Every now and then a group of people, calling themselves a church, decides that they don’t want to be a church any more. They take a vote and decide to close. It’s sad, but they followed a prescribed procedure. Everyone can move on.

In the Lutheran church, a congregation gets to decide among themselves how to use their remaining assets to the glory of God. Standing on the sideline is the regional body or synod, desperately trying to find ways around their polity to guarantee that the wealth of the congregations goes their way.

To assure this, they have developed a new process. You won’t find it outlined in quite the way it is being implemented in any ELCA governing documents. (But that’s why we hire lawyers.)

It begins with a target painted figuratively in red on the church. This is followed by years of neglect, and knowing nods and glances among clergy when the name of the congregation comes up in Lutheran forums.

The next step is the lock out. They’ll be talk (with no specifics) of the heroic “efforts” that came between these two steps—as if God was at work and failed. Truth be told, the prescribed neglect is just that — neglect, and no effective help was ever intended or offered. This is the written advice of noted church leaders.

By this time, clergy have ceded their influence in the Church to lawyers. The Gospel is out the stained glass window with the law following. Separation of Church and State replaces the laws other people have to live by.

What is likely to follow is a legal battle pitting clergy with their loyalties to the bishop against laity whose loyalties are to their congregation and faith. It’s not supposed to be this way. We are supposed to be interdependent, working together as equals. This is the traditional Lutheran way.

2×2 grew from just such a debacle at Redeemer in East Falls, Philadelphia. We have 15 years of experience on our side.

We’ve heard of similar heavy-handed treatments from bishops in New England, Metropolitan New York and Slovak Zion Synods and there may be more. There are examples in other denominations, including an Episcopal Church in East Falls. (East Falls is a favorite target. It’s a nice, working class neighborhood with soaring property values. The value of our property has outgrown the value of our people.)

So what are the reasons behind these actions.

Some possibilities

• The congregation cannot pay its bills.
• The congregation cannot afford to pay clergy.
• The congregation is heretical in its teachings.

(If the first two are a reality, the congregation is likely to know it and work together to solve the problem or close.)

Here are some other possibilities.

• The regional body cannot pay its bills.
• The regional body cannot afford its current staff.
• The regional body is heretical in its teachings.

In this case, there is the need for a cover story to gain acceptance among church people who might find what is about to take place distasteful — if not sinful. In East Falls, the cover story was that  SEPA Synod intended to close the congregation for six months and reopen it with new and improved Lutherans that wouldn’t ask questions.

Well, SEPA has owned the property by court order for going on four years and done nothing with it.

This was not the real plan. The people of East Falls knew it all along!

The primary question that needs to be asked and answered is “What is the goal of forcing churches to close?”

The goal is usually stated as “better stewardship of church resources” or as a synod representative told Redeemer members, “ministry in East Falls is not good use of the Lord’s money.”

If this is the goal, the results point to high-stakes failure.

The results of this mismanagement, from which clergy and congregations shield their eyes, are ungodly. They include:

• broken relationships — within the church, among friends, within families—and with God (the definition of sin)
• children wrenched from the first support system they encounter outside their families
• elderly living their later years under legal attack from the church they served all their lives
• disabled or non-drivers, who relied on the local church, totally disenfranchised
• an economic pit that gets harder to crawl out of every day for both the regional body, haughtily asserting its power, and the remnants of the congregation they set out to destroy
• a Gospel message, preached weekly, but acted upon rarely

The stated goal—better use of church resources—is no longer even mentioned. The goal has failed.

The evidence is that if stewardship of resources is the goal, it is a far better to work with congregations interdependently — as our constitutions state.

Where do we start? What are your ideas?