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A look at where we have gone
by Dr. Frederick Baltz (WordAlone board member, Galena, Ill.)
June 8, 2008
As I write these words the calendar tells me it is exactly thirty years since I was ordained. 
My thoughts go back to college days. Friends, who were "pre-sem" students like I was, had felt a call to the pastoral ministry as I had. We were excited about our future. We took our courses together . . . and loved them! What people speak of now as the biblical world-view made sense to us. So did the Lutheran heritage.
Then we went our different ways to seminaries of the church where the quest for knowledge and the preparation for ministry continued. We had little idea yet that there were gaps in our training such as a basic lack of education in the area of evangelism. We certainly had no idea that the history of the Lutheran churches would unfold in the sad way it has. The American Lutheran Church (ALC) had been losing members, as had the Lutheran Church in America (LCA). It hadn't always been so, but something had already changed in the churches. I suppose we all hoped we would help make things better once we were ordained and had our opportunity.
In less than ten years the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America had become the successor to the ALC, LCA, and The Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches. It seemed reasonable to many of us then. There would now be a united Lutheran witness that didn't exist before, we thought. We could cooperate more effectively and get to know one another to the benefit of all, we thought. Though experts' predictions were that the start-up would be rocky, most of us believed the ELCA was a good idea. In principal it was.
Today many of my colleagues whom I have known for decades would deny that the formation of the ELCA has proved a wise decision. If the ELCA had gone in the right directions, perhaps all would be different today. But those who believed in the congregation as the primary locus of God's activity, and accordingly stressed the congregation's authority, were immediately outnumbered in the newly structured churchwide headquarters; there was not even a balance between congregational and hierarchical traditions, just the replacement of the former. We heard more about synods and churchwide, and more of the personal politics of the leaders presented as what all Christians really ought to think. We heard less about the Word.
New pastors joined the ranks of the clergy who found Marcus Borg more acceptable than St. Paul. Borg holds theological positions that have no place in a denomination supposedly governed by the Lutheran Confessions. So, for instance, if everyone will be saved anyway in the end, why busy yourself with the Gospel as the power of God for salvation for all who believe? They made it instead the power for social justice. Salvation of souls seems to have become almost a "you've-got-to-be-kidding" matter.
Congregations and pastors have been taken to task for not baptizing more souls, yet churchwide leaders have taken actions that have alienated long-standing church members as well as people outside the church. The decline in membership has continued, and now the rate of people leaving the denomination is the most serious it has ever been. The leaven the ELCA was supposed to be in society hasn't materialized. Quite the opposite.
No one would believe that the solution for one sinking ship would be to tie itself to another sinking ship so there would be twice the flotation. But the ELCA's leaders brought that about with Called to Common Mission (CCM), the full communion agreement with The Episcopal Church, despite the fact that synodical resolutions showed the desire on the part of more than half the members of the ELCA not to enter that relationship. We even swore we would abide by a particular regulation in the other vessel's sailors' manual, though it contradicted our own direct orders. And still more people went over the side to lifeboat churches, or no churches. Now the CCM decision is an embarrassment to many in the ELCA including some of its original supporters, but one that ELCA leaders will still defend. The names of the myriad congregations that so needed CCM because they didn't have a pastor available from their own tradition all fit easily on one page of the ELCA yearbook.
In the years since CCM was approved we have had sexuality questions brought before us that will not go away. We are told we must continue to pray and study, because there is still "no consensus" in the ELCA on homosexuality. What I have seen of church politics makes me think that the first time a vote goes in favor of the liberal/revisionist proposal to ordain practicing homosexuals, even in a setting where a simple majority might be necessary (i.e., where one vote more than half can be enough), the long-sought consensus will have arrived.
I have been asked why I devote time and energy to WordAlone. The ELCA seems so far gone as to be beyond help. What's the point? Doesn't it waste time you might have used for better things? That last question is the most important. If being a witness within the ELCA required slighting ministry in the congregation, or making it conform to some lesser standard than what we find in the Word, I would be gone. But as it is I can still minister in the congregation while witnessing to the Word with other like-minded believers. Thirty years have brought disappointment and frustration because of what I see on the national scene, but fulfillment in the congregation where the Word is at work in many exciting ways. God has not abandoned us.
Recently I heard from some pastors who said they thought CCM was foolishness, but it wasn't something their members cared about or even understood. Therefore, they would do nothing. What they don't seem to realize is that CCM made it one degree of heat warmer for the frog in the kettle, and we are getting very near killing temperature for the frog, which is the ELCA. With the rough equivalent in members of a synod being lost each year now, what does the future hold? God still performs miracles, and the ELCA needs one. But if the ELCA leaders will not conform their leadership to the Word, God is not without other options. Our job is to be faithful witnesses to the Word, whatever may come.