Issues between SEPA and Redeemer Are Not Fully Resolved
2×2 has been sitting on this post for a few weeks.
It is uncertain that the member churches of SEPA will give any regard whatsoever to this report. They are likely to continue to believe everything their leadership tells them — which is how this mess started.
Several weeks ago Bishop Burkat issued a letter to clergy and rostered leaders claiming all matters regarding Redeemer are settled. Although generally true, an important detail was left unmentioned.
As your 2013 Synod Assembly approaches, SEPA congregations should not be assuming that the litigation involving them and Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls is over.
The ruling in January was made without prejudice and awaits decisions in several other court matters. The current judge has retained jurisdiction over future litigation, a step that would not be necessary if the issues were in fact settled.
A full and correct report from your leaders would have included these details which affect you. Partial truths and even untruths have often fueled this conflict, which never had to be.
If you don’t know whom to believe, look into it for yourselves.
Redeemer Ambassadors have now visited nearly 60 churches. We are perennial visitors. If there is such a thing, we are experts. Practice makes perfect.
Our status is unique. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America locked us out of God’s House. What they expected to happen as a result is unclear. We started visiting churches.
We are learning the strengths and weaknesses of churches and their hospitality efforts.
Some congregations are more welcoming than others.
Many churches have no hospitality program.
Some congregations have welcome teams who are ready to tell you all about their ministry.
Two gave us a token gift — a mug and a candle.
Most think they are very warm and inviting, even those who don’t say a word to us.
Some have a genuine sense of caring that permeates the entire community. Three of the most welcoming churches we visited had no pastoral presence.
Some say “welcome” but seem a bit suspicious. We understand. There’s a lot of gossip out there. The bishop even sent a letter warning churches that we visit—including a number to call if we cause trouble. How welcoming can you get!?
That was three years ago and we’ve done no harm. None was intended.
The bishop’s unwelcoming tone trickles down. Think what the opposite might do. Clergy could play a big role in setting a welcoming example. They often do not.
We have noticed that pastors are rarely present during fellowship and often stay in the sanctuary or hallway, talking to a select few. That translates in the fellowship room to pockets of people talking to one another with no effort to include visitors.
In three years and 56 visits only one pastor wrote acknowledging our visit afterwards. When we followed up, the conversation stopped. One pastor called and met with us. His church ended up leaving the ELCA. Another pastor returned a call when one of our ambassadors called with a question. Pastors don’t want any part of the situation they helped to create.
In general, the welcoming approach of churches tends to be self-centered. They have a product to sell — membership. And with the purchase of this product you get the following benefits. The list that might follow is a little unclear.
Salvation?
Love?
Acceptance in our community?
The right to contribute?
The right to vote (until the bishop takes your vote away)?
The right to be part of something bigger?
The right to take the blame?
The responsibility but not the power to move the church forward?
The pleasure and satisfaction of doing things our way?
This may sound pessimistic and cynical but it is precisely the uncertainty that lay people face. If visitors are new to church, it is even more unsettling.
The approach of the church with every encounter — with individuals or with groups — should be filled with questions. Gracious, non-judgmental, questions.
How did you find us? What brought you here?
Where are you from? What is your work?
Do you have family? How can we serve your family?
How can we help you?
How can we get to know you?
Do you have a special burden we might be able to lift?
The approach toward visitors should not be list of “talking points”—programs offered, your congregation’s wish list.
It is the job of the church to love others. We can’t do that when we are always looking in a mirror.
In general, although our Ambassadors enjoy our visits, we very much look forward to our own worship once a month. There is no place like home, even if home is borrowed space in a local theater. We can sing the hymns we want to sing, pray the prayers we need to pray, know that the people we are communing with are not attacking us or taking what is ours or looking at us with judging and critical eyes—without ever talking with us outside a court room.
Putting a WELCOME sign by your front door is a promise. Keeping that promise is work that each member needs to be trained to do.
