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| These four - ELCA and Episopalian - have destroyed more congregations than the Chicago Fire. |
WELS and Missouri Are Following ELCA Down the Drain:
Yet since the launch of ELCA its course has been permanently downward. The ELCA’s own statistics show that after 5,288,048 Lutherans came together in 1987 to form the denomination, only 4,059,785 remained in ELCA in 2011, the latest year of available data. In all, this is a “staggering loss of over 1.2 million members, or 23% of their membership,” Rev. Kevin Vogts of the conservative Lutheran lay organization Steadfast Lutherans notes. The number of ELCA congregations has also dropped from 11,138 at the 1987 founding to 9,638 in 2911, a loss of about 13%. “As they ‘celebrate’ this year the 25th anniversary of the ELCA,” Vogts observes, “the fact is that during that time they have lost more members and congregations than make up many entire denominations!”
Almost every year of ELCA’s existence has witnessed membership loss, particularly the 270,349 and 212,903 leaving in the succeeding years 2010-2011. The loss of each of these two years averaged more than five percent of ELCA’s total membership. This followed the 2009 Churchwide Assembly decisions to allow individual congregations “to recognize, support and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships” and for individuals in such relationships to serve as ELCA leaders. Only the years 1990 and 1991 ever showed any ELCA membership growth of 1,941 and 4,438 congregants, respectively.
Such membership losses have financial consequences. Vogts calculates that national ELCA donations in 2008 were $88 million, but dropped to $40 million in 2011. Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, the ELCA’s largest, announced in 2012 a $6 million operating deficit on a $27 million budget. Reportedly one couple had given $1 million annually to the seminary but stopped after ELCA’s pro-gay decisions. Luther Seminary had to cancel programs and lay off a third of its staff as a result.
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| Who needs the Lutheran World Federation? We have Thrivent to unite us all with Fuller and ELCA. |
