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ELCA

ELCA Elects New Presiding Bishop

Elizabeth Eaton Elected ELCA Presiding Bishop

We were surprised to learn that Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson lost his bid for re-election as the ELCA’s presiding bishop in August. We are accustomed to nothing changing in the world of church leadership.

The new presiding bishop, beginning in October, is Elizabeth Eaton, a bishop from Northeastern Ohio.

Her election on the fifth ballot defeated Hanson 445-287.

We hope her election brings our church into some serious course correction.

The ELCA lost about 10% of its churches under the leadership of Bishop Hanson, who seemed to be happy fiddling and globe-hopping while his Rome burned.

Our congregation has been very frustrated with the national church. We had written to Bishop Hanson every month for nearly a year in 2008 and received only one fluffy response that was knee-jerk support of clergy over laity. We also wrote the national legal offices. Several letters were ignored before at last someone wrote saying they feel no obligation to get involved. (Who exactly is paying for their existence?).

The governance of the ELCA is seriously flawed. It puts the full power for settlement of disputes on the Synod Assembly—an unwieldy group of people who have no real ability or time to wade through issues with individual congregations and no real credentials for making legal decisions. Delegates are not vetted for their knowledge issues or  church law. A third of the delegates rely on their relationship with the bishop for their next call. Their fear is well-based. SEPA Synod Council, under Bishop Burkat’s leadership, asked for a pastor to be censored because he wrote about our issues. Heaven forbid anyone in the church speak up!

If the Synod Assembly is not doing its job or not following the rules there is no place for congregations to turn. This has resulted in a sort of Wild West here in the Northeast and in a few other synods as well. Bishops and synods can do pretty much as they please. There is no law or church power that can stop them.

  • A congregation in New Jersey was raided in the middle of night by its synod (Slovak Zion). They used their relationship with one member to gain entry.
  • The leaders of a church in Massachusetts were lured to the bishop’s office for a meeting while the bishop was having the locks changed on their church building. The bishop had the forethought to alert the sheriff’s office that they might get a complaint but shouldn’t be concerned.
  • Our bishop asked to meet with our congregation and had a locksmith hiding behind the church ready to pounce. No one has ever explained what was expected to happen that day.
  • Should a congregation and its pastor resist a synod’s attempts to take church property, you can expect the pastor to be lured to a new, cushier assignment with no replacement leadership offered. We can cite three instances of this tactic being employed.

The battlefield for Redeemer’s dispute was not the negotiation or the reconciliation table. It was the courtroom with individual church members as the target. The decision of the courts was that they have no jurisdiction in church matters. A strong dissenting opinion stated that if the law were applied, our congregation’s claims deserved to be heard. That, in itself, should alarm church leadership—including national leadership. Congregations cannot rely on their own governing rules being followed or upheld by secular courts. It’s up to them to make sure their own rules are followed!

As it is, the courts have no jurisdiction. The national church has no interest. There is no system of accountability. There is no incentive to honor the constitutions of the national church, regional church or even the local churches. The constitutions don’t matter anymore! If Synod Assemblies realize they made a mistake there is no place for them to turn. The Wild West of religion.

We hope and pray that Presiding Bishop Eaton will be more than a figurehead and actively work to protect the congregations under her shepherding care. We need a new sheriff in Dodge. A good shepherd will do.

09 Sep 2013

Are Sermons Passé?

storybookIs the weekly Sunday sermon
reaching anyone anymore?

When my son was little, he created a little ritual. He’d pick out a stack of storybooks for bedtime reading. Ten or so was the usual number and we usually went through all of them. But I did not dare start a story without saying certain words.

“Say it, Mom. You have to say the words.”

The first time he demanded this, I had no idea what he was expecting.

He patiently prompted me.

And so I took orders from my tot.

I opened the book to the title page and said. “And now it is time for our featured presentation.”

He was, obviously, influenced by his video and movie experience. A story just wasn’t a story without this little bit of fanfare.

Beyond “Once Upon A Time”

Modern culture does influence us. It affects our point of view, our attention span, and are ability to process information that we hear. When we set about listening, we have different expectations than our ancestors may have had. We recognized this when we moved from the two-hour sermon to the one-hour sermon to today’s 20-minute expectation. But today, things are still changing.

I have written many times about the futility of paying a pastor a salary with one of the primary objectives having a 20-minute sermon written for just fifty people once a week.

That’s a lot of resources invested in something that half of the listeners are likely day-dreaming through. At the end of the service, we never really know whether or not we have reached anyone with the Word. But we keep at it because that’s the way the Word was delivered for hundreds of years—since farmers and tradespeople took a break from the isolation of their fields and shops and gathered with the whole village to spend the day.

