There were three linchpins that were integral to my departure from the ELCA. The first linchpin, the so-called “Bound Conscience” statements, kept me from leaving the ELCA for over 15 years with the belief in the lie that the ELCA was some kind of “big tent,” with room purposely made for biblical conservatives along with progressives. It was, of course, a lie intended to stop the mass exodus of conservatives and others, but it was convenient for me to believe and promote. I told myself that as long as I could preach and teach from a biblically conservative and confessional theological position without interference, I would remain in the ELCA. Why risk damaging a church when there was no interference or pressure? As the years went on, this self-deception wore thin and I felt less and less welcome and safe in the ELCA.
This Bound Conscience (BC) linchpin was exposed and readied for pulling at the 2022 Churchwide Assembly, when it was decided that BC needed to be “reconsidered.” Conservatives who already had diminished trust levels in the ELCA interpreted this as meaning that BC would be neutered or eliminated. When asked about what this meant, we were typically told that the language would be “updated,” “aligned with current understanding of issues,” or even “aligned with Federal DEIA guidelines” (except when it was pointed out that DEI was being eliminated throughout the federal government).
It took me a long time to understand that the phrasing of BC as “Conscience Bound Belief” was itself actually a trap. Scripturally conservative pastors and believers would never say that we were “conscience-bound” to a belief. We would rather say that, like Martin Luther, our conscience is bound to the plain language of Scripture. Our consciences are not simply bound to an easily dismissed social construct. Even with this problem, BC provided at least some legal and denominational cover for conservatives, while being incredibly offensive to progressives.
The concept of Bound Conscience as an important factor for conservative pastors and churches was difficult to explain to the lay people in my congregation. None had heard of it. Explaining it and what the loss of it would mean to conservative pastors and churches was critical in preparing my congregation for disaffiliation.
The second linchpin in my disaffiliation journey was the work of the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church (CRLC). This is where the “quiet part was said out loud.” I was providing sound and video support for a pastors’ conference in 2023 where I got to hear first-hand what they were planning to do to the denomination. I have never felt so unwelcome and unsafe in my entire ministry. It was as though I had fallen into a DEIA-based cult, where Jesus wasn’t really needed and scripture was only quoted to make what was being done sound vaguely religious, or to confuse anyone who dared object to anything being proposed, all presented with this kind of sanctimonious smirk intended to intimidate or shame any who disagreed. After three days of listening to their plans, I knew I had to get out of the ELCA prior to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly. There absolutely was no place for a conservative pastor – or church – in the ELCA.
If there was any doubt about my concerns, they were put to rest when the final report of the CRLC was released by the ELCA Church Council. It was so much worse than I had understood. DEIA, along with anti-racism and Critical Race theory, were now to be the central “operating system” of the ELCA, and it was now in writing. I was surprised to see that much of what the CRLC was proposing was already approved through Continuing Resolutions (requiring no vote) or was being passed on for approval. The fix was already in and the traps to catch conservative pastors and churches were now set.
Walking my congregation through this very well constructed maze of traps was interesting. It all assumed that, of course, DEIA was in place and would be implemented on every level: Churchwide, Synodical AND in congregations. The problem was that congregations still had some level of autonomy. Much of the CRLC’s plan involved implementing DEIA policies fully in congregations and congregation councils. Plans were put in place to do that, but congregation constitutions needed to be brought into line with the Churchwide and Synodical constitutions, and to do that, a constitution convention would need to be held. That wasn’t approved at the 2025 Churchwide Assembly, but all of the groundwork had been done to implement DEIA, CRT, anti-racism and all the rest of it fully into every aspect of the ELCA. For a more complete discussion on this, click here to see my Lutheran CORE article from July of 2024.
The last linchpin in my journey was the results of the ELCA’s DEIA audit that has been on the ELCA’s website for some time (found here and here ). It’s in two parts and has largely been adopted for implementation along with the CRLC’s final proposals. The DEIA audit is another fascinating “saying the quiet part out loud” document that is so disrespectful of conservative pastors and churches, literally mandating DEIA policies and training for all pastors and church councils. It’s breathtaking in its scope, and it describes the tenuous autonomy that congregations have as an obstacle to the full implementation of DEIA policies.
