Lutherans grappling with future
It’s a challenge to any church that continues to lose its members: How do you change with the times while remaining faithful to your core values?
Like other mainline Protestant denominations, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America has watched its membership dwindle in recent years. The church still has nearly 5 million baptized members nationwide, but that total has decreased by about 1 to 2 percent every year. Other ELCA statistics are equally alarming: Only 17 percent of the church’s 10,667 congregations are experiencing any growth; ELCA members are at least 10 years older than the average age of the U.S. population; only 3 percent of its members are people of color.
“If those trends continue, we will be a dying church,” said Bishop Mark S. Hanson, ELCA’s presiding bishop.
Hanson and many others are taking action to turn the tide.
During an ELCA synod assembly this weekend in Spokane, more than 400 pastors and lay members of the church have gathered to discuss the problem of shrinking membership and how the church can renew its mission of evangelism. Today and early Sunday, they will explore a number of topics – from what draws people to church and what makes them feel welcome, to worship music and ways to help strengthen members’ relationship with Jesus and their fellow Lutherans.
“At the core of our identity is the good news of Jesus Christ that we not only believe, but invite others into,” said Hanson, who traveled from Chicago to attend this gathering of people from Eastern Washington, Idaho and Wyoming.
For Hanson, being evangelical doesn’t mean preaching and forcing one’s belief on others. Instead, “it’s inviting our friends along on a journey, one with many questions not just answers. It’s inviting people into a quest for the meaning and purpose of life.”
Lutherans have been stereotyped as the shy residents of the fictional town of Lake Wobegon from Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” Hanson said. But rather than keeping their faith quiet, he wishes they would become “bold witnesses to the good news of God’s love.”
“I am convinced that membership will continue to decline until we take seriously that being an evangelist is the vocation of all the baptized,” Hanson wrote for The Lutheran magazine.
Membership locally has mirrored the national trend, said Bishop Martin Wells, head of the Eastern Washington-Idaho Synod, which has 36,000 members at 108 congregations.
The decrease in membership is due largely to cultural trends, Wells said. No longer are children expected to attend church with their parents every Sunday, he said. Traditional ethnic ties are less meaningful, hurting churches founded by immigrants from Norway, Sweden or Germany. As people abandon towns for cities, smaller congregations in rural areas suffer from loss. Just recently, the Lutheran church in Elmira, Wash., had no choice but to close its doors. Other area ELCA congregations have started efforts at consolidation.
“We’re in a transitional time right now, moving from one kind of church to the kind of church we will be,” Wells said.
How that future church will look remains unclear. Some people don’t like the idea of a mega-church with thousands of members, he said, but they also can’t cling to the intimacy of a church with fewer than 100 members.
One model that has proved successful in ELCA’s Eastern Washington-Idaho Synod is that of a medium-size church of about 400 members with two or three pastors. Two area churches have flourished in recent years – St. Mark on the South Hill and Prince of Peace in northwest Spokane.
Appealing to a wider, more diverse population also requires changes, including music and worship services offered by the churches, according to Wells.
“We need to become clearer and creative in our use of language,” Wells said, addressing that many no longer have “basic biblical literacy” since fewer children are required to attend Sunday services with their parents and grandparents.
Instead of using words like “sanctification” and “liturgy,” pastors must address people’s questions with a different vocabulary.
“We have to re-articulate the faith for people who haven’t heard it,” Wells said. “Our mission field is not overseas, it’s in the middle of our town.”
Lutherans must allow these changes to happen while simultaneously hanging on to the core values of their faith, Hanson said. That’s happening in Africa, where there are more than 1 million new Lutherans, he said.
During a recent trip to Tanzania, he attended a church service with so much liveliness and hand-waving that it would’ve shocked most Lutherans in the United States.
Later in the service, the African bishop asked the congregation about their progress addressing AIDS and HIV; their involvement in the schools; and the reforestation projects, since being a good Christian requires taking care of the Earth.
“We have to be a church that matters, a church that makes a difference in the world,” Hanson said. “Church is God’s instrument for working in the world, not a refuge from an evil world.”