I know that I may be beating a dying horse with my arguments. Dying is probably the right word. Just look at the statistics. We are watching the steady decline in attendance in most mainline churches. If you think the 30 to 50% drop of the last 15 years is alarming, be prepared. The biggest decline is in people under 40. The next 20 years are going to be really bad for a lot of congregations. There is no one to fill the roles of today’s 50-, 60-, and 70-year olds. It is unlikely that the younger generations will ever adapt to the traditional delivery of a sermon.

Understand I’m not against preaching. It’s been our family business for generations. I’m questioning whether the ritual format of worship, including the sermon as the weekly featured presentation, is achieving its purpose—any purpose.

Consider the Lowly Podcast

Podcasts are voice only online presentations. They can be easily promoted on a  blog or web site and delivered to listeners through itunes. One of their major benefits is longevity. They can be accessed long, long after they are posted and certainly long after the Sunday morning church service ends. They can be shared. Your audience can grow!

Podcasts are the fastest growing platform for social media.

Why?

People can listen to them when and where they want. It doesn’t have to be at 10:20 on Sunday morning in the sanctuary on Main Street in every zip code. They can listen while they ride the bus, do the dishes, or mow the yard. They can return to a section they liked or questioned. They can listen to their favorite podcaster (preacher) or follow any links he or she might give to other inspirational or insightful resources.

They fit into our modern way of life as Christians and seekers.

At Redeemer, without a sanctuary for our people to attend and since our pastors headed for the hills long ago, I connected our members to an online teacher. (We are determined to stay true to our mission despite our unjust expulsion from the ELCA.)

Every day our members receive a short email Bible lesson. Only recently have I started to get feedback. They like it. At our last Redeemer gathering they started talking about the week’s lesson, which happened to be the book of Philippians — the foundational scripture for 2×2’s publication, Undercover Bishop.

My next experiment may be to expand this feature and develop podcast commentaries. Or maybe we can record chapters of Undercover Bishop!

It may begin as early as this week. Watch for it!

Podcasts may be the wave of the future for preaching. Who knows? We don’t have to give up the Sunday morning sermon, but after a while, we may want to!

And now it is time for our featured presentation.

photo credit: Travis Seitler via photopin cc
07 Sep 2013

Transforming Trends in the Church-5

longtailTREND 5
The Long Tail

Huh? What’s the Long Tail?

This is a term familiar to marketers. It refers to niche marketing. Major retailers are generally interested in selling lots of just a few products. The emphasis is on creating products that will appeal to everyone.

This traditional business model is why it was hard to get a book published. Publishers wanted to make sure it was worth printing 100,000 copies minimally. If your interest was canoeing in Nepal or the life-cycle of spiders, you were out of luck!

The internet has made it possible for products that appeal to smaller audiences to be profitable, too. In fact, there is great potential in recognizing the people who go against the mainstream. It is a numbers game. There are an awful lot of people in the world!

The result in the publishing world, with which I am most familiar, has been an exciting explosion of new titles.

What does this mean for Church?

Actually, the Church is the original long-tail marketer. They’ve just forgotten it! Click to Tweet.

Jesus’ approach to ministry describes the long tail. Seek and serve the marginal members of society—everyone from the rich man and educated Nicodemus—to the dead, infirm, and dying—to the women and children with no status—to the foreigners.

As the Church grew, every neighborhood was a “niche.” But today, the Church is abandoning its strength, hoping for economic strength in size.

This may be a long-term disaster.

Large churches are not filling the gap of the abandoned small faith communities. A few are growing slowly but most are in decline. People like to worship with people they know. Being part of a crowd may be fiscally desirable, but faith doesn’t work that way. Most churches will continue with memberships hovering between 100 and 300 ( a third of them active) until the Church abandons them. That’s the way it’s always been and it follows the findings of sociology that it’s the way it will always be.

We already know the small church works well—perhaps even best. The challenge to the Church is to keep small churches viable and in keeping with their expectations. This requires entrepreneurial thinking which is not prevalent in the Church.

Churches like to do things the same way (while preaching transformation). They have an expensive infrastructure that resists change and requires size.

The concept can even be seen in their approach to mission.

Redeemer’s membership was always an immigrant population. Early members were western European. The immigrants of recent years represented five continents. Many from East Africa found their way to our door. We welcomed them and they were part of a truly transforming ministry.

The Synod, on the other hand, had a different vision for us. The older immigrants and their descendants had to die. (They waited eight years for this to happen at one point in our history—2000-2008). But new members came along. Their plan was not working.

