I have noticed that the people escaping ELCA are looking for an older version of the same denomination, perhaps going back to the LCA of 1987 or the ALC version a little earlier.
Here is a hoot for everyone. Some come-outters want to send their future pastors to ELCA seminaries, even though they are leaving ELCA.
One of the earlier groups, during the Terror (1987 merger), voted on sending the candidates to Fuller Seminary!
The come-outters will have women's ordination, it seems, an ideal place for Herman Otten's sister, Marie Meyer to preach.
The American Lutheran church bodies all came from Pietism - Missouri, WELS, ELS, LCA, ALC, and earlier versions.
If they do not reject and repudiate Pietism, they will always go return to the Universalism and apostasy that Pietism breeds.
Rollback Pietism means the "No gay pastors" rule, at least "No out of the closet gays" quickly becomes Neo-Pietism. The Lavender Mafia Neo-Pietists condemn anyone who resists ordaining a man/woman after a sex change operation. The Neo-Pietists are just as sanctimonious as the Pietists - they just change the orientation of the Law.
The success of the Church Shrinkage Movement in WELS/Missouri/ELS has come from its affinity to Holy Mother Synod. The Pietists of the Syn Conference recognized themselves in the Pietistic law of Fuller and Willow Creek:
1. God wants His church to grow.
2. We must have cell groups to grow.
3. Anyone who questions this is a reprobate sinner, a lazy miserable cad who deserves to be kicked out.
Have the Syn Conference leaders had a problem with Fuller? No, not at all. They look down their noses at ELCA, for public consumption, but gallop over to joint projects, joint ministry, joint evangelism, and joint worship with ELCA. Pietism loves Pietists. ELCA is Pietism, Class of 2010. WELS is Pietism, Class of 1850.
What Must Be Repudiated?
To avoid the Slough of Pietism, Lutherans must denounce and repudiate Enthusiasm, its crafts and assaults, its temptations and pitfalls.
Enthusiasm separates the work of the Holy Spirit from the Word. The essence of Pietism is the cell group, the lay-led Bible study, prayer, care, koinonia, or affinity group. Lie down with Pietists, get up with Enthusiasm.
