Once upon a time there was a congregation that became separated from the other congregations in their denomination. They worshiped in their homes, wandered from church to church, and borrowed space from neighborhood friends when they wanted to hold events.
They weren’t hard to find. They took their ministry online.
Many people who weren’t looking for them found them. Christians all over the world began writing to them and sharing their ministries. Amazing stories of mission became commonplace.
But their closest Christian friends took control of their money and property. They locked their doors and sent them away. You are no longer welcome, they said. And they meant it. All the sheep were warned by the shepherd to keep their distance.
There was no shepherd interested in bringing the Lost Church back into the fold, to reconcile, to comfort them, heal with them, or recognize them as part of God’s family.
The Lost Church maintained its mission and became known for innovative ministry. They grew in influence and in favor with churches that belonged to other denominations.
Amazing stories of ministry were soon being told as faraway Christians interacted in prayer and fellowship. God’s love crisscrossed the oceans as friendships were made.
No matter how effective their ministry was, nothing the Lost Church did was good enough for their own shepherds. They were busy caring for all the congregations that were never any trouble and unfailingly did as they were told without question.
Two years after they became lost to their denomination, leaders decided to officially declare them lost for good. Their name was taken from the denomination’s roster, their signboard was torn down and destroyed. Their church home remained locked to all in the community where they lived. The members of the Lost Church passed their locked doors every day. Every day they were reminded that their own family would not welcome them.
On September 29, Redeemer will celebrate four years as the Lost Church of the ELCA. We are still active and respected in the community. We still worship weekly. We are more active in mission and ministry than ever. Our achievements literally fill books — nearly 1000 posts on this website, one published book and four more in the works. 40,000 have visited online and some visit with us every day. Other denominations come to us for advice.
But our own church leaders choke when they say our name.
Will we forever be the Lost Church of the ELCA?
This Sunday we will listen to the stories about how God feels about one sheep separated from the family of sheep. We will hear the about the joyous celebration of a recovered coin. We will weep with joy for the father and wayward son who embrace in reunion.
Will anyone in the ELCA understand what they hear?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That’s the part of the lesson Jesus taught to the disciples when they were challenged in prayer.
Ask. It will be given.
Seek. You will find.
Knock. The door will open.
Following biblical advice, Redeemer will just keep at it.
We’ve been at it particularly hard for the last six years of our 122-year history.
Early on, even before all the lawsuits, we wrote monthly letters, which our presiding bishop, bishop, and trustees steadfastly ignored.
One of our members writes regularly to pastors. They hold keys to the doors of the democratic nature of our church government. When they’ve responded at all, the attitude has been like the head of the household who wants to go back to bed with his children in Jesus’ story. They want to be left alone in their congregations.
We started visiting congregations — all of which voted to take our property for themselves. We know they had been fueled with inflammatory falsehoods, exaggerated tales, one-sided accounts, which influenced them to believe that taking other people’s property, and expelling men, women and children from the church was somehow the godly thing to do.
Early on, we wrote letters or sent cards to the churches. Later we just published our visits on Facebook and our blog. We discovered that other churches are much the same as ours, making their hands-off attitude all the more difficult to fathom. We’ve been to 68 congregations so far. We know more about your ministries than you knew about ours when you voted to take our property.
We continued our ministry which led us in innovative directions that could now benefit the whole church. Redeemer’s greatest value is not its corner property in an affluent neighborhood. It is our people who have a 132-year legacy which is still growing despite efforts to pack our ministry in cardboard boxes and store them in the seminary archives. Out of sight. Out of mind.
After six years of tiring and expensive conflict we remain an active Christian community that grew new networks when we were excluded from the ELCA. We are obviously viable. We have something to add to the faith community which is our heritage—more now than when you took our land.
And so in the spirit of the Lord’s teaching, we will continue t0 ask, seek and knock.
Ask.
Please recognize our valuable ministry. Return our property to us and partner with us as we all pledged to do 25 years ago when we agreed to be part of the interdependent ELCA.
Seek.
We seek peace and reconciliation. We want to belong—not as second-class citizens with a set of rules just for Redeemer but with the same rights and privileges all member churches share.
Knock.
You know where we are. We know where you are. Why can’t we talk this through?
If what is going on in East Falls is so right, why is it shrouded in hateful vindictiveness? Why is everything so hush-hush? Why are people so afraid to act?
East Falls is still OUR neighborhood. We don’t have to go to community council meetings to court neighborhood leaders. We ARE respected neighborhood leaders, already friends with other neighborhood leaders. The best people to create Lutheran ministry in East Falls are the Lutherans of East Falls.
We have a plan we would like to present to SEPA Synod Council. Our experience is that anything presented privately never sees the light of day. We’ll publish our plan for ministry here first.
