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ELCA

The Advent Prayer of Thankful Warriors

Where Do We Send Our Thanks?

My mother had a question she asked every Thanksgiving.

“If people don’t believe in God,
what do they do on Thanksgiving?”

The answer is simple but it is not one she would accept.

They watch football, feast, and go shopping.

It’s also what a lot of people who DO believe in God do!

Thanksgiving is a national holiday, not a religious holiday. In reality, many Americans will gather around the traditional turkey and utter thanks to no god.

Their thanks will fill the empty air and land in no place in particular.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls have one thing in common. We are Americans. We too will pause to give thanks.

Some will do this in their church homes.

Redeemer has no church home—but we will manage all the same.

We are now in the fifth year of being locked out of our church by SEPA Synod.

This is the outcome of greedy synodical actions, implemented with no clear direction but with all the power bullies can muster.

Can anyone in SEPA Synod explain what they thought would happen when they came to our neighborhood on February 24, 2008, with words of peace but with a locksmith in hiding?

Really! What were you thinking?

SEPA has spent the last four years as slum landlords in East Falls. Good slum landlords. The walls are still standing and the lawn is raked and mown. But they have shown no love for East Falls or any understanding or compassion for the many people they have hurt.

Hate is like that.

For all their talk of discernment, SEPA has communicated no vision for mission in this region of Philadelphia, which includes East Falls, Wissahickon, Roxborough, and Manayunk—and a sizable swath surrounding this area. This area is home to more than 100,000 people and SEPA has no vision for serving here. They grabbed the assets of three churches in this region since they organized in the 1980s. They’ve put nothing back, except the expenses of caring and disposing of property.

As richer SEPA congregations struggle to support their regional office, the land of smaller churches has become a target. When they’ve squandered all of that, then what?

Nothing positive has come of SEPA’s actions in East Falls—nothing.

Left in the wake of this manifestation of corporate greed are good people disenfranchised from the church.

On the other side of the conflict are good people who still want to believe that their leaders know best. All evidence is to the contrary.

  • Assets provided for ministry by our community have been squandered on legal fights and synod’s budget shortfalls.
  • A Lutheran-sponsored school which provided important services for 25 years was closed—a long relationship squandered.
  • SEPA has created a reputation in the neighborhood of a church that puts property above people and that handles disputes with local people with all the strength of a corporately supported bully. Rebuilding the church here, without the people they expelled, will be very difficult—assuming that was ever their  intent.
  • Children once active in their church weekly were left unchurched—disenfranchised. One young man who was eleven when he was locked out has started his own Bible study with his friends.
  • Young adults once passionate about ministry are unchurched. They were in their teens when they were locked out. Sadly and perhaps wisely, they’ve become content. Secular organizations value them.
  • The working people of Redeemer remain in close touch ready for the day their church might once again love them. We are faithful to our mission.
  • The older people of Redeemer support one another, still in shock that the church they supported all their lives would rather “move on” without them. Other churches expect cooperation in making this easy for them.
  • Every church now knows what to expect if they don’t do as they are told. Lutheranism has lost its backbone.

Not only is this all OK with SEPA Lutherans but it seems to be the only outcome Lutherans in this region can imagine.

That is sad. We worship of God of possibility!

Hate destroys.
Love nurtures.

At Redeemer, we give thanks for our community that has weathered this storm and forged a new ministry without property and without the expenses that are crippling many churches. While others have waited for us to die, we’ve networked locally and worldwide. We are thankful that we live in an age where this is possible.

We are thankful for the blessings of God that have given our people fortitude and spirit. We are thankful for the varied skills and talents which comprise our community. Some are hard workers, some are spiritual nurturers, some show extraordinary care for the many people in their lives, some are great organizers.  We have each other. Praise God!

We are thankful for the support of a few churches and individuals that have no dog in this race except that they see injustice. They remain nameless for their own safety. They have our heartfelt thanks. They have shown us what “church” is supposed to be.

If God seems at times to have looked the other way, He at least has given us good company.

Thanksgiving in America is the harbinger of Christmas. Soon the Church will be talking about love, peace, reconciliation, forgiveness and the gift of salvation brought to all people in the form of God’s only Son.

