Many thanks to those who have already responded to the appeal for prayer and mission partners for a faithful, orthodox ELCA pastor and his Spanish-speaking ELCA congregation – Pastor Samuel Nieva and Pueblo de Dios Lutheran Church in Compton, California.  Compton is one of the poorest and most violence-prone cities in California.  A link to the article, which was part of the June letter from the director, can be found here.   

At the current time Pueblo de Dios is receiving $24,000 a year from the ELCA Churchwide and $5,000 per year from the Southwest California Synod, in support of an annual budget of $75,000.  But these amounts are at risk of being reduced, plus Pastor Nieva would like to not be financially dependent upon the ELCA.  Combining the donations from the congregation’s current mission partners, plus the amounts that have been given or pledged in the last few weeks, we are about one-fourth of the way towards meeting the goal of $50,000 per year from mission partners.  If you feel that God is speaking to you and/or your congregation about the needs of this most effective, faithful, and powerful orthodox ministry, please contact me at [email protected].   

Pastor Steve Shipman wants to be clear that the political statements below are his opinions and do not represent official positions of Lutheran CORE. He served as a pastor in the ELCA for more than 45 years including as Director of Lutheran CORE. He is now an NALC pastor serving an interim pastorate in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. You can contact him at [email protected].

One could almost feel sympathy for ELCA
Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton as she tries to navigate the minefield that is
the current political debate over legislation permitting or restricting
abortions.

As I noted in a previous article, the ELCA published a social statement on abortion a number of years ago, probably the last such statement that truly included a variety of opinions and was not simply stacked on one side along with a token “conservative” or two to make the outcome look legitimate.

Radical Feminist Cabal

The reality is that nobody in the ELCA officialdom seems willing or able to challenge the radical feminist cabal who are evidently the power behind the crozier. The ELCA has become what Secretary Almen warned against when it was being formed: It is the far left wing of a certain political party at prayer.

Correction

At the end of May poor Bp. Eaton issued a
letter on abortion, followed swiftly by a “correction.” Obviously she stepped
over a line on the first try, which did fairly accurately represent the
statement. The original letter from the Bishop said, “Through this social
teaching and policy statement, this church seeks to travel a moderating path by
supporting abortion as a last resort for pregnancies that are unsafe or a
result of rape or incest.” And that is basically true. But less than an hour
later she issued a correction, dropping “for pregnancies that are unsafe or a
result of rape or incest.”

Bp. Eaton’s Political Issue

Let’s review what the ELCA Abortion Statement actually said. It was quite clear: “…this church supports legislation that prohibits abortions that are performed after the fetus is determined to be viable, except when the mother’s life is threatened or when lethal abnormalities indicate the prospective newborn will die very soon. ” And of course the political issue which Bp. Eaton cannot or will not address is that laws are being passed and celebrated in shameful ways which permit any and all abortions up to the moment the baby comes out of the birth canal. Some political figures even leave it up to the mother to decide whether doctors should be permitted to treat a baby born after a botched abortion.

Abortion and Slavery

I personally believe that the
abortion issue in our time is the moral equivalent of the issue of human
slavery two centuries ago. If the Lord tarries, in another century the ELCA and
the other oldline churches will be seen much as we view those Christian groups
that justified slavery, often on biblical grounds.

Incapable of Biblical Truth

It is ironic that while the ELCA eagerly accuses every white person of being a horrible racist who needs to be re-educated to give up our “white privilege,” (which is even worse if you are a male), it is incapable of speaking a word of biblical truth in defense of vulnerable life unless it serves a certain political agenda.

The Science is Clear

And while on other issues the ELCA champions truths of science to support its political lobbying, the science is very clear that the unborn child has a very different DNA from its mother. The unborn child clearly has a higher moral claim than a spleen or an appendix.

So what can you do?

Goddess Choice

First, pray. Pray because just
as we are still experiencing what the prophets would call God’s judgment over
the practice of human slavery, God will not be mocked over the sacrifice of
innocent life on the altar of the goddess Choice.

