What took so long?
Non-WELS readers know it should read "You're fired."
Non-WELS readers know it should read "You're fired."
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CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) acted Nov. 15 to reduce the 2010 churchwide current fund spending authorization by nearly $7.7 million, 10 percent less than the budget authorized by the 2009 Churchwide Assembly. The council's action eliminated 40.75 full-time equivalent positions, of which six were vacant.
The Church Council is the ELCA's board of directors and serves as the legislative authority of the church between churchwide assemblies. It met here Nov. 13-15.
The action reduced the current fund spending authorization for 2010 to $69,022,800. The 2009 assembly authorized $18.7 million in World Hunger spending for 2010, which was unchanged.
Nearly all churchwide units were affected by staff reductions or reassignments of staff, said the Rev. M. Wyvetta Bullock, ELCA executive for administration, in a report to the council. She said 23 executive staff positions and 18 support staff positions were eliminated. To respect their privacy, the names of people affected by the reductions will not be made public by the churchwide organization, Bullock said.
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Party in the ELCA
CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) adopted a revision to the reinstatement process for former clergy and other professional leaders who were removed from the church's official rosters for disciplinary reasons or resigned in lieu of discipline -- solely because they were in a lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationship.
The change, adopted Nov. 15, applies to former ELCA associates in ministry, deaconesses, diaconal ministers and ordained ministers.
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In Fargo, N.D., the Rev. Ronald Bock, senior pastor of St. John Lutheran Church, and Dr. Joel Kangas, a local dentist and member, gave interviews to a television news crew about their congregation. They wanted people in the Fargo-Moorhead area to know their congregation is open to everyone. They wanted to say that St. John "seeks to encourage, reflect and grow community in Christ" -- as its mission statement says.
They also wanted residents to know there's another side to the news reports they've been reading and hearing about in Fargo in the past month. At least three other large ELCA congregations in town have declared they will redirect mission support funds away from the ELCA: Hope Lutheran Church, First Lutheran Church and Pontoppidan Lutheran Church.
But don't count St. John among them. The congregation intends to increase its giving to the ELCA.
Why? Because members have always had a "high view" of mission support, Bock said in an interview. And it was painful when the congregation had to reduce its giving a few years ago to meet mortgage costs, he said. Since then, they've been working their way back up.
For 2010 Bock said St. John's budget proposal will likely be about $510,000. Overall benevolence, which includes mission support, could be set at $48,000. If so, that would represent an increase of $13,000 over 2009.
That doesn't mean that all of the congregation's 1,100 baptized members agree with the assembly's decisions, Bock said. Members have many opinions. But what binds them together is not whether they always agree -- it is that have been called by Christ in baptism to be together, Bock said.
"We're hanging together. That's what the church ought to be about," he said.
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CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Two former presiding bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have appealed to members to pray for unity of the church and its mission, and to contribute financial gifts to support the ELCA.
"Our troubled world needs the Good News of the Gospel and all that flows from it," wrote the Rev. Herbert W. Chilstrom and the Rev. H. George Anderson, in a Dec. 3 e-mail message. "Our differences must not divide us at a time like this. We are absolutely certain that we can continue to live together and serve as one family in the ELCA."
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