Posted on 04/26/2010 2:16:51 PM PDT by SmithL
The congregation at Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church voted 49-12 on April 18 to part ways with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The vote resulted in Pastor Mary Sanders leaving the Galt church because of her desire to remain with the ELCA. The issue came to a head when the ELCA national convention voted on Aug. 21 to allow gays in committed relationships to be pastors and deacons. However, no church would be forced to accept a gay religious leader. Convention delegates, in their vote last year, didn't vote to allow gay marriage.
Shepherd of the Valley became the second local Lutheran church to opt out of the ELCA. Pending a final vote on June 13, Emanuel Lutheran Church in Lodi, known as a theologically conservative church, stands to leave the organization as well. Emanuel's congregation voted 162-32 on Feb. 21 to leave the ELCA, though organizational bylaws require a final vote in June, said Alice Reimche, president of Emanuel's church council.
Sandy Lindquist, president of Shepherd of the Valley's church council, said after Sunday's service that she couldn't discuss that day why the congregation voted to leave ELCA. The congregation, meeting without Sanders, discussed which organization the Galt church might affiliate with, along with a possible severance package for the departing pastor.
"She is an excellent pastor," church member Michael Greer said after Sunday's service. "She was very involved in the community, which speaks very well for our church."
Sanders is well known in Galt and converses regularly with pastors in the community. She has served as a crisis and grief counselor on a rotating basis with other pastors for crime victims and grieving families in Galt.
"It was a very difficult decision for everyone," said Colleen Hurley, who offered a prayer for Sanders during the service. "We will miss Mary very much."
Sanders said she chose to remain in the ELCA and therefore leave Shepherd of the Valley because God led her that way.
"I believe the Holy Spirit was at work in the discussions which took place last year and in the years previous," Sanders wrote in an e-mail Sunday. "I believe the spirit led the results of the vote. I also am convinced there is room in the body of Christ and the ELCA for a variety of understandings of Holy Scripture and questions about it. I am sorry that so many feel otherwise."
Mattie Shepherd, who said she isn't a church member but attends services regularly at Shepherd of the Valley, said she doesn't agree with her congregation's decision.
Has it occurred to you that both could be true? I have no reason to doubt a female single ‘pastor’ in ELCA when she says she believes the pro-gay vote ELCA took was “Spirit-led”.
Follow the money.
Did you hear her explanation? She agrees with the pro-gay vote. She said she thinks God made the vote turn out that way.
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I agree with her to an extent. I believe God did “allow” the vote to turn out that way, but not for reasons the supporters may think. It’s been my experience over the years that the LORD often allows these sort of things to happen to help his servants see what’s going on and to allow us to make the proper decisions for our lives. As in my case, I left the ELCA and now attend a biblically sound Wisconsin Synod church.
Who gets a severance package when they quit?
Mattie Shepherd, who said she isn't a church member
The ELCA died when they allowed women to become pastors.
Perhaps they couldn't find one that was critical of the vote.
And what is the ‘orientation’ of this particular priestess, I wonder...
Call me olf fashioned, but I believe the role of the Pastor according to THE BIBLE is supposed to be filled by a man anyway.
It is interesting to note that every denomination that has allowed female Pastors has gone on to full blown liberalism. It seems to always be the first step to apostasy. Next comes the "social Gospel", then comes the acceptance of the sin of homosexuality and finally the denial of Christ being the exclusive path to salvation. Once a Church starts conforming to the world to gain social acceptance it's end is inevitable.
Madam Pastor apparently wasn’t too “popular”.
Pr Sanders needs a sabbatical, during which she can contemplate, and hopefully discern, the difference between the Holy Spirit and the Zeitgeist.
“I also am convinced there is room in the body of Christ and the ELCA for a variety of understandings of Holy Scripture and questions about it. I am sorry that so many feel otherwise.”
This is what happens when a church no longer believes that the Scriptures teach THE truth, but that everyone is free to choose what is true for himself. The ELCA disregarded the prohibition against women pastors in Scriptures, so why should any of them be upset over the acceptance of practicing homosexuality? Once someone determines that they can pick and choose what they want and leave the rest, unity become impossible.
You do not make doctrine on whether or not you like someone: male, female, heterosexual or homosexual. You make it on objective principles. There is nothing more objective than, “God said.”
Problem two, women serving as council leaders in a church that has no Board of Elders.
But really, where did “God say” women cannot be pastors?
*Paul* seemed to say it, but he also seemed to say it’s better not to marry; just “OK”. So why are we allowing pastors to marry if they are purveyors of God’s Word?
I sympathize with the traditional view, if only because women doing certain public services can be very impractical - when they get pregnant. But otherwise, I don’t know why.
Do you mean, as opposed to eunuchs? Do you KNOW that all the disciples were “entire”, as horse people say? I guess you don’t mean “uncircumcised”, because Jews were supposed to be circumcised, which isn’t intact in that sense.
Honestly, I don’t remember about “intact”.
As for Paul’s writings - again, that’s Paul, not God. And at the same time, women are written in that very section of the Bible as teaching their local groups. How does all this jibe?
St. Paul is an apostle, and his writings are considered to be divinely inspired, God-breathed. He bases his teachings upon the order of creation as found in Genesis.
Priests had to be “whole,” which is associated with holiness. There was a controversy in the early church over Origin in which he was denied ordination because he had castrated himself. This was in keeping with the idea that the successors or the Apostles had to be whole males.
Where in the Bible are women teaching their local groups? Maybe I do not understand what you mean by “local groups.” Perhaps you can give me an example from the Scriptures?
I think I mistook what I remembered of women in early church (in Scripture). I thought there was something that said this and that woman were teaching, but maybe not. I think it was just that they were “helping” with the church in 1 way or other. 1 was a “deaconess”.
I was unaware of this “wholeness” for Christian men (much of Jewish rules went away, remember), and particularly this story of Paul castrating himself. So was he never “ordained” after all, or did they make an exception? In any case, apparently it didn’t matter in the big scheme of things.
Paul was not castrated, Origin castrated himself. He took St. Paul’s teaching about being a eunuch for the Lord literally. Origin was criticized for teaching the clergy, so he decided to become a priest, but because he was a eunuch, he was prohibited from being ordained; however, he found a bishop that did ordain him, and all hades broke loose. Three hundred years after his death, St. Cyril of Alexandria had Origin declared a heretic. Origin had a most unusual history.
In the Roman Catholic Church, the priesthood is connected with the priesthood of the Old Testament. As a Lutheran, we have a different understanding of the priesthood, and we do not see the pastoral office as a continuation of the Old Testament priesthood, but of the apostolic succession of doctrine. We do; however, have a much higher view of the Holy Ministry than you would find in most Protestant denominations.
Women were important in Jesus’ ministry and during the time of the apostles. There is indication from Paul’s writings that widows were to teaching the younger women how to be good wives and mothers. It is from this that deaconess or nuns probably developed in the later centuries.
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