SEPA has had control of Redeemer’s property for nearly four years. It sits there unused— vacant with its paint peeling. Unused property in an urban neighborhood is quickly claimed by dog lovers.
Redeemer occasionally had to remind the neighbors that the yard is used by children. Mostly they respected that. No big deal. But now it’s different. When we worshiped this Easter on the sidewalk we watched one dog owner after another shortcut through the yard.
The people of East Falls were quite upfront at the Community Council meeting SEPA attended more than a year ago. SEPA was putting their best foot forward, trying to impress the locals with their concern for the neighborhood—something they failed to show their own supporting members in East Falls. Rev. Pat Davenport was all charm as she gratuitously asked the community what they would like to see on that corner. The members said, “a dog park.”
The absentee landowners are now peeved. Ever-accustomed to wielding a mighty arm without resistance, SEPA now resorts to signs on every corner. Signs on the signboard. Cardboard signs propped up on folding chairs (at least they haven’t taken ALL our folding chairs).
Clearly, they mean business!
They warn the neighbors that they don’t intend to clean up after their dogs.
That should make mowing the yard very interesting.
Their attitude toward dogs is similar to their attitude towards Redeemer’s people.
East Falls is not going to take well to it.
Sometimes neighbors just have to put up with neighbors. If SEPA ever wants to open a word and sacrament church in East Falls — as Rev. Davenport claimed, but we doubt — they should adjust their attitude. Fallsers have a long memory. As new owners of old East Falls land they are already, in East Falls vernacular, considered “squatters.” (And in SEPA’s case, they are squatters who showed no mercy on the people of East Falls in pursuit of our community’s riches for their gain.)
A little advice from Redeemer on how to get along with your neighbors:
The only thing that draws more flies than dog dirt is honey. 🙂
It isn’t Redeemer members you are dealing with now. It is all of East Falls.
Redeemer and 2×2 takes SEPA’s recent request for congregations to make multimedia presentations about their ministry seriously. It is a goal of 2×2 to conquer video for use on its website, so it was a welcome challenge.
We learned basic recording techniques and syncing sound tracks to slides. We added transitions. We’ve got a lot to learn, but we are happy with our start and will soon share our experiences with others.
2x2virtualchurch is the web project of Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls, Philadelphia, shunned by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. They view us as too small to fulfill any mission purpose and seized our property and locked out our members.
2x2virtualchurch is now two years old. We started knowing very little about the web but it seemed to be a logical and viable mission opportunity for a congregation raped of its heritage.
It’s been a voyage of discovery.
We’ve documented our growth statistics before but in the last month we began to add new dimension to our ministry.
About a month ago, businessesgrow.com (Mark Shaefer’s marketing website) featured a 2×2 guest blog.
That blog was picked up by five other major blogs including a couple of business web sites and two Christian Social Media web sites. (These are the ones we know about!)
Yesterday, we received a request to participate in a podcast for a Christian Social Media site. At the same time we are about to launch our first multimedia video.
This is all within a few weeks!
So the progression has been:
2011: Readership grows from 1 reader per month in February to a few hundred per month
2012: Readership grows from an average of 20 readers per day to 50 readers per day
2013 to date: Readership grows from 50 readers per day to an average of 90 per day and more than 4000 per month
This makes Redeemer and its 2×2 ministry the congregation with the widest reach in SEPA Synod—which declared us to be closed and unfit to manage our own ministry in 2010. (They wanted our property.)
The lessons to be learned from our ministry:
Prepare to give a solid year of dedicated work before making any value assessments. 2×2 started to gain momentum when we started posting daily in the summer of 2011.
Post frequently at least three times a week.
Look for interests that aren’t being addressed. We discovered a demand for object lessons for adults that draws daily traffic to our site. Churches are also looking for easy dramas—plays that don’t require a lot of costumes and rehearsals. We are trying to figure out how to offer music!
Your audience is the world once you begin using the web. You can write for just the people who live near you but don’t close the doors on interesting opportunities. We have many stories to tell of how our ministry is impacting the lives of Christians thousands of miles away in surprising and exciting ways.
Be helpful to your readers. Our free resources geared to small congregations drives our traffic.
Cast a wider net when fishing for men. Most church web sites are all about them. They may succeed locally with this approach, but they will be missing mission opportunity.