We often hear today of pastors feeling burned out. This term belongs to the modern age. There was no such thing allowed when we were an agrarian society. A farmer cannot face a field of ripe crops and succumb to burnout. A herd of cows with bloated utters must be milked. We had no choice but to do the job that was our lot in life. And still we found time for church.
In those days, there was always a reward at the end of such tasks. The reward was fairly immediate. You had vegetables and milk to consume or sell.
There were also dire consequences for not doing what needs to be done. If crops were not reaped on time, there was no seed money for next year. If livestock was left unattended, they were deadstock.
There were few people to blame when things went bad in an agrarian society. It was either the weather or the farmer—or perhaps the government.
Burnout in the church happens because goals and rewards are less clear. Responsibility is something of a roulette wheel. Add to this expectations that are dated or unrealistic or which are no longer desirable and you have a perpetual malaise. Consequences are delayed. Failure can go on for a long time without the congregation taking steps to change things. In fact, not changing things in the face of failure is encouraged.
Pastors can complain of burnout. They may be well-trained and prepared for calls that no longer exist—at least the way they have been taught to expect. When they spend several hours writing a sermon, week after week, that they will deliver to fewer and fewer people, they get discouraged. “Why am I unappreciated?” is the question that must go through their minds. Clergy have other clergy shoulders to cry on.
The same problem plagues the laity. They have fewer places to register their complaints without being judged. Lay people volunteer their time, week after week. They rarely get credit, often face criticism, and have no support system except their family and friends.
The result: a deadend blame game that polarizes the Church. The clergy blame the laity. The laity blame the clergy. The only ones who are happy are the ones who accept the status quo.
The Prevention of Burnout
The church needs to do a better job at supporting both the clergy and the laity.
The problem may be that our whole structure of expectations needs to be turned upside down. We are trying to “do church” the way it has been done for a long time but under very different conditions—both socially and economically.
Things are generally a mess in the mainline church, but dwelling too much on reality is painful. A new church will emerge but it will not resemble the church that is failing.
In the new and emerging church, the pastor will play a different role, concentrating on reaching people where they are — and it is not in church on Sunday morning.
The skills of lay members will be elevated in importance and put to work. Part of the failure of today’s church is that it is relegating enormous and varied lay talent to tightly structured roles that are no longer challenging, necessary or satisfying. The wealth of lay talent is ignored and often seen as in competition with clergy.
Skilled lay leaders —movers and shakers in their communities — are offered few ways to contribute beyond being a lay reader or usher or some other tightly defined task that doesn’t compete with clergy expectations and which pose no rewarding challenges. Lay people of tomorrow’s church will want to know that they are making a difference. If the Church does not allow them to use their skills in service to God, they will find some other place where they can grow and serve.
This is already happening. People are shopping around for ways to give back that have meaning and grow their skills at the same time. There are many other places they can spend their evenings and weekends.
The Emerging Church Will Be Entrepreneurial
The old economic model has already failed — yet we keep measuring success by the offering plate. Congregations that survive to be part of the emerging church will be entrepreneurial. They will have to fund ministry without relying on member contributions.
This is OK! Churches should be serving the people least likely to be able to contribute.
The size of a congregation will mean far less than its reach. Congregations with the greatest influence may be very small indeed.
Clergy will eventually look for calls not by the size of the congregation but by their resourcefulness. Why?
Today the Roman Catholic Cardinals chose a new pope. Pope Francis of Buenos Aires stood on the balcony in St. Peter’s Square and asked for the faithful to join in prayer. He stood in silence for a long moment before saying a word. We are encouraged that the cardinals chose a man known for humility and servanthood and pray, as he requested, that he will nurture such traits among all religious leaders.
Best wishes as the Roman Catholic Church enters a new era.
We talk about servanthood and sacrifice but there is always the temptation to accumulate wealth and prestige.
In order to accumulate wealth and prestige you must make people happy—especially people who already have some wealth and prestige.
These people hold power over the whole Church. They, by virtue of their status, are responsible for the Church’s success—and its failure. Don’t wait for them to admit it.
We are now watching the celebration of power, in its highest Christian form, with the activities in Rome.