Maybe the message of Christmas will be heard this year by SEPA Lutherans.

Hope is what Advent is all about!

13 Nov 2013

Old Order Lutheranism vs the New Order

pakistan2Helping the Church in Pakistan

The ELCA’s new presiding bishop wasn’t speaking to us in her editorial published in November’s The Lutheran.

After all, the Lutherans of East Falls were shut down more than four years ago. We don’t exist.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, courtesy of courts who didn’t take the time to hear the issues, now owns Lutheran land in East Falls. They’ve kept the doors locked and the security system (which they installed) turned on for four years, while they worked very hard to destroy any semblance of the faith in our part of Philadelphia. Meanwhile, they have done nothing with the land they coveted for more than a decade.

But now, we have a new presiding bishop. I mean they have a new presiding bishop.

Her name is Elizabeth Eaton. She’s been part of the Council of Bishops for some time, so she has surely heard all about us—at least one side of the story. That was enough for her predecessor. Will she follow the same course? Hands off any dispute between congregations and regional leaders? Let local Lutherans twist in the wind?

Will she have a grasp of what is going on in the several synods that are living beyond their means and violating Lutheran polity while they prey on small congregations?

Time will tell. The Lutherans of East Falls are prayerful if not hopeful.

We are busy being Lutherans whether or not Lutherans accept us.

Bishop Eaton wrote in one of her first addresses to greater American Lutherandom:

We are church together. There is no way that the churchwide organization or synod offices can be with the saints and be present in the communities where our churches are planted. The local congregation does that.

But there is no way that the local congregation by itself can run camps, train leaders, engage in disaster response or accompany global companions. That is the work we do together as synods, agencies, colleges, seminaries and the churchwide organization.

We are church for the sake of the world. We have experienced God’s extravagant love in Jesus. We want others to know that love too. That is what motivates our evangelism and our work to make the abundant life promised by Jesus a reality for the most vulnerable.

This view reflects an “old order” view—the one taught in confirmation classes across the country for decades.

But the world is changing.

pakistan32×2 has discovered that the statement we printed in bold is no longer true in the emerging world. In fact, the strength of the emerging church will be that the local congregation can do a great deal without “federal” oversight.

Congregations can run camps (Redeemer had one). They can train leaders (read 2×2). They can respond to disasters that more organized efforts are inclined to overlook!

2×2, the remnant of Redeemer, was appalled and deeply moved by the church bombing in Pakistan. One reason this touched us so deeply is that we had already been in conversation with Pakistan’s church leaders through our website for more than a year!

An entire congregation of 250 worshipers (larger than most congregations in our affluent part of the world) was targeted by suicide bombers. More than eighty were killed. Twice that number were seriously injured. That creates a congregation of shell-shocked and mourning families. That leaves an unusual number of orphans and an unusual number of adults recovering from war-caliber wounds. The world of over-organized religion has barely taken notice.

We looked to the national church to see if we might latch on to global relief efforts—the Old Order Lutheran way.

We found none.

In fact, we’ve heard no mention of the Pakistani problems in the churches we visited since the attack—not even a passing reference in the Prayer of the Church.

Lutherans are carefully selective in their world view. This is nothing new. I was on the staff of The Lutheran Magazine back in the 1970s when Cambodia was a killing field. I remember arguing that we ought to be addressing this.

Cambodia was not on the Lutheran map then. Pakistan is not on the Lutheran map now.

2×2, Lutherans unfettered by Lutheranism, has befriended the church in Pakistan. We are a modern congregation that knows that individual churches have enormous individual power if they use the tools of the modern age.

We sent some relief money. A drop in the bucket for their needs, but they wrote numerous thank you notes.

The Pakistani Church is asking for warm clothing for winter especially for the orphaned children. They need jackets, sweaters, hoodies, fleeces, shoes and socks.

We are just a little congregation without much access to families with small children who might have hand-me-downs to share.

But we can put the word out. There is no harder place, or perhaps more important place for Christians to maintain voice in today’s world. Our very faith is being put to the test in a world that is pitting Muslims against Christianity by forces that don’t really practice either religion.
The victims are the children.

The future of Christianity in these hard places for Christians is also with the children.

