ELCA NEWS SERVICE
May 20, 2010
ELCA Worshiping Communities Intent about being Welcoming
Members of Central Lutheran Church in Elk River, Minn., voted earlier this year to terminate their relationship with the ELCA, but some members there sought to remain in the ELCA and have started their own worshiping community.
"For now we're called Elk River Lutheran. We may undergo a name change, but we had to do something quickly. [GJ - How about Lavender Lutheran?] People started leaving Central," said Richard Spyhalski, president of Elk River Lutheran's steering committee.
The ELCA Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission program unit affirmed Elk River Lutheran as an ELCA "new start" in March 2010.
"Elk River is a congregation under development," said the Rev. Susan E. Tjornehoi, director for evangelical mission, ELCA Minneapolis Area Synod.
Tjornehoi said the members of Elk River are passionate about their mission and ministry. "They've gone from no place to bursting at the seams. The depth of their joy, tears of happiness and being the people of God has freed them to gather in community, (engage) in ministry and identify with the ELCA." [GJ - Rev. Susan has a gift for fractured English.]
Elk River Lutheran "intends to be a full-service ELCA congregation," said Spyhalski. "Right off the top" members of the community committed 10 percent of Elk River's budget to support ELCA ministries, said Spyhalski. "We are very brand-loyal." [GJ - How about being Word/Confessions loyal?]
Spyhalski said he joined Central Lutheran in 2007 and became disenchanted with the congregation. "Central had stopped certain ministries like Sunday school, and/or started doing other things, which had caused people to leave the congregation," he said.
"The final straw for me was the congregation's response to the decisions of the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly," said Spyhalski.
The assembly adopted a social statement on human sexuality and called for revisions to ministry policy documents, making it possible for eligible Lutherans in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender [GJ - aka homosexual, lesbian] relationships to serve as ELCA clergy and professional lay leaders. The ELCA Church Council adopted the revisions to ministry policy documents April 10.
To date less than 2 percent of the ELCA's 10,396 congregations have officially left the denomination, primarily as a result of the assembly's actions.
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GJ - Offerings are 10-20% down, because many congregations have already impounded offerings that would have gone to ELCA, perhaps sending them to the LCMC, etc. The news release fails to concede that the largest, most established congregations are leaving or considering an exit.