But the Roman Catholic Church is not alone. Most church bodies are tempted to organize around power.
It’s funny. All this power doesn’t seem to help the Church grow.
Living within a power structure causes the people of God to look over their shoulders. The smallest idea or initiative, regardless of its potential, is likely to die before it can be tested.
An individual brings an idea to a committee.
The committee has to check with its version of elders.
The elders have to check with the pastor.
The pastor has to check with the bishop.
The bishop doesn’t have time.
Everyone promises to pray.
Nothing happens.
Perhaps one definition of “saint” is a Christian who steps outside this power structure and gets something done.
What is going on in Rome right now might be of interest only to our Roman Catholic neighbors. But when one denomination boldly claims to be the one and only true church, they invite the attention of the rest of us neo-Gentiles.
Protestant leaders tend to emulate the Roman Catholics, often forgetting the reasons we separated 500 years ago. Some of the reasons have disappeared. Other have not. It’s probably envy for the attention the media gives to the pope.
Truth be told, Protestants have their own messes to clean up today—lots of them, in fact. We don’t really need to be watching so closely.
Nevertheless, beginning this week, all eyes will be on Rome. The process promises to take us close to Holy Week. Guess how much attention Protestant churches will get from the media this Easter season.
We don’t know how things will turn out. One learned church authority described the process and closed his statement saying, “In the end, it’s God’s choice.”
Really? God needs the help of 115 old men, each with considerable self-interest, to name his new Saul or Peter?
Why is the process so secret? Tradition is not a good enough reason anymore. Tradition has led to horrific abuses. Furthermore, tradition has condoned the abuses and made a habit of victimizing any voice of dissent. Again, Protestants share in these atrocities. For once, they can be glad the media concentrates on the Roman church.
Can we, perhaps, learn and adapt traditions so they make sense?
Secrecy in choosing leaders reveals distrust in any human ability beyond the chosen elite. It leads the Church down the road of management not leadership. Managers tend to preserve what they have as they seek to maintain and expand the same power structure. The privileged will remain privileged. Outsiders will fight for a voice.
Leaders, on the other hand, assess the existing resources and add dreams—their own and those of others. This is what the Church today — Roman and Protestant — needs badly.
Leadership has been with us always. In recent years, sparked by the Renaissance, the Reformation and the rise of Democracy, the concepts of leadership have been studied. Much of this research and analysis emerged during the last century but it continues as the world is redefined by digital communication. Old principles will be applied in new ways.
We know now that heredity does not ensure good leadership.
We know that occasionally the best leaders come from outside a given structure.
We know that genitalia is not a predictor of effective leadership.
We know that there is no chosen race that excels in leading.
We know that the most effective leaders are often unarmed.
We know that input from all leads to better decisions.
We know that any voting process is not foolproof.
We know that any power, however and once bestowed, needs to be watched.
We know that future power might be sitting today in a jail cell.
We know that power need not be a life-long mandate. Power can be passed on to successors peacefully and former leaders can return to “civilian” life.
And with all this new knowledge about leadership, we know mistakes can still be made and power can be abused.
Yes, we know more than we did some 2000 years ago, when someone had to figure out what to do upon the demise of Christ’s hand-picked favorite — the mercurial and passionate Simon Peter. They got it wrong a few times, terribly wrong for a while, which brings to question the conclusion that this is God’s process.
We have ample experience these days with dictators and despots—some benevolent, some ruthless.
We have learned that secrecy and exclusion is a predictor of problems.
Good leaders operate in open ways, building trust with honesty and accountability.
The Church has been very bad at this.
Protestants fall into the same trap. In our denomination there seems to be a behind closed doors vetting process. You have to play to have a say.
The archaic processes are designed to evoke mystery and keep the sheep at the far end of the fold with a few barking dogs between them and the emerging leaders.
Just look at the customs that are revealed on the evening news.
The papal apartment is sealed. Against what?
The stoves and chimneys are installed so that smoke can signal the cardinals’ progress. Come on! Even Pope Benedict used Twitter.
