ELCA NEWS SERVICE
August 6, 2007
ELCA Assembly Opens with Worship 07-CWA-002-LL*
CHICAGO (ELCA) - The Rev. Mark S. Hanson, ELCA presiding bishop, welcomed the participants of the 2007 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Aug. 6 with a sermon at the opening worship. Hanson's message was focused on the difference between a "sent" and "settled" church.
The churchwide assembly, the chief legislative authority of the ELCA, is meeting here Aug. 6 to 11 at Navy Pier's Festival Hall. About 2,000 people are participating, including 1,071 ELCA voting members. The theme for the biennial assembly is "Living in God's Amazing Grace: Thanks be to God!"
"I want to share with you the question that has most preoccupied me as we have prepared for this assembly. It is this: will we gather at Navy Pier for the 10th churchwide assembly of the ELCA out of our longing to be a settled church or out of our conviction that we are a sent church?" said Hanson.
"Sometimes I wonder even worry that for far too many of us ELCA stands for 'Expectations Low. Climbing Anxiety'," said Hanson during his sermon. "A church body with low expectations for what the Holy Spirit is doing and can do in our lives and through our ministries. A church with climbing anxieties that our differences-- especially over human sexuality-- inevitably will lead to divisions. A church body that views declining membership as a prelude to almost certain demise. Such a church body will be tempted to become a settled church."
"Members of a settled church may find it acceptable that 30 percent of the members are in worship weekly given all the competing demands on our harried and hurried lives. Members of a sent church are prayerfully discerning the variety of spiritual gifts given to each of the baptized. Shaped by living memory of the past, they are giving generously and constantly asking how God's money might serve God's mission for the sake of the world," he said.
"As a sent, scattered people, we will be gathered each day around the means of grace [this week], speaking the truth that it has not gone as well as God desires, for we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves," said Hanson.
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* Lauren A. Lamb is a senior public relations and speech communication major at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. This summer she is an intern with the ELCA News Service.
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