Don’t look to professional leadership to have the skills needed to forge the way in this type of ministry. They have been busy learning other things. Turn it over to lay people.
Don’t rely on hierarchical support. They are not likely to understand the potential of the web. They were born of an era when church structure was locally focused with distant oversight. This is not likely to change without a major reformation.
Don’t expect accolades for your success from the greater church. Again, they frequently don’t understand the web and are still assessing congregational viability by 1950 standards. It will be five years at least before they realize what they are missing. By then things are likely to have changed still more.
Don’t expect regional bodies to admit their weaknesses.
Where to from here?
2×2 has gained credible blogging skills. We will now look to be adding more video and podcasting and more helpful resources for small church ministry and world mission.
We hope to cooperate with other local ministry efforts, offering our expertise to their causes.
We’ve grown a bit “like Topsy” but we will now become more intentional in creating our ministry plan—something Redeemer was always good at!
We have achieved this success on a $0 budget as our hierarchy claimed all our offerings at the same time it challenged us with legal expenses. We now have a readership base that can monetize our ministry. The economics of scale will allow us to do this at prices far lower than traditional publishing and we will remain dedicated to providing most resources for free as part of our mission.
There is a lot of hard work in learning all these new mission skills. We will be glad to share our experiences with any church interested in diving in!
Here’s the manifesto he quotes from an organization called Acumen:
Acumen: It starts by standing with the poor, listening to voices unheard, and recognizing potential where others see despair.
It demands investing as a means, not an end, daring to go where markets have failed and aid has fallen short. It makes capital work for us, not control us.
It thrives on moral imagination: the humility to see the world as it is and the audacity to imagine the world as it could be. It’s having the ambition to learn at the edge, the wisdom to admit failure, and the courage to start again.
It requires patience and kindness, resilience and grit: a hard-edged hope. It’s leadership that rejects complacency, breaks through bureaucracy, and challenges corruption. Doing what’s right, not what’s easy.
Acumen: it’s the radical idea of creating hope in a cynical world. Changing the way the world tackles poverty and building a world based on dignity.
Love the phrase “hard-edged hope.” It describes Redeemer.
The problems Redeemer has faced in the ELCA is that the ELCA has become a complacent church. Congregations seem to be increasingly self-focused. As long as things are fine for them, what problems can there be?
The problem is that this complacency quickly defines our culture.
Our culture is worshiping together in a fairly defined way. It is friendly chatter around coffee before or after worship. It is choosing from a fairly short list of acceptable public charities to support (Habitat for Humanity seems to be the most popular). Some congregations support or operate food pantries and nursery schools. Ladies Groups knit prayer blankets and fix meals. Toys are donated at Christmas. Cookie cutter ministries.
The church that grew from the biblical teachings of Martin Luther was anything but complacent.
Lutheranism grew from the ability of Christians to question authority and to fashion ministry with scripture as a guide — not pronouncements from hierarchy. The whole structure of the Lutheran Church, which focuses on the congregation is designed so that congregations can look at local possibilities for mission and respond independently, without carrying the weight of bureaucracy.
The ELCA uses the word “interdependent” to define this structure. The intent is that each level of church might draw strength from one another. Our regional body has reinterpreted this to mean that they are authorities unto themselves. No one can question them. There is no structure above them to check their power. The churches below them are supposed to do that — but that has proven to be ineffective at best and risky at worst.
The result in our region is SEPA Synod—a collection of 160 congregations that instead of drawing strength from one another, tends to exist with each member church living in its own little world. The way to avoid challenge is to never stray from conventional ministry. Just keep doing the same thing as the world around us slips into history.
Redeemer, on the other hand, had fashioned a ministry around new challenges. This was made all the easier by SEPA’s refusal to provide pastoral leadership. Our priority was not in maintaining good relations with leadership. It was in exploring ministry possibilities. We continue to do so.
We were fashioning multi-cultural ministry in a new way. Diverse cultures were joining together in ministry, worshiping and serving together. We weren’t just sharing a building.
We were investing our resources in this ministry. Our resources. Not SEPA’s resources.
We were recognizing something that the rest of the Church does not want to admit. We cannot serve needy populations when the expectation for every congregation is to support a building and professional staff at a minimum budget of $130,000 before a dime is spent on mission or outreach. This model is creating a church where only the rich and middle class can expect to participate fully. This worked in a culture where everyone attended church and knew what was expected of them. It doesn’t work when you are trying to reach the vast and growing population of unchurched people.