Their pronouncement: White Redeemer must be allowed to die. Black Redeemer . . . we can put them anywhere.

Actually, SEPA had a vision for a Pan-African church. Something big. Something to boast about. Something that could exist without bothering white Lutherans.

africa-truesizeA Pan-African Church! When you realize the size of Africa, the concept is ridiculous. Africa is a BIG place, with varied customs and cultures. Our African members were amused at the idea. “They don’t speak our language in Zimbabwe!”

This is nothing new. Chestnut Hill, Mt. Airy, Germantown, Roxborough, Manayunk and East Falls look so close on the map. The managerial temptation is to try to unite them for efficiency and cost-savings. Four church closings in this area have not bolstered the memberships of the other churches. (Advent in Mt. Airy, Grace and Epiphany in Roxborough and the seizing of land in East Falls). (Shh! The doors may be locked, but we are still open!)

Urban people know their neighborhoods are distinct. So, too, are their ministries.

With size and managerial motives (among others, we suspect), SEPA Synod orchestrated the closing of our growing viable community congregation. Their plan (never discussed with our leaders) was to set our white members free to fend for ourselves (excommunicate us) and assign our black members to another site. Result: 82 Lutherans locked out. A squandering of new blood!)

Unfortunately, when you close churches in the neighborhoods where immigrants live, you take the resources that would serve them. Everyone in the neighborhood loses and the takers of the property get only a short-term advantage as they quickly spend the assets the communities developed over a century.

The future of the Church may be in rediscovering its past. The trick will be finding a way to make Long Tail Evangelism fiscally viable. The more active and inviting the ministry, the more realistic this will be.

Redeemer was well on our way to implementing a plan which would be supporting the congregation today with ample dollars to spare.  We saw ourselves serving several niches and felt uniquely qualified for this type of ministry.

If the Church is to be successful in recognizing the benefits of Long Tail Evangelism, they must help congregations explore the use of their assets for ministry, not seize them for their own financial fix.

The result is long-term loss to faith, community and potential.

Perhaps it is time we return to Jesus’ approach. Love that long tail.

 

24 Aug 2013

Redeemer Revisited: Part 4

The Power of Interdependence

Lutherans believe the autonomy of a congregation is powerful and so congregations own their own property. Their ministries are controlled by lay government—not clergy. Clergy have influence but not control.

Our founding documents call this interdependence. Congregations depend on regional and national bodies to provide competent church leaders. There was a time when they depended on them for other things, too—managing foreign missions, social services, and providing educational and worship materials, advice and inspiration.

In the new information age, these roles are significantly diminished. Local parishes sense that hierarchies are less effective—a financial burden that is crippling to small church ministry. (Most churches are small.)

National church and regional bodies are totally dependent financially on local churches (not the other way around). Under their prescribed interdependence, congregations have no financial obligations to the regional body or national church. Congregations can vote with their pocketbooks.

In fact, in 2010, when there was a great doctrinal rift in the ELCA, some regional bodies promised their member churches that their offerings could be set aside and not sent on to the national church with whom they were unhappy.

It is hard for churches with hierarchical traditions to understand. But it is foundational to Lutheran thinking. Regional bodies exist to facilitate ministry.

In the world of church this is called “congregational polity.” It is protected by the founding documents of the ELCA and individual synods’ Articles of Incorporation. These are rarely read. They state:

  • Bishops cannot convey property of a congregation without the consent of the congregation.
  • Synod Assembly’s powers are limited by the Articles of Incorporation.

There is no right to seize or vote on congregational property.

Interestingly, predecessor Lutheran bodies went even further. Synods were not allowed to own property at all. They knew it would change the mission of church leaders. This is a deeply rooted concept of Lutheranism—one of the bugs in Martin Luther’s crawl.

Today Synod Assemblies are unfamiliar with their governing rules and polity. The last few years of cozying up to denominations with different polities have obscured our awareness of our own tradition. The ranks of OWLs, Older and Wiser Lutherans, are thinning. When asked by our trusted leaders to vote on another congregation’s property, we may assume we have that right. We don’t.

This happened in 2009 in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (SEPA/ELCA). They voted to take the property of Redeemer in East Falls, a small but viable congregation with an endowment fund.

SEPA had exercised this self-appointed power before without challenge. The process had always gone smoothly, Bishop Burkat reported. That doesn’t make it right!

Redeemer has among our members a pastor who spent a sabbatical researching the early history of the ELCA. He showed us the founding documents. They said this was wrong.

Property is not necessary to ministry, but property has advantages.

