Who gets the kids?

My wife and I once joked that we would have divorced a long time ago but neither one of us wanted the kids and the court required one of us to do just that.  Yeah, it was a bad joke.  The typical divorce has an opposite focus -- the fight over the kids and the lengths people might go to be awarded custody of the children.

In most cases, church divorces are still fights over the kids -- that is the property and assets.  The Episcopal Church and the ELCA Lutherans are adamant that the group remaining with them gets everything.  A ton of money has been spent in pursuit of the kids in these two denominations -- sometimes just to spite the folks leaving.  The news is filled with stories of Episcopalians who fight to the death over some bricks, mortar, and wood and of the Lutherans who would rather sell their building to a pagan religion or for less than virtuous use rather than allow the group leaving to get it or purchase it.

The reality is that several denominations that have undergone divorces have somehow found a way to split the kids and walk away.  The not so United Methodists and the Reformed are undergoing very public separations but they seem to be finding ways to divvy up the stuff.  Cash payoffs may have contributed to the agreements.

In the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, even tarnished assets and rebellious children are hard to relinquish.  Perhaps second only to Roman Catholics, the LCMS has succeeded in a denominational identity and loyalty which makes the divorce of differing theologies untenable for either side.  We seem intent to hold onto our beloved Concordias and RSOs and cannot imagine dividing these up even for those who might want to walk away and give up some of the maneuvering and politics that have marked our sometimes contentious history.

If some of these assets and auxiliaries end up diminishing in value, it may actually make it easier to foresee a day when an institution with strong loyalty and identity might actually go the way of the Episcopalians or Methodists.  I would be sad about this but I can imagine a time when we have already written off some of our once vaunted institutions and therefore end up with the prospect of nobody wanting the kids.  The reality is that the people leaving hardly ever leave because the Word of God is being taken too seriously.  The drift of Christianity has pretty clearly been toward those who like the idea of Scripture a whole lot better than the Book.  Those who have embraced the changing patterns of belief and truth are, in many cases, in solid control of the kids and cannot see the writing on the wall that nominally Lutheran institutions are virtually valueless in a culture of nominal faith and virtue.

I would hope that we could invest time in arguing about the Word of the Lord that endures forever and our witness and confession of that truth instead of trying to deal with faith questions with bylaw answers.  It hardly seems possible that our fractured unity could be harmed by a deliberative assembly any more than it has been by the carefully scripted conventions that typically pass for national meetings today.  In fact, if we argued about the faith, we might just remember why we joined together in the first place.  Oh, well.  Just a random and meandering thought as we plug our way through a 175th anniversary years....