Is anyone sounding the alarm?

I am much more familiar with the stats in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and these are by no means encouraging.  Yet the reality is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is in even worse shape.  Now no one in their right might takes comfort in the fact that as bad as we are doing, others are doing worse.  If you do, I am sad for you.  I don't.  Remembering the days when we were both growing by a new congregation every week or less and TIME was wondering if everyone in America would be Lutheran in the year 2000, I grieve not over the loss of power or prestige but of vibrancy in our life around the Word and Sacrament, seriousness for the task given us, confidence in the Word to guide and answer our questions and the worlds, and hope for the future.  In both denominations, doom and gloom and a mind for expediency or ignorance seems to be our temptation.  That said, a bishop of the ELCA has given a sober assessment of the state of that church body.

• Over the last 10 years, the percentage of the smallest congregations with fewer than 50 people has doubled.
• 58% of ELCA congregations have fewer than 50 people.
• Congregations that worship with over 250 people in attendance decreased from 9% to 2% over the last eight years.
• From 2015 to 2023, The ELCA lost 834 congregations. Of these, 520 closed, 131 merged into another congregation, 142 left, and 41 were removed.
• The ELCA ordains about 200 pastors a year, while 400 pastors retire each year. Currently, there are over 600 ELCA churches seeking a pastor.
• 45% of ELCA congregations cannot afford a full-time pastor.  

The ELCA ordains 200 pastors a year, sees about 400 pastors retire each year, and has over 600 parishes calling a pastor (not counting permanent vacancies).  In the LCMS we are smaller by the numbers but have about 115 or more new pastors every year and has 500+ calling (with many of those calls for part-time pastors).  These stats cast a long shadow over us.  We seem not to lack money as much as people, not congregations but growing congregations, not pastors but young pastors who can be expected to serve 35-40+ years.  That is what we share in common with a denomination that also calls itself Lutheran though looks very different from us.

This is one of the poisonous fruits born of distraction.  Missouri continues to be distracted by worship wars, evangelicalism, congregationalism, and the lingering skirmishes of the last Battle for the Bible.  The ELCA seems to find it hard to reject a cultural cause that has anything to do with sex or gender.  When the dust settles, both church bodies find it easier to fixate on the distractions than take up the cause of the Gospel of Christ crucified and risen.  Both find it hard to give full attention to the mission of calling sinners to repentance, absolving them of their sins, and raising them up to new and everlasting lives in baptism.  Both have been lax in their catechesis and now it shows in the generations lost by failing to teach this Gospel in the home and at the Church.  Both have been lazy about youth, preferring to entertain more than challenge them with the faith of the Scriptures and Confessions.  Both are reaping the fruits of a culture of divorce and of a devaluation of marriage and children.  We all owe it to the Lord of the Church and to the future to admit our past, lay it before the Cross, and rise up renewed to do better.

If I had to predict the future, I would find more hope for Missouri than the ELCA.  Already their ecumenical partnerships have weakened the Lutheran identity at their seminaries, blurred in the minds of the people what difference there is between Lutherans, Reformed, Presbyterian, etc..., and muddied what it is that Lutherans actually believe and confess.  This provides them with short term pulpit supply from whoever is available but long term problems coming up for a rationale for the ELCA.  Missouri, for all its problems, it is much more homogeneous in belief and practice even though our disputes dominate the headlines and, as long as we keep the two seminary route, we will also have a much more theologically and pastorally united ministerium.  The numbers are not the issue and we should not fixate on them.  But they are a warning shot to remind us that distraction from or abandonment of the Scriptures and our Confessions will hurt us even more deeply and steal the vitality from our mission.  The demise of either body is certainly possible but the faith we confess is not for the benefit of how we feel about ourselves.  It is about the lost and the Good Shepherd who has called us to labor for Him in finding them and making them part of His flock so that He may shepherd them to the rich green pastures and the cool quiet waters of everlasting life.