Message from Pastor Stanton for May 2023
ELCA Lutherans are spiritual descendants of reformers. From Martin Luther in the 1500’s calling for the church to stop selling indulgences, to our own grandparents calling for the ordination of women in the 1960s, our ancestors in faith have practiced ongoing discernment regarding how the fruit of God’s Spirit is feeding the Church for its work in the world today. In 2023, First Lutheran lives more fully into this reforming tradition by seeking to become a Reconciling in Christ congregation, for the sake of the world.
“On Sunday, May 21, First Lutheran will have one worship service at 9am.
Within that time of worship, we will call to order a congregational meeting that simply asks for all our voting members to support our welcome statement”
It’s been nearly ten years since First dug deep into questions surrounding same gender unions, then marriages. We used resources like “Journey Together Faithfully,” an ELCA Study on Sexuality that fostered conversation centered in scripture and tradition. By 2015, the congregation authorized its pastors to officiate same gender weddings, and by 2019 the Vision & Leadership Team was prepared to create a Reconciling in Christ task force who would lead a process for the congregation to consider becoming a Reconciling in Christ (RIC) church. That process required listening sessions, Bible studies and lots of face to face conversations that promised to be challenging, but fruitful. The shutdown, however, threw a wrench in the timeline of that process. Only by the fall of 2022 did the RIC team feel ready to present a welcome statement for the congregation to consider and recommend a special congregational meeting where the whole church could joyfully endorse that statement to be used on our website, in our announcement pages and as a guiding light for all our ministry teams in their work.
On Sunday, May 21, First Lutheran will have one joint worship service at 9am. Within that time of worship, we will call to order a congregational meeting that simply asks for all our voting members to support a welcome statement that says, “We Welcome All,” “We Build Community,” and “We Serve Our Neighbors.” Yes, it says more than that, but those three core values provide the primary categories for our welcome.
The idea, here, is for the members of First Lutheran to move beyond efforts at simply being ‘nice’ to whoever walks through the doors, or ‘tolerant’ of all sorts of people. Stories like the Good Samaritan call us to go out of our way to go the extra mile in caring for our neighbor. And stories like the Ethiopian eunuch being baptized by Philip at a roadside puddle call us to claim ALL people as our neighbors.
Welcoming, building community and serving neighbors is nothing new for First Lutheran. Generations of faithful Christians have done this kind of work from First for over 150 years. What is new is using these core values to guide us in our efforts to reconcile with people who have too often been left out, remained uncared for, or have been outright harmed.
The LGBTQIA+ community, people of color, people with handicaps and indigenous peoples are just some of the groups whom the church has at times actively judged as sinners, or questioned their worth as children of God. Being an RIC church will provide intentional opportunities to both confess past wrongs and live into a future that receives the gifts of people, communities and partnerships that we no longer want to ignore. In becoming an RIC church, we give up nothing. We seek to gain new friends, new siblings in Christ, and claim more of the gospel message for our church and extend that good news to our community.
Endorsing the Welcome Statement to become an RIC church is the end of a process, but the continuation of an ongoing identity at First Lutheran. We are indeed the spiritual descendants of reformers. In May of 2023, we continue that tradition. I pray our descendants are blessed by our reconciling works. May the mercy, love and peace of God be with us always.