With all three of these linchpins about to be pulled, the wheels are about to fall off of the ELCA, at least with regard to all conservative pastors and churches. How? It’s a really clever trap. There is, as ELCA representatives insist, no directly stated threat to congregational autonomy. There is no “Do this or else” language. However, if a congregation or pastor refuses to adopt and implement these policies, they will be branded as sexist, racist and misogynist, and put under discipline or removed for failing to fall in line. When there is a pastoral transition, congregations will only be given candidates chosen to bring them back in line with current ELCA DEIA polity, or worse, given interim pastors whose job it is to weed out the “problems” with the church. And conservative pastors? Good luck with mobility or support. Any refusal to go along with the progressive agenda will be viewed as hate speech. See this video of a SWCA synod council member doing just that to motivate the 2023 synod assembly into voting to put a congregation under synodical preservation.
What Our Disaffiliation Process Looked Like
With the very helpful advice of the Lutheran Congregational Support Network YouTube videos (here) we focused ONLY on the issue of congregational autonomy. I was heading in this direction on my own, but this really helped clarify the issue. The “big tent” lie, while still being promoted by the ELCA, is easily dismissed as a manipulative tactic to keep churches from leaving. The question for me is simply, “Are conservative pastors and churches Welcome and Safe in the ELCA?” That phrase, “Welcome and Safe,” became my main emphasis as I worked to educate my congregation. If you focus on DEIA or LGBTQIA issues, you end up in endless, circular and manipulative arguments that the ELCA is very well prepared to win, or at least, to distort the issues and gaslight people into confusion. Focusing on the congregation autonomy question is the only route to take, and it is easily understood and grasped by congregation leaders and members.
Once I understood fully what was coming and what the issues were, I began the education process in my congregation – first with the council leadership, then with broader leadership, and then with the congregation as a whole. Education and information are key. Members have to fully understand the issues.
The first vote we took was with the church council, moving to ask the congregation to vote on whether we should begin the disaffiliation process at the congregation’s annual meeting. That passed unanimously.
The next vote was at that annual meeting, to decide to move forward with the disaffiliation process. There we set the official disaffiliation vote dates according to the ELCA’s model constitution for congregations. This also passed at over 95%.
Even though our formerly ALC congregation was operating under a church constitution from 1977 (!), I decided to follow the ELCA’s current process guidelines for former ALC congregations to the letter. This made little difference to us, and it removed an ELCA objection point.
It’s important to note that we engaged a conservative Christian legal firm (Tyler Law, LLP, out of Murietta, CA) to walk us through the process. Even though I was confident that I understood the process, I wanted legal backing to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I wasn’t. A representative from the firm was present at each of the two mandated disaffiliation votes to verify that the process was conducted properly, and all correspondence went through our legal firm. We had used this firm before for issues with the City of Los Angeles and some HR issues. The total legal cost to us for this process was just over $11k. I would not recommend going into this process without a legal team.
I can’t stress enough the importance of fully preparing the congregation for disaffiliation, making sure they understand completely what the issue really is. Because my congregation was well-prepared, both votes were above 95% in favor of disaffiliation. The Bishop’s Consultation meeting actually solidified the results.
Because I had a good working relationship with the current and previous synodical bishops (I provided a lot of sound and video support for them, as well as serving as a Conference Dean for many years – and having served in this synod for 32 years), the process was not contentious or adversarial. I understand that this is probably the exception rather than the rule as these things go. I do feel utterly cut off from former friends and colleagues in the synod, however. That seems par for the course.
In this disaffiliation process, I prepared extensive documentation and educational materials for my congregation. I am happy to share these with pastors or congregations considering this process. Just email me with your questions and concerns. I am also open to phone conversations on this.
Our congregation is now a part of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC). We are now a part of an organization that truly honors Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. It feels like we came home.
“Jesus wasn’t really needed and scripture was only quoted to make what was being done sound vaguely religious, or to confuse anyone who dared object …”
This is a good summary as to what has already occurred in many segments of Christianity, not just in Lutheranism. For the most part a theologically vague expression defines who God is based not on the Scriptures, but on sociological categories defining God based on those categories. God the Father is unique and cannot and must not be compared to earthbound understanding of who a father is. Arianism has replaced the only begotten Son with someone to ignore because Jesus’ incarnation was as a male confined to history. This particular male has not been repeated in history and is not to be defined by general characteristics of maleness alone.. What happens when the Gospel is replaced by the redefinitions as above, drains out the salvo fix character of proclamation in the preaching. An Arian Jesus is born and dies completing the human process. While most of the New Testament is ignored and Christ’s resurrection does not begin anything but is left unused in the preaching and teaching.
I left the ELCA clergy roster in 2016. Since then the LCMC supports me in providing a vibrant mission oriented ministry.
