Posted on 08/27/2009 6:13:07 PM PDT by lightman
The Ministerium In Schism, A Church Divided
A week from the first vote in Minnesota that altered the landscape of the ECLA forever, I have had some time for a few reflections. I don't pass myself off as some deep thinking theologian, nor do my words reflect anything other than that of the parish pastor. A parish pastor who day in and day out ministers to the people, preaches the Word and administers the sacraments, and understands he is simul justus et peccator, at one and same time sinner and saint.
There are many of us, in fact probably a great majority, who simply cannot comprehend what happened last week. I was a voting member and I am not sure I understand. But we do know that the decisions made will ripple down and probably signals the end of the ELCA as a potent denomination in American Lutheranism.
I am not getting into the scriptural debates that have raged for the entire life of the ELCA on this issue. I think in all reality we have been operating with two diferent hermeneutics of scriptural interpretaion for a long, long time. It is why we have been obsessed with this for the entire life of the ELCA. Last week, I really wanted to talk about world hunger. About caring for the homeless. About why our church has lost half a million members in six years. About evangelism. There was little, if any , discussion on these topics. I do want to say this.
Most of us who struggle with this are not extremists on either side. We do not demonize those who think differently from us, nor do we hate people because of their sexual orientation. Many of us have gay friends and know people who struggle with sexual identity. As a pastor for 21 years, I have counseled many people who struggle in that arena. I have not judged them, nor condemned them, but tried to share God's love in all things.
The fallout is massive, and deep. I am hearing from pastors and laypeople across this nation, and life has changed for many in these days. Because I was a voting member and shared my convinctions, my phone is ringing with those who want to talk who saw me on the web. But the commen theme is life has changed forever. And we all know that theologically we have crossed the Rubicon. We can't go back, only forward. We know many will leave. We know many will go to other churches, other faith expressions. This is not just about pastors and their polity, but it is about the layperson who is confused and struggling in this time. About the congregation in the midwest who has had people leave already. About pastors who wonders what their church does stand for.
The Ministerium is in schism, and our house, our church is divided. Pray for everyone involved, from laypeople to Bishops, and for the simple parish pastors who must now minister in the midst of a church founded on protest, that is in protest, and indeed in schism. Whether His house through the ELCA can still stand remains to be seen.
Being compassionate, and accepting of each other as Americans, is a whole different story than blatant politics which have destroyed this church. Last week, there was a militancy that frightened me , not from the tradtional side, but from those desiring change. At all costs, even that of seeking unity, they pushed, and pushed, and pushed, until finally out of fatigue, the question was called.
I am not assailing the motives of any on either side, but stating that the church of sola scriptura just sold her theology down the river. When we say the Holy Spirit is doing a "new thing", we better be darn sure that is grounded in our scripture, in our confessions, and in our life together. I am not sure that happened. I am not sure a simply majority vote, which leaves half the church opposed, if not more, is right.
Luther wrote in his Commentary on John:
The Holy Spirit establishes a wide difference among teachers and gives the right rule by which the spirits are to be tested. He wants to say that there are two kinds of teachers. There are some who speak on their own authority; that is, they evolve their message from their own reasoning or religious zeal and judgment. The Holy Spirit is not to be that kind of preacher; for He will not speak on His own authority… In this way Christ sets bounds for the message of the Holy Spirit Himself. He is not to preach anything new or anything else than Christ and His Word. Thus we have a sure guide and touchstone for judging the false spirits.1
Is a social issue the Word? Is the Holy Spirit doing a new thing when it is unbound from the Word? Where do we go from here? What makes our generation so enlightened, so confident, so self-important that we know better?
And I certainly hope that those doing a victory lap will pause to recognize that the question still needs to be answered as to whether this new thing is theologically grounded, confessionally sound, wedded to the Word, or simply our best guess on social policy in American culture. Some may see this as the price that needs to be paid for change. Maybe the cost is just too high, and I wonder if anyone is having buyers remorse?
Pastor Jeff Ruby Status Confessionis, ELCA pastor
Luther, M. (1999, c1961). Vol. 24: Luther's works, vol. 24 : Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 14-16 (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther's Works (24:362). Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House
After these same kind of shenanigans in the United Methodist Church, only worse -- the UMC finally came down hard on not approving of gay pastors, so the huge number of old hippie gay pastors who entered seminaries in the 60s and 70s are still in the northeastern conferences, just continuing to lie and dissemble and corrupt the Word and influence the youth groups and hang out in gay bars in Philly, Baltimore and DC. I left almost a decade ago.
I have only been in home churches ever since -- small groups of about 6 to 8 members, with a quorum of four. I have been in three of them in succession.
We study the Bible and pray together, call each other and hear each other's confessions and triumphs. It's not perfect; since there is a universal human tendency for cliques or "cults of personality" to develop, so I have found that there has so far been a lifespan of about 3 to 5 years. Sometimes in a group that small, if one or two people move away, the group disbands.
The most successful group I was in had strict rules, and that works well for people who respect rules; but in one of the groups that was mixed (blacks and whites), generally speaking most of the blacks found rules to be oppressive and would react emotionally to being called to account by a white member, so that one was an "ad hocracy" that was great and produced one or two lasting mixed friendships but was culturally unsustainable during the last presidential election season.