Watch for it. Answer the door when we knock. Please.
Today’s church is in trouble. Everybody in the church knows it. Some (fairly few) congregations are still large enough to get by without facing the new age but most churches are feeling just how tough the next two decades are likely to be.
The answer in our area of the church (the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) has been to check out on the people who have brought the church this far. They prefer to look for new faces to deal with—if they can find any. New faces will be easier to manage. They have no heritage at stake.
That was said to us at Redeemer in so many words by Bishop Claire Burkat.
White Redeemer must be allowed to die.
Black Redeemer . . . we can put them anywhere.
Beyond this, when it looked like the judge was going to rule in our favor, Synod scurried and wrote a proposal to the judge. The proposal was that they would reopen Redeemer under their control and our current members were welcome to attend but would not be allowed any leadership role.
The judge sidestepped all the issues and ruled that he has no jurisdiction in church affairs. The appellate court ruled in its dissenting opinion that if the law were applied, Redeemer’s arguments should have been heard.
SEPA has hidden behind this dubious win and interpreted it as having free reign. In fact, they have free reign as long as members do not exercise their constitutional roles in running their church. The courts don’t want to do this job for you.
The problem with this conflict is that from the start, SEPA refused to deal with members. If they were to have any presence in our community, they wanted it on their terms with different people, who we can presume would thrive as long as they voted the right way.
When we want to deceive or lash out, it’s easy to do. Hey, there’s always someone else we can start over with, relationships and even reputations are disposable. We don’t have to look you in the eye, it’s dark in here, and we’re wearing a mask.’
He calls this approach “an experiment in fake.”
It turns strangers into actors on a screen, and sometimes we help them, but often, we become inured to their reality, and treat them with a callousness and indifference we’d never use in our village.
Recently, I was cleaning out the home of a deceased pastor. I found a folder on a prominent table. In that folder was The Lutheran article about the life and death of one of the founding leaders of the Lutheran Church in America, Dr. Franklin Clark Fry. With it was an article from Time magazine that called him “Mr. Lutheran.” There was also a bulletin from his funeral.
Then on June 6 of this year, someone from this pastor’s family called me to honor Dr. Fry’s “glory day.”
I was surprised that anyone would recall a death of a church leader in 1968 and that they would think to call me. I am only remotely connected to Dr. Fry. His grandchildren are my cousins. But I was struck by the power of his leadership and influence. I’d heard plenty of stories about him as I grew up—mostly about how he insisted that congregations and clergy follow the rules. He would meet personally with people when he could have mailed a letter or picked up the phone.
His leadership had lasting influence.
That influence is waning as Lutheran leaders exert less and less power with more and more force.
The people they lead are treated as expendable. If you don’t think so, try disagreeing.
When this happens in the church — an institution that is supposed to matter — things get phony fast.
Our leaders no longer know the people they are leading. They never deal with them. They use clergy as intermediaries. They don’t respond to mail or email. They speak to us through letters and email blasts and call it “mutual discernment.” They deny us voice and vote in Assembly and rely on no one enforcing the rules—or even knowing what the rules are.
They are afraid to look their own people in the eye.
As Seth says. When you look people in the eye, you own the results.
You want to resolve things in East Falls? Look us in the eye.
Our worship gathering started a little blue today. We Redeemer members are tired of being ignored or looked down upon at best and demonized at worst. Our members walked through our worship doors this morning fed up. We allowed some time for complaining.
Our members have plenty to gripe about. This month, we enter our sixth year of persecution by the leadership of the ELCA. We’ve been treated very badly and the courts, which are beginning to sympathize with us, still must defer to the original court ruling that says the church has to settle this themselves. The dissenting opinion that sided with Redeemer seems to be gaining support as court actions continue.
The Church is powerless to fix its own problems. They seem to be unable to practice much of anything that they preach. What good is any church that when put to the test is totally impotent? That’s the ELCA.
We soon put our problems aside, learned a new hymn and began worship. By the end of the service and our discussion of the amazing faith of the centurion, we were in a better mood.
Sometimes people outside the Church can see the bigger picture most clearly. That’s Redeemer’s experience, too. Many of the people who have been most generous in helping us have no church affiliation. Church people look the other way. Silence and inaction is all we’ve seen from SEPA congregations.
Redeemer has maintained our community. We are poised both financially and administratively to resume our ministry in our own community with our own resources.
If our situation was so dire—as SEPA falsely claimed—we could not have maintained our ministry for more than a few months. We’ve continued to grow our ministry for the last four years!
Our ministry was not the reason for the conflict in East Falls. SEPA Synod’s failing finances are the cause. Six years later, they are still in pretty bad shape. Redeemer is holding its own!
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.
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.
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.
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).
2×2 Sections
Where in the World is 2×2?
On Isaiah 30:15b
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