Second, join Lutherans for Life, support them with your prayers and financial gifts, sign the petition they have recently posted (links are also on our Facebook page), and learn more about what they are doing.

Nothing is More Important

And third, I’m sorry to say
this, but please reflect on this issue when you cast your vote.  I am unapologetically a single-issue voter. I
believe that nothing is more important today as a political issue than the
protection of all life from conception to natural death. Yes, there can be a
few squishy areas on the extremes. But I cannot support any politician or
political party that advocates and even celebrates abortion without any
restrictions whatever.

March for Life 2020

So maybe that brings up a fourth point. I have gotten involved again in political campaigns to support some strong pro-life candidates. And they know why I support them (although they aren’t about to pander to the abortion lobby to save their political careers). Politics may not be for everybody. But at the very least, I hope to see many of you at the March for Life on January 24, 2020 in Washington (or you can look for a local march). We need some ELCA folks too, since I can no longer hold one end of the “ELCA for Life” banner.

Photos of baby in the womb by Life Issues Institute

Some startling statistics were included in a newsletter article by the president of an ELCA seminary.  According to the president, there are currently 2,776 vacancies in the nearly 10,000 congregations of the ELCA.  That is over one out of every four.  One thousand of those vacancies are for a full-time position.  What makes these statistics even more startling is the fact that the majority of the baby boomer pastors have yet to retire. No wonder there is such an extreme urgency about what Lutheran CORE’s Congregations in Transition (CiT) ministry initiative is doing.     

CiT is a new ministry, sponsored by Lutheran CORE, to assist churches facing the departure or retirement of their solo pastor.  CiT can be especially helpful in two kinds of ministry scenarios: 1. When the pastor has recently announced — or is planning to announce — his or her upcoming retirement; and 2. When congregational leaders who are already dealing with a vacancy have found the search and call process to be longer (and perhaps more frustrating) than they had anticipated.

Each congregation that “signs on” is assigned their own trained coach/consultant to provide customized counsel to the church for up to six to eight months.  These trained coaches are mostly recently retired Lutheran pastors, which means that they are volunteering their time.  This is a pan-Lutheran effort.  We have pastor/coaches who are rostered with ELCA, LCMC, NALC, and AALC.  The only costs to the congregation are the reimbursement of actual travel expenses incurred by the coach, plus a nominal $150 administrative-cost fee paid to Lutheran CORE.  This ministry is not designed to replace the ministry support and resources available to your congregation from your own church body.  Instead it is designed to supplement those resources.

Chuck Amdahl, retired LCMC and NALC pastor and one of the trained coaches, describes CiT in this way:

“It is all about people whose hearts are great for the people of God, for the life of the congregation. . . . As coaches they come alongside of congregations in transition, encouraging and equipping – empowering leaders whose responsibilities include navigating the congregation through uncertain transitions.  These coaches are building awareness, strength, and confidence among its members, renewing purpose (mission) and vitality all the while. 

“I am privileged to work alongside of these coaches.  They are brothers and sisters serving the Lord Jesus and His Church – your congregation, and the very Church which as Samuel Stone so rightly reminds us in that old and favorite hymn composed well over a century ago:  ‘…with His own blood He bought her, and for her life He died.’”   

For more information contact Don Brandt at [email protected] or Dennis Nelson at [email protected].  You can also read more about Congregations in Transition by visiting the Lutheran CORE website.  A link to that portion of the website can be found here.

by Brett Jenkins, member of the board of Lutheran CORE

Editor’s note: Originally called “Draft Social Statement on Women and Justice,” the document which was developed by the ELCA Task Force on Women and Justice and which has been approved by both the ELCA Conference of Bishops and the ELCA Church Council for consideration by the 2019 ELCA Churchwide Assembly is called, “Faith, Sexism, and Justice: A Lutheran Call to Action.” The ELCA Churchwide Assembly will take place in August 2019.

“Ah! Words! Just words!” the person shouted to the man at the lectern whose speech had just concluded. “Who told you culture is a search for coherence? Where do you get that idea from? This idea of coherence is a Western idea.”