Property provides continuity from generation to generation. A physical presence is a a ministry tool. With property you can invite, teach, host, serve. With property you have a financial hedge against a few difficult years.

Redeemer has been ministering without property for four years. We have a very influential ministry worldwide, but we could do so much more locally if our property had not been taken from us.

Well, it was properly appealed, wasn’t it?

Do SEPA Lutherans realize that they never voted on our appeal in 2009? We appealed Synodical Administration. A totally different question—worded by the synod—was presented at the time of the vote. SEPA voted to take our property. Bait and switch. Read the 2009 minutes. You’ll have to dig. SEPA posts minutes from only 2010 on!

Do SEPA Lutherans realize that in 2010, SEPA Synod Council took it upon themselves to vote Redeemer closed without any input from Redeemer? Do they realize that Redeemer was never informed of this decision (which the Synod Council constitutionally has no authority to make)? We only know because we googled our name.

What’s done is done.

Question: What do our interdependent congregations do when mistakes are made?

This still lies in the hands of congregations.

Redeemer has a constitutional right to challenge the 2010 decision of SEPA Synod Council. We intend to formally make that request within the next few months but we will need a fair forum.

SEPA congregations have an opportunity to revisit their actions in East Falls.

It is not too late to make this right. It takes the courage to say, “Wait a minute. What did we do? How do we move forward?”

This seems to be beyond the scope of our Sunday morning confessions. 

If SEPA Lutherans do not care about their actions in East Falls, they might think about the effect their actions or non-actions have on other member congregations.

Redeemer is visiting all the churches that voted to take our property. We’ve been to 69. Many face the same treatment within the next 20 years. With SEPA’s self-proclaimed power to seize property, fueled with persistent deficits (a $250,000 shortfall last year and $275,000 the year they took our property), there is no incentive to help small congregations. Hierarchical survival is in jeopardy. They play the “wait for them to die” game.

Without responsible clergy and involved congregations, SEPA government has the power to rule by intimidation. They even seem to enjoy it. 

The Redeemer situation has proven that they are not afraid to abuse power. They use their protected status and the secular courts to bypass their constitutions. And while SEPA clergy and congregations looked the other way, hoping to not be touched, the courts have changed Lutheran polity. Now, SEPA congregations own their property only as long as SEPA says so. As Bishop Burkat has written in reference to the land in East Falls—it’s the property formerly occupied by Redeemer. In her mind, we never owned it.

The churches of SEPA could have stopped this. They still can.

Easier to let Redeemer suffer. 

13 Aug 2013

Why Congregations Should Own Their Buildings: Part 1

Why Congregations Must Own
Their Ministries
(and that includes property).

quote-8713Part 1

A long time ago there was a church that had lost its way. It had many members. Almost every person in every city and hamlet belonged.

Each town had its own monument to God. These monuments were built by the people. The land was likely part of a tract of land provided by a local baron, who might have received his land as a reward for a winning role in a crusade.

The people built the resulting church or cathedral. Some laid the foundations and built the walls, some designed windows of rainbow beauty. Others made the hardware that hung the doors and secured the roof. Others carved the pews and illustrated the stories of their faith on the wall. Still others waited until the roof was complete to install the musical instruments for their best musicians to play.

And then there were the women who kept the homes going, the workers fed, the linens woven and held the hands of the many children they brought through its doors. It took several generations to make these splendid monuments to God.

These monuments became extensions of their homes. They were nurtured at their altars in their youth, strengthened through the years, and comforted in their old age.

They loved the buildings and what they meant to them, but they did not own them.

Absentee Landlords

Their churches were owned and controlled by leaders, far away on the other side of formidable mountains.

Church officials did not trust the people to own their own buildings. Their work was acceptable to God, but it was owned and controlled by hierarchy which tended to appoint and elect people who would comply and obey.

What was presented to the glory of God was used to glorify Man.

This system worked very well as long as everyone agreed on everything and there were enough people willing to enter lives of total compliance to sustain the structure. For centuries most people’s choices in life were made for them by the station of their birth. Change was seldom seen and challenges came from outside the faith.

Things Started to Change

Suddenly, the challenges of this lifestyle came not from infidels but from the faithful. How would the Church handle its own dissenters?

The knowledgeable religious began to see that sole ownership of the church by a corporate office in Rome was abusing the faithful. The Church had become a vehicle for personal advancement. Expensive lifestyles were sustained with the sacrifices of much poorer people. They were being gouged— charged even for prayer.

People wanted to believe that the Church they loved had their best interests in mind. They relied on trust—most messages from their leaders were delivered in a foreign tongue.

