ELCA Church Council Welcomes New Members

The council — which serves as the ELCA churchwide organization’s board of directors and interim legislative authority between meetings of a churchwide assembly — took the following actions on three memorials referred to the council at the adjournment of the 2025 Churchwide Assembly:

• Directed Theological Discernment staff in the ELCA churchwide organization to review a request for a new social message on rural, remote communities and sovereign tribal nations, and to bring a recommendation to the ELCA Church Council, no later than its spring 2026 meeting, on what means should be authorized to address the questions involved.

The council received updates from its Executive Committee regarding:

• A timeline of the “immediate action on dismantling racism” acted on during the spring 2025 meeting to develop mutual accountability measures and compliance incentives across all expressions of the ELCA.

The council also received reports and approved items related to churchwide assembly and synod actions, whose subjects included: reconsideration of the ELCA’s social message on end-of-life decisions, remembrance of Indian boarding schools, advocacy for missing and murdered Indigenous women, restoration of funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development, public discourse about Palestine-Israel, and follow-up on the ELCA’s Middle East strategy.

• Conferred the honorary title of “presiding bishop emerita” to the Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton.

• Approved an issue paper on artificial intelligence.

• Elected at-large members to the Executive Committee.

• Received a debrief on the 2025 Churchwide Assembly and a preliminary report on the assembly voting member evaluation.

• Reports from church leaders, committees, the Conference of Bishops and churchwide units and teams.

• Education on gender and racial justice.