My grandmother, mother and aunts were in a large, old-time "women's circle" that went "home church" after the civil rights movement hit our city and white flight disbanded a venerable, generations-old working-class congregation within a decade. That circle lasted for 62 years and supported a hospital ministry and a missionary; but it did not supplant regular church attendance -- the two dozen members scattered to a number of different congregations, but kept up their circle independently with a monthly meeting rotating among houses and a big yearly picnic that included spouses and children. Every birthday, Christmas or death in the family, each member received two dozen cards, phone calls and visits from the faithful circle members.
To all Christians, This recent move by they ELCA has vast implications for all.
It can be easy to point and think that it will not happen in my Church.
This is a serious sign of the degradation of morality in our whole American society whether you are a Christian or not.
It is effecting you.
As for Cristians we have been prayed for by Christ himself (John 17)and are to be "in the world" but not "of it."
This is a call to be Holy, NOT to abuse God's grace!
Would Jesus say that we must stay with these who will not hear the word?
No, he would say to dust of our sandals and move on to those who will listen.
The victory is in Christ alone for "he has done it".
Romans 6
Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ
1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
John 17:6-19
Jesus Prays for His Disciples
6"I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. 7Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. 8For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them.
They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. 9I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. 10All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. 11I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one.
12While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. 13"I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. 14I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.
15My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
The ELCA by an evil politically driven secular agenda has become "of the world".
Satan is the prince of that world.
Would you not stand and fight for the LORD at least a little bit before you up and leave your church?
Few men have been as skilled at polemics as Martin Luther. I’d be rolling to hear what he’d have to say about this.
I imagine that some of it wouldn’t pass the FCC’s bad word test.
It’s the age of apostasy.
I left the Lutheran denomination years ago for similar reasons, and found my spiritual home in the original Church founded by Christ Himself, the Catholic Church. We are protected from creeping homosexualism by the Tradition of the Church, which is the unwritten taught by our Lord to St. Peter and the other Apostles and passed down over the millennia to us. No bishop (not even the pope) can teach anything that contradicts Tradition. For the record, here is what Tradition teaches us about homosexuality:
2396 Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.Despite what you may have heard, we Catholics do not worship statues, we do not think of St. Mary as being equal to or greater than her Son, Jesus Christ, in any way, and we are not the Whore of Babylon. I urge those of you Lutherans out there who have been made spiritually homeless by this latest, regrettable instance of theological anarchy to prayerfully consider the Catholic Church as your refuge.2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection. Source
(Please feel free to FReepmail me privately if I may be of any service to you in this matter.)
“Be warned, however: sooner or later, the rot will spread to these denominations as well.”
Only if we let it, like if we become complacent.
“We are protected from creeping homosexualism by the Tradition of the Church, which is the unwritten taught by our Lord to St. Peter and the other Apostles and passed down over the millennia to us. No bishop (not even the pope) can teach anything that contradicts Tradition.”
Yet, there’s still some bad apples, are there not? Also, you don’t need Catholic Tradition, you just need to stay true to the Bible and the Word of God, IMO.
“I urge those of you Lutherans out there who have been made spiritually homeless by this latest, regrettable instance of theological anarchy to prayerfully consider the Catholic Church as your refuge.”
Thanks, but I think that the LCMS or WELS would be quite sufficient.
Only the Evangelical Lutheran Church of AMerica. The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod would bet to differ with you. You do know that there is more than one Lutheran church here in the US?
The LCMS no longer recognizes the ELCA as being Lutheran.
I left several years ago and went back to my RC roots when I saw the storm clouds on the horizon with this type of talk. Not to mention the "fine print" about clergy getting money for abortions.
There's the problem right there...You can bet the extremists for Jesus don't struggle with it...
I have counseled many people who struggle in that arena. I have not judged them, nor condemned them, but tried to share God's love in all things.
How can you counsel someone and still condone their sin???
Good sales pitch, but,,,...
Science has pretty much proven that homosexuals are not born...They are made...Recruited...
Your religion of all single male clergy seems to have an overabundance of homosexual priests...Would seem these homosexual priests were recruited as children by other homosexual priests...
While your religion preaches anti-homosexualism, it appears to go well beyond any reasonable bounds by protecting these homusexual priests from the law...
So let's remember your religion is fanatical on abortion while allowing more than half of it's American members to vote for a baby murdering president...
I'd like to highly recommend that these jilted church goers find a church that not only does the talk but walks the walk and not only condemns the acts of homosexualism but enforces it's own rules when it comes to homosexual clergy...
As if a tornado wasn’t enough, LOL. Very, very sad. My parents were Norwegian lutherans until they came to the US and there was no church nearby. We were brought up Episcopalian. Now both of those good churches, liturgical churches, are split.
Your church is rampant with homosexuality, whether it teaches it or not. The harm homosexual priests have done to your church and its young people is horrific. I know most Catholics are good people and are not homosexuals, but the Vatican let it go on for years and just covered it up. Your church needs to clean itself up.
Amen, Iscool. There are many bible-believing, bible living churches out there, mostly non-denominational or true Baptist-type churches that preach the word.
Do not use potty language - or references to potty language - on the Religion Forum.
I’m sorry, but I don’t remember using any “potty language” in Post #37. Please let me know how I broke the rules so I won’t unwittingly do it again.
Ah, I see. Point taken. Thanks for the private reply.
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