The mind games, always part of the process, become tiresome in the media. They would have us believe none of the cardinals aspire to stand on the balcony with the world watching. They are all so engaging as they describe their reluctance. One candidate is out of socks. Another just wants us to know he bought a roundtrip ticket. Coach or first class?
But again. This is all the business of the Roman Catholic church. It doesn’t involve the various branches of Christianity, including the Orthodox who were the first to leave the self-proclaimed one true Church. (Or did the Roman Church leave the Eastern Church?)
The difficult thing to understand is why Protestant leaders, excluded from the club, travel to Rome for photo ops with the pope. There is zero benefit to their denominations, which are surely footing the bill.
The reality is this: the papacy and all church leadership face a new age in which hierarchies as we know them will topple.
It could come hard. It could come easily. It’s going to come. Whomever God or the conclave chooses will be managing or leading God’s people into a new religious era.
Comparing SEPA’s Largest Congregation with the Church SEPA Says Doesn’t Exist
What do Trinity, Lansdale, and Redeemer, East Falls, have in common?
We both engage with more than 700 followers each week.
According to Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Trend reports, Trinity, Lansdale, stands alone among Southeastern Pennsylvania churches in numbers. It has nearly 5000 members and an average worship attendance of 725. Most other large churches in SEPA — and there are only a few — average around 400.
Most SEPA churches are much smaller with about 100 or fewer at worship (many much fewer). ELCA Trend measures only membership, attendance, income and expenses (in various configurations).
There are new statistics that will mean more in the emerging church. Churches don’t have to worry about collecting the data. The internet tracks results for you. This is where Redeemer is breaking ground no other SEPA church seems to be seriously exploring.
Redeemer is no longer listed in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Trend reports, although the congregation never voted to close. We’ll take that up with the ELCA later.
Redeemer was growing quickly although we were still among the SEPA churches with fewer than 50 in average weekly worship attendance—the only engagement most churches measure. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod seized Redeemer’s property and locked our doors in 2009—something about inability to fulfill mission. (They approved a $275,000 budget deficit at the same time they claimed our property.)
There was plenty to question at the time, but no one did. There is more to question now!
Redeemer has continued its ministry without our property. There is no rule that a congregation must own property.
Locked out of God’s House in East Falls, we took our ministry online with our blog, 2x2virtualchurch.com. We now have an average weekly following approaching 800 in new traffic and about 150 who subscribe to our site daily. We engage between 1000 and 2000 readers each week.
Redeemer may have the largest engagement of any SEPA congregation! The potential for effective mission is huge.
While the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the ELCA has tenaciously tried to destroy our ministry, we adapted — and grew!
2×2 is written with lay leaders in mind. Our experience as a small church is that lay leaders are the innovators in ministry. Most have part-time pastors. Growing churches is not part-time work. The passion of lay people (an undervalued resource) is keeping many churches going.
Small churches need resources that don’t rely on paid skills.
We had an additional challenge. Redeemer is multicultural and multilingual. No single age group dominates. That means we can’t just turn to a choir or a youth group or a Sunday School class to create interesting activities. We developed materials that could be adapted to any eclectic grouping.
When we still had our building we posted these resources on generic ministry websites.
Two years ago we began posting them on 2×2.
We posted an Easter play Redeemer performed for all East Falls churches in 2009. It was downloaded 300 times last year and 3000 times this year.
This tells us how we can further serve the large audience of small churches. Search engine analysis shows us that people are beginning to find our content by specifically plugging in terms specific to our site (“2×2 Easter play” — not just “Easter play).” Our content is gaining a following.
We post at least two features a week which congregations can adapt. Early in the week we post an object lesson intended for adults based on the week’s lectionary. Mid-week we post an analysis of art that complements the week’s theme. These can be adapted to multimedia presentations that some churches now show before worship (just as Redeemer did). We will continue to build on this foundation.
In addition, we offer our experience in using social media with dozens of how-to posts.
One large church recently wrote to us: “A lot is written about social media and the church, but you are the only church actually doing it.”