If your church can help gather clothing, call us for the address. For the safety of the Pakistani church leaders we will not publish this information.

We already have an effort in Michigan taking up the cross! We’re doing what we can!

This is an opportunity for Christian love to shine.

Here is a photo of the Bible class recently started for the children of the besieged church.

pakistan1

09 Nov 2013

Clergy Fashions: The Look at Me Factor

clergyfashionHigh fashion in the church is changing!

Above you see a Lutheran bishop and a Lutheran pastor.

Below you see a recent pope. Last you see the man they all emulate.

We at Redeemer were once so cutting edge with our pastor who shaved a cross on the back of his head!

But we are not so far behind the times. One of our own, a tattoo expert, could still provide a valuable service to rising clergy who want to spend less on frocks but keep with modern fashion trends.

As this tattooed pastor shown above said, “You know you want it!”

(She wasn’t talking about salvation.)

Benedict-Jesus

06 Nov 2013

2×2 Reaches 40,000 Unique Visitors

Redeemer’s website/blog, 2x2virtualchurch.com, is about to log its 40,000 unique visitor in its 30-month history. We’ve grown from 2000 visitors our first year to 13,000 visitors our second year and are well on our way to surpassing 30,000 visitors this year.

2×2 has grown by offering content. Our editorial mix is one third about Redeemer’s unique ostracism from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Being quiet only fuels the notion that it is OK to treat congregations this way. We have to speak out.

Another third is devoted to commentary about the future of the Church, which we think will suffer less from member apathy than from a failure of church structure to adapt to modern times. Still another third—and the third that drives traffic—is our resource offerings geared for use in small congregations (most congregations).

You see, first and foremost, we are a church, a people shunned by the church of our heritage, but a church all the same.

2×2 begins each week with two resource features: 1) an object lesson geared to adult learners but often adaptable to all ages and 2) a study of art or poetry/prose that is spiritually enriching.

Seven hundred readers find our spiritual content every week as unique visitors. Another 200 follow our content through social media.

We have other features, too. We have written extensively on the topic of social media and the church and have gained national and world recognition. In the topsy turvy world of the 21st century we are beginning to be noticed locally, long after readers from far away began following us.

We respond to people who write to us and have formed an interesting network of Christian alliances all over the world—impossible 20 years ago. We believe this ability to connect directly will change evangelism forever. Geography will become less and less important to viability.

Our exploration of social media has been self-guided—brand new territory for everyone. The church is very slow to realize that using social media will spark the transformation they seek.

We have used no gimmicks in growing our following. No contests. No email opt-ins. No special offers. We just plod along as volunteers with no budget, figuring things out for ourselves.

As we enter 2014, we will begin exploring more methods for intentionally growing a church website and following as a mission model.

What holds Redeemer back is the strained relationship with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod, who, hungry for our property and endowment funds, stopped seeing our congregation as children of God. We were an obstacle to their goal of taking our property.

We tend to be no better than way we treat the least among us.

If your church is exploring internet outreach and would like to learn from the 2×2 experience, let us know. We are always ready to share.

Meanwhile, we will spend the next two months establishing some hard goals for our 2014 ministry, which continues in spite of four years of locked doors and lawsuits as our only connection to the church which took $2 million of property and cash assets, reasoning that they had better uses for our resources. They have spent the last four years mowing the lawn of a locked church.

16 Oct 2013

How does 2×2 rank with other church blogs?

I have been blogging on behalf of my congregation (Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls) for nearly three years. It has become a discipline which has created many interesting mission opportunities for our little church without a building. It is something our members follow and discuss when we get together. It is our church blog.

There is always something new to learn! In 2011 we inched our way up from one visitor each month to 500 a month. In 2012 we improved our statistics about tenfold and doubled that again in 2013. We have used no gimmicks or strategies—no Facebook ad campaigns, no contests or elaborate opt-in schemes. We just created and posted content almost every day.

But how do our statistics measure? I had no idea.

Today I saw a recommendation for a utility that analyzes a website in comparison with others in a similar field. I think it does this by analyzing key words and results of key words. How would  three years of work stack up in an independent, purely statistical, algorithmic review?

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Nevertheless, I started exploring.

