Title: ELCA Consults Young Adult Lutherans of African Descent ELCA NEWS SERVICE
January 19, 2007
ELCA Consults Young Adult Lutherans of African Descent 07-006-FI
CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) brought together 32 young adult Lutherans of African descent from across the United States here Jan. 6-7 to encourage them as church leaders and to seek their advice on attracting more young adults and more people of color to the ELCA.
ELCA Multicultural Ministries hosted "Breaking the Barriers: An African Descent Young Adult Consultation" at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago with funding from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and the ELCA Leadership Initiative. Participants were between the ages of 19 and 35.
The Rev. Julius Carroll IV, director for African American ministries, ELCA Multicultural Ministries, said ELCA congregations, the majority of whose members are of African descent, were asked to nominate young adults for the consultation. He said the purposes of the consultation were to introduce them to the churchwide structure and opportunities for ministry in the ELCA and "to hear from them what barriers prevent them from being active within their congregations."
Participants said the older members of their congregations tend to hold on to their roles in the congregations or insist that those roles not change, Carroll said. Many congregations are not open to new things, like a Sunday afternoon "hip hop" service, he said. Participants also said they were unaware of all the ministry opportunities in the ELCA.
Carroll said participants wrestled to recognize their gifts. "They realized that everybody doesn't have every gift, and everybody has at least one. They celebrated that," he said.
One goal for the consultation's organizers was for at least five young adults to say they would consider ordained or lay ministry in the ELCA, Carroll said. Eighteen of the 32 said they would consider professional church careers, he said.
Carroll said several of the young adults formed a planning team that will work to involve more young Lutherans of African descent in similar discussions.
Culture-Specific Church Wants to be Multicultural
The Rev. Mark S. Hanson, ELCA presiding bishop, spoke to the group about the challenges of leading a church that is approximately 97 percent white and has an expressed goal of being multicultural and antiracist.
"I try to be with young adults whenever I can because I come away with a sense of hopefulness for the church," Hanson said. "When I'm with young adults, I pick up on your restlessness with the way things are. You know that this is not the way God intends the church to be or the world to be," he said.
"You want to be a part of a church that's making a difference in people's lives. I see a restlessness with bureaucracy among young adults," Hanson said.
When three Lutheran churches merged to form the ELCA in 1988, they set a 10-year goal of having a membership that was 10 percent people of color and people whose primary language was not English. In recent years the ELCA has set strategic directions that committed the church to "confront the scandalous realities of all of the 'isms' that divide us, including racism, and that we will ardently pursue our commitment to becoming a multicultural church and a church that reflects age diversity," Hanson said.
"The commitments are there," he said. "Why are we having so much trouble achieving them?"
Hanson offered several answers to his question, saying many in the ELCA don't understand why it has set these goals. "Too often we white folks think we need people of color to shore up the declining membership of a largely white church," he said. Rather than "survival," he said the real goal is to transform the church.
To become a multicultural church the ELCA must first confront racism, Hanson said. "Too often we white folks say racism is a problem persons of color must solve on our behalf, and we put the burden of racism on your shoulders rather than take responsibility for it," he said.
A recent restructuring of the ELCA churchwide organization placed the church's antiracism work in the Office of the Presiding Bishop. "I come to great power and great privilege because I am a white male in this church and this society," Hanson said. "Unless I confront that white privilege every day, I can't expect the church to confront it in its institutional life, its congregational life, in the lives of individuals," he said.
It will take more than a weekend of antiracism training to dismantle endemic racism in the ELCA, Hanson said. "We're beginning to ask what a church committed to be antiracist and multicultural looks like, so that antiracism work is part of the very fabric of its daily life, and that's hard work."
"Largely white congregations in a largely white church are simply unwilling to confront the realities of how we will be changed by virtue of the presence of persons of color in our midst," Hanson said. Many white congregations welcome people of color, "but if you choose to stay we expect you to become increasingly like us," he said. "That's not a biblical view of transformation."
The ELCA does better with "ethnic, cultural, language- specific congregations than we do at becoming truly multicultural as a church," Hanson said. "It's sociologically understandable," he said. "We don't want to acknowledge the sociological function that religion plays in our lives -- that it preserves culture and identity."
Hanson used new immigrants from Africa as an example, needing to preserve their culture, identity and traditions by proclaiming the gospel in their mother tongue. "We are called to be multicultural, multi-lingual, a Pentecost people each in their own language proclaiming the mighty deeds of God but each hearing the other in that proclamation. So, the step from being culture- specific to multicultural is a huge and difficult step."
Hanson cited Dr. Justo Gonzalez, former director, Hispanic Summer Program, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, saying the ELCA's motivation to become multicultural must be "the realization that we are not fully whole." The ELCA will not experience the complete body of Christ without "the other," he said. "As the other comes into our midst there we meet Christ, often for the first time or often again."
The Realities of Leadership in the ELCA
"Who will be America's next top model?" the Rev. Lamont A. Wells, Lutheran Church of the Atonement, Atlanta, asked during opening worship. He referred to a popular television program, suggesting that young adults find their models among those who serve God in church and community. Wells challenged the participants to serve as those models for others.
"Doing God's will will usually involve a risk," he said. "What are you going to do, even if you must stand alone, to answer God's call at this hour?"
The Rev. M. Wyvetta Bullock, executive for leadership development, ELCA Office of the Presiding Bishop, presented data that illustrated the church's need for greater involvement of young adults of color. "Your generation has come of age at a critical time in the life of the church," she said.
Bullock said less than three percent of the ELCA's clergy are people of color, and the church of 4.85 million members has fewer than 170 people of color in the process to become clergy.
"You are already called" to be leaders, Bullock told the participants, and she invited them to explore leadership roles in the church. She outlined several qualities of a leader, including being Christ-centered. "If you are not grounded in who and whose you are, it will hurt," she said.
Bullock said clergy of color tend to be paid less than church compensation guidelines in the ELCA, take little vacation and work long hours. Part of their work is to break down cultural, gender, socioeconomic and racial barriers in church and society, she said.
"You will be challenged," Bullock said. "You're going to have to forgive some folks," she said. "You're going to have to ask for forgiveness."
The Rev. D. Jensen Seyenkulo, assistant director for multicultural leadership: development and recruitment, ELCA Vocation and Education, discussed the various ministry opportunities in the ELCA. In addition to ordained ministry, he said the ELCA has three rosters of lay ministry: associates in ministry, deaconesses and diaconal ministers.
"All baptized are called into leadership," Seyenkulo said. "All are called to specific ministries."
Seyenkulo described the ELCA's Theological Education for Emerging Ministries (TEEM) program. TEEM provides an alternative to four years of classroom and internship preparation for ordination in the ELCA for "top models" -- exceptional people called to minister in specific contexts, he said.
The Rev. Charles V. Newman, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Decatur, Ga., emphasized the importance of members within congregations. "Not everyone is called to be a pastor," he said.
Newman introduced several members of his congregation who accompanied him to the consultation -- a football coach, a cosmetologist, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering and a singer "too young for the choir."
Newman encouraged the participants to take whatever risk is necessary to minister in the way they feel called. "If it is of God, it will come to pass," he said.
Participants attended two of four workshops: Spiritual Gifts: Gifts in Every Day Life; Ethics: Faith and Practice of Christianity in Daily Life; Human Sexuality and Sexual Orientation; and Comfortable in Our Own Skin, dealing with issues of self-image and being created in God's image. -- -- --
Information about Multicultural Ministries is at http://www.ELCA.org/multicultural/ on the ELCA Web site.
For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org http://www.elca.org/news ELCA News Blog: http://www.elca.org/news/blog