In all likelihood, Redeemer has the widest reach of any church in SEPA Synod with followers all over the world. We engage with them one-on-one. We share ministry problems and successes and rely on one another for prayer.
What does this mean for ministry in East Falls? It means our worldwide reach can now benefit our local ministry. We have a new potential source of funding for ministry.
Redeemer always was viable despite SEPA’s self-interested reports. Our day school, locked since SEPA interfered, would be generating upwards of $6000 per month. (That’s nearly $300,000 of squandered potential over the last four years.) The web site could begin to generate several thousand a month within a year of nurturing—plenty of resources to fund a neighborhood ministry without a single coin in an offering plate.
Redeemer has never had more potential.
If mission is the goal in East Falls (and it is definitely our goal) the best potential for ministry is to make peace with the Lutherans who have steadfastly maintained and grown mission during the last six years of conflict. The property should be returned to Redeemer. This would be in keeping with Lutheran polity.
Our journey has been a leap into the future of the church. We could still be a small neighborhood church serving a few, focused on survival and paying a pastor—as is the case of so many small churches.
We’ve learned that it is possible for a small church to grow. We are very aware that 2×2 can grow beyond our own vision.
Meanwhile, the largest church in SEPA and Redeemer, the largest online church, are both fulfilling their mission with impressive results.
God is doing something new at Redeemer, East Falls.
The strategy and tactics of love are the backbone of most storytelling.
Here is the standard scenario.
Boy sees girl or girl sees boy. They want to get together. (Strategy) They plot to be together, surmounting one obstacle after another until they are happily and forever in each other’s arms. (Tactics)
Is this not like the longed-for scenario of church work?
In the Church, achieving togetherness (oneness with God) is the strategy. Tactics are the methods used to reach this goal.
Too often in church work, we employ tactic after tactic with no clear strategy. Strategy starts to stray — usually in the direction of making a traditional budget.
We write mission statements to remind us that the strategy of the Church is to reach God’s people with the message of love.
What follows should be an examination of tactics. Too often it is simply putting into place the tactics of the past.
Typical tactics include:
Membership drives
Pot luck dinners and seasonal festivals
Visitation
Worship innovations
Educational and social opportunities
Newsletters
Sermons
Service projects
There are new tactics that the Church has not yet conquered.
Social media
This contains a host of sub-tactics — blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, podcasting, video, etc.
But what is the strategy?
The message of the church is love. The strategy never changes.
The strategy is engagement.
Jesus engaged people.
He approached them as individuals.
The woman at the well
The midnight lesson with Nicodemus
The paralytic by the pool of Bethesda
He engaged them in groups.
The wedding guests
The disciples
The multitudes on the mountainside
The people in the temple
The family of Lazarus at the graveside
Once engaged, Jesus employed tactics.
Miracles
Rituals and observances
Personal conversations that often had a supernatural nature
Teaching
Storytelling
Protesting (clearing the temple)
Service (blessing the children, feeding the hungry, curing the ill)
We must emulate these tactics. We must teach and serve, pray and worship. We must do some things in a traditional way and we must do many things in more modern ways. To some extent we must do them simultaneously because we live in transitional age.
A common tactic employed by regional bodies is to close churches on older memberships — expecting elderly members to assimilate into other congregations that might also be forced to close within a few years. This is a cruel and dead-end tactic because it has lost view of the overall strategy of the church. The strategy of engagement has been overtaken by the strategy of economics.
The rut which is engulfing the Church is that we have become accustomed to people coming to us. We expect this and even demand it—without success, but we keep doing it anyway! This expectation is becoming less realistic with every passing day. The problems we face today are because the tactic of neglect has been employed for decades.
And so we must adjust our engagement tactics.
If people are not going to come to us, how are we going to reach them? How do we engage God’s people today?
People in today’s world expect transparency. We are emerging from a world where business was conducted in back rooms, managed by a few bosses with self-interest as a core motivation.
That’s not working so well anymore. It’s truly a new business environment. Management must listen to employees and employees must listen to customers. Failure to operate openly and honestly in a considerate manner (transparency) can quickly spell disaster.