The results are amazing.

2×2 is in the upper 20% of most church social media ministry categories and is NUMBER ONE in the category of church blogging. The lowest we ranked in any category was 47%.

Within the next two weeks we will tally our 40,000th unique visitor. We now have about 200 readers everyday (about half unique and half followers).

We are putting our four years of exile from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to good use. What we have learned could help many! Statistically, we may be the largest church in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod — measuring modern statistics!

But we are shunned. Our skills, our loyalty, our faithful mission, and our people are worth nothing in the ELCA. Our property and the protection of the people who created this mess are priorities.

Lutherans teach that the church is not a building. The church is the people.

But Lutherans don’t really believe what they teach. They have our building and evicted the people. They declared us closed—with no consideration for the people. A new church is now worshiping at the same time we once worshiped — right across the street from our locked building—proving that ministry is totally possible in our neighborhood.

But we knew that all along.

Will the ELCA ever see us as viable?

Not without some help.

Redeemer is not closed.
We are locked out of God’s House by SEPA Synod.

10 Oct 2013

Learning from the Religion of Our Heritage

faith2

Transformational Ministry—No!
Adaptive Ministry—Yes!

Today, we can learn from Jewish neighbors and colleagues.

A problem with religion in general is that we all live in our own worlds. We approach problems as if they are unique, threatening only to what we in our self-imposed isolation are doing.

In fact, most churches, denominations, and faiths face the same challenges.

We just don’t identify the challenges correctly.

We all live in the same world with the same changing demographics, the same societal changes, the same economic dilemmas.

Churches die before they can adapt. They die because they are chasing the transformational dream. They die because they are encouraged to change while lacking the tools or structure that will foster change.

It is time to admit that the emphasis of the of last 20 years has been wrong. Churches do not need to transform. We don’t need to change who we are or our message. We DO need to adapt to the world we all live in if we hope to reach the world we live in.

What we need to pursue is adaptive ministry.

The Church’s two-decade old quest for transformation has failed because we all have been looking at each other, waiting for someone else to do the transforming. We isolate the few successes—without really analyzing why they were successful or waiting to see if the success is sustainable. We try to copy one trendy methodology after another.

The last thing we would think to change is the structure of the Church. Heaven forbid!

This approach blinds the church to truly adaptive ministry.

Rabbi Hayim Herring addresses this in his blog today. He talks about many of the things 2×2 discusses—the need to reach people where they are in ways they can actually relate—and sustain.

He calls it “building a platform.” Platforms are structures!

From Rabbi Herring’s blog:

What is an organizational platform (and I can highlight only a few dimensions in this space)? A platform is an enabling space for people to interact and act upon issues. An organization that becomes a platform enables individuals to self direct their Jewish choices and express their Jewish values within the organization’s mission. That is a radical shift from organizational leaders directing people how, when, where, why and with whom to be Jewish—in other words, the dominant paradigm of more established Jewish organizations and synagogues!

Becoming a platform is also a mindset. It means embracing the desire of individuals to co-create their experiences, opt in and opt out of Jewish life, do new things and old things in new ways-of course, within the organization’s mission. This mindset operates within the building, outside of the building, on the website, and anywhere else. It also requires a much more creative and intentional use of technologies to tell individual stories and organizational stories and a redefinition of professional and volunteer leaders’ roles, new governance models and even new professional and volunteer positions.

There is little need for traditional church structure in today’s world. People know this. Church leaders don’t. That’s why churches, large and small, are failing. That’s why the population in the sanctuary is quickly aging.

This failure of the Church to adapt its structure will continue to strangle the breath from the Church. If we can adapt structure, we can avoid a sure and certain death.

Redeemer was leading the way in this regard—still is. We didn’t really know that we were building a platform—but we were!

Redeemer was doing many things in ministry right. We hadn’t gotten there without stumbling a few times, but we had learned a lot in facing problems. We had identified a niche ministry that was growing quickly. We had faced the economic challenges of small church ministry head on. We came to realize that associating with just one pastor was impeding ministry—limiting us to one vision while sapping our resources. We had found pastors willing to work within the new paradigm that was needed for success, while our regional body had only one position: there were no leaders willing to serve us.