Coherent or Incoherent

I heard Ravi
Zacharias tell this story.  With a
quickness of wit that I can only marvel at, he responded to the person (whom he
later learned was transgendered) by saying, “Before I answer you, Madame, let
me ask you this, then: would you prefer that my answer be coherent or
incoherent?”[1]

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It is a dangerous proposition to write about someone else’s writing; history is full of literary, philosophical, and political critiques that were complete misfires (often cleverly worded) because the author misunderstood what he was reading. They did this because, not being part of what Charles Taylor would aptly deem the “web of interlocution” from which the original document arose, they misunderstood what was being proposed in the first place.

Having left the ELCA, grateful for the friendships and even some of the formation I enjoyed there but much more grateful to leave behind the posture of defensiveness that necessarily accompanied my ministry as a self-consciously orthodox Christian within it, I wondered actively about the idea of writing this article. I even resisted the pressure of colleagues to do so. I am a pastor of the North American Lutheran Church, and this newsletter has already featured one excellent critique by another NALC pastor, Rev. Cathy Ammlung as well as a critique by ELCA pastor, Stephen Gjerde. Both articles were detailed and incisive, so what can I add to them?

Analysis of the Introduction

Actually I can add one thing: an analysis of how the introduction of the ELCA’s proposed social statement Women and Justice represents the broader conflict of worldviews active within our culture, of which I am, indeed, still a part.

Rev. Ammlung noted in her critique numerous points on which the draft social statement was not only out of step with the Christian (and Jewish) traditions of 2000+ years, but even seemed internally incoherent, out of step with itself. Indeed, as Rev. Ammlung noted pithily, “It’s hard, though, to see in this draft how God’s revealed Word is greater than the sum of feminist, intersectional, and ‘gender/sexual justice’ language.”

Impossible

It is not hard to see—it is impossible to see, for there is no evidence to the contrary in the document, nor should we expect there to be. The constellation of “feminist, intersectional, and ‘gender/sexual justice’ language” emerges from a larger worldview wholly at variance with the Scripture’s line of sight, that of postmodernism.

Gender Feminists

In 1994, doctoral candidate in Women’s Studies at Wellesley, Christina Hoff-Somers, recognized that a foreign ideology had hijacked the equity-seeking feminism of the movement’s progenitors, separating the movement into what she deemed “equity feminists” and “gender feminists,” the latter being the product of postmodern thinking married to the aims of feminism. The feminism with which most readers will be familiar from their time as an undergraduate, on a seminary campus, or from the shriller, attention-getting voices on the nightly news is of the gender feminist lineage, which frequently claims that those Hoff-Sommers characterizes as “equity feminists” are not feminists at all, for they do not share the postmodern presuppositions that undergird their narrative and analysis.

Power

To whit, rooted in the work of theoreticians like Derrida and Foucault, postmodernism sees all social interactions (like the proposed social statement) as “word games,” and word games with only one goal: the exercise of power.

Language of Justice,
Science and Religious Truth

In such an account of the world, there is no way to discern good from evil, truth from falsehood, for all such language is merely a ruse, a “word game” to disguise the naked aggression of one person or group against another. In the view of postmodernism, we are all possessed of worldviews incommensurate with one another and irreconcilable, so our only alternative is civil war through our word games. The intersectional feminist gender-fluid activist by their own reckoning uses the language of justice, science, and religious truth but is merely a campaigner for their own peculiar position—just like everyone else.

Civil War Through
Word Games

Postmodernism allows for temporary alliances but not ultimately the pursuit of jointly-held truth or justice. Witness the growing voices within the gay community expressing relief in the fact that they came of age before the rise of transgenderism because they believe if they were coming of age now they would be forced into hormone therapy and miss out on the adult identity they now espouse. Because postmodernism believes in no higher truth or objective reality to which language correlates but only the exercise of power, it can never be more than a sophisticated exercise in narcissism, an assertion of self over-and-against everything and everyone else.