Recovery from a gaffe in this new business model is all the harder if shortcomings are not readily admitted and corrected publicly and promptly.
The Church lives in the same world, but it has a tougher time adapting. Church leaders sense that things aren’t going well, but they are reluctant to make any changes that might right our course.
Churches teach trust. Sometimes the trust that we intend for God and His Son, is projected onto church leaders—who are often quite willing to accept the surrogacy.
Recent events in the Church have proven this trust to be ill-placed. There is little evidence that we are learning from the exposed mistakes.
The reason? The Church just doesn’t know how to change. The existing structure is perceived as right, proper and necessary. So what if it is no longer effective!
If the Church is to continue as a viable influence in society, it must provide transparency. People expect this—especially the young who are unfamiliar with old ways of operating. They are looking at their parents across a dinner table discussion about church and thinking, “And we are expected to tithe to support this?”
They are not going to trust that their offerings and other tangible sacrifices for their church are put to good use. They will want proof—real proof. They will no longer trust the Church — just because. There simply have been too many abuses of their trust.
This article posts a short bulleted list of the qualities of transparency.
Transparency means that you are not afraid of feedback.
Transparency means that you have nothing to hide.
Transparency means your employees’ personal and work persona blur.
Transparency means you like to have conversations with your customers.
The Church fails at each of these.
The Church discourages feedback.
The Church operates in secrecy.
Clergy and hierarchical leaders remain distant in maintaining relationships with congregations and with individual lay members.
The Church likes to give orders. Dialog is controlled, when it exists at all.
Illustrations follow.
The Church is facing the same new demands for transparency. But the old ways of doing church are hard to break. Progress is slow.
In our region, we have a synod council that constitutionally represents the congregations in leadership within the synod. The names of the representatives are listed on the regional body’s web site. There is NO contact information.
The dates of synod council meetings are not publicized to the congregations that have the right to attend them.
Synod council’s published minutes include fairly frequent “executive” sessions that are not reported.
Synod deans, who lead regional clusters of congregations, were once volunteers, representing the group of congregations to the regional body. Today they are paid — an extension of the bishop’s office.
It is almost impossible for a congregation to initiate conversation with the regional body.
The national church, too, has transparency problems.
They respond to correspondence from congregations (who fund their budget) when they feel like it. One of our members, after months of attempting to contact the national church, received a letter from its legal department stating that they felt no obligation to respond. Ten monthly letters to our regional body and the national church went totally ignored. We gave up.
The denominational magazine, The Lutheran, plays at social media. It allows comments on its website only if you pay. A lot of Lutherans read the denominational magazine via subscriptions paid for by their congregations. Others share a subscription within the family. The result: the forum in the Church is controlled.
Most people in the congregation have no clue what might be discussed (in the limited time allowed for discussion) at the tightly controlled Synod Assemblies.
The article we are referencing goes on to list ten suggestions for achieving transparency. We’ll adapt them to church life.
Treat members right. Genuinely interact with them. One devoted Lutheran once shared that he was eager to attend an evening with the bishop. He expected to be part of a dialog. He sat through an hour-long monologue, got discouraged, and walked out.
Don’t come on too strong. Show respect. Bringing legal counsel and a locksmith with you to a meeting with a congregation might be seen as coming on too strong. Dismissing all the elected leaders of a congregation with no discussion is disrespectful.
Always listen to church members.Our synod failed to return phone calls or respond to correspondence for more than a year.
Continue to satisfy. Offer support. Our regional body failed to provide even minimal services for nearly a decade.
Treat congregations and lay leaders as valued partners—even when you disagree.You might be able to learn from one another, but only if communication is two-way.
Build trust. Trust is a process. Start by keeping little promises and staying in dialog. One-way email broadcasts are not dialog.
Admit mistakes. This is impossible if you never make mistakes. But that’s unlikely, isn’t it?
Follow through on your word. Keep promises. We have a long list of promises broken by our regional body.