Redeemer was responding to this economic challenge, not by pleading for stewardship. We taught stewardship, but we recognized that it would take decades to develop personal giving. (This was made much more difficult by SEPA raiding our bank account in 1998.)
The only way toward fiscal viability was to develop our own funding streams.
We were unafraid of failure. We learned from it. Our early attempts to reach the diversity of our neighborhood were not particularly successful. Our pastors were not comfortable with multicultural ministry, so evangelism was difficult. Our success came when we were free to find professional leadership who could actually further our mission beyond status quo Sunday worship. It came into full flower when we put outreach leadership into the hands of our immigrant members.
SEPA was so intent on seizing our resources that they never really looked at what was going on in our community. They ignored our success and dwelt on ancient failures.
The past five years have proven that they really don’t care about their congregations and their missions. They certainly don’t care about the people.
Our suggestion for congregations:
Spend more time writing your manifesto and less time on your mission statements. Let’s regain our Lutheran culture!
I received an anonymous letter from a member of a SEPA congregation this week. The writer added a note that she was sending the letter to ELCA Presiding Bishop Hanson and several other church leaders including our local bishop.
She noted that she doubted letters make any difference. True, anonymous letters give the recipient an excuse to blow off any point the writer makes no matter how valid.
We understand the need for anonymity. We live in a Synod that is funding its ministry with seizures of property and lawsuits against laity.
Clergy have no room to criticize. Their universal silence on these issues is a form of anonymity.
We at Redeemer have written many signed letters almost all of which have been ignored. The single exception was the first letter we wrote to Bishop Hanson, probably early 2008. The Bishop glibly dismissed our very serious issues. Lots of God words, no God actions. His attitude trickles down to his staff and clergy. The ELCA legal offices, funded with parishioner offerings, responded to a Redeemer member’s letter with a note that they feel no obligation to get involved. Bishop Burkat has never responded to any of our letters. The people we pay to be there to make sure the congregations are protected spend our offerings protecting themselves.
We are going to reprint this anonymous letter because it has value. This writer took the time to understand the issues — something SEPA clergy, the Synod Council and Synod Assembly and the courts have failed to do. This writer nails the issues. Write on!
Here’s the letter (with minor spelling/grammar edits):
Dear Bishop Hanson,
I belong to Peace Lutheran Church in Bensalem, Pa., which is part of SEPA Synod. I recently attended a charity event in Philadelphia and met a woman from a church in Lansford, Pa. We got into a conversation about Redeemer Lutheran Church and Bishop Claire Burkat and how sad that their church was taken from them and how their valiant fight to regain their spiritual home was knocked down by the Pa Supreme Court, citing “church vs. state.” The woman I sat with told me that her church belongs to the Slovak-Zion Synod and that their Bishop (Rev. Wilma S. Kucharek) was investigated by the authorities for making improper withdrawals from a congregation’s accounts, causing the downfall of a church in New Jersey. She locked them out of their own church, like Burkat, and then sold their properties for a huge sum of money, forcing the congregation to now worship in a rented facility when they already had a mortgage-free church and parsonage of their own. She heard this from some people she knows that had attended a Synod Assembly cruise. Are you even aware of this in Chicago?
What kind of organization allows the taking of church properties that were built and paid for by the members of these congregations without any help from their synods. Just because you have hidden clauses in your constitutions that allow Synod Bishops to abscond with properties does NOT make it morally right. It is actually criminal to take by force another’s possessions for your own profit or gain. These clauses do not appear in the congregation’s constitution (I checked) but appear in the Synod’s constitution. How sneaky. Why didn’t you put this language in the congregations’ constitutions and spell it out more clearly so the average parishioner can understand the language? “That the Synod Bishop may close, at his/her discretion, the congregation’s church, seize their property, sell it, and then distribute the funds as he/she sees fit.” Wouldn’t that be more befitting to a religious organization to be honest and more forthcoming with the followers. You should also point out to the congregation to NOT come to you with their problems because you are an “interdependent” organization.
I am ashamed of how the ELCA has disgraced the Lutheran religion by ignoring Martin Luther’s principles of fair play for all. He would never condone abusing the weak by taking their possessions to further enhance one’s already lofty standing. Greed is a terrible sin. God knows who these bishops are. They can’t fool him with their empty prayers and their false justifications that they are doing this for the overall good of the Synod. These thefts of properties will be seen for what they are by the Lord.
