I don’t mean to trivialize the heart wrenching, divisiveness of this ongoing process by reporting a scorecard like a basketball game. Yet, it’s important to separate the reality from the rhetoric; thus, I offer this tidbit of information about the latest count of congregations to be officially departing the ELCA.
Through mid-December 2009, the ELCA Office of the Secretary reported that 135 congregations had taken votes to leave the ELCA. Ninety-seven had achieved the required two-thirds vote on their initial votes to terminate the relationship with the church, and 38 had failed.
Ninety-seven out of ten thousand five hundred. Serious and hurtful but unless this trickle turns into a torrent, Lutheran CORE will hardly become a “reconfiguration of American Lutheranism” as they claim.
Our second vote is next week. I will let you know if it passes. What is happening some places is that if the vote fails, the gay bashing members pull out and form their own church. I think if ours passes, those of us who want to stay ELCA may want to form a new church.
At my church, the council decided against having a vote. Not enough council members wanted a vote when making up the agenda for the annual meeting, which makes me glad because it would just be a bunch of people arguing and making divisive comments with an end result of hurt feelings. So those who really wanted to leave the ELCA mentioned this past Sunday was going to be their last.
Don’t know where they’re going to go. This is in northern Utah, the land of not so many Lutheran churches. There are currently 3 ELCA churches within the county including the one they’re leaving. There is also a Missouri Synod church in town. Supposedly, some of them are going to attend this non-Lutheran church in town called “The Genesis Project.” (Yeah, the name totally reminds me of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.) This Genesis Project church doesn’t appear to be associated with any kind of church, but one of my friends, who is Catholic, referred to them as “the born-agains.” I suspect that a few of them may return after a few months. Probably not all of them though. One guy said he was just going to “take a break from church.”
One of the other ELCA churches within the county is having a vote on this next Sunday. I have no idea how things are going over there. Basically two of the three ELCA churches are not going to have a vote on this. I’ve heard the third ELCA church in the county is not going to have a vote either; apparently they have too many other fish to fry.
But back to the church that is going to have a vote. I suspect that they may actually vote to leave. IF that happens, I think it’s possible that those who wanted to stay within the ELCA church may leave that church to go to one of the other ELCA churches. Those who left our church may have a Lutheran church nearby that they would feel comfortable with.
Those leaving our church wanted to join this LCMC synod/organization. I often think that in 10 years the landscape of things may have changed so much that those LCMC churches may decided to rejoin the ELCA. You never know how things are going to shake out. I consider this issue to be so small, almost insignificant even. Gay pastors in monogamous relationships or married in the states where they’re allowed to be married are always going to be so small in number within the ELCA. It really feels like crying over spilt milk to me.