Then came Martin Luther and Gutenberg (among others).

He told them what was going on in their own language.

His printed message spread across Europe, uncensored by the Church for the first time.

Many of the faithful were kicked out.

Lucky! For the first time, they had some place to go!

The Church in a New Land

Many traveled to a New Land where immeasurable property was newly available. For the first time the people could actually own the property they donated and the buildings they raised. They could affiliate with a Church later.

The old system still exists today. It is failing fast. The Roman Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church still own all church property. Both bodies are closing churches at a record pace. The Episcopal Church is fighting many court battles over property. The Roman Catholic is being eaten alive in our area by the clergy sexual abuse scandals.

Some of this is because of the failing support and lawsuits. Some is control of their people. Disagree with the Church. We will take the property you built and paid for.

The Lutheran Church and other Protestant Churches, grounded more firmly in the spirit of the Reformation and growing in a new land, did not attempt to accumulate property for the benefit of a corporate church. There would be no grand collections of art and treasuries to collect the sacrificial offerings of the faithful for the benefit of clergy. We had left that thinking behind.

Protestant Churches of many sects prospered under this new system.

Early Lutherans in the New World forbade church hierarchy from owning property. They wanted to ensure that the officials of the church existed to serve not accumulate wealth.

But today the church is in trouble again. The Lutherans spent a good part of recent decades trying to unite with the Episcopal Church. They are now proudly in Full Communion (minus the long list of exceptions and disclaimers that follow the documents that most people don’t read). Full communion, sort of.

One reason today’s Lutheran bishops are comfortable claiming congregational property is this new association with Episcopal Church. In doing so, they are reverting to pre-Reformation thinking—the thrilling days of yesteryear when hierarchy controlled more than they led.

We’ll look at what this means for today’s Lutherans in an upcoming post.

07 Aug 2013

Take It to the People

What If?

In yesterday’s post we talked about Bishop Claire Burkat’s tactic of bypassing clergy and church council leadership and taking issues dear to her heart directly to the congregation, who under the circumstances would be voting having witnessed the horrific treatment of their leaders.

Although this is always presented as democratic, it is a violation of church structure and a form of bullying. Sue the leaders; then ask others, whose collective knowledge of church procedure is likely to be low, to do the voting. (And if that doesn’t work, just issue an edict.)

It’s an irritating problem for church leaders. When pride and power reign and the possibility that you won’t make payroll looms on the horizon, it’s worth a try—constitutional or not. Bishop Almquist had tried it before at Redeemer (and failed).

This first Sunday of the month, as Redeemer heads out to worship in our own community, passing our locked church building (now equipped for the first time in its history with a security system), on our way to meet in the upper room of a local theater, we can’t help but wonder:

What would happen if SEPA bypassed the bishop, Synod Council and Synod Assembly and took the issue of Redeemer directly to the people of SEPA Synod?

Same strategy. Who knows what the results would be?

No worries.

It will never happen. Bishop Burkat would never stand for such a violation of church procedure. 😉

04 Aug 2013

Redeemer Revisited: Part 3

In the last post we revealed SEPA Synod’s typical strategy as exercised twice in Redeemer’s history—once by Bishop Almquist and for most of the term of Bishop Burkat.

In short:

  • First eliminate clergy from the congregation. Wait for a change or force a change.
  • Second, cut the lay leadership down to size or eliminate them entirely.

Today’s post is about the third part of the Strategy—dealing with the congregation.

When both Bishop Almquist and Bishop Burkat decided to go directly to the people of the congregation they did so with an air of democracy. They were taking an issue directly to the people. Noble-sounding, indeed.

They were really manipulating the situation, using the congregation, and side-stepping the constitution.

The people they were approaching had followed their constitutions and elected leaders to—well—provide leadership. These leaders were authorized by the congregation to speak for them.

The pastor, too, had been called and could represent the congregation if he or she had the backbone.

The congregation doesn’t expect to be called together to deal with the regional body. They aren’t prepared and their interests have wide range—much of it personal, not corporate in nature. Leaders do a better job of sifting through the layers of congregational life to represent the “whole” people.

The bishop knows this. That’s why she needed these levels of leadership gone!

Redeemer knows it too. We have experienced it with both Bishop Almquist and Bishop Burkat.

In truth the congregation was being called together because the bishop and regional body knew that what they were proposing was not likely to be approved by the elected and called leaders of the church.

In Redeemer’s case, the congregation had just witnessed the inexplicable disappearance of pastors they had invested in both monetarily and emotionally.