Bishop Hanson, I’m sorry to say, the ELCA is now being run by bureaucrats and lawyers who don’t know what it’s like to honor the Lord by doing what is right in the Lord’s eyes and not the courts. There can be a happy medium but right now there isn’t. By the interdependent nature of the ELCA, you’ve divorced yourselves from your followers (the mass that supports the organization) by taking away their right to a fair an unbiased hearing regarding the closing of their churches. They can’t go to the courts because of the “separation between the church and state.” The Synod assemblies are a joke. The people who sit on these assemblies have no training in judicial matters in order to make proper judgments. They are just parishioners of local churches who volunteer to attend a yearly gathering and are clueless as to what’s going on. They are heavily influenced by the bishops, plus I don’t think that the bishops even need their approval to close a church.
It’s just so wrong that just one person can decide the fate of so many. At least the Catholics can go the Vatican Council in Rome where they have already overturned church closings in places like Cleveland, Ohio, by over-ruling local Bishops. The Lutherans have no such recourse.
Claire Burkat may have sued some members of Redeemer for standing up to her abuses, but she will not be able to sue me.
Signed, Disgusted
Here are a Few More Supporting Points
This writer describes the problems fairly accurately. The interdependent constitutions leave parishioners vulnerable to various self-serving interpretations, putting anyone who raises an issue at risk. Parishioners are the most vulnerable.
The writer also does not mention the founding Articles of Incorporation of ELCA Synods. These foundational documents forbid bishops from taking property and limit the power of the Synod Assembly. The writer is dead right that Synod Assemblies don’t know enough about church law to make decisions. Also, about a third of the Synod Assembly (the clergy) have a built-in bias. They owe their next call to their relationship with the bishop.
The clauses in the Synod constitutions have been altered over the years. The original model Synod Constitution calls for synodical administration to be temporary in nature and with the consent of the congregation. It was intended to help struggling congregations. Tweaks here and there presented to unsuspecting Synod Assemblies have reversed the intent of the constitution and violate the Articles of Incorporation—which was further compromised by Judge Lynn’s order regarding Redeemer, issued without hearing the case. Saint Paul knew what he was talking about when he advised church people to stay out of court!
Consequently, a clause intended to help congregations find their way through difficult times is now used to seize assets and help the synod through troubling times.
In Redeemer’s case, Redeemer appealed the issue of Synodical Administration to the Synod Assembly. The Synod Assembly never voted on the issue we appealed. Synod officials used our appeal to present a question allowing them to take our property (which we had not addressed in our appeal). Like lemmings the Synod Assembly voted on an entirely different issue—and an issue over which they have no constitutional authority. All SEPA Lutherans were victims of bait and switch.
Because of Synod Assemblies unquestioning decision, no Lutheran congregation really owns its own property anymore. A long-standing Lutheran tradition is gone. Your bishop needs only to make a claim on your property and your congregation is toast. There are no standards to be met. If Bishop Burkat needs your property to meet her budget (including her salary) she can claim it.
Back when Redeemer’s money was taken (1998) we were told the money would go to a Mission Fund. It was later reported that Mission Fund money is tapped by the Synod to fill deficits. When our Ambassadors visited Holy Spirit in NE Philadelphia, the week before they closed, their pastor explained that their money would go the the Bishop’s Discretionary Fund. At least that’s more transparent if not nobler. We suspect there is even less control over that fund than the misnamed Mission Fund.
We hope there are more letters written and we encourage you to sign them. Send them our way. As long as they are factually accurate, we will consider publishing them. At least you’ll know your letter has a chance of being read. Right now, the ELCA’s circular files are wide and deep!
The best people to put an end to the travesties of SEPA Synod are SEPA Lutherans. Ask your Synod Assembly to revisit the issues with Redeemer. We are still alive and well. We have grown a base of support during our years of exile and are ready to resume our ministry with our property— if SEPA Lutherans can ever manage to deal with the issues for which they have accepted responsibility.
It should be obvious to SEPA Lutherans that the sad story of Redeemer’s lack of viability was always a crock. Redeemer, even with many of its members in hiding, is stronger today than ever. We reach more people each week than any church in SEPA. We are positioned to restore our endowment to its 1990s high point—before SEPA cast its line over our waters (and they weren’t fishing for men).
