More than 10 Evangelical Lutheran Synods put together!
That is a lot of Little Sects.
Where did I go wrong? Kicking pastors and parishes out?
My bad."
American Lutheran Publicity Bureau:
The magazine will also limit its reporting on which congregations have left our union, preferring an annual accounting rather than a month-by-month report. ELCA Secretary David Swartling periodically releases the number of congregations that have taken first or second votes to leave, and the number that have succeeded. In his most recent report, as of December 7, some 666 congregations have taken a first vote. (December 7 has some ominous historical connections, and 666—well, you know; but I personally think this is just an eerie coincidence from which no particular conclusions should be drawn.) He says that 308 congregations have left since the sexuality decisions. Some unofficial sources put that number slightly higher, but still it represents a very small percentage of ELCA congregations. David Barnhart, a pastor who left the ELCA and now seems to take unseemly pleasure in tracking the defections on his blog, says those who have left in the last year represent 235,568 baptized members. I’m as confident of that as I am of any church membership statistics...
Meanwhile, the Rev. Dr. Gemechis Buba, who has been the ELCA’s Director of African National Ministries, has resigned that position and accepted a call as Missions Director for the new North American Lutheran Church. Dr. Buba has been outspoken in his opposition to the ELCA’s decisions regarding sexuality, and this, he says, has “made me a target of many confrontations, persecution and challenges” from other churchwide staff and others in the church. Yet another example of what the ELCA action means in terms of its much vaunted “ethnic ministries”—to say nothing of another light on what “bound conscience” means.