The ELCA, while stumping for transformation, couldn’t deal with transformation when it bit them on their Achilles heel. Ouch! What was that?

Regional bodies have serious problems of their own and they have only one way out—getting fewer lay people to give more. If that doesn’t work, take it.

That’s what they did in East Falls. They took what did not belong to them, attempting to destroy ministry to salvage structure. It hasn’t worked very well.

Redeemer’s transformation continues. Our online ministry teaches and involves people who would never bother with Sunday School or religious education. We are discovering our own world view—not waiting for a national church to point out needs and remedies to select problems. We continue to pursue the economic challenges of all neighborhood ministries and we think we have some answers. There is no reason to lock the members of Redeemer out of Church life—except the desire for our assets.

We have built a platform. We work at it every day. We work at it with no help from the structured church. We have learned a lot about ministry in today’s world.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for the most part, is not listening. They are worried about their retirement years. Their ears are growing old, their eyesight is growing dim. But we, their faithful children, still love them.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney via photopin cc
08 Oct 2013

Four Years of Locked Church Doors

Today marks the fourth year that the members of Redeemer have been locked out of our sanctuary by order of Bishop Claire Burkat, bishop of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (SEPA / ELCA).

Four years ago, on this date, the Rev. Patricia Davenport came to our church on Sunday morning and oversaw the changing of locks. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy!

Today I drove past our locked church and noticed that the streets were uncharacteristically parked full. Bishop Claire Burkat had criticized our church for having no parking lot. “A church with no parking lot cannot survive today,” she said. We explained that parking had never been an issue at Redeemer, but the truth did not serve her purpose. Bishop Burkat’s argument was self-serving nonsense. Many of the churches we visit have no parking lots, including Saints United, where we visited this morning.

There is a reason the streets were parked full this morning. Across the street from our sanctuary, a new church was holding its first service in the public school auditorium. Apparently, the lack of a parking lot is not deterring them. The doors were wide open an hour before the advertised worship hour and people seemed to be plentiful.

We are disappointed. While the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod  of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has sat on its hands in mission for four years, two other churches have begun meeting in our neighborhood. Epic meets at the local movie theater. and now Authentic Life Ministries is meeting next to our empty sanctuary. In addition, a Presbyterian branch holds house worship in our neighborhood.

As for Lutherans—nothing.

All the excuses Bishop Claire Burkat gave to justify her lust for our property and endowment funds are pretty well blown away. SEPA’s behavior in East Falls was a covetous land grab. They will always have difficulty establishing a church in the neighborhood where they spent four years suing church members. Perhaps they think the rest of East Falls doesn’t know about them. They do! We still live here. People will not be lining up to come to a church that sues its own members.

If the ELCA wants a Lutheran presence in this part of Philadelphia, where two Lutheran churches have closed in the last ten years, our doors have been locked, and the only remaining church is barely alive, they should start talking to the members of Redeemer and working with us for a change. The last six years of costly legal battles might have been avoided had this been attempted earlier. All their nonsense excuses—parking, demographics, no clergy willing to serve— are proving with each passing day to be pitiful.. They wouldn’t listen to their own people. Now other denominations are taking advantage of their failures. Talk about LOSE-LOSE scenarios!

But then, despite their rhetoric about wanting a word and sacrament church here, they tipped their hand in 2008, when they offered our property for sale to a Lutheran agency behind our backs.

It’s never been about mission. It’s always been about money. When money from live churches isn’t rolling in, create some dead churches and take their properties. A strange economic stimulus program, indeed!

Redeemer is not closed.

We are locked out of God’s House by SEPA Synod.

SEPA’s Mission in NW Philadelphia

29 Sep 2013

When the Church Ignores Statistics

Mission Can Be More about Property Rights than Saving Souls

Here is an interesting report found in the ELCA’s statistics online. This is a direct screenshot.

changeinworship

Do you see where the trend for growth is? It is in SMALL CHURCHES!

Pastoral Churches with 51-150 members have a much slower rate of decline than all other categories.

Small Churches are actually showing growth. Significant growth.

Small Churches and Pastoral Churches together comprise a significant percentage of all churches. Things aren’t as bleak as we sometimes think. We are just defining success inaccurately.