There is more economic potential in open churches than in closed churches.
Organizations that thrive in the 21st Century will be distinguished by two attributes: entrepreneurship and organizational foresight.
He suggests that the word innovation be replaced with the word “entrepreneurship.”
He notes these subtle but significant differences (the bullets are quotes):
Innovation requires creativity but, unlike entrepreneurship, does not address issues like tolerance for risk, organizational agility, improvisational ability and speed.
Innovation often comes in bursts after focusing on discrete ideas and issues, while entrepreneurship requires cultivating a certain kind of culture, defined by a set of practices and attitudes that are infused throughout an organization.
Innovation implies the creation of something new, while entrepreneurship can mean dramatically improving what is already working with new vision and processes.
This sounds impossible. It is not. Even small churches can follow it.
The problem is that church hierarchies don’t recognize the potential. Armed with an impenetrable sense of entitlement and a tradition that supports it, they measure their congregations by ancient standards. These standards are failing almost everywhere!
The entrepreneurial church is not about making money for money’s sake, but is more about creating revenue streams with ministry projects. More lucrative ministries will provide funds for ministries that will never be self-supporting.
People today hesitate to give offerings, especially when they can’t see their offerings at work. More and more, congregations are begging for offerings just to help them survive — not to help them serve. It’s a losing proposition.
Less committed people of faith are not going to see this as a good investment of their time or tithe. They are more likely to contribute both money and energy to projects when they see them making a difference. They are not seeing this in churches that have budgets that are top-heavy in overhead.
There are many opportunities that are entirely in keeping with the mission of the Church.
One of Redeemer’s strengths is the ability to recognize opportunity.
There would be no conflict between Redeemer, East Falls, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, if Redeemer had been nurtured and granted the freedom their constitution gives them to shape and fund their ministry in less traditional ways. Are we not regularly implored to “transform”?
Our Christian Day School, which was ready to open as a Christian School for the first time in 25 years, would be providing upwards of $6000 per month for ministry—and creating a Christian witness in a neighborhood which is losing its Christian schools.
Our aid to immigrant families would be producing $100,000 per year. Redeemer had a plan in place that would help immigrant first-time home buyers. The expertise of our members would ease the path to home ownership and the congregation would gain some money in the real estate transaction, which would then go to help another immigrant family.
Our website would generate another few thousand per month for ministry. The website reaches out to small churches all over the world.
More than enough resources for a neighborhood ministry.
This is no different from religious publishing houses making their living publishing books or religious social service agencies tapping into government revenue streams. And it doesn’t camouflage mission to meet government requirements.
Unfortunately, our regional body has no vision for its small churches. They are waiting for them to die.
It will take a while for the Church to recognize that they can no longer control the voice of the faithful. The reason for this delay is that congregations and individual Christians do not yet realize that we have more power than ever before in history.
We are accustomed to abiding in silence, accepting what we are told and assuming that the powerful within the church have godly interests.
This is not always true.
Martin Luther took a huge risk when he hammered his list of 95 complaints onto the cathedral door. The response was predictable. Luther was forced into hiding for fear of his life. Fortunately, he made a few well-positioned friends who helped him over this rough spot. He emerged to become a respected preacher and teacher of the Word.
Martin Luther wasn’t the first to raise many of the issues he cited. He was the first to survive. He was the first with the power of a printing press to amplify his voice.
The old tools of intimidation still work. Clergy who are beholding to hierarchy are easily silenced.
During the extended conflict between Redeemer Lutheran Church and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod has anyone wondered why it is the lay people who have been dragged through courts? The clergy who were working with the congregation, voted with the congregation, and encouraged the congregation headed for the hills after private meetings in the synod office.
Today, each individual within the Church has far more power than Martin Luther.
We have a voice that will be more difficult to control.
Eventually, our voices will have influence.
Redeemer, excluded from participation within the church, started a blog. We are one of very few churches who have taken this step and use this tool for weekly outreach. It has both changed and shaped our ministry in ways we never expected.
Blogging builds community. We have encountered dozens of individual bloggers who write from a spiritual point of view. They are poets, photographers, parents, writers, artists, and adventurers. They are all over the world—Thailand, Armenia, Scandinavia, Africa, the Mideast. Some of them have church connections. Others do not. They tend to represent the age demographic that is missing in the church on Sunday morning—20-40.
