An Analysis of the Work Of the ELCA’s Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church

As promised, we continue to monitor the work of the ELCA’s Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church (CRLC).   The Commission was formed in response to action taken by the ELCA’s 2022 Churchwide Assembly.  The assembly directed the Church Council to establish a Commission “comprised of leaders of diverse representation” that shall “reconsider the statements of purpose for each of the expressions of this church, the principles of its organizational structure, and all matters pertaining thereunto.”  The Commission was instructed to be “particularly attentive to our shared commitment to dismantle racism” and to “present its findings and recommendations to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly in preparation for a possible reconstituting convention.”

There was a very interesting article in “Living Lutheran,” the ELCA’s digital magazine, dated August 2, 2023 and entitled “Inside the commission that could restructure the ELCA.”  Here is a link to that article. The article begins by comparing the original Commission for a New Lutheran Church, which met between 1982 and 1987 and whose work led to the formation of the ELCA, and this recently appointed Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church.  According to the article, the original Commission (from the 1980’s) was “a mammoth research project that held forums across the country, reviewed over 12,000 letters from Lutheran faithful, and processed responses from the synod, district and national conventions of three Lutheran denominations hoping to merge.”  The original Commission was composed of seventy persons who spent five years doing their work.  In contrast, the current Commission will have less than two years to complete its work.  The article in “Living Lutheran” says, “The new group of 35 rostered ministers and laypeople from across the church will conduct a more condensed version of the original group’s investigation, examining ‘statements of purpose’ and ‘principles of organization’ for all three expressions and conducting nationwide research and listening forums.”

A Timeline for the work of the Commission can be found on their website. Here are some key dates.

The Churchwide Assembly that directed the Church Council to form the Commission was held August 8-12, 2022.

It was not until January-March 2023 that there was a nominating process for members for the Commission.

On April 20, 2023 the ELCA Church Council appointed members to the Commission.

On June 20, 2023 the Executive Committee appointed Leon Schwartz and Carla Christopher as co-chairs of the Commission.

It was not until July 13-15, 2023 that the Commission held its first meeting – almost a full year after the assembly which directed the Church Council to form the Commission and just a little more than two years before the July 28-August 2, 2025 Churchwide Assembly, which will vote on the recommendations from the Commission.  But the Commission needs to complete its work well before then.  Here are a couple more very significant dates coming up very soon which are on the Commission’s Timeline –

Spring 2025 – A draft of the Commission’s report and recommendations is to be shared with the Conference of Bishops for comment.

April 3-6, 2025 – The Commission’s final report and recommendations are to be shared with the Church Council, who will forward the report and recommendations to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly for the assembly’s consideration.

The “Living Lutheran” article is filled with hope and anticipation.  It quotes from the memorial submitted by the Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Synod, which says, “The governing documents, constitutions, bylaws, and continuing resolutions of the ELCA do not allow (congregations, synods and the churchwide organization) to reorganize quickly to meet the changing realities for effective mission in today’s world.”  According to the article the other nine synods which submitted memorials used similar language. 

The article shares comments made by Carla Christopher and Leon Schwartz, the two co-chairs of the Commission, in a sit-down interview after the first meeting of the Commission.

Carla Christopher said, “Church itself has changed.  The people coming to church have changed, and the systems necessary to support the work the church is doing have changed. . . . We want to make sure that churchwide is resourcing the best places where mission is happening and innovation is happening, that synods have the ability to support and address and equip rostered (ministers) for the future, that seminaries have relevant curriculum, and that parishioners have the ability to be active and involved even if they’re not traditional parishioners.”

Both Christopher and Schwartz told stories of a “church struggling to react quickly in a century when crisis is becoming the norm.”  Leon Schwartz added, “When the churchwide assembly meets every three years, and that’s the only chance you have to change the constitution, it’s very cumbersome. Even bylaws or continuing resolutions, they take a lot of time to change anything.”