This report was published in 2008, the year lawsuits were filed in our church case. The chart shows the change in worship attendance from 1990 to 2006—the year Bishop Burkat first approached Redeemer with a copy of her constitution in hand.

Redeemer was one of the churches showing growth when this report was published in 2008. In fact, in 2006, we were the only small church in SEPA Synod that church statistics showed as growing. Most congregations in every category were showing decline. These records were altered during the court battle. There SEPA represented our congregation as having only 13 members at the same time they were holding us to a quorum for 82 members. In fact, we had tripled our membership between 2006 and 2008 to more than six times the 13 SEPA was counting.

Fortunately we have a screen shot from before the record was doctored. See for yourself.

More interesting are the figures for Mission Churches. SEPA was hot to make Redeemer a Mission Church. As it ends up, we were smart to resist this proposal.

The status of Mission Church sounds like leaders are trying to help—but the status of Mission Church actually changes the relationship of a congregation to the Synod. If they accept the status they forfeit rights to their property. It is really just a sneaky way to gain control of congregational property. They tell congregations that’s it is about starting fresh without the baggage of the past. That’s a ploy. It’s about property. Once Mission Status is assigned, the congregation will not be able to leave the ELCA with its property — EVER!

Churches with Mission Status are failing faster than any other category save Mega-Church. When they fail, property issues are already decided.

We discovered this for ourselves when we visited Spirit and Truth in Yeadon a few weeks ago. Their story was cited as an example of what SEPA could do for us if we would only cooperate.

In 2006, Spirit and Truth was a freshly chartered church. SEPA had started this congregation by closing the existing congregation and making it a mission church. New name. New management. New rules. The people of Yeadon—old and new—lost control of their property. Now, eight years later, their numbers are lower than when they were chartered.

If SMALL CHURCHES are where the best potential for growth lies, why are they targets for closure? Why are they encouraged to enter a failing model? Why are members expected to transfer memberships to churches that face tougher challenges?

The answers lie in the needs of hierarchy to control property and manage the stable of professional leaders. Members and mission are lower priorities. When budgets are failing, there is little incentive for SEPA to help small churches succeed. Small churches are their security blanket, their bank, their nestegg for their own rainy day.

The thinking is shortsighted. Small churches have the best chance at making a difference, but there is no plan to provide the necessary leadership. The lucky ones have able lay leaders. Failing that, they will soon be on the list of churches that synod feels must be closed. (But first your synod might pretend they are going to try to reopen the church as a mission church, so they’ll benefit from the property.)

Time for the ELCA to pay attention to its own data!

Time to find answers for strengthening small churches.

That’s where your best potential for long-term mission success lies.

28 Sep 2013

A Walking Tour of East Falls

Redeemer’s Ambassadors took a Sunday off. We each had personal plans for the day.

Today I was entertaining one of my oldest friends.

She is visiting Philadelphia for only the third time in her life. It was her first visit outside of center city. She came to attend a four-day meeting being held in East Falls.

Having her as a house guest was a little intimidating. Her mother had been my home economics teacher in high school. But my fears that my house-keeping and hospitality would not be up to snuff were groundless.

We met when we were twelve, when my father, a Lutheran pastor, changed parishes. We sang together in church and in school—girl’s trio and choir. We were friends through college. We hadn’t seen each other in more than a couple of passing encounters in nearly 40 years.

We lived in a small town—farming, coal and steel country. We were friends in both church and school. Many of our school teachers were church members, so the lines were always blurry.

We walked a lot of East Falls together during her four-day visit. We walked through the parks, along the Schuylkill River and Wissahickon Creek, the various campuses (college and high school) and I showed her the churches. Her meetings were being held at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, the church Bishop Burkat helped in ministry at the same time she was trying to take our property. I showed her our locked building. The lights were left on, so it was easy.

As we talked with people we met during her visit, she still identified me as their preacher’s daughter. Some things in life I’ll never be able to shake.

We attended a performance at the playhouse where Redeemer began its ministry in 1891 and where we now hold Sunday morning worship. My friend worked in summer stock theater, so she was interested to see the local theater club. We talked with fellow playgoers. Whenever we encounter anyone from East Falls, the topic of Redeemer comes up. Some things SEPA will never be able to shake!

