Tuesday--Your daddy's church no more
The one message I got from today’s proceedings is that the church is striving not to be your daddy’s Lutheran church. It may become your great-great-great granddaddy’s Lutheran church, filled with immigrants and outsiders. It may become Martin Luther’s Lutheran church. It may become a form of a 1st century Christian’s Lutheran church. But your daddy’s church will be gone.
We started in the morning eliminating program committees. That was an easy vote. Voting members who were like me have never heard of program committees before attending the assembly. The people who did know of the committees said they were well-meaning and full of good, well-meaning Lutherans, but those committees did not achieve their purpose. So today we voted them out of the ELCA constitution as part of the Living Into the Future Together (LIFT) proposal.
To me the LIFT proposal calls for shifting emphasis, if not power, from churchwide to synods and especially congregations. It calls for reforming the church my helping make congregations “entrepreneurial” with support coming from synods and churchwide.
The spirit of reform was seen at worship today (where I was privileged to serve as a communion minister). We started with the cantor singing in two foreign languages (Japanese was one). The presiding minister, Pr. Sean Forde, was black, and our preacher, Pr. Marysol Diaz Feliciano was Hispanic, and her Gospel reading was entirely in Spanish.
Our Bible study looked at the cultural ramifications of the Jew Jesus speaking with the Samaritan women at the well (John 4:3—29). After Bible study we learned of a variety of missions to Chinese, Filipino, African, and Japanese communities, as well as non-traditional ministries such as Luther’s Table in Renton, Washington. Finally, at dinner we had Spirit-filled multicultural music provided by Global Mission musicians. Bach would have been dumbfounded, but I think he might have enjoyed himself.
It’s been a long day for me, so Blessings everyone. -- Allen
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Yes!
I echo everything Allen has said here. There is a concern by some that LIFT is centralizing power to a relatively few on our church wide council of the Conference of Bishops. No, not so. This is an invitation for congregations ad synods to step up tonthe plate. Let's do it, Oregon!!
Understanding the LIFT proposal and CWA vote
Is the LIFT Implementing Resolution PDF on the ELCA website the best document to reference to understand what is being voted on and why some voting members are concerned?
LIFT
The LIFT proposal is a pretty big piece of work. But yes, I think this is the best interpretive piece. Maybe other voting members here with me want to chime in here.
The concern I hear is that people don't want to get out of contact with each other - and we don't want to be centralized. So, if you read through the proposal and think about the changes being considered the question is "What will happen if we do this?
Certainly there are some things being eliminated - such as program committees. Most feel, though, that these haven't been working very well anyway. There are also things we just can't do because of our new budget realities. I think the real issue is one of mindset. Churchwide can't mother hen us in all the things they used to. If we want to be connected, grass roots, creative and effective than we (congregations, individual members) need to set up to the plate and do it!! Lines of communication go in two directions, right? I see LIFT as an invitation for us as a synod, as congregations, and as individual members to get to work - which is wonderful thing.
"Free to Serve." That's been our theme here. Let's do it!
on centralizing power and the use of acronyms (right word?)