They have discovered that within the Church, they have little voice, but outside the Church, they can grow.
The ability to grow as individuals is a key factor that is missing in many church communities.
Modern youth have been reared in a world where they must constantly reeducate themselves. They are involved in an ongoing process of self-discovery. In the past this discovery period ended at about age 30, when we settled down. This will no longer be true for any of us, regardless of age.
Self-rediscovery tends to be discouraged within the Church. We are likely to be assigned a task that Church needs to have accomplished. We will be told how to do it—how to teach, how to sing, how to fix the altar, and how to distribute the offering plates. Once we accept one of these jobs, it may be ours for life!
It is no wonder that people turn away from the Church. They seek community where their voices can be heard—their ideas and talents recognized.
If the Church does not find a way to welcome the voice of the people and adapt to modern expectations, they will find their churches to be empty on Sunday mornings.
Church leaders who face this change in society with tenacious resistance will enjoy fleeting successes.
A storm is coming. A wise church would nurture voice if they want transforming change.
Today’s Alban Institute blog post addresses church resilience. It includes the thoughts of Judith Jordan who describes resilience as not so much an “intrinsic toughness” but more as an ongoing process of nurturing and fostering of relationships.
All churches can be resilient. We notice resilience more when the stakes are higher—but both large and small churches can rebound. They can redefine their missions. They can survive.
Resilience grows from love.
That’s what the Church is supposed to be good at. Wealth gets in the way.
The Church at every level is challenged today. Almost all church activity is funded by the contributions of individuals. That quarter that clinks in the offering tray must fund the local church, a regional body, the national church and all church agencies.
It is getting harder for church entities more distant from the members’ pockets to survive. Power is their only tool.
In the Lutheran Church with its interdependent structure, there is very little power assigned to church hierarchy. They are supposed to exist as servants of the congregations. But the economy has hit them hard. They crave more direct access to the wealth of congregations.
They start to stretch their powers, tweaking their constitutions a little here, a little there, until they are wielding powers that were never bestowed upon them in their founding documents.
The sense of mission begins to fade. It becomes replaced with pageantry. Pageantry makes things look better—for a while.
The mission of most churches today is funding their budget.
In this atmosphere it is harder to see resilience. The message of love is lost.
Love breaks down barriers. It opens hearts.
Resilience is hindered in a culture of criticism and judgment. That’s what many congregations experience within the structured church. The list of judgments against small congregations can be long and fabricated. The claims are difficult to prove, but few care as long as they are not personally affected.
Lay leaders are too strong.
People are resistant to change.
People are living in the past.
People are unwelcoming.
People can’t support clergy.
People can’t accept new ideas.
Says who? The people who want to claim church assets.
Funny, the faulty lay people who are “destroying their churches” with their backward thinking are thriving in the secular world which changes more frequently and at a faster rate.
Much of the criticism of congregations reflects denominational needs.
Running a denomination is expensive. Offices are expensive. Staffing an office is expensive. Keeping up illusions is expensive. The ONLY source of income for denominations is congregational members.
The poor, the needy, the sick, the young and old dependents, the infirm or visionaries need not apply.
Constitutionally, in the ELCA, no congregation is required to give to the denomination. Withholding support for a denomination may be the only voice a congregation has.
But denominations can ignore the voice and interpret the lack of support as the congregation’s failure—never its own.
It should be a huge red flag within a denomination when criticism focuses on lay people to the point of naming them and suing them. Any denomination that puts limitations on the laity’s ability to serve denies the example of Christ, who nurtured a ragtag group of peasants and spent most of his time with the needy.
You don’t hear limiting words from lips of Christ. All that comes later. It echoes through the centuries and may be the undoing of the mainline church.
Both clergy and lay leaders are all capable of leading congregations in renewal. But if their view of a congregation is only a measure of dollar signs for the denomination, then there is real trouble.
Any denomination that seeks to limit any individual’s talents is doing a disservice to their message.
Redeemer members gathered this Easter on the sidewalks of our forbidden house of worship. Our pastor led us in a song. We took turns singing verses of I Know That My Redeemer Lives. Redeemer still is a church full of soloists.
We then went to a member’s home for Easter Fellowship. Ham and kielbasa. Delicious.
