Radically relevant. . .

I miss a lot of things and a lot of things are worth missing.  This is a curious one.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has been bleeding off members for decades.  Once with 5.2M members, the numbers continue the decline to 3M and below.  Several hundred thousand formed the North American Lutheran Church and less formed Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ.  Most have simply stopped coming and nobody knows if they are going to any church.  Anyway, it seems that the ELCA has begun to notice the drop (probably because the financial numbers also reflect the decline in the numbers in the pews).  They have done some thinking about this and have implemented a Future Church design for their denomination that acknowledges the regional and local expressions of the ELCA but is centered on a One Church identity.  With such a redesign comes, inevitably, new mission statements, a reduction in staff, and new departments for the national office.  They think this will help them stem the bloodletting, stabilize the denomination, and even grow their church body.

The three goals of this new design are:

• A welcoming church that engages new, young, and diverse people. . . 
• A thriving church rooted in tradition but radically relevant. . . 
• A connected, sustainable church that shares a common purpose and direction. . .   

The grayest and whitest of the Lutheran bodies has decided that their future lies with new, young, and diverse people.  With a nod to tradition (could this mean Lutheranism?), they intend to focus on what is relevant (as decided by those who are, well, not ELCA?).  This is a green church, a climate change church, in which being sustainable is as important to them as to the environmental movement.  They intend to have a common purpose and direction and, to an outsider, that suggests they will not abide disputes with their chosen future.  That is my snarky take on all of this.

The leaders of the ELCA have mapped this out more fully.  They want to find a way to activate people to invite more people into the way of Jesus so that they may find community, justice, and love.  That is the way of Jesus.  They want to use doctrines of grace and justification to bring freedom and to make sure that theirs is the authentic voice of Christianity.  They believe they are drilling down like Luther to the core of the Gospel message -- holding true to a few core principles and innovating everything else.  They believe in vocation and that when people become the body of Christ and live more fully into that collective, all things are possible.  

They get that people are not going to church so they are going to them.  They are sad that they are so monocultural in a multicultural world.  They hope to embrace other cultures.  They want to be a more vigorous online community because that is where community is at now.  They want to reflect more the diverse makeup of Gen Z.  They believe this is not simply their design for the future but the one the early church had as well.

The leaders believe that 1 in 50 Americans is touched by a Lutheran organization and these are entry points into the goal of 1M more.  Because they see belonging preceding believing, they need to be better at engaging people and being changed by the grace of God.  An innovation department and lab will help this.  They intend to be much more collaborative -- not as a program but as a way of being.   They are on a mission from God to melt away the barriers that once the people already in the pews get a taste of it all they will embrace the future church.

What they do not talk about is salvation.  There was not one mention of the cross.  There were very few references to Jesus at all.  There was barely a mention of Scripture and prayer.  There was no mention of creed or confession.  The only doctrines mentioned were justification and grace (but without context).  Tradition is a legacy but innovation, change, and radical relevance were deemed to be the road ahead -- and this from a church body that is already on the cusp of social, cultural, and gender change.  In the end, it sounds like they are doubling down on the path made crystal clear in 2009 at their church wide assembly.  They believe their church body needs to change not only their clothing but their very understanding of Christianity -- something that has been apparent to outsiders watching them for a long time.  I am sure it will help them to think of themselves as hipsters and rock stars in the church of their imagination but whether it will stem the blood flow or interest people who are getting all of this not from church, well, time will tell.

Let me say that I do not speak from the vantage point of a church body that has it all buttoned up and is doing swimmingly well.  The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is not.  We have our own problems and they are many.  What I have said to Missouri, I say to the ELCA.  There is no future for a Lutheran lite style of church, for a church that abandons Scripture and its design and purpose, for a church that minimizes doctrine, creed, and confession, or for a church that waters down the faith for the sake of warm bodies in the pews (or on the screen).  The only Lutheranism that matters is the one that our confessors proclaimed -- catholic in doctrine and practice and renewed by the Word and Spirit of God to reclaim the once, today, and forever Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and risen and the free gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation that God bestows because of this saving work.