 |
| "Amy, this is not another excuse to phone Brett." |
For those who are "keeping score" so to speak, Pastor David Barnhardt has posted the following with regard to congregations that had votes to leave the ELCM:
First English Lutheran Church, Lennox, SD passed their first vote to leave the ELCA and join the NALC. (92%) 2nd Vote will be early 2013.
West Prairie Lutheran Church, Leland, Iowa passed their 2nd vote to leave the ELCA 50 yes, 7 no. (87.7%) Voted to join LCMC.
http://davidbarnhart.blogspot.com/
Pastor Barnhart, still the most reliable source for first reporting news on this issue, posts this in his most recent blog.
An official report by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) revealed that the denomination suffered a net loss of 370 congregation in 2011, along with a loss of 213,000 members. ELCA membership at the end of 2011 stood at 4,059,785, down from 4,272,688 at the end of 2010.
[GJ - Officially, ELCA began at 5.3 million mmembers in 1987. We left before ELCA merged. WELS and Missouri have stuck with ELCA like lint on Velcro.]
***
GJ - Not everyone can see this, but each denomination is fading away. They used to promote the brand name but realize now that their brand has been poisoned by their own leaders. Wayne Mueller, Jim Tiefel, Mark Schroeder - they just remind people of the junior executives they despise at their big corporations: jerks who know they can get away with sadistic behavior.
After viewing a few felony cover-ups and clergy DUI memory erasures, many members just slip away. But now entire congregations are saying bye-bye to the synod while evading the normal divide and conquer tactics of the leaders.
The only way a denomination can stay together is through the myth of the unit concept. If people cannot imagine going anywhere else or leaving their precious building, they will stay and be whittled away by incompetent, alcoholic, or abusive officials.
Once, many years ago, I phoned a mission official in mid-day. He was so drunk that he could not speak a coherent sentence and put the phone down. Yet he was in charge of buying land, picking church buildings, and funding mission congregations. He was the bishop's buddy.
The Episcopalians were busting up before the Lutherans. I often observed, before 2009, that an Episcopalian congregation would leave its beautiful building behind, just to be rid of their gay leadership and its gay agenda. ELCA seemed glued together by tradition, loyalty, brick-and-mortar worship. But they came undone after the infamous 2009 convention, when gay liberation won the big vote (after many small victories) and congregations began leaving. Bishops began leaving! Two denominations formed out of ELCA.
Why stay in the denomination? To keep receiving nasty, abusive letters from synod officials? To borrow $100,000 to send junior through the synod college? To borrow another $100,000 for seminary? Such a bargain. Memo - don't say anything cross to the DP or junior will never get a call.
Here is a profile of a DP. His spiritual retreats are drunken, bawdy affairs where the women lay bets on who will puke her guts out first. Sonny boy was kicked out an alcoholic synod college for extreme alcoholism and behavior best not named on a g-rated blog. When a seminary faculty covets such a turkey for its own, doom is assured.