Recognize responsibility. The congregations may not always be right — but they probably are more often than not. Certainly regional bodies are not necessarily right just because they are regional bodies.
Always say Thank You. Our regional body seized our property and financial assets. No please. No thank you. Just five years of litigation.
The modern Church will find its strength not in bolstering the clergy and hierarchy but by enabling lay members (upon whom they rely for support).
Failing to answer the modern expectations from rank and file church members will result in the failure of the Church. Transparency must be addressed. The sooner the better.
In the story of the good Samaritan, the religious people (the priest and the Levite) find reasons to pass by the poor soul who has been robbed and hurt. In each case, their failure to act with compassion is prompted by fear for their own hides.
It is the Samaritan—the outsider, the person at whom the religious people of the day would collectively thumb their noses—who offered help—ongoing help, not just a quick fix.
We lived the Good Samaritan story this week. We needed help. One of our good members faced the imminent loss of her home and income due to the reign of terror inflicted on Redeemer and its members by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Our little church, which SEPA insists doesn’t exist, rallied.
We asked for help from churches who helped create this situation. They were prayerful but unhelpful. It’s so easy to find excuses to do nothing.
“We’ll pray for you” is the universal excuse of SEPA Lutherans. Their prayer, we suppose, is that someone else will fix the mess they created. How tiring all that prayer must be!
We went to unrelated Lutheran churches. We don’t do that sort of thing, was their answer.
At last we found the help we needed. One local church who has been helping us for the last four years offered major assistance with no expectation of return. A church some 200 miles away (and smaller than Redeemer!) both contributed and guaranteed what we couldn’t raise locally. Four individuals also helped graciously. As far as we know, only one has any church affiliation.
Two of them used the same phrase: “A wrong has been done and it must be righted.”
And so little Redeemer, raised the money we needed to satisfy Redeemer’s debt—twice what SEPA expects to pay. This debt would never have been a problem to anyone if our school were operating for the last four years and contributing to mission and ministry in East Falls. But SEPA, hungry for our assets, interfered with and ruined our 25-year relationship with a Lutheran agency and stopped us from opening our own program. They have kept the doors locked on both the sanctuary and school for nearly four years—no ministry is better than a neighborhood church they can’t control.
SEPA Synod took our property under questionable legality. A court split decision ruled in their favor, saying the courts could not be involved in church issues. The dissenting opinion pointed out that the legal arguments seem to favor Redeemer and the case should be heard by the courts. In five years, court room after court room, the case has never been heard.
We have always claimed that SEPA’s interest in our property was entirely a result of their failing finances and mission—not Redeemer’s.
This week is further proof.
We’ve been saying in our posts on social media that the power in the church is shifting. There was a day when congregations had to band together to provide services and perform effective mission. Individuals now have the power to do much more on their own. Support of hierarchy is more expensive than effective.
Redeemer (and yes, we do exist) proved that this week.
Don’t get us wrong . . . we appreciate prayer. But we appreciate even more those who help find answers to prayer.
Thank you to all who cared enough to do more than pray. You are a living parable.
Join Bishop Ruby Kinisa as she visits small churches "under cover" to learn what people would never share if they knew they were talking to their bishop.
Undercover Bishop will always be available in PDF form on 2x2virtualchurch.com for FREE.
Print or Kindle copies are available on Amazon.com.
For bulk copies, please contact 2x2: creation@dca.net.
MISSION INSPIRATION OFFER
A visual and biblical guide to help congregations define their missions.
Contact Info
You can reach
Judy Gotwald,
the moderator of 2x2,
at
creation@dca.net
or 215 605 8774
Redeemer’s Prayer
We were all once strangers, the weakest, the outcasts, until someone came to our defense, included us, empowered us, reconciled us (1 Cor. 2; Eph. 2).
Be calm. Wait. Wait. Commit your cause to God. He will make it succeed. Look for Him a little at a time. Wait. Wait. But since this waiting seems long to the flesh and appears like death, the flesh always wavers. But keep faith. Patience will overcome wickedness.
—Martin Luther
