Lutheran Ping!
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
Posted on 04/28/2010 8:46:28 AM PDT by rhema
A leadership conference at west Omaha’s Lutheran Church of the Master drew close to 350 people from around the country.
That’s a sign of how fast a breakaway church group, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, is growing as members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America grapple with a controversial decision allowing gay clergy who are in committed relationships. The annual conference was for pastors and lay leaders of churches in Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ.
The association was founded in 2001 by people, including members of Omaha’s Lutheran Church of the Master, who disagreed with the direction of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Omahans helped shape the new association.
“When we first got together (for a leadership conference), there were 18 of us,” said the Rev. Kip Tyler, senior pastor of Lutheran Church of the Master.
The association grew slowly into 2009. Then in August, a national assembly of the ELCA voted to allow congregations to hire noncelibate gay clergy in committed relationships.
Since then, 185 congregations have joined Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, pushing its membership over 400 churches. The vast majority of those congregations have voted to leave the ELCA, said Sharon McFayden, information coordinator for Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ.
Several Iowa and Nebraska churches are among the new members, including Thanksgiving Lutheran Church in Bellevue and Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church in Smithfield, Neb.
The ELCA remains the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination, with more than 10,000 congregations.
For those who are leaving, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ has become one of the main groups to join.
The congregations aren’t shifting affiliations merely because of the vote on noncelibate gay clergy, Tyler said. More than that, he said, the departing congregations believe the ELCA leadership has drifted away from an orthodox view of Scripture.
“The vote in August was more of a symptom,” Tyler said.
Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ allows women pastors and has open communion, like the ELCA but unlike the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
Leaving the ELCA has been a painful process for congregations, said the Rev. Larry Lindstrom, board chairman of the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ.
It was good for their leaders to meet others like them this week in Omaha, he said, and to encounter pastors and lay leaders who went through similar pains a few years ago.
They’ll share experiences and ideas for the benefit of their members, Lindstrom said.
“Hopefully, the folks who were here go back to their congregations empowered,” he said.
“The vote in August was more of a symptom,” Tyler said.
I wonder when Obama has time to focus on jobs like he promised.
Omaha, not Obama. That’s allright I made the same mistake at first.
Like my pastor and I were discussing last Sunday, it doesn’t matter how the press covers it, or how a gay “church” moving is growing, or anything else.
When you get away from Jesus and Gospel, what you call a church in essence becomes a social club. You lose the Power.
“But know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power therefore.”
2 Timothy 3. Is that not a description of the modern progressive world?
Lovers of self. Lovers of money. Without Self Control. Disobedient to Parents. Sheesh. It’s like Paul was looking into the future.
I first became aware of LCMC a couple of years ago when my daughter was invited by a congregation to apply for a position with their church. (It turned out to be a non match and each wished the other well with their search and parted amicably.) I am not an expert on the subject but I liked what I read online about them. I would think Obama would host an ELCA group long before he would host LCMC.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
I first heard of LCMC, in the spring of 2008. My parents were members of American Lutheran Church, in Prescott, AZ, and that church left the ELCA, to join LCMC. A few months earlier, my parents left the church and joined an LCMS church.
One line explains why the LCMS has garnered only very few, if any, of the separating ELCA congregations.
Female clergy, open communion.
“allowing gay clergy who are in committed relationships.”
What? They’re not allowing “single” homos to be pastors? How do they weed them out? Does this mean that “single” homos can’t even go to seminary? Sounds like more discrimination to me. After all, they don’t require heteros be in “committed relationships” of any kind!
The ELCA's folly of adding denominational codicils to the Bible is continuously on display for all to see. Maybe if the homosexual seminarian-to-be were to show an engagement ring to the seminary's admissions department . . . .
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