My friend commented at the sense of community she experienced in East Falls.

We are that. Our people and our history mean something to us. That’s something the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America cannot understand.

For them, East Falls is all about how much money they can get from us. Our people—our history—our passion for ministry—are obstacles to them. We are just in the way.

Pity!

Here’s an idea. We can take SEPA representatives on a similar tour. We’ll walk you around our town. We’ll show SEPA where our members live and where we got our start. We’ll share our history and our personal faith journeys and what has happened to our members since we were locked out of the Lutheran Church. We’ll introduce you to the people SEPA has taken advantage of. We’ll share our mission plan—yes, we still have one!

Maybe then, you’ll know something about us. Maybe you’ll see us as people, fellow children of God. Maybe that will prompt some right actions and justice in the Lutheran Church.

There’s always hope.

22 Sep 2013

Ambassadors Visit Spirit and Truth, Yeadon

Spirit and Truth Lutheran ChurchA New Experience for the Ambassadors

Today, was our 73rd visit to a congregation of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (SEPA) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

Redeemer’s Ambassadors never know what to expect when we set out on our Sunday morning adventures.

We visited Worship in Spirit and Truth Lutheran Church or Worship Center (we’ve seen it listed both ways) in Yeadon (just outside of West Philadelphia). We found the doors were open, but the sanctuary was empty.

We had checked the web site before setting out. The service was listed for 10 am. We had run into a detour and were afraid that we were a little late. In fact, we were only two minutes late.

We could hear a praise band practicing and one of our ambassadors caught a glimpse of three musicians, but otherwise there was not a soul in sight.

We looked around the narthex for a few minutes. The sign on the narthex wall said WORSHIP 10 am. The Ambassadors took a quick vote and decided not to hang around waiting for the unknown. We were concerned that another ambassador was planning to come independently, but since he is never late, we soon set out. This morning would be a Fellowship Sunday.

On our way to the parking lot, we passed the pastor and his wife (at least they seemed to match photos from the web site). They were just arriving. We said hello. But there was no turning the Ambassadors around at this point. It was clear that worship was not going to begin anywhere near on time, and we are a restless bunch.

Last week, when we visited Redemption in NE Philadelphia, there had been an announced change in worship time that wasn’t on the web. We waited an hour for the service to begin, but we waited with other people. The pastor talked with us for a while and explained why there was a mix-up. This morning we had no idea what was going on.

We retired to our favorite local diner and discussed the gospel lesson of the lost sheep.

We were disappointed.

Spirit and Truth’s ministry interested us because their story was told to us when SEPA was trying to find a less messy way to acquire our property five or six years ago. We wanted to see their ministry for ourselves.

This is what we did in Yeadon, they said. The existing church (Trinity) had only a few old ladies left as members, they explained. The old ladies voted to close. We had a grand closing service to provide them closure. Then we reopened the church under a new name a few weeks later with new management—synod. They called the church a mission development church. Rev. Patricia Davenport (who was part of the Redeemer fiasco) canvassed the neighborhood for four or five years. SEPA rechartered the church in 2005 with 179 charter members. But the new charter would forever list the church as a church with mission roots (which we are guessing Trinity didn’t have). This is a bigger deal than it may seem. Read on.

For this strategy to work, it was explained, all memory and ties to the past must be severed. They make it sound likes this is to aid mission. It’s not. It’s about legally acquiring certain congregational property rights.

Spirit and Truth’s web site history begins: In 2000, the Trinity Lutheran Church of Yeadon, PA closed. That’s all folks. Trinity is history. Spirit and Truth rose from its ashes. The saints of Trinity would soon be forgotten.

This was the new flagship strategy of Bishop Burkat when she took office in 2006. Redeemer was to be the first of six churches to benefit from her innovative leadership—or so their lawyer stated in court.

This is why Spirit and Truth is sometimes called a Church and sometimes called a Worship Center.. Worship Centers are synod-controlled. Churches have rights. Unfortunately, those rights have been watered down (with muddy water) in recent years.