Christopher cited numerous examples of the “church’s command structure breaking down” during the COVID lockdowns of 2020-21.  According to the article, neither co-chair would say that the decades-old model of three expressions is fundamentally flawed, but they did state that many areas of ministry do not fit under any of the three expressions.  These ministries include camps, colleges and universities, interfaith engagement, and environmental agencies.  Schwartz commented, “There’s a lot of things that have just grown up over the past 40 years.”

Leon Schwartz pointed out that the original Commission (from the 1980’s) “took six years to collect its data whereas the new commission is down to about a year and a half before its report comes due.”  Therefore he “lamented that so much time had elapsed already.”  “It’s a different environment,” he said. “You can’t take six years to make changes anymore in this world.”

This same attitude of hope and anticipation continues as the article says, “When the next churchwide assembly convenes, in summer 2025, the CRLC will present its findings and recommend whether the church should then mount a special reconstituting convention without delay.”  I do not remember the words “without delay” being in the original motion.

If all that is the hope, dream, plan, goal, anticipated outcome, and reason for which the Commission was formed, what is the reality?  As of the time of the writing of this article, the Commission has met six times – three times in 2023 and three times in 2024.  Three of the meetings were in person; three were online.  The plan is that the Commission will meet twice a year in person and online every other month during the other months.  Summaries of the first six meetings can be found on the Commission’s website – Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church – Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (elca.org)     

I have read, studied, and reflected on the written summaries of the first six meetings of the Commission.  I noticed that earlier summaries were more specific in their content.  For example, the Commission revealed their priorities through whom they invited to address them.  They also mentioned their receiving a copy of the DEIA audit which the ELCA had done of their governing documents.  They have not stated what impact that audit will have on their final report and recommendations.  But the two members who held a listening session for the synod in which I am rostered celebrated the fact that the ELCA is the first of its kind of organization to have such an audit done.

For me, the summaries of the more recent meetings are very general and non-informative.  They speak of such things as reviewing highlights from listening sessions and online surveys, holding listening sessions at the recent youth gathering and adjacent events, identifying essential functions of the three expressions of the church, hearing from synods about their functions, ensuring that their work is viewed through a lens of antiracism, and discussing the current seal and name of the ELCA.  Nothing specific is said.  Reading the summaries tells you nothing about what actually is being done and is going on.

I can think of two possible explanations.  First, they are not getting a whole lot done.  They have grand ideas but do not know how to make those ideas a reality.  After more than half of the time has passed between their first meeting and when they need to give their report and recommendations to the Church Council, they are spinning their wheels.

There is also a second possibility.  They are intentionally not telling us what actually is going on and specifically in what direction they are heading.  For example, they are not disclosing how the ELCA’s DEIA audit will impact their recommendations.  This possibility reminds me of how quickly the recordings of the evening sessions from the recent youth gathering were removed from the internet.

Either way, I see and have a problem and will continue to keep you informed. 

 

A concerned member of the ELCA contacted me, asking me to do a review of a new curriculum from Augsburg Fortress’s Sparkhouse. That curriculum is entitled T.B.D.: Think. Believe. Do.  Sparkhouse touts it as their newest youth curriculum.  A blogpost describes T.B.D.

as a new small group series that gives students the tools to articulate, investigate, and test out their beliefs on a broad range of topics that connect to their daily lives. However, the goal isn’t to come away from each series with a settled idea about the topic. Although they might feel more settled than they did before. Instead. T.B.D. focuses on how students think, not just what they think.

https://blog.wearesparkhouse.org/youth-faith-process

Currently, T.B.D. offers six topical courses on Prayer, Sin, Mission, Salvation, and Bible, broken up into four sessions each.  Each session begins with a “Provocative Statement” before moving through three major sections: Think, Believe and Do.  After answering a series of thought provoking questions in their journals, students watch a video and reflect on two Bible Passages.  Following this, they come up with an honest statement of what they believe as individuals and as a group.  Finally, the group brainstorms a low risk way to test out that belief in the following week. 

