Lutheran (EL
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Posted on 02/09/2010 5:55:38 PM PST by SmithL
Nebraska and Iowa are feeling the fallout from a decision by the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination to allow non-celibate gay clergy and church leaders, as well as recognition of same-sex couples.
Thanksgiving! Lutheran Church in Bellevue voted Jan. 31 to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or ELCA. It takes two votes with at least a two-thirds majority, taken at least 90 days apart, for a congregation to split from the national church.
The Jan. 31 vote was Thanksgiving!’s second vote, so it appears to make the church the first Nebraska congregation to break from the ELCA since a controversial churchwide assembly in August.
At that assembly, ELCA delegates voted to lift a prohibition against sexually active gay and lesbian pastors from serving as clergy. The new policy, which has not yet taken effect, would allow ELCA congregations to hire such individuals as pastors if they show they are in committed, lifelong relationships.
One congregation in the Western Iowa Synod of the ELCA, Skien Lutheran Church in Sloan, also has voted twice to leave the ELCA.
Other Midlands congregations are considering whether to leave, and some are withholding their support of the national church.
At least one Nebraska church, Hope Evangelical in rural Smithfield, is known to have voted once to leave and is pondering the required second vote. And at least one Iowa congregation, Eagle Grove Evangelical in Eagle Grove, has taken a first vote, but chose not to split from the ELCA.
By Thursday, 220 congregations had taken a first vote since August on resolutions to leave the ELCA, said Melissa Ramirez Cooper, an ELCA spokeswoman. Sixty-four rejected it, she said.
Twenty-eight congregations have taken a second vote. Ramirez Cooper said she didn’t know how many of those had passed. But she said seven congregations have been removed from the denomination.
The ELCA has about 10,400 congregations in the United States and the Caribbean. It’s the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination, with more than 4.6 million members.
Bishop David deFreese, leader of the ELCA Nebraska Synod, noted that those voting to leave were a small percentage of the state’s 260 congregations with 119,000 members.
Still, he said, it hurts.
“Our goal is always to enlarge the circle, to touch more people with God’s love and hope,” deFreese said.
He said he was saddened not only by the congregations’ departures, but also by the message they could send to society.
“This is maybe just another statement to society that the church is judgmental,” he said. “We want to have the church seen with arms out, longing to care.”
In Iowa, Bishop Michael A. Last said there is “significant unsettlement” in the Western Iowa Synod he leads.
“Probably half of our congregations are not so happy with our (August) decisions, but believe that the ELCA is a church they still feel good about, and for them it’s not really an issue,” Last said.
He estimated another 25 percent of congregations supported the decisions. The remaining 25 percent, Last said, are in the process of discerning what to do, including whether to leave the ELCA.
Last said some in his synod are urging the national church to delay implementing the decisions until the ELCA’s 2011 churchwide assembly.
In Bellevue, Thanksgiving! Lutheran members who attended meetings in October and last week voted about 90 percent in favor of leaving the ELCA, Pastor Glenn Harless said. The second vote was 283 to 32. About 900 people attend services weekly at Thanksgiving!.
“The decisions of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis last August regarding issues of human sexuality were simply a catalyst for T!LC to begin the discernment process to leave,” Harless said by e-mail.
“We believe that Jesus Christ calls us to love and to care for all people, including those with same sex attraction; but we have a profound difference of opinion with the ELCA regarding how we are to carry out that ministry.”
He said the ELCA’s new position “ignores a clear reading of the scriptures, including God’s created order and design for human sexuality.”
That stance appears to be a common theme among those leaving the ELCA.
“The (August) decisions cannot be squared with the biblical and historical teachings of the Christian faith,” said the Rev. Cathi Braasch, pastor of Hope Evangelical, a growing rural church near Smithfield, Neb.
“For our congregation, and for so many, we recognize we’re all sinners and that we are called to love all sinners — without blessing or endorsing sin.”
Those are hotly debated points in Nebraska and Iowa, as across the nation.
The Rev. Lilette Johnston left as pastor of Skien Lutheran after the Sloan church voted to leave the ELCA.
“I’m very supportive of the actions that were taken at the (August) churchwide assembly,” Johnston said. “I believe in the mission and the ministry of what it means to be Lutheran, and the fact that we are called to mission and outreach in our country and throughout the world, and I believe the ELCA does that very well.”
Like many congregations that are leaving the ELCA, Thanksgiving! will affiliate with Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, an association with deep Nebraska roots.
Exodus Ping
Sodomites and their friends are just trying to steal assets...
“For our congregation, and for so many, we recognize we’re all sinners and that we are called to love all sinners — without blessing or endorsing sin.”
It is one thing to welcome the sinner in to your congregation it is another to be led by them.
Seriously, even with the most unrestricted and limber of mental acrobatics, using a trampoline of Moral Relativism, how can you read the Bible and see support for this anywhere?
If they want to participate in this sort of un-Biblical behavior, why do so under the banner of Christianity? Why not just set up a new New Age religion based on Human Secularism?
(I know that part of their goal is to destroy Christianity from within, so that is a rhetorical question.)
And they wonder why they continue to lose members.
Left the Lutheran church years ago for a Pentecostal church.
No kidding!!! They will continue to lose people if they keep this stuff up. They quit seeking God and only seek what feels good or they themselves perceive as good. God will protect His true church, which is not a building or a denomination, it’s His children.
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
The people supporting this stance, need to read Jesus’s rebukes of the 7 churches in Revelation. The Church of Philadelphia being the only church to not receive a rebuke.
Churches promoting gay and lesbian clergy are skating on thin ice.
My own Church has quietly let it be known to its members that while the Synod may go that way, our Church will not be endorsing or promoting gay/lesbian behavior. They are welcome to worship, and hopefully see the error of their ways...but lead? No, they will not be held up as examples by our congregation. If, at some point in the future, the Synod pushes us on this, they'll probably loose another Church.
Saw an article in last night’s local paper, the Lutheran church is getting ready to vote to break away. I am in south central Nebraska. The Smithfield congregation mentioned in this post is a tiny town with a rural congregation- twenty miles down the road from me.
As Groucho would say, "close but no cigar.".
The "Full Comunion (altar and pulpit fellowship) Partners" are The Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ, the Reformed Church in America, the Moravian Church, and The United Methodist Church.
Where was the outrage before?
In the hundreds who attended the many "Call to Faithfulness" conferences held at St. Olaf; in the hundreds who signed the "9.5 Theses"; and in the hundreds of clergy who have subscribed to the Rule of the Society of the Holy Trinity.
I would think most churches would feel the way yours does. It’s truly a sad day when you see men pushing an agenda on the church that is not of God.
ELCAspeak translation: "We do get an occasional pang about putting our denominational imprimatur on sin, but our worst nightmare is the secular world's labeling us 'judgmental'."
That’s an interesting bit of observation. Thanks for it. Always valuable to get such perspectives in a society that oversimplifies.
All politics are local, as Tip O’Neill once famously said.
It is interesting to see the reactions in each area of the country to this decision.
Thanks for the correction and information. I forgot the Reformed Church of America, but I was unaware of the Moravian Church, and the United Methodist. When were these last two included in the altar and pulpit fellowship? I don’t think that I have ever seen a Moravian church.
I don't believe the church of Smyrna was rebuked either. (Smyrna = "the persecuted church")
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