[FreeMaine]

"WHEREAS, both the North American Lutheran Church (NALC) and Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) are encouraging congregations, clergy, and laity to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA); and WHEREAS, some clergy have violated the governing documents of the ELCA by encouraging their congregations to leave the ELCA; THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the 2011 Southeastern Minnesota Synod in assembly request that the ELCA Church Council consider removing from the Health and Benefits Program of the ELCA, clergy who have left the ELCA or encouraged their congregations or laity to do so."

So what's wrong with that? If you leave the group paying for your insurance and go another group, why would the old group keep paying for your health insurance. This isn't revenge, it is common sense.

[rhema]

I think the Benefits part of that vindictive resolution is the chief issue. If reader Swenson is right, the ELCA can't remove former ELCA pastors from the pension program.

Many organizations allow a departing member to continue receiving health insurance if he/she pays for it. It seems the ELCA wouldn't even allow that. So much for tolerance, magnanimity, and forgiveness.

[Caleb1411]

The resolution seems to indicate that the ELCA (which certainly wouldn’t pay for departing pastors’ insurance and pension benefits) would not even allow former pastors to personally pay for and remain in its health program or continue private payments to its pension program, even though it might be a benefit to do so (e.g., not having to change health-care providers under a new plan).

[Colonel_Flagg]

Read it again. For me the key is ‘or encouraged their congregations or laity to do so’.

If a parishoner approaches his or her pastor and asks as a question of faith, “should I stay in a church I believe to be apostate?”, and the pastor answers “no”, this measure would have allowed him or her to lose his benefits.

Adherence to Scripture would therefore bring financial penalty to pastors still in ELCA service, in direct contradiction with Church tradition of Apostles being provided for by the Church (See 1 Thess 2:6).