The Video

In the videos that accompany each session, a young person wrestles with questions about the topic of the session.  This is very interesting.  Like many people today, both young and old, the character in each video turns to the internet, searching for an answer.  As you would expect, answers come from all quarters.  The internet search yields many quotes from the Bible.  Quotes are also given by Luther, Augustine, Calvin, Bonhoeffer, St. Benedict, and other Christian teachers.  Others come from more dubious places, like Bart Ehrman and Richard Dawkins.  This is what you would expect from an internet search.   The character in the video is left with more questions than answers as a result.  Pastors and catechists are very familiar with the kind of idiosyncratic views that people develop from their use of the internet. 

Values Clarification

The question is where to turn.  The answer is more than a little surprising.  After pondering challenging statements, watching the video, and looking up two Bible verses, the students are immediately asked to formulate their own responses to the questions.  The result is something very similar to the kind of “values clarification” that was practiced decades ago.  It’s almost as if the students are told, “You’re on your own.  The Bible is unclear and unreliable.  The Christian tradition is too varied and contradictory.  Who’s to say what is true.  You need to chart your own path.”

As a person who grew up in the 1970s, I am quite familiar with this way of teaching.  I learned to ask open ended questions and to accept the challenge to decide for myself.  Fortunately for me, I had pastors and college professors who pointed me to the answers.  (I attended a Lutheran college.) Otherwise, I would have been lost.  During my senior year of college, the process of asking open questions and deciding for myself overwhelmed me.  I realized that I was drowning in a sea of meaninglessness and purposelessness.  In the midst of this, I became acutely aware of my sinfulness.  It was then that I turned to the things I had learned from my pastors and professors.  In particular, I remembered what I had learned about the Cross and the Resurrection.  If I had been left entirely to my own resources, I don’t know where I would be.

A Third Resource?

In T.B.D., youth are presented with two resources with which to interpret the Bible: 1) the confusing diversity of answers given by the internet and 2) their own wisdom and the wisdom of their peers.   It’s too bad that a third resource is not introduced into the discussion, namely, the wisdom of the Creedal and Lutheran tradition of interpreting the Bible. If the person teaching this curriculum is a pastor or a well catechized lay person, T.B.D. might not be harmful.  The same would be true if it was used with well catechized youth.  As one reads the lesson book and watches the video, it is easy to identify answers to the questions that are raised. 

For instance, in the unit on Prayer, the video character, a young woman, wrestles with the meaning and purpose of prayer.  What does the Bible teach?  How is one to pray?  Does prayer change things?  Why pray if God already knows everything?  As I watched, I thought to myself, “It’s too bad the Lutheran tradition doesn’t have a simple but profound explanation of the meaning of prayer; or even better an explanation of the Lord’s Prayer.”  At one point, the character finds a link to an article on St. Benedict.  She decides to download his daily prayer schedule to her calendar, only to be shocked by the notion that it calls for prayer seven times a day.  Again, I found myself thinking, “Too bad Luther didn’t simplify the seven hours of prayer on behalf of the laity, reducing them to two or three times a day.”   At another point, the character does a search for the Ten Commandments, hoping that there is something there about prayer.  She concludes that the Ten Commandments are no help, since prayer is not mentioned.  As one knows, however, Luther’s interpretation of the Second Commandment has a lot to say about prayer. 

Unanswered Questions

After reflecting on this curriculum, I am left with a final question.  Is the failure to use the catholic and Lutheran tradition a bug or a feature of T.B.D.?  In other words, do the developers of T.B.D. assume that teachers and facilitators will make use of the Great Tradition and the Lutheran Confessions?  Have they simply forgotten to explicitly remind facilitators of these resources?  Or is the intent to encourage students to utilize the widest possible resources, from St. Benedict to Richard Dawkins, to formulate their own system of beliefs?  If so, the result will not be formation in the Christian faith, but instead in an eclectic post-Christian form of spirituality. 

Ironically, I can remember a time when Augsburg Fortress was criticized for being too Lutheran, too Confessional, too heavy in doctrine.  Other publishers, like Group Publishing and Youth Specialties, were preferred because they were more user friendly, more engaging, and more broadly Evangelical.  To see a curriculum that makes such sparse use of the Catechism and the Lutheran Confessions is surprising, and not an improvement.