This was followed by disregard and disrespect of the leaders they elected to act in their interest.  One church council member who had approached a Synod Council member on the congregation’s behalf had already been threatened. “Get out while the getting is good. We have no intention of negotiating with you.”

Now synod leadership was coming to them!

The message was clear: Vote our way or else.

Of course, the congregation was intimidated.

This was actually voiced by Redeemer members during Bishop Almquist’s tenure. When he called for a THIRD vote on a call question, the people said, “If we don’t vote the way he wants, he’ll shut us down for sure.” Fear would have controlled the situation, not reason.

Redeemer recovered from that time with able lay leadership taking the time to heal the congregation.

But in 2007, under Bishop Burkat, the Synod was resurrecting the same familiar tactics.

Bishops do not have the right to call congregational meetings. If they want to meet with congregations they are supposed to work with local leadership in doing so. That’s the way the constitutions are written.

Bishop Burkat never asked the local leaders for suggested meeting times. She just wrote letters saying she was coming. In her world, lay people are waiting for her to find a convenient time to pay attention to them once every decade or so.

The first time she tried this, in September 2007, she chose the local back-to-school night. Redeemer members decided they wanted to attend their children’s back to school events.

This was interpreted as resistance.

When we finally met in November, the meeting went very well. Bishop Burkat agreed to review our ministry plan and resolution to call a pastor. She promised we could work with the newly appointed Patricia Davenport. “You will love working with her,” she told us.

We were never given the opportunity. Bishop Burkat broke the promises made to us in her only meeting with our leaders.

Once again, Bishop Burkat scheduled a visit to Redeemer with no consultation with the congregation. This time she chose the Sunday of our Annual Meeting and luncheon and an afternoon birthday party for our pastor.

First, she announced the outcome of the meeting before the meeting was held. She was closing Redeemer with no congregational vote or consultation. NONE!

We informed her immediately upon notice that the date wouldn’t work. We reinforced this by email, fax and letter. We had hoped that she would meet with our leaders and work through any issues. But then NO issues had been raised.

The fabricated report that was read at Synod Assembly was written just a few days before Synod Assembly, three months after this. It was NEVER shared with Redeemer. It was inaccurate and untrue and would not have withstood scrutiny.

What happened at Redeemer was a property grab facilitated by pure bullying. It set the stage for all litigation.

Bishop Burkat arrived at Redeemer on February 24, 2008, despite our notice that the congregation could not meet at that time. She brought with her a lawyer, a locksmith and a host of witnesses.

Not exactly the atmosphere for an honest congregational vote.

Bishop Burkat was embarrassed that her plan to lock us out that day was thwarted in front of her company of witnesses. Any reasonable person could not have imagined it going any other way—but then they thought no one from Redeemer would be present. They could change the locks and surprise us the next Sunday when we all arrived for worship.

Had Bishop Burkat respected our leaders, this embarrassment would never have happened. Every subsequent action was face-saving and vindictive.

Bishop Burkat boasts of empowering laity. We have seen the opposite in her dealings with our congregation. Empowered laity are laity who comply.

Next: We will examine why Lutheran congregations own their own property.

03 Aug 2013

Redeemer Revisited: Part 2

This is the second post in a series that revisits the last five years of court actions involving the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (SEPA / ELCA) and member church, Redeemer in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pa.

Understanding the Legalities  

Five years of costly and hateful  litigation have shed little light on the legalities of the land grab in East Falls.

The courts are far from united in the various rulings in all the cases of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America against member church Redeemer in the East Falls neighborhood and carefully selected members of the congregation.

The early rulings were that courts have no jurisdiction in church affairs.

This first ruling was upheld by a split decision of the Pennsylvania Appellate Court. Two dissenting judges strongly supported Redeemer. If the law were applied, they concluded, Redeemer should be heard.

Keep in mind that all this litigation was just about HEARING the case. It has never been heard.

A similar case WAS heard at the very same time involving a Presbyterian denomination and a member congregation in western Pennsylvania. That judge took five days to hear the case and ruled in favor of the congregation. The ruling came five days after the Redeemer “no jurisdiction” ruling. This decision has held through the appellate process and was last heard at the state supreme level this April with a decision due any day.

SEPA wasn’t satisfied with their default win. They wanted Redeemer to pay more. They went after individual members.

They held the cards now and they fixed the deck. The ace up their sleeve is “Contempt of Court.”

Synod locked the members of Redeemer out of the church within 36 hours of the ruling. Redeemer members had no access to anything in the church. Synod (again with no consultation with Redeemer members) sued members for contempt of court for not supplying things we still think ARE IN the church.