Hi Rev. Rahn, Thanks for writing – I appreciate the affirmation. I sometimes wish I had left earlier. It wasn’t until I saw the intention to remove/diminish Bound Conscience and saw the intent of the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church that I realized I had to get out prior to CWA 2025.
The ELCA often felt to me like an extremely liberal social service agency with stained glass windows and almost no connection or need of Jesus or the gospel. In my previous Lutheran Core article (July, 2024), I wrote about how faith and any meaningful connection to God through Jesus was skipped in their haste to promote their agenda. The whole “God’s Work, Our Hands” nonsense sounds very Christian, until you realize that the connection with Jesus isn’t necessary for any of that and it all just becomes a works-based ecclesiology.
Blessings in the LCMC! Another Bible-based denomination!!!
Hi~ Thank you for the most interesting and informative article. I was an ELCA pastor who suffered under all the ELCA’s steps toward false teaching and practice in the 1990s and 2000s. When the churchwide assembly took place in 2009, I felt as though I couldn’t belong anymore to that church. I held Bible studies with my two church councils and asked if we should leave the ELCA. They would NOT go along with that, so, since I was 65 years old, I retired. I now belong to LCMC congregation.
Thanks for the comment, Rev. Kuziej. I spent about a year educating my very conservative congregation on the issues, focusing, as helpfully encouraged by the Lutheran Congregations Support Network folk, on church autonomy. If you read the DEIA audit and the final report of the ELCA Church Council on the work of the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church with that autonomy issue in mind, these documents show an intent that is truly frightening. Play along with the agenda, or else…
I’m 71 now and have been at this congregation for 7 years. It is actually the congregation that my wife was a part of as a teenager, where we were married, which paid my seminary tuition, and at which I was ordained – so I have a deep history here. It is, thanks to the wonderful 49 year ministry of my predecessor, Rev. Fred Masted, a very conservative and biblically-based church. It was/is a good match, and we have a deep mutual trust level. Hence the 95% passage on both votes.
Two years ago I took a call to an ELCA congregation in Yuma, Az. Their Mission Profile made a lot of noise insisting they were missional. The end proved they were more interested in saving an old building- I believed we were prepared to sell (about 1.5 Mil) and begin again as a true mission plant. Anyone can steer the ship but I came to chart a new course. Calls went privately to the synod office and in no time the bishop called for meetings with her team of ‘listeners’. Weeks later I met with that person (to use the term bishop which implies ‘pastor of the pastors’ would be wildly inaccurate) where she immediately demanded my resignation. We had no discussions regarding what the ‘listeners’ had whispered to them by congregational members.
Rev. Lawrence Becker wrote”When there is a pastoral transition, congregations will only be given candidates chosen to bring them back in line with current ELCA DEIA polity, or worse, given interim pastors whose job it is to weed out the “problems” with the church. And conservative pastors? Good luck with mobility or support.” And that was my situation- leave now! Pastor, if your stance is QUIA (vs. quatenus), look out- there is no room for bound conscience
Rev. Moffat, your story is painful to hear, and it confirms what I knew and was starting to experience here in Los Angeles. DEIA absolutely cannot tolerate any exceptions, so while BC technically remains in tact, in practice it is not honored. The myth of the “Big Tent” that I chose to believe is, with the CRLC report and the DEIA audit being largely adopted at CWA 2025, completely gone. I knew that was coming, so a year before CWA, I knew I had to be gone by then. Made it by two weeks.
Bishops also will use any unsubstantiated complaints against a conservative pastor as an excuse to railroad them out. An acquaintance of mine just experienced this – it was an abuse of power on the part of the bishop.
Also, even though according to the current model constitution for congregations, churches and pastors still have some autonomy with regard to affiliation and local practice, I have found that bishops and bishops’ staff members are either ignorant of, or completely ignore that autonomy. I’ve personally observed both.
I hope you’re in a safe place now.
Hello,
Not a pastor, current nor former. My sister is, and she seems to have fallen so far from the ELCA of our childhood. Then again, so has the ELCA
I’m glad to hear your congregation’s separation from the ELCA went peacefully, and am saddened to hear you lost friends. Thank you for mentioning the NALC, I’ll have to check them out, since I’m a Christian without a church right now, studying the texts and teaching as best I can and trying to live by them.
Peace and His Grace be on you.
Thanks, Matthew. I am finding that the NALC is like the church I THOUGHT I was being ordained into in 1983 when I was ordained in the ALC. At Luther Seminary, I could already see that some funky things were coming – that ALC seminary was already being merged with Northwestern Seminary, the more liberal LCA seminary. For me. there was a stark difference between the two faculties. I wasn’t even aware that a merger between the ALC, LCA and AELC was being planned. Looking back, I could see that the merger was already a fait accompli – the fix was already in. I attended several reporting sessions of the Commission for the New Lutheran Church back in the mid ’80s and, like many ALC pastors, was quite concerned at what we were hearing. It was all so much worse than we could have imagined back then. Simpler times, I guess.