Sophisticated Narcissism

“Everyone else” necessarily includes God, of course… at least if God is purported to do anything other than underwrite our own self-perceptions and exercise of power through our word games. The postmodernist can use the language of “the Word of God,” but they cannot mean by it what Christians have historically meant—a revelation of something we could not have known without the active initiative of God. Nor can they mean by it what Lutherans have meant by it when they distinguish within that Word Law and Gospel. For both Law and Gospel reveal to us a self so impoverished and depraved it is impossible to affirm, the Law by revealing our inability to be righteous and the Gospel by revealing that we can only be saved by Christ’s righteousness, one utterly alien to ourselves.

Incoherence of
Postmodern Thought

There is a reason why the great theologian Augustine defined sin using the phrase in curvatus in se—“being turned in upon oneself.” When we turn within, seeking something affirmable by God, we cannot find our prelapsarian innocence, and what we produce is the incoherence that characterizes all postmodern thought, including the ELCA’s proposed social statement Women and Justice. The founders of postmodernism actively sought to reject the “Logo-centrism” of Western culture, that is, the logic—the coherence—born of a worldview flowing from a belief in the Logos, belief in an ordering principle within the world that does not take its cues from autonomous human actors.

God Brings Order
and Love

Of course, in the case of Christians, that Logos “became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14) God’s first act in the Book of Genesis is to call order forth from the primordial chaos, and He uses His Word to do so. The God revealed by the Scriptures is the bringer of order, of coherence.
The amazing news of the Gospel is that this bringer of order does not look upon our profound disorder—our sin—and simply destroy both it and us. In the words of one of my favorite LGBTQIA+ authors, “It is not the perfect but the imperfect who have need of love.” The Gospel is that God knew this long before Oscar Wilde and “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son”—the order-bringing Logos—“that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Order is Inherently
Hierarchical

Unfortunately, the God who brings order and coherence to not just the created order but our own lives in spite of us is necessarily antithetical to the worldview underlying the ELCA’s proposed social statement, for order is inherently hierarchical; it privileges truth over falsehood and so some narratives over others. This God also calls us away from the contemplation of ourselves—away from seeking affirmation of any sort, no matter what we find within our experience—and to the contemplation of Jesus Christ, in whom alone we are to find our un-hyphenated identity. Far from the postmodern de-legitimization of distinctions inferred by postmodern exegetes, Galatians 3:27–28 (“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”) teaches us that only Christ is acceptable to God and so we are to find our true identity in Him, not in any other identity, real or imagined.

ELCA Anti-logic

The unity gestured to by Paul as he ends this thought is not incidental. Just as the word adhere means “to stick together,” so the word cohere means “to form a whole.” The unity in justice that is to characterize the Body of Christ and claims to be sought by the ELCA’s latest social statement cannot be pursued using it as the mechanism, for its own internal logic is anti-logic; it reviles any coherence that would not privilege every self-perception and self-identification.

Viral Attack

A virus uses the body’s own self-defense system to undo an organism. The ELCA’s proposed social statement Women and Justice is necessarily incoherent because, in ways I assume its authors may not even be aware of because they have probably not read the primary texts that gave birth to postmodernism (Foucault and Derrida are, after all, inordinately difficult authors to plow through), it appropriates the language of truth and justice, sin and righteousness, Law and Gospel, and uses them virus-like to hobble and, if possible, undo the order-bringing work of God’s Word, inverting its meaning as necessary in order to serve an agenda not born of the Word itself. Women and Justice is an example of postmodernism gone viral within the Body of Christ, seeking to destroy it, and if the ELCA hopes to remain Christian in a way that will permit them to be recognized as such by other Christians not held captive to the postmodern mindset, they must not only reject it, but the worldview that informs it.

Moreover, all Christian communions functioning within the increasingly-postmodern West must be on guard against the same virus that has so deeply infected the ELCA and other mainline, revisionist Protestant bodies as well as (smaller) sections of the Roman Catholic and even Orthodox churches. It is in the water around us, and we must fortify our immune systems against it if we hope to not have our health compromised… or worse, to die as non-Christians mouthing Christian-sounding words.

