ELCA Division Explores the Future of the Church in Society

LISLE, Ill. (ELCA) -- To erase hunger from the face of the earth and to draw clear connections between the Christian gospel and justice are some of the goals Lutherans brought to a strategic planning session here Jan. 22-24. Staff of the Division for Church in Society (DCS) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) hosted a "Future Search" conference to help the division know where to focus its attention in the near future.
The "Future Search" planning process began with a focus on the past. Each of the 64 participants developed a time line of the past five decades, first of personal experiences and then of global events.
Sitting in unassigned groups of eight, the participants combined their data into a broader time line. Then one person from each group entered that information on a time line that covered half of a conference room wall.
Herbert A. Marlowe Jr., professional facilitator, Analytica, Newberry, Fla.; Kathryn A. Sime, evaluation analyst, ELCA Department for Research and Evaluation, Chicago; the Rev. Leslie F. Weber Jr., associate executive director, ELCA DCS; and Suzanne Wise, executive director, Family Service Centers, Clearwater, Fla., facilitated the conference.
Wise asked the group what it was like to develop such a time line. Many said it was difficult to remember all the details of the past, but working together made it possible to fill in the blanks.
One participant noted that the time line covered events from detonating an atomic bomb over Japan to the birth of grandchildren, but there were few references to the church. We tend to talk about history as though the church was not there, but we are.
In the conference room there were eight tables -- one for each of the division s stakeholder groups: administrative staff, churchwide units, congregations and synods, executive staff, governance, partners, and service and grant recipients, other entities. Generally, eight representatives of each group sat at a table.
What surprised the Rev. Charles S. Miller, executive director of the ELCA DCS, was how quickly the discussion moved beyond stakeholder labels and collapsed into what is our common interest and what is the common good. In his closing remarks, he told the group, I take that as encouraging.
"The broad involvement of stakeholders indicates that a churchwide unit is trying to listen," said Weber. "Stakeholder groups want to help, because it is important to all of us. There wasn't an anti-institutional bias that often comes through."
In their stakeholder groups, participants were asked to focus on the present. They tried to identify all the trends, issues, events and concerns that affect DCS. Then they sorted the issues into four categories: economic, institutional, program or demographic issues.
Economic issues included access to health care, access to technology and the widening gap between rich and poor people. Institutional issues included the church s relationship with government, a growing anti-institutional bias and the need for organizations to build alliances.
Program issues included the environment, violence and criminal justice, hunger, poverty and the educational system. Demographic issues included the aging of the church, diverse family structures, the shifting sizes of ethnic groups in the United States and gay/lesbian concerns.
Participants then discussed impact on the future, especially for DCS, from the perspectives of the various stakeholder groups. Marlowe asked them then to look at an ideal future for DCS.
Marlowe led the group through zero-based visioning -- to pretend that the division did not exist and that they were initiating the church's work in society. What are the structures through which to work? What are the tasks? What are the differences we are trying to make? For whom are we trying to make them? he asked.
The group developed 71 indicators for DCS to address. Facilitators sorted the indicators into nine focus areas: economic equity, ecumenical alliances, education, environment, hunger, media, prisons, social action/gospel and social justice.
One of the most difficult tasks of any organization is to narrow the number of its objectives to a manageable few, said Marlowe. An organization that tries to do everything does nothing well, he said. Everything we do is good.
All 71 indicators were written on large sheets of paper which covered the walls of an adjacent room. Each participant walked through that room and voted by putting a mark next to 10 goals she or he thought were of highest priority for the division to address.
Marlowe then announced seven objectives that received the most votes: + Reduce the number of hungry people; + Increase ELCA members awareness of connections between the gospel and social action; + Obtain significant funding for prophetic, justice and church in society ministries; + Increase the number of congregations and individuals who identify themselves as being committed to social justice; + Increase the availability of alternatives to incarceration; + Reduce the number of people living in poverty, and increase the number of people who are employed; and + Reduce amounts of greenhouse gases.
A final element of the "zero-based visioning" was to list the mistakes that the new organization should avoid. Participants came up with 42 mistakes which the facilitators grouped and restated in the positive as eight principles for DCS: + Build God's agenda and not merely our own; + Listen to the people directly affected; + Use language in publications that a person unfamiliar with the institution can understand; + Stay connected to issues of faith; + Limit the number of issues you take on; + Be clear about identity and mission; + Respect and treat as equals the people you serve; and + Allow the structure to change as needs change.
"Seven of the eight stakeholder groups said DCS should address congregations as an audience. The style of engagement varied somewhat. Three groups suggested a more passive approach -- education, while four suggested a more active approach -- advocacy, facilitation, engagement," said Weber.
"The objectives and tasks will need refining, but there is a great deal of consensus on these," he said. "While the vision is not finished and will require work by staff and board and perhaps a focus group, we have the primary audience that we should focus on, objectives for our work and tasks to support these, and operating principles."
Each day of the conference began with devotions or a worship service. We are millennial straddlers -- who stand with our past in the second millennium and our futures, for as long as they may be, in the third, said the Rev. Michael Cooper-White, director of the ELCA s Department for Synodical Relations, in Sunday s sermon.
This world, in its present form, is passing away, he said. It is passing away into and unto a loving, saving God who awaits us there and prepares to welcome each of us by name.
As a closing exercise of the conference, Marlowe asked participants to state the one thing he or she learned or wanted to get across before leaving.
Action without reflection on God s Word does not lead to justice, said Tony Aguilar, assistant to the bishop, ELCA Metropolitan New York Synod, New York.
Eliminating world hunger is an attainable goal, said the Rev. David M. Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, Silver Spring, Md. He said it is possible to cut the number of the world s hungry people in half in five years.
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