I missed it (doggone it) but apparently the ELCA Churchwide Assembly gave Gerald B. Kieschnick, president of The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod an opportunity to give us a verbal smackdown for the vote on the sexuality statement and ministry policy. You can read all about it here: ELCA Assembly Hears LCMS President on Same-Gender DecisionsApparently it's going to " negatively affect the relationships between our two church bodies." OH NO!!!! Because you know, we were SOOOO close to getting it on...
I lived in a small town with a Missouri Lutheran church. That pastor would not speak to me on the street. At Valparaiso University a while back Pastor Kieschnick refused to speak in the chapel until the female ELCA Chaplain agreed NOT to read the scripture lessons.
I'm concerned about how this is going to affect our relations with other international Lutheran bodies and hope we can find a way to keep talking and working at mission together. But Missouri? I'm sure there are some very nice Missouri people but as long as the ELCA has women pastors and they refuse to let women near the altar or pulpit to even read a lesson when there's a man around....I'm sorry what they think is just irrelevant.
My only concern about Missouri here is what they might choose to do in relation to Lutheran Disaster Relief, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, and possibly Lutheran Social Services. Other than that, I really couldn't care what Missouri thought of the ELCA. It is irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteWe heard it and maybe I'm just naive and take things at face value, but, knowing he would disagree, it still seemed to be a very heartfelt and concerned message that he gave.
ReplyDeleteI've gone to a number of LCMS blogs. If I've posted an "opinion" or "feeling" about something, I've been soundly put down. I've seen so much anti-ELCA stuff on these blogs for the last 4 years. My personal experience with LCMS worship is limited to only 3 times, and it wasn't positive, but not due to theology, rather to the complete lack of any personal interest by the three different pastors to the people in attendance.
ReplyDeleteHere in the East, relations between Us and Them are actually comparatively good. (Compared to "he wouldn't speak to me on the street," that is -- which is just crazy.) My wife -- also an ELCA pastor -- has not only been welcomed by several of our LCMS colleagues, but communed by them, albeit at services where no laypeople were around. In theory, of course, those pastors could have been drummed out of the corps, and they might well have been, if they weren't serving hard-luck inner city churches where nobody wanted to replace them
ReplyDeleteBut none of that changes the basic facts of the relationship between our church bodies, which are comically bad. Anybody remember their full page anti-ELCA in USA Today a few years ago? I mean sheesh.
So the very idea that any step we take could make those relations worse is sort of laughable. It would be a shame if the LCMS decided it couldn't work with s on matters of civil righteousness (read: LDR, etc), but they've already come close, demanding that many smaller intersynodical agencies choose one -- and forfeit funding from the other.