An email message to rostered leaders from Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson

"Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable ... do the work of an evangelist ... " (2 Timothy 4:2a, 5b)

"Bishop Hanson, what is your number one priority for the ELCA?" The question was addressed to me recently with great clarity and a desire for specificity. My answer? That we be an evangelizing church. The questioner nodded with what I took to be a gesture of agreement and walked away.

I am curious how my questioner would have responded to his own question. And I am interested in your response.

I wish we could have had further conversation, because the question is both important and urgent. The urgency was brought home again this week by the, Chicago Tribune headline that read, "Many in U.S. leave their churches." Research by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life documents a decrease in U.S. adults who identify themselves as Catholic or Protestant and an increase -- doubling to 16 percent -- in those who are not affiliated with a religion.

I have growing commitment to, and appreciation for, the fact that we boldly declare that we are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. With that name it's tempting to distinguish ourselves from "those other evangelicals" but I prefer to make a consistently clear and constructive affirmation of what it does mean that we are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

We are a church body centered in the good news that we are saved by God's grace through faith for Jesus' sake.

The Holy Spirit is at work through the proclamation of that evangel and lives are changed -- strangers are welcomed, sins are forgiven, doubt gives way to faith, despair turns to hope, the people living in poverty hear good news, the oppressed are set free.

The church is "the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is proclaimed in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel" (AC VII).

In Christ we are set free and sent into the world to bear witness in word and deed to the evangel -- serving our neighbor, seeking the common good, striving for justice and peace in all the earth. Being evangelicals in a Lutheran key permeates the life and work of this church.

We read and interpret the Bible evangelically -- listening for "what urges Christ" (was Christum treibt).

We live evangelically -- forgiving as we have been forgiven, inviting people to new life in Christ, walking together the way of the cross.

We lead evangelically -- as servants of the Word, bearing Christ to our neighbor.

How are we doing as an evangelizing church? That is an important question to ponder as we seek to hold each other accountable.

The challenges of this moment in history can be discouraging, especially if we succumb to the great pressures on us. Rostered leaders serving congregations are expected to attract and hold members in an increasingly competitive and consumer-oriented religious market place. Many of you are serving congregations that have experienced significant losses, which often can lead to a nostalgic longing for an idealized past that depletes energies for ministry today. You face the challenge of supporting mission beyond the congregation when resources are diminishing or inadequate. We can lose ourselves in discouragement when we view ministry as if it were all about us.

Rather than wondering anxiously "how are we doing?" by ourselves, I invite you, as a Lenten discipline, to take a fresh and confident look at where we are by asking the question out of your daily baptismal renewal: "What is God doing with and among us?"

On the cross all of our self-absorbed attempts to "survive" or save ourselves were crucified. Through the gospel the Holy Spirit claims, gathers, and sends us into a new life as an evangelizing church for the sake of the world. The Holy Spirit is the source of our power, strength, and gifts as together we proclaim Christ and engage in God's mission for the life of the world. In this mission we follow the way of the cross, losing our lives for Christ's sake and for the sake of the gospel. A cruciform ministry with brokenness, vulnerability, and forgiveness at its center invites us together to seek to discern the mind of Christ and to live as an evangelizing people. As a result, an evangelizing church will be present where people are being persecuted for their faith, where the reality of poverty and violence diminishes abundant life, and where the creation groans in travail. An evangelizing church will be present, proclaiming Christ and bearing witness to all, including those who claim "no religion."

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is and will be an evangelizing church. I invite you to join me in embracing and celebrating this call with new energy and passion.

This is one of the finest, if not thefinest articulation of the Gospel that Presiding Bishop Hanson has ever made.

The message is archeived in a public-accesible section of the ELCA web site.

While I am a frequent critic of PBp Hanson's all too frequent press releases weighing in on all sorts of economic and foreign policy issues, here he has demonstrated an exercise of his most important roll: Shepherd to the Shepherds and Pastor of the chief Pastors of the Synods.

That said, the call to live a cruciform life might well be interpreted to be "advance damage control" for the pending release of the Draft Statement on Human Sexuality on March 12.

The question may seem simple but the answer is complex.

I'll begin by posting a quotation from Charles Porterfield Krauth--one that I've shared on FR several other times:

"But the practical result of this principle is one on which there is no need of speculating; it works in one unvarying way. When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three. It begins by asking toleration. Its friends say to the majority: You need not be afraid of us; we are few and weak; only let us alone; we shall not disturb the faith of others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions. Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ and any favoring of the truth, because it is truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is “ipso facto” non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the church. Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them. From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points. It puts men into position, not as at first in spite of their departure from the Church’s faith, but in consequence of it. Their recommendation is that they repudiate that faith, and position is given them to teach others to repudiate it, and make them skillful in combating it." (pp. 195-196)

From: “THE CONSERVATIVE REFORMATION AND ITS THEOLOGY as represented in the Augsburg Confession and in the history and literature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church” by Charles P. Krauth, D.D. (1871). [Note date]

The relentless drumbeat of the forces of revisionism and sexual hedonism has had the effect of eroding away the resolve of those committed to historic Biblical Christian sexual ethics. Many have simply grown exhausted in this struggle that they have little fight left

Some--like Fr. Richard John Newhaus and Fr. Leonard Klein--have grown so weary in the struggle that they have swum the Tiber. Others have swum the Bosporus. The ELCA has lost many of its best and brightest in the past decade.

The Lutheran World Federation is not parallel to the Anglican Communion. The options of "alternative pastoral oversite" now emerging in ECUSA/TEC do not exist for Lutherans.

So, the cliche about ending "not with a bang but with a wimper" seems applicable here. There is not likely to be a sudden, cataclysmic fracturing, but rather a small, steady, and relentless hemhorage of the finest congregations and best clergy simply drifting away.

Quite a betrayal of an opportunity to be evangelical.

"That said, the call to live a cruciform life might well be interpreted to be "advance damage control" for the pending release of the Draft Statement on Human Sexuality on March 12."

I am afraid you are spot on here. When I see my old friends from my former church, which is ELCA, and I mention how happy I am at my new church, which is LCMS, I see a wistful sadness in their eyes. I don't think it is because I am no longer in their congregation, but because they see what is happening around themselves and are experiencing a profound loss.

Of course, the "Feel-good" liberals of the congregation are strutting around in their pompus self-righteousness. That helps a lot, also.

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