EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA CHURCH COUNCIL April 8-10, 2011
Total Giving and Mission Support by ELCA Congregations Per Baptized Member
$50 $100 $150 $200 $250 $300 $350 $400 $450 $500
$0
Exhibit F, Part 5a Page 5
Total Giving Mission Support
$481.95
$50.83 $8.97 Source: ELCA and Predecessor Annual Report Forms. Prepared by ELCA Research and Evaluation.
the church on the margins, and an American dream the church and its workforce painfully needs to die to, not aspire to?
Back in the neighborhood Some of us can remember when the local church was the primary hub or anchor of moral, ethnic, charitable or social community within a city block or cornfield by virtue of its Sunday morning worshipers and their offer- ings. That is no longer the case. At the holidays, Subaru donated $250 of a car purchase to a choice of charities to “share the love.” USA Network, using viewers’ favorite TV actors, did an amazing public service announcement on diversity with reach the church can only wish for. What is our purpose, for the community good, in holding down corners of real estate where our churches have been planted? For the last decade or so, congregations have been renting space to other groups to make ends meet, thinking this will buy them time until the church becomes self-sufficient again. The new economy asks us to rethink and
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repurpose this landlord-tenant rela- tionship. The new economy has us considering how, when we partner and share with community groups that also truly call our space home, facilities become a sacred, healing space for an entire neighborhood. When we share this home with another worshiping community (or two or three), we are multiplying ministry.
The new economy also has us considering calling community space home to worshiping communities, or calling our homes worshiping space for gathering communities, not tem- porarily but unapologetically and by design.
The new economy realizes the church is at large outside the stained- glass windows in and through everyday lives and work. It repri- oritizes our concern, time and other resources. As a church on the move we begin to see the temporary nature of the shelter of Christ’s body even as it is expressed in brick on Sunday mornings. We rejoice that Jesus “tents” among us as God in human form wherever that body goes.
$26.31 1965 1967 1969 1971 1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 4/5/2011
Where we have seen mostly scarcity in time and money resources in siloed communities of faith organizations, increasingly we find we can get a hand in coop- erative efforts with other congregations, other faiths, community part- ners or unchurched indi- viduals. Or we can just lend a hand—or five— to other’s projects. A connected, opti- mistic, creative, socially conscious generation of young adults at a crisis point in rethinking val- ues and making sense of what the economic melt-
down means for the rest of their lives might be attracted by the freedom of these openings in the walls. Millen- nials are and could increasingly be leaders in this church and culture that are being pulled into a new economy. While within the church we search for identity, purpose and meaning, the world calls out our vocation. This country is blessed with the gifts of a growing Latino community of neighbors. Last fall, 58 African immigrant children were baptized at Our Savior Lutheran/ Anyuak Faith Community in Austin, Minn. How are these gifts, among others in diverse and diversifying neighborhoods, fully engaged in our congregations for the flourishing of the world God loves? How does the church join in this diversity? A recent blog summed up an A Renewal Enterprise workshop on “post-missional” economy: “[W]e need our neighbor in order to under- stand our mission. Therefore the neighbor isn’t an object that needs to be conquered, but rather the means through which we discover who we are and what God is doing.”
Per Baptized Member
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