Justice can and must be pursued for not just women and minorities but all people without de-privileging the truth or re-writing the Word of God. The Logos—coherence Himself—demands it.

[1] https://www.rzim.org/read/just-thinking-magazine/an-ancient-message-through-modern-means-to-a-postmodern-mind

Image [of virus attacking cell] by Darwin Laganzon from Pixabay

Photo [Protest]
by Peyton Sickles on Unsplash

by
Dennis Nelson, executive
director, Lutheran CORE

In the March issue of our newsletter, CORE Voice, we included information about the ministries of two of the pastors who were going to be presenters at the Rekindle Your First Love event.  Another one of the persons who was going to be a presenter, NALC pastor Wendy Berthelsen, heads up a non-profit Christian teaching ministry called Call Inc., which mobilizes ordinary people “called” by Christ Jesus our Lord to “incorporate His call” into all of life, 24/7: home, family, church gathering and “glocal” (local to global). Wendy writes:

We offer seminars and resources that are
available on our website: http://www.callinc.org. We take seriously that the Biblical
Greek word for church (ekklesia) literally means “called out
ones.” We believe “called out ones” gives both the definition
and purpose of church: “Ones” … ordinary people “called”
by Christ Jesus our Lord, to go “out,” transforming the world in
Jesus’ name, with His Gospel and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore,
actively teaching about living God’s call and helping people to recognize and
discern the Holy Spirit’s call and gifts is crucial to being the church.

by Cathy Ammlung, Secretary of the board of Lutheran CORE

The view from the front of the chapel in the Desert Retreat Center, where the training event was held, looks out on the beauty of Arizona’s Sonoran desert.

In early April we had a training event in Arizona for the Congregations in Transition ministry initiative.  We now have eight (mostly retired) Lutheran pastors who are ready to serve as coaches for congregations that are between pastors.  Another option is for the coach to begin working with a congregation even before the pastor has retired or resigned to take another call.  If you would like to know more about how one of these coaches could be of help to your congregation, please contact Don Brandt at [email protected] or Dennis Nelson at [email protected]. 

Fear of Pastoral Vacancies

For most of my 29 years as an ordained pastor, I have served small congregations and/or congregations that had a pastoral vacancy. Even in healthy parishes with little conflict, they consistently had two major concerns. One was the fear that there might be a protracted (and possibly unsuccessful) search for a new pastor. The second was that, rather like a tire with a slow leak, the life of the congregation was going to “go flat.” Energy, commitment, contributions, and attendance would diminish. Especially in small, isolated parishes that could not obtain a full (or significantly part-time) interim pastor, maintaining the worship life, fellowship, pastoral care, and outreach of the congregation seemed like a nearly insurmountable task for the lay leadership.

Team Your Congregation with a Coach

The Congregations in Transition initiative, developed by Pastor Don Brandt and Lutheran CORE, addresses these concerns by teaming an experienced, usually retired pastoral “coach” with such a congregation. The coach helps the laity (through a Leadership Team) to confidently and competently navigate the challenges of a pastoral vacancy, to maintain the critical tasks of ministry and mission, and to thereby pave the way for a call committee to focus on its unique tasks with less distraction and stress.

Tap into God-given Gifts

The workshop I attended as a “coach in training” was challenging, packed with useful insights and information, and very helpful. I like the way it calls for coaches to develop personal relationships with a small “Leadership Team” in order to tap into their God-given gifts for leadership, decision making, spiritual growth, and Christian care for their congregation and its members. Rather than feeling helplessly adrift, the laity are empowered to be the Church, the Body of Christ, beloved of Christ and lavishly endowed by the Holy Spirit with every good gift needed to care for one another and to weather what often seems like a “time in the wilderness.”

