Lutherans Discuss Commitment to be "In the City for Good"

LUTHERANS DISCUSS COMMITMENT TO BE "IN THE CITY FOR GOOD"
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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