If they couldn’t find something they were looking for, they could have asked. But no! Straight to litigation where they are immune from the law and church members are not.

Redeemer members are in the position of not being able to prove that the items are in the church building.

Note to other SEPA congregations: They are likely to use this tactic again. Protect your church leaders now.

In the Redeemer case, subsequent judges have shown growing sympathy for Redeemer.

First, let’s ask, Where were the clergy?

Clergy fled at the first sign of trouble.

The pastor who had been serving us for nearly two years when Bishop Burkat was elected and who was well-liked, disappeared after a private meeting with Bishop Burkat and a congregation (Epiphany) who had been in covenant with Redeemer and was sharing our building. That church never discussed breaking the covenant with us, but after a private meeting with the bishop, they announced they were closing. The pastor gave 10 days notice by email (not the constitutional 30 days notice.) He never planned to talk with us about his decision. He left the Synod.

Epiphany continued to share Redeemer’s property outside of the covenant for six months, rent free. They were never locked out!

Redeemer found a pastor to replace him. Redeemer hand-delivered to Bishop Burkat the congregation’s resolution to call him in November 2007. In February 2008, he had just encouraged Redeemer members to “stand firm” in our ministry. He visited the bishop’s office hoping to talk things through.

This pastor had shared with us that he had been trying to talk to the synod for a year and couldn’t get a return call or a response to correspondence. (We had the same experience!).

So now he goes to talk to the Synod about serving Redeemer.

He never sets foot inside Redeemer again.

He suddenly has an interim call in Bucks County.

Clergy are out of the way.

Next. Lay leaders.

Let’s make this quick! All lay leaders, having had no hearing with Bishop Burkat on the subject of closing the church, were dismissed by letter from the bishop in February 2008. She had promised to work with us just four months earlier at a meeting which closing the church had not been discussed. No grounds were ever cited.

OK, lay leaders are out of the way.

There is still the congregation to deal with. 

We’ll tell you how that went in our next post.

Hint: Any claim that there was a process of mutual discernment is a lie.

 

02 Aug 2013

Redeemer Revisited: Part 1

A New Look at a Tired Situation May Be Prudent

Redeemer-LocklowresThis is the first post in a series that will advocate for revisiting SEPA Synod’s involvement with member church, Redeemer Lutheran Church, East Falls in Philadelphia, Pa.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (SEPA)of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) made claims on this congregation’s property in 2008. Their actions sparked five years of litigation.

There is ample room for revisiting the actions of SEPA today.

  1. If ministry in East Falls is the goal, we are on the same side.
  2. If attaining or protecting assets is the goal, the better economic decision might be to foster ministry as opposed to shutting ministry down.

Either way, the important point is that we should be on the same side. The stewardship of ministry and/or resources should be an objective. So should loving the people who make up our synod and upon whom all hope for ministry or the funding of ministry depends.

Why revisit Redeemer now?

Eight years passed between the time when Bishop Almquist looked at Redeemer in 1997-1998 and Bishop Burkat’s revisiting his decision. Things changed during those years but SEPA never adequately examined how they had changed. That was a mistake. Let’s learn from it.

Another five and one half years have passed since the 2008 land grab was attempted. Four years have passed since the court awarded SEPA our property — not on the basis of secular law or even on Lutheran law but on the basis of separation of church and state. Courts do not want to be involved in church issues. The dissenting opinion suggested strongly that the law and the church constitutions were on Redeemer’s side.

This means that justice in the Lutheran Church is the responsibility of each Lutheran. There is no room for even benign neglect of that responsibility.

Things have changed during this time too.

To not review the actions in this long and trying relationship would be another mistake. Great potential might be missed. The mistakes made in the Redeeme debacle will be repeated—over and over.

We’ll start the discussion in the five following topics (possibly more). We will look at how decisions made today will affect various aspects of many local congregations and neighborhoods, the Church as a whole, and the mission of all Lutherans.

These are some of the areas we plan to discuss:

  • Legality
  • Viability
  • Innovation
  • Community Impact
  • Short- and Long-Term Potential

We believe that the Redeemer situation poses questions that will impact dozens of congregations in the next two decades. Redeemer’s interests are also the interests of at least 30 other congregations we have visited who may be OK for today but face a very uncertain future as aging memberships lose their ability to hold things together.

Redeemer has learned a lot in the last six years. We will share what we see in a forthright manner. We will strive to leave the buzzwords and popular leadership jargon out of the discussion. The ELCA needs a frank discussion that focuses on the interests of the congregations — not the preservation of a system and protection of the interests of church professionals but the true reasons we bond together for mission in the first place.

