:9 I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.
The Church isnt listening to the people. Just like Congress doesnt listen.
If you are a ELCA member and upset, you do have an alternative. You can join us in the Missouri Synod, where we don’t even have women as pastors.
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Separated from Apostolic teaching authority for 500 years, this is not surprising.
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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
I know there must be very conservative family oriented Lutherans....I know a lady who is expecting her 14 child...and she is from some sect of Lutheranism...
Indeed. Isnt it richly ironic that Martin Luther's church is afflicted by a schism born of the fruits of the latest worldly modern philosophy. To those who are troubled by heresy, dont forget that it is never too late for the prodigal sons to return to the fold.
That's what the ELCA-predecessor church bodies did 35+ years ago when they started ordaining women. That should have been the wake-up call way back then.
Exactly my point in post 16. Hmm, I wonder if you and I may have received similar theological training. . . .
Indeed, indeed, they can now swim the Tiber and be reunited with a strong practicing and recent homosexual component in the clergy.
Allow this Catholic to respectfully suggest that you might want to tack a new 95 theses to Martin Marty’s backside or his office door or whatever on behalf of LCMS. May God bless you and yours and those faithful in ELCA who strive with integrity to apply God’s law in their daily lives.
Isn’t that like choosing between rape and murder?
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