Churchwide Assembly 2022

I have been following (and I use that word loosely) various updates (mainly in the form of tweets and Facebook posts) from the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly.  Watching the national form of this flavor of the Lutheran church conduct its business from a distance is an interesting exercise.  

The actual business is interesting, but so are the various reactions and then reactions to the reactions.  It's clear that the church has so many ways to break a human heart.  I could make that argument about any institution.  I could go even further and say that any person or institution or group can break our hearts in a number of ways, and in a way, it's a good thing.  It means we care.

Back to the ELCA:  I see a church that's trying to do the right thing, to move in life-giving directions, to correct what's gone wrong with the trajectory.  Some will grumble about how long these processes take, and I understand these grumblings.  I can also see that mistakes could be made if we moved too quickly.  It's a tricky needle to thread.

There are questions that I can't answer, questions about whether or not we have too much top down authority.  There are ways that I wish the corporate church would empower local congregations and individuals, but I don't have many expectations that way.  I've seen some react in horror that the national church behaves like a corporation, but in fact, it is more like a corporation than a congregation, and as such, it has a different set of priorities.

I have seen national gatherings of other denominations rip themselves to shreds over various questions, and I'm grateful that the ELCA isn't doing that this year.  I hear the people who would say that we're avoiding the hard questions, so it's not a good thing.  But I don't think so.  We're considering the questions in our traditionally slow and deliberate way.

I do think that the next Churchwide Assembly could be explosive, once we've had a chance to consider these issues.  And we'll be electing a bishop.  But then again, we'll have had time to consider these issues, to argue, to hash out differences.  Maybe it won't be explosive.

It's also sobering to think about how the world might be very different in 3 years. We may look back and shake our heads at what we thought was important at past Churchwide Assemblies.