As one of the beleaguered American Roman Catholic nuns, Sister Pat Farrell, commented tonight on 60 Minutes— “There doesn’t seem to be a safe place to talk about issues of differences. Where do people go?”

This is true in the ELCA, too. Redeemer has found no honest and open forum within the church. In fact, great effort was made to deny or control all discussion early on—when open and sincere discussion might have prevented five years of law suits and acrimony.

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28 Jul 2013

Ambassadors Celebrate

Homecoming and Coming of Age

Today was the end of our third year of Ambassador visits. We stayed home and had worship, followed by a party. (68 church visits, BTW)

It was an especially joyous day as one of members was home from nine months overseas. It was good to be reunited.

We actually saw each other several times this week, bumping into each other just like the old days. It was especially good to see our young people trying to reconnect.

SEPA Synod’s view of Redeemer was that we were a bunch of old ladies who would be dead soon enough. We wouldn’t have the energy to resist. Need money? Easy pickings in East Falls.

But Redeemer’s demographics were actually the youngest of any Lutheran church our Ambassadors have visited. It was not unusual for children to outnumber adults on Sunday morning. We had very few people who could be considered old.

A lot had changed in the eight years since Bishop Almquist nurtured that indelible impression and during which SEPA Synod ignored us.

And then another six years passed while Bishop Burkat tried to destroy Redeemer one way or another.

A funny thing happens in eight years, followed by six years (two thirds of the history of SEPA Synod). Our children grew up.

Since 2007. Redeemer’s cradle role members are now in first and second grade. Redeemer’s grade school kids are now entering high school. Redeemer’s high school youth are now entering graduate school or the work force.

Synod has been so focused on destroying the adults that they never stopped to think about how their actions in East Falls affect the children. Land and money remains their only consideration.

I’ll never forget the Sunday after Bishop Burkat followed four months of silence with a letter announcing she was closing Redeemer. Our last meeting with her had been all about working with Synod. She broke every promise made to us without a word.

Of course, when all this ugliness was going on, we did our best to protect our children. On this Sunday, following the edict (don’t believe the “mutual discernment” nonsense), two synod representatives appeared at worship. Rev. Patricia Davenport and the Rev. Lee Miller were sitting right beside the children as they gathered for the children’s sermon.

The children came forward wanting to talk. We usually let them talk during the children’s sermon. We typically asked them what was going on in their lives before we settled in for a message. This week they were upset. You see they had seen their parents crying.  “Daddy got a letter and was crying,” one six-year-old said.

They were probably surprised and confused that on this morning, when they needed to talk more than usual, their concerns were deflected.

The sight of a parent crying, especially a father, is troubling to a child. We should have talked it through with the children right then and there. But then the people responsible for the family’s pain were sitting within arms’ reach. The word “smugly” comes to mind. They seemed clueless to what they were witnessing.

Awkward moments in worship.

But today the children are older. As we talk now, we make no attempt to hide anything from the young adults. At one point, I invited them to go off and enjoy kid talk.

“Nothing doing,” one boy said. “I’ve heard bits and pieces of this over the years, but this is the first time I’ve heard all this. This is really interesting.” And so we shared our story with a new generation — now old enough to vote in the church.

As the father told the son, I always thought that if our story were told, any reasonable person would side with Redeemer.

Lack of dialog has characterized this entire conflict. Reason has held little sway.

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

Our children still care about Redeemer. They will always know what it feels like to be shunned by their church leaders, excluded from the church that had once welcomed them in baptism, and how their parents were attacked in court for five long years.

We learned what they are doing. The young man who often helped lead Redeemer’s children’s sermons now holds a home Bible study. (Redeemer had no shortage of leaders and was grooming a new generation.) Another boy attends church with a school friend. Most remain unchurched as is typical of the membership of closed churches. Another falls back on his Quaker school upbringing. (A good number of Redeemer kids attended Quaker schools.)

Several families that were united at Redeemer are divided in exile.

Bishop Burkat was quite up front with her insistence that the memory of Redeemer be allowed to die. The church’s version of scorched earth policy. If the church was to reopen it had to have a new trendy name. The members of Redeemer could not play a leadership role in any “resurrection.” They would remain dead while SEPA searched for more compliant East Fallsers (good luck!) or shipped in outsiders.

She thought the death process would take six months. That was five years ago.

And now we know.

Redeemer’s spirit will live for another generation.

Let’s hope a resolution is reached that will restore our children’s faith in Christian community—for everyone’s sake. It’s high time.

Praise God for this special day.

28 Jul 2013