 |
| Note that ELCA began with 5.3 million members and leadership trained at Fuller Seminary. WELS' Norm Berg mentioned his friendship with ELCA's Mac Minnick, Fulleroids both. They have taken the broad, easy path to perdition, and their synods with them. |
As United Methodists look ahead toward next week’s special General Conference on human sexuality, there is a great deal of knowledge and wisdom to be gained by looking at the recent histories of other mainline Protestant denominations that have walked this road.
https://juicyecumenism.com/2019/02/15/happened-denominations-passed-one-church-plan/?fbclid=IwAR0zkQBELbOnDAQfIFrZJ7k_G66Y-UNxqwbLaMGFKprDeGU0KAhIeAKNM34
Rev. Donna Smith, who was pastoring an ELCA congregation in 2009, stated that her church gave people options, such as an assurance that “all gifts would go to the local congregation and local benevolent causes.” She said she knew of some congregations that directed all of their benevolence away from their synod and ELCA.
The ELCA’s numbers show a denomination that did not find unity and is now struggling greatly. A slew of congregations left the ELCA between 2009 and 2013, the first five years after the liberalizing change, with the vast majority of these departures coming in 2010 and 2011. In all, 675 congregations disaffiliated from the church, about two-thirds of the 954 that took a congregational vote to decide whether to leave.
The ECLA’s decline has continued far beyond the first two years when the exodus was greatest. The ELCA lost three percent of its congregations from 2016 to 2017, the most recent year for which data is available.
From 2009 to 2017, membership has decreased from 4,542,868 to 3,455,573, a drop of 24 percent. In that same period, the number of congregations also dropped significantly, from 10,348 to 9,039, a loss of 1,309 congregations or over 12 percent of them in a mere eight years. These number indicate that apart from entire congregations leaving, churches that stayed lost many people. Baptisms of children and adults combined have dropped 37 percent since 2009.
 |
| WELS' own Mark and Avoid Jeske has been a leader in radicalizing ELCA-WELS-ELS-LCMS, one big dysfunctional family, united by Objective Justification. |