It’s important to find a church where scripture is actually believed, rather than just used out of context to support an ideology or social agenda. The NALC meets my criteria for such a denomination. It’s almost eerie NOT having something to complain about in a denomination or church leadership.
My pastor husband and I were Augustana born, then LCA, then ELCA. The writing on the wall concerning the diabolical direction of the ELCA was really clear as early as the late 1980’s, at least in the New England Synod. We left by 1992, spent good years in the Missouri Synod and now, as old folks, have been part of a couple of way-above-average Roman Catholic congregations with holy priests. No denomination is perfect. Satan works overtime in all of them, BUT the ELCA (every liberal cause in America) is a lost cause. There are too few soldiers left to fight; people who have longed to remain faithful to Jesus have left a long time ago; others have hoped for change and stayed only to either be misled or written off; the ELCA just waits for “those types of people” to in fact die.
Hi Ms. Anderson,
I was ordained in 1983 into the ALC and, while I was so new and inexperienced, I could see significant concerns. I taught a Bible Study in my first church that had several retired pastors in it. It was fascinating hearing them complain about what was coming. I thought they were overstating or overreacting – they, if anything, were underestimating what was to come. I was barely aware of the merger issues, but the more I looked into it, the more concerned I became.
I stayed in the ELCA as long as I could, but the “Big Tent” myth/lie evaporated with the “reconsideration” of Bound Conscience and the dominance of DEIA. As I began to see what the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church was truly doing, I knew that I was, as I told my congregation, neither “Welcome nor Safe.” Glad to be out.
I graduated from an ALC seminary in 1980 and was called as an assistant pastor to an ALC congregation and to assist a devout and orthodox senior pastor in serving the congregation. One day as we were traveling to a monthly pastors’ meeting, he asked what I thought about the coming merger of the ALC, LCA, and AELC. I told him I thought it was a good idea: we could reduce redundancy in the bureaucracy (a smaller bureaucracy), have more resources for missionaries and new congregational starts, and we were all pretty much aligned in theology anyway. Within 5 minutes he changed my mind: he said that the bureaucracy would grow, not shrink; he said there would be less missionaries in the field; there would be less new congregational starts; the laity would feel further away from the larger denomination; and the theology of the new configuration would be the least common denominator. He was correct on every point.
Although your journey was arduous and intricate, you saved yourself and your righteous flock from the self-destruction of the Church and the transformation of the Corpus Christi mysticum (Mystical Body of Christ) into a secular NGO with an ecological-social-psychological mandate.
Pastor Andrew Weisner of Lenoir-Rhyne University was a victim of a malicious scheme carried out by the NC Synod of the ELCA involving bishops, interns, synod staff, and seminary faculty… They had to get him out. They lied in order to do it. They couldn’t have a university chaplain who could be mistaken for something more wholesome than the ELCA. He didn’t match the image the ELCA sought whilst killing themselves off by trying to promote that very image. A congregation I serve faithfully for two years also suffered a similar end. It was a high church congregation involving five or six robed acolytes, young people who liked being included in the service. I helped guide them. Many adults have told the Pastor that they were pleased to see so many young people involved in the services. He was surprised when a Lutheran pastor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul told him that he was
pleased to discover a high church worship service in Los Angeles. One visiting layman became a regular because he liked the involvement of children. On July 17th of 2016, the last service ever was held by the congregation and as an ELCA Synodically-Authorized Worshipping Community. This fate was one that was initially quite difficult to absorb for all involved. It was a loving place, where God’s love was manifest. I feel humbled, grateful, and honored to have been a part of that mission. I will never forget that flock, and I will never stop loving our wonderful church.
I would like to hear more about the NAlC. Please…at 77 we have just joined a LCMS church after moving to a continuing care facility.
Thank you
Hello Ms. Scheidt,
The LCMS is a good, Bible-focused denomination as well. In a continuing care facility, you are probably a bit limited in where you can go. If the LCMS church is close and convenient, I am sure that will be fine.
The NALC is a lot like the old pre-ELCA American Lutheran Church (ALC). They are very congregation-focused, traditional and scripturally conservative. Do you have any specific questions about it? I am relatively new to the NALC but would be happy to answer any questions. Also, their web site is http://www.thenalc.org.