SEPA presented their sanitized intentions to the courts in 2009. They left out the part where they tipped their hand by trying to sell our property behind our backs in 2008.

Their plan included a stipulation that was not acceptable to Redeemer. None of the existing members could play a leadership role in the Church of the New Name. We could do no more than attend. We found no constitutional basis for disempowering local leadership and no reason to go this route as we had plenty of existing and developing lay leadership. The proposal was, in our view, a way of gaining control of our property by getting influential church members out of the way and scaring marginal members and pastors into submission.

There are three problems with this strategy.

Problem 1

There is no evidence that the strategy works. While Spirit and Truth grew for a few years under Rev. Patricia Davenport’s leadership, it has been in significant decline since she left in November 2007. Within three years of her departure their average attendance was less than half what it was in 2008 (and statistics were not reported in two of those years). Their statistics had dropped below their charter membership just a few years before. It was during these years that the great Yeadon experiment was starting to fail that Pastor Davenport and Bishop Burkat were trying to take Redeemer down the same road.

If leadership is dependent on clergy, then consistent leadership seems to be pivotal to success. There are no guarantees in today’s church that mission-capable pastors are going to be available long-term. Therefore, relying on clergy to be the sole provider of mission leadership is foolish.

Spirit and Truth’s ELCA Trend Report has current membership at 136 with average attendance of 35, but if you add up the itemized membership column, the membership comes out to only 70—about 12% smaller than Redeemer. Redeemer’s cash and property assets were more than four times theirs. Yet they got to vote on our property. We didn’t.

Thirteen years have passed since SEPA tested this new strategy.

Looks like Redeemer was smart to be wary.

Problem 2

Redeemer was not anything like Trinity in Yeadon, the predecessor of Spirit and Truth. Their members agreed to the arrangement. We were given no choice.

Our membership was statistically young. Only three or four of our 82 members were over 70 (just over). While Bishop Almquist waited six years (2000-2006) for our older members to die, we had actually become a young church. In 2007 the new members led a membership drive which resulted in 49 new members. Most of our newer members were young families and with a good percentage of young unmarried people and young couples from a wide variety of backgrounds joining. We were growing quickly. No reason to act like we were failing when we weren’t.

We didn’t need a new entity with a new name and Synod-approved leaders. Synod did.

Problem 3

Many churches don’t realize this:

If you allow your congregation to be listed as a mission development church, you lose important constitutional rights.

  • The Synod gains rights to the property and disbursement of assets if you vote to close.
  • The congregation loses the right to withdraw from the Synod to join another Lutheran body with their property. EVER—even 100 years from now.

The Synod wants churches to have mission status—even for a short length of time—to constitutionally secure the property for their future enrichment.

This strategy puts the control of assets in their hands. It also puts success or failure in their hands—since they now control all aspects of ministry. That’s why SEPA needs knowledgeable lay people out of the way. That’s why Trinity, Yeadon, was encouraged to close and deed the property to Synod before new outreach began. SEPA needs old churches to close to gain rights to property. It has nothing to do with mission effectiveness being hindered by previous ministry or history. It’s about creating new entities to secure property ownership under mission status. All those new church members in Yeadon may not know that they no longer have the rights the old members in Yeadon had.

Very sneaky, indeed.

We can only wonder why the current residents of Yeadon are considered less able to run their own church than the previous demographic of Yeadon. Redeemer was dealing with a new demographic too. Our members, mostly from well-educated professionals from East Africa, were viewed as unable to manage their own affairs without synod’s help.

And all of this is why SEPA’s dealings with Redeemer have been secretive, underhanded, vindictive beyond reason and litigious. They don’t want people to really know what’s behind their “mission” strategies.

Redeemer has members well-versed in the church constitutions. We knew it was not in our ministry’s interest to give up our rights as Lutherans. SEPA was the only beneficiary of the plan.

SEPA would have to find another way to take possession of our property—and they did. But it has been an ugly unChristlike LOSE-LOSE situation. It is an embarrassment to our denomination.

The Ambassadors didn’t attend a worship service today. We don’t know what went awry.

One thing we know:

Redeemer leaders were always ready for worship at the appointed time.

We had visitors almost every week.

First impressions count.

15 Sep 2013