Once the endless meetings, insulting slurs, character attacks, hurt feelings, and procedural difficulties involved in leaving one ecclesial community and entering another are over, the remaining congregation members are often fatigued. Yet they are often galvanized by the process’ inevitable conflicts and are more committed as disciples of Jesus Christ than ever. They hope that the Lord will reward their faithfulness by swelling their ranks, securing their sometimes-tenuous finances, and allow them to return once again to whatever is identified as the golden age of the congregation’s life.

The Lord, in His mercy, rarely does this, at least in any easily recognizable, straightforward way.  The process of reaffiliating for the local congregation is always, to a larger or smaller degree, a traumatic one.  Before a congregation is ready to properly disciple a significant number of people, there is usually work the Lord needs to do within us first.  There is a gap between what we were and what we will need to be for the mission the Lord has planned for us.  I want to encourage anyone facing this to GO intentionally into that GAP:

Go deep with God:  Lutherans confess that the Spirit uses God’s Word and Sacraments to create and sustain saving faith in the hearts of people and thereby constitutes the Church.  As Luther avers, it is only in this way that we are “called, gathered, enlightened and sanctified.”  Don’t do generic Bible studies but do some focused on God’s promises and power related to healing, mission, and yes, even vengeance upon those who persecute His people (having one’s character assassinated by people you love is a real, though mild, form of white martyrdom).  Let the Lord’s Word be a branch thrown into the oft unspoken tension, pain, and ennui of the bitter waters of church hurt and make them sweet.

Open your heart to the new thing the Lord wants to do:  Paul’s ministry changed radically after he was called by Jesus.  Your congregation has been called by Jesus too, and it is not likely that He has called it to do basically what it has done in the past, just with purer doctrine.  This is not because local traditions are bad or change is good, but because if Jesus has called you into a new denominational affiliation, it is for the purpose of mission, and the mission field is always in flux.  Indeed, learning that the mission field lies at our doorstep rather than in other countries is a radical thing for many long-established congregations.  Please note that what I am issuing here is not a call to radical change, but rather to radical openness to God’s leading.

Get to know your mission field: Don’t assume you know your community’s spiritual needs.  Remember, when you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of U and ME.  As a Gen X’er I typically assume that Christianity’s chief rival is atheism.  For those under 40, it is paganism.  Does your congregation’s ministry take this into account?  What are the socio-economic pressures with which your visitors are dealing?  What are the most common family dynamics and dysfunctions?  Learn what people will need in your context to become good Christian disciples apart from orthodox doctrinal commitments.

Align yourself with what God is already doing: Ministry changed for me and my congregation when we stopped having a plan to reach people and started recognizing what the Lord was already doing with those He was gathering, then putting our time, talent, and treasures behind that.  “Unless the Lord builds the house, the laborer works in vain.”

Patiently wait for God, then move decisively: Don’t let anxiety about the future push your congregation to waste energy on mission to which the Lord is not calling you.  The Church’s only mission is the Great Commission, but your congregation is not the Church.  Your congregation is a church, and God is not calling you to do everything.  Instead of trying to reach some group or create some ministry that leadership thinks is essential to the congregation’s long term survival, trust the Lord with your future.  It may be that the ministry everyone thinks critical must have the foundation the Lord wishes to provide now.

GO into the GAP without fear, for it is not the valley of the shadow of death, but rather God’s way of teaching you trust on the way to the green fields and still waters for which He has claimed you.

 

Editor’s Note: Dan Hetherington is the pastor at St. John Lutheran Church, Columbia, MD.

We have heard many stories from around the country about the problems some have faced in leaving the ELCA.  For us, at St. John, it was rather straight forward; however, a lot of the reasons why go back to leadership of previous years.

For many years, prior to my arrival at St. John, the staff and church council had refused to update their constitution and bylaws and so were operating under a different set of guidelines than most.  This was also before any regimented changes to bylaws from ELCA upper leadership.

The congregation of St. John has always been a ‘mixed bag’ when it comes to members’ political leanings.  For some, political affiliation has always been a leading influence on shaping values and beliefs, yet for others, Scripture has been the overriding authoritative source and norm for life. 

The straw which broke the camel’s back and led to the senior leadership beginning the conversation, and taking what they found to the Council, was what can only be described as movements towards universalism and, more concerning, paganism.

Once this was shared with the council there was deliberation on how this would be received among the congregation and what any fall-out might be.  Before anything was decided upon, we took our time to make sure that our membership roster was up-to-date and that only those who still have a ‘true’ interest in the mission of St. John would have a voice when it came to deciding our future.

Having things lined up, letters were sent to the congregation from the council president and from myself as the senior pastor, stating the requirements for discussing and ultimately voting, as well as sharing the primary concerns.

The bishop and his staff were very good.  He heard our grievance, spent time in speaking with members of the congregation, which brought us to the point whereby we could vote and then enter a process of discerning to which network we moved (either LCMC or NALC).

I have no doubt that the right decision was to leave the ELCA, and although this resulted in some people leaving the church, the major test for us was in our dedication to be who we said we were – and after voting to join with LCMC, keep to the statement of faith to which we agreed to uphold.

Being part of the ELCA had allowed for the church to be many things, and for a lot of our members, that was not Lutheran.  There were difficult discussions which resulted in people walking away over our stated beliefs and some of the practices which now held a stronger place in our worship.

All-in-all although the church membership is greatly depleted, and the active participation in worship even smaller, I believe that we are a mightier body than before.  The strength that I have seen from those who remain has given me great cause for celebration.  We don’t all agree on everything – there is still a divide in political alliance, and with that certain views on what some refer to as political issues and others moral issues.  But we stand together, and we hold the Scriptures as being the sole authority on which all things we decide to do must stand.

 

“RESIDENT ALIENS: LIFE IN THE CHRISTIAN COLONY”

A video book review by Douglas Schoelles  

Many thanks to Douglas Schoelles, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana (NALC) and member of the board of Lutheran CORE, for giving us a video review of the book, “Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony” by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989).  A link to Doug’s review can be found here.  A link to our You Tube channel, which contains reviews of around three dozen books as well as a dozen CORE Convictions videos on various topics related to the Christian faith and life, can be found here. 

Doug writes: “While this book has been out thirty-five years, it is worth the read because the points Hauerwas and Willimon make are more salient than ever.  Congregations will need to see themselves as unique faith communities set apart in our neo-pagan, post-Christian society. Paganism permeates our society, filling our thoughts, converting our youth, and subverting the church.  Efforts to accommodate the society whether with liberals or cultural conservatives is an empty effort to underwrite American societies.  The message of the church is not for ourselves, but for the whole world.  As an incarnation of Christ, our purpose and only significance is a vessel of the Gospel which God uses to bring hope and salvation to the whole world.”

Doug continues: “In our world where loneliness and detachment are epidemic many people are searching for a rooted tradition.  Do we offer that?  ‘With our emphasis on the narrative nature of Christian life, we are saying that salvation is baptism into a community that has so truthful a story that we forget ourselves and our anxieties long enough to become part of that story, a story God has told in Scripture and continues to tell in Israel and the Church’ (Hauerwas & Willimon, p. 59).  As we are baptized to be priests we are commissioned to help people in the name of Jesus, not do-gooders who help people.  We are called to be a community of disciples who believe the gospel and are shaped by it.”

Doug concludes: “The authors did not anticipate some twists of history, but much of what they forecast is spot on.”