ALPB Online Forum
I received a letter today from the Oregon Synod Office about adjustments that have been made to the 2011 budget to bring it more into line with current income. The adjustments include reducing the bishop and assistant to the bishop positions to 90% of full time (with corresponding 10% reductions in their salaries) and the elimination of one of the synod staff positions. The letter also stated that the advocacy position in this synod will no longer be funded by ELCA ChurchWide and other sources of funding for this position are being sought.
These adjustments to the budget are being made by a synod that has not lost many congregations and has not had many congregations split. I assume that some other synods are having to make more drastic reductions in their spending plans.
Mel Harris
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Quote from: gausmann on December 07, 2010, 05:30:32 PM
The following link to the Northeast Iowa Synod lists about eleven churches which have all solidly voted on the first ballot to leave the ELCA
http://www.neiasynod.org/synod_news/CongregationalVotes.asp
Reading the official letters linked to on that page, I was surprised to see how frequently "the 1 Corinthians 13 text" comes up in the lectionary.
Mel Harris
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ALPB
Secretary Swartling's latest report on congregations which have voted to leave the ELCA provide these figures:
First votes taken - 700 (representing 666 separate congregations - apparently 34 congregations have taken a 2nd "1st" vote).
Of these, 481 have been successful.
Second votes taken - 327 (1 congregation has taken 2 "second" votes)
Of these, 308 have been successful.
(These figures can be found on David Barnhart's blog here: http://davidbarnhart.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_archive.html
I have not been able to locate the direct posting of these figures from Secretary Swartling, but Barnhart has been accurate in reporting these figures in the past.)
A couple things I find of interest in these figures:
* The "passing" percentage of 1st votes is 68 - 69%, which has been consistent for the whole year. Likewise, the "passing" percentage of 2nd votes has been consistently 94% for the year. One can expect, then, that of the 481 who have passed their first vote, 452 will pass their 2nd vote.
* The number of 1st votes during November taken and passed were 71 and 50, respectively, the highest number for any month of which I am aware. The average per month has been 47 and 32. I don't know if these figures include December 5 results, which would mean they are for 5 weeks, but even then it would be well above the average for a a five week period of 54 and 37. The bottom line is that the number of congregations voting to leave the ELCA has not slowed but, if anything, continues to increase.
Marshall Hahn
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GJ - The successful votes are dominated by the largest ELCA congregations, which give the largest share of all benevolence dollars.
I published plenty of documented evidence about the new ELCA going this way in 1987. WELS was embarrassed that I criticized its bed-mate, because WELS was engaged in many different church projects with ELCA. Norm Berg (Board of Fuller Missions) and DP Robert Mueller (Michigan Fuller District) both bragged about the ELCA leaders they knew and worked with.
I felt that Jeske was doing inner city stuff with ELCA, via AAL/LB, but he was too coy to say so.