One Small Discipleship Step

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that congregations can sometimes feel so desperate to call a pastor, any pastor, that they rush through the call process and sometimes make a bad decision. And if the process drags out, they become so discouraged that they simply drift – and some members just leave, often permanently. An experienced coach helps them understand that they really can see – and take – one small, necessary “discipleship step” after another; and each small step can strengthen their faith, prayer life, discipleship, fellowship, stewardship, and outreach. They can discern what they need to do to care for one another, proclaim the Word of God, and reach out with Jesus’ love to their neighbor. And they can redeem that in-between, interim time, to prayerfully consider what gifts a new pastor would best have to continue their growth in faith toward God, fervent love toward one another, and loving witness and outreach to their neighbors.

I hope that many Lutheran congregations will benefit from such coaching relationships and experience interims as precious seasons of growth in faithfulness, trust, and obedience to their Savior and Good Shepherd!

by Keith Forni, member of the board of Lutheran CORE

This program, for adults with special needs and sponsored by St. Timothy Lutheran Church, has been serving Chicago’s Hermosa neighborhood for nearly 30 years. Meeting monthly since 1990, the Uncle Charlie program serves an average of 50 residents from eight group homes on the northwest side of Chicago. Participants gather for Bingo, arts and crafts, Bible lessons, worship and lunch.

Here Uncle Charlie Program members lead music during morning devotions. Pastor Keith Forni notes that “their joy is so powerfully expressed.” Favorite choir songs are “This Little Light of Mine” and “Jesus Loves Me.” St. Timothy is an ELCA congregation affiliated with Lutheran CORE.

Uncle Charlie Program participants await lunch at St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Chicago, during a recent Saturday monthly gathering.

 

 

 

Paul Diaz, a mission partner volunteer from First and Santa Cruz Lutheran Church- ELCA, Joliet IL, displays the May 2019 theme at the Uncle Charlie Program, St. Timothy Lutheran Church, Chicago.

 

 

 

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Lutheran CORE wants to lift up the ministries of other orthodox ELCA congregations that are faithfully living out the Gospel and serving our Lord. Please contact us at [email protected].

Dennis D. Nelson is the Executive Director of Lutheran CORE

I am continually blessed and encouraged by the very positive and uplifting responses which I receive to my letters from the director, articles in our newsletter, CORE Voice, and other written communications.  It is good to know that people read our materials and appreciate, value, and support our work.  The responses I received to my most recent (the April) letter from the director were no exception.

One NALC pastor wrote, “There have been times when I have wondered why CORE staff and adherents remain in ELCA, but after reading this letter, I am thankful that you are still there.  If you were to leave, it would please them because they wouldn’t have to deal with your wisdom any more. . . . I know your presence will probably not make a difference over the long run, you are fighting a strong and wily opponent, Old Scratch himself, but I admire your courage and your willingness to take on a formidable task.  Blessings to you on your work, your passion, and your hope that there may be a ray of sanity somewhere in this mess.”

And then, to clearly show what we are up against and how we got into the mess we are in, a former ELCA synod mission director wrote the following [emphasis added] –

“Shortly after being called to that position I attended staff orientation at the ELCA headquarters with other new Mission Directors.  We were told unequivocally that we were to start new congregations for gay and lesbian groups but to refrain from traditional church starts as there would be little if any financial support for traditional church groups.  I was told directly by the then ELCA mission director it was the unspoken policy of the ELCA to NOT start traditional New churches or to provide any support for Rural Congregations because the money was to be directed to gay and lesbian church starts. . . .

“During one of my visits to the ELCA headquarters, the national mission director took me into a closet that held the congregations responses to the first sexuality study of the ELCA.  She said, and I quote, ‘we are going to ram this s____ down their (congregations) throat.’. . .

 “I and many faithful pastors suffered mightily at the hands of the ELCA.  In fact nearly every faithful pastor I knew as Assistant to the Bishop suffers or has suffered as a result of ELCA pressure on their ministry to conform.  In the ELCA almost anything is tolerated except not accepting their lgbt policy.” Thank you to both of these pastors for letting me quote them in this article.  We give thanks for the support of all of our friends, and we pray for and want to encourage and help all who are enduring pressure to accept and conform to non-Biblical positions, practices, and priorities.