Thursday, March 31, 2005

LCMS to ELCA - "Don't Go There!"

The link below is the LCMS response to the recent ELCA recommendations regarding Human Sexuality (read: Homosexuality) in the church.

You will recall that the ELCA study group recently recommended, in effect, the "local option" for congregations. In other words, "Let's not change the rules, let's just agree not to enforce them".

If adopted at this summer's ELCA churchwide convention, it would be an ominous (though not entirely surprising) step further away from God's truth for the ELCA.

The tone of the report from Rev. Kieschnick (and others) is slightly more collegial and "soft" than I would have used. But nonetheless, they do address the issues at hand and state clearly where we differ with the ELCA.

We will certainly watch these developments very closely.

Here's the link...

1 comment:

Preachrboy said...

Well, frankly, Andrew, the term "Evangelical" has (sadly) lost meaning, and changed meaning since the time of Luther.

In fact, I am more concerned about the term "Lutheran" today. As the ELCA goes, so is a Lutheran perceived in our country (at least by much of the media and the uninformed many).

Our congregation has seen quite an influx of disaffected ELCA members over the past few years, including one couple in their early 90s (!) who switched over because of the whole gay agenda. We are becoming a refugee congregation.

What is interesting, too, is that these people tend to be some of the most conservative and doctrinally-aware members we have - even more so than many life long LCMS types.