wfn.org | Lutherans Discuss Commitment to be "In the City for Good"

[ELCANEWS@ELCASCO.ELCA.ORG]

ELCA NEWS SERVICE

 August 16, 1997

  LUTHERANS DISCUSS COMMITMENT TO BE "IN THE CITY FOR GOOD"
  97-CA-10-RF

     PHILADELPHIA (ELCA) -- Setting a strategy for the Evangelical
  Lutheran Church in America's ministry in urban areas might be, in the
  view of at least one voting member, "the most important thing we do" at
  the ELCA's fifth biennial Churchwide Assembly.  The assembly meets here
  Aug. 14-20.
     "If we don't have a presence in the cities, we're not going to
  have a church," John Gruber, a voting member from Milwaukee told one of
  three open hearings on the strategy document held Friday, Aug. 16.
     "In the City for Good," produced by the Urban Initiative Team of
  the ELCA's Division for Outreach, asks the assembly to declare 1998-2008
  a decade of emphasis on urban ministry and to commit at least $5 million
  over that period to help urban congregations adapt to and transform
  their neighborhoods.
     "We're selling a vision: that God is in the business of
  transforming lives and communities, and our work is part of that," said
  the Rev. Ruben Duran of Chicago, a member of the Urban Initiative Team.
     "The vision is a transformative vision that happens in three
  dimensions   transformations of lives, communities and ministries in
  congregations," said the Rev. Jerrett L. Hansen of Baltimore, leader of
  the team.
     Asked to define "successful" urban ministries, the Rev. Susan
  Ericsson of Philadelphia, a team member, said that success is not a
  model but a spirit in which people are enlivened by worship and study
  and sent out to make communities safe, healthy and economically viable.
  "A church where people drive in on Sunday, have church, and drive away
  for the next six days isn't a church," Ericsson said.
     "The foundation is context, context, context," Hansen said.  "You
  have to understand who you are ministering to and make what you are
  doing fit the context."
     The document notes that "urban ministry" applies to more than just
  the nation's inner cities. "'City' is geography. 'Urban' is a set of
  dynamics that can be found throughout our culture," Hansen said.  The
  dynamics include "the changing racial makeup of communities, the
  changing ability of people to find jobs and cope with underemployment,
  and the growing distance between haves and have-nots," Hansen said.
     In his address to the assembly earlier in the day, ELCA Presiding
  Bishop H. George Anderson noted that "congregations in rural areas and
  urban settings often discover that they are the only institutions left
  in local situations.  The bank's gone, the store's gone, the school's
  gone   but the church is still there."
     "This unique position," he said, "offers the possibility of
  identify with the poor and dispossessed in a way that our former
  privileged position did not."  The church is "genetically engineered to
  thrive in adversity and tribulation," he said.
     "Why are you asking for $500,000 (a year)?" asked the Rev. Robert
  Gant from the Detroit area.  "Why not $2.5 million?"  While urban needs
  are certainly greater, Hansen said, that amount "seemed achievable now"
  to the team and the church council.   The team envisions the funds
  to be "seed money" that might leverage other grants or contributions,
  said the Rev. Warren Sorteberg, ELCA executive for Congregation Outreach
  Services and staff advisor to the team.
     Earlene Reeder of Detroit asked how the initiative would help
  empower "pew sitters" left behind in churches abandoned by "white
  flight" from citites.
     "We envision some of the funds to go for preparing urban leaders,"
  said team member the Rev. James L. Sims, Jr., Oakland, Calif.   "We need
  to better identify those who will be leaders, pastors and lay
  ministers."  The document calls for development of workshops and "Bible
  schools" to train lay leaders.
     Asked about links with the ELCA's multicultural strategy, Hansen
  noted that they should be inseparable and based on the local community.
  For example, "if you're in Los Angeles," he said, "an urban strategy
  would be a Latino strategy."
     Extensive discussion probed the difficulties often faced by urban
  congregations struggling with the changing racial and economic makeup of
  their neighborhoods.  The Rev. Kenneth Olsen, bishop of the ELCA
  Metropolitan Chicago Synod, expressed concern about congregations that
  "prefer to maintain chaplaincies than set higher standards of mission."
     "It's a faith issue," Olsen said.  "If you ask some congregations
  suffering from a lack of mission and ask if they're willing to give up
  their edifice complex, the answer is often 'Not in our lifetime.'"
  Olsen noted that bishops can only try to persuade congregations to
  change.  "We're presbyters, not bishops, and we won't have the power (to
  effectively address such situations) under our ecclesiology."
     "What we're not about is supporting buildings or a pastor's job
  we're about transforming lives," Ericsson said.  "The goal of ministry
  is not having a full-time pastor but bringing people into relationship
  with Jesus Christ.  There are congregations that are not going to
  change, no matter what.  But this will be good news in a lot of
  congregations saddled with a too-big building and inherited expectations
  of how to maintain it.  In a lot of congregations all that is needed is
  permission not to do it that way anymore," she said.
     Several voting members asked if the team had included
  representatives of the unchurched and of other denominations among the
  urban pastors, bishops, seminary faculty and students and lay leaders
  with whom they consulted in developing the document. " Is the church
  willing to say that we don't know what the heck we're doing, and ask
  people who are doing it?" asked the Rev. Cedric Gibb of Orangeburg, S.C.
     The team listened to urban experts from many denominations, and
  "listening to the unchurched is a high priority" in the process, Hansen
  said.
      "As we prepare pastors we find our best ecumenical partners are
  those with whom we have not traditionally worked, African Methodist
  Episcopal and Pentecostals from whom we have walled ourselves off," said
  the Rev. Philip Krey, interim dean at the Lutheran Theological Seminary
  at Philadelphia and pastor of a small urban congregation. "It's a new
  day.  We can critique theology, and work together.  Sometimes they take
  our empty buildings and fill them within a year."
     The document points out a number of "practices that do not serve
  Christ well," including a lack of attention to realities of racism and
  white flight, attention to buildings instead of mission, and supporting
  what the Rev. Fred Lee of Plymouth, Minn., called the "affliction" of
  congregationalism over cooperative work.
     "In the City for Good" also stresses Lutherans' gifts for the
  city, including the need for a message of grace in areas where hope is
  in short supply and Lutherans' deep roots in urban areas.  In
  Philadelphia, for example, Lutherans have been providing both worship
  and social services for more than 300 years.
      "The good news is that we don't have to make a decision to get
  into the city. We're already there," Hansen said.

For information contact:

Ann Hafften, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://www.elca.org/co/news/current.html