ELCA Presiding Bishop, Secretary Announce Future Intentions

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), announced
he will be available for possible election to another six-year
term as presiding bishop. Hanson, who was elected presiding
bishop at the 2001 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, made the
announcement as part of his report to the ELCA Conference of
Bishops meeting here.
The Rev. Lowell G. Almen, ELCA secretary, told the
conference he will not be a nominee for another six-year term.
Almen is the only person who has served as ELCA secretary, a role
to which he was first elected in May 1987, seven months before
the ELCA was formed through a merger of three Lutheran church
bodies. He has been re-elected three times.
The ELCA Conference of Bishops is an advisory body of the
church, consisting of the ELCA's 65 synod bishops, presiding
bishop and secretary. It met here October 5-10.
The 2007 ELCA Churchwide Assembly will meet Aug. 6-12,
2007, at Navy Pier in downtown Chicago. That assembly will elect
both a presiding bishop and a secretary to terms through the 2013
Churchwide Assembly. With the ELCA vice president and treasurer,
the presiding bishop and secretary serve as officers of the
church.
Key responsibilities of the ELCA presiding bishop are:
serving as president and chief executive officer of the
corporation and overseeing staff, budget and overall
administration of the church; chairing the churchwide assembly;
preparing agendas for the assembly, ELCA Church Council and
Conference of Bishops; serving as chief ecumenical officer of the
ELCA; providing leadership and care for synod bishops, and
serving as preacher, teacher and administrator of the sacraments.
Key responsibilities of the ELCA secretary are: maintaining
official church records, minutes of meetings of the churchwide
assembly, Church Council, Conference of Bishops and other
meetings; receiving minutes for all meetings of boards and
committees of the churchwide organization; maintaining official
rosters of professional church leaders; preparing and researching
possible amendments for the ELCA Constitution, Bylaws and
Continuing Resolutions, as well as the Constitution for Synods
and Model Constitution for Congregations; interpreting the ELCA
Constitution; publishing official documents and policies of the
ELCA and other informational and statistical material; receiving
annual congregational reports; coordinating use of legal
services; maintaining the church's archives; arranging and
managing meetings of the churchwide assembly and Church Council;
and providing library and reference services for the churchwide
office.

Hanson reflects on elections process
In 2007 there will be at least 25 elections for synod
bishops, and at least 11 will be for new bishops, Hanson said.
Next year many current bishops are retiring or moving on to other
possible calls in the church. Like his wife, Ione, and him,
Hanson said he knows many current bishops have been thinking
about their future plans.
"We have been praying about this call," Hanson said. "We
have been talking about its joys and it challenges for us
personally and for us as a family. I think you know how much I
feel called to this office, how challenging this office is and
what joy I find in this office."
Hanson, 59, said he believes he has "the best call" in the
church because he gets to see so many of its ministries at work.
"If it's good to the spirit and the will of the voting
members of the 2007 Churchwide Assembly, I would be available to
continue to serve in this office for another term," Hanson said.
His comments were greeted with applause from the conference,
churchwide staff and guests who were present.
Before he was elected presiding bishop, Hanson was bishop of
the ELCA Saint Paul (Minn.) Area Synod. He had just been re-
elected to that role a few months before the 2001 Churchwide
Assembly.
The re-election process in the synod was a "low point" of
his ministry, he told the bishops. That process was troubling
because of how "rancorous it became, how divisive it became, how
politicized it became," he said.
"I would pray that these next months not be that for this
church," he said. "I don't view that I have just declared myself
a candidate for re-election. I have said, 'I'm a pastor that has
a call from this church to serve in this office, and now I invite
the church to be together a call committee -- praying, discerning
the context of mission, discerning together the gifts this church
needs in whoever serves in this office.'"
The 2007 Churchwide Assembly should think of itself as a
call committee when it considers who should serve as the ELCA's
presiding bishop, he said.
"I said when I was elected, 'I don't view it as an election
won but as a call received.' And I trust that the work of the
Spirit will be in this call process in the coming months," he
concluded.

Almen notes historic experiences, gives thanks
Almen, 65, said he will mark his 40th anniversary as an
ordained Lutheran pastor in June 2007.
"As of next June, I will have served for more than half of
my ministry as a Lutheran pastor under call as secretary of this
church," he told the conference. "This has been the type of
pastoral ministry that I could never have imagined four decades
ago in my senior year at Luther Theological Seminary in St. Paul
(Minn)."
Almen's current term as ELCA secretary ends on Oct. 31,
2007, at which time he will have served more than 20 years as
secretary, he said. At that point, it will be time to pass his
responsibilities to a successor, Almen said.
"By the grace of God I will complete this term with abiding
gratitude for the privilege of serving throughout this historic
era in the cause of greater Lutheran unity," he said. To be part
of this chapter of U.S. Lutheran history has been "an unbounded
blessing," Almen said.
"I have had a first-row seat for many of the major events in
the ELCA and its predecessor churches in the final quarter of the
20th century and the early years of this century. In several
instances I have experienced more than a close view. I have been
on the platform both figuratively and at times actually
contributing to the shaping of those significant developments,"
he said.
Almen expressed appreciation for his wife Sally, son Paul
and daughter Cassandra; for the ELCA's congregations, synods, the
ELCA Church Council, Conference of Bishops, presiding bishops,
treasurers, vice presidents, churchwide staff and colleagues in
the ELCA Office of the Secretary.
He noted special interests such as military chaplaincy,
synod staff, ecumenism, full-communion relationships, meeting
patriarchs, popes and many other church leaders, ecumenical
organizations, witnessing first-hand the birth of the Republic of
Namibia, and relief and development efforts.
He cited as a "continuing challenge" the ELCA's relationship
with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, saying he's tried to
keep "as many doors and windows open" as possible. "The task has
not been easy, and at times the prospects have seemed terribly
discouraging," he said. "I worry that too many ELCA folk in the
future will simply grow tired in those efforts. I know the
internal difficulties of the LCMS are complex ones. Yet I remain
convinced that, for the sake of clear Lutheran witness in this
land, the two church bodies need to work together in as many ways
as possible now and in the years to come."
Almen reported some regrets: that he has not been able to
speak eloquently enough about the "grand vision" of the ELCA's
life together as articulated in its governing documents; that
some leaders and members haven't undertaken or experienced the
interdependence and shared ministry of the ELCA; and that he may
no