We had changed our Easter time to accommodate the plans of our members. So when two carloads passed by the church at the normal time for Redeemer worship (10 am) they found an empty church (as opposed to an empty tomb).
We caught up with them later and took a second photo.
Fortunately, we can resurrect our sign which our bishop was so intent on destroying. It’s looking better than the church!
Take away the name. Take away the heritage. Destroy the church. Control the wealth.
SEPA, let the people who love a church, care for it. That’s the Lutheran way.
Thrivent, once known as Lutheran Brotherhood, is a financial fraternal association serving the members of all Lutheran denominations.
Redeemer’s Thrivent members recently received a ballot to vote on a proposal to expand their service offerings to other Christian groups. (They must not have heard that we’ve been kicked out of the Lutheran Church.)
It was inevitable as the Lutheran population dwindles that the financial fraternity would have to expand its economic base and welcome more people into the brotherhood.
This raises some questions about church voting. If an insurance company can open a vote to every member, why do we still rely on representative assemblies voting for us at the Synod level? Might the Digital Age afford us a better way?
Representative voting relies on voters having the knowledge and experience to do a conscientious job. In this regard, the voting procedure within the ELCA is seriously flawed.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America adopted a quota system at the time it was formed 25 years ago—before the power of the internet was unsheathed. The original system (faulty as it was) has been tinkered with ever since. Votes are assigned by size of church, gender, language, and age. There is no good way to prove some of these characteristics. Redeemer was a church with a majority membership of color, a strong youth population and multi-lingual. Not only were we never allotted extra representation for any of these demographics, as the bylaws allow, but the bishop (at the last minute) declared us ineligible to send any voting representatives to the 2009 Synod Assembly—which the bylaws do not allow.
None of the voters at that Assembly raised any questions. We’ve been excluded ever since.
Under the quota system, credentials for representatives create a false demographic—an illusion of inclusion. A scan of the floor of a Synod Assembly might make it seem like SEPA Synod is highly diverse. We’ve visited 57 congregations. Diversity is the exception.
Twenty years of liturgical gerrymandering may have resulted in a voting pool that meets inclusion criteria but fails to be representative—or effective.
For example, many congregations have a majority female membership. They must come up with a male if they are to have the proper number of votes at Assembly. The males in the congregation may have no interest and are borderline involved in church government but genitalia is valued above knowledge and commitment.
An inexperienced voting assembly is putty in the hands of church leaders. How else can our Synod explain adopting six-figure deficits at a time when giving was down across the board and never stopping to think how those deficits would be overcome and at whose expense?
Voters who don’t understand the issues or consequences of their decisions follow the pack.
There are important documents and procedures which control the powers of the Assemblies and provide safeguards to the congregatons. It’s not just the constitution, with which some people have at least vague familiarity. It includes the Articles of Incorporation, which define the powers of the Assembly and control the extent to which the constitution can be changed. Practically no one is familiar with this document. For one thing it forbids the seizure of congregational property without the consent of the congregation and puts this matter outside the authority of the Synod Assembly.
Without knowledge of church government, Synod Assembly has become a venue to present a synod’s wish list for rubberstamp approval—not a venue for dialog or debate.
All of this can be revamped for greater participation in an age where this is expected.
It is now entirely possible to allow all members a vote, but failing that they can at least be afforded a voice. It would take some thinking to make it work but it could bring benefits, fresh air, and true representation into the world of Church.
Regional offices will be forced to really engage with their constituency.
Congregations will have to be realistic about their memberships.
They, too, would have reason to engage members on issues that matter.
Members would have a sense that their involvement can make a difference.
Vested members may increase participation and giving.
Today issues can be presented to all church members online well in advance of the Assembly date.
During this time, the regional office is free to communicate with all members of the church. Congregations have equal freedom to debate issues. Even individuals can take discussions online. People might actually become involved.
If it is too unwieldy to count each person, a congregation’s representatives can gather after the issues for debate have been aired for a few weeks. A one-day assembly is all that would be needed.
It’s something to think about.
It could be truly transforming!
If insurance companies can count every vote, so can churches.
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
Redeemer occasionally had to remind the neighbors that the yard is used by children. Mostly they respected that. No big deal. But now it’s different. When we worshiped this Easter on the sidewalk we watched one dog owner after another shortcut through the yard.
