can see possible emerging answers to the question: do denominations still matter?


Networked across time The history and long-term theologi- cal commitments of a denomination are of primary importance. “A group working across time and generations can accomplish more than a group working for one season,” Stetzer said. In the recent past we have seen denominations, spurred by the church growth movement, discard older traditions for newer methodologies, sometimes at the expense of cutting ourselves off from a rich legacy of faith. It was believed for a time that only new methods could reach the next generation. Stetzer said, “A generation later,


emerging leaders are yearning for a sense of rootedness. In an age of frag- mented social identities, connecting with the past has become synonymous with finding purpose and meaning.” What the baby boomers untied from the mooring of traditions and heritage, emergent leaders today are trying to reconnect for a sense of leg- acy and communal identity. Denomi- nations carry history, a shared story and journey, and need to do a better job of conveying and evoking this in new ways to a generation and culture hungry for meaning and rootedness. One such “emergent ministry” exists in Portland, Ore. Called “The Leaven Project,” it is an outreach to urban young adults who aren’t part of any religious institution (page 21). A denomination that matters is involved in starting and connecting more than 20 of these emergent communities, linking postmodern spiritual seekers across time and space. We are also linked to the immi- grant stories of our churches and families. Immigration is the big mis- sion issue for our time and we have failed to engage it together around our


Now denominations are regarded as clunky and irrelevant to the emerging forms of mission needed to address this postmodern, flat world of globalization, mass social networking on the Internet, relative truth, and suspicion of authority, texts or a uniting narrative.


Lutheran immigrant narrative—our grandparents—and the narrative of Scripture. Ignoring our rich traditions, we instead engage one another in red and blue state conflict, a conversation fueled by fear and disagreements over this or that policy.


When congregations open up to one another and the community around them out of shared under- standings of our immigrant story and guided by Grandfather Abraham and Grandmother Sarah, economic migrants all, we catch a renewed sense of mission. A denomination that has a vibrant network—Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and a large family of social ministry organizations; congre- gations that are reaching out to their communities and planting new minis- tries that receive the gifts of our immi- grant neighbors; bishops and other advocate leaders willing to speak with immigrant leaders, truth to power in state capitals and Washington, D.C.,


with ecumenical partners—is indeed a denomination that still matters.


Confessional consensus Stetzer believes the witness of Scrip- ture and shared theological and con- fessional grounding of a denomination strengthens its ability to unite diverse partners around the mission that flows out of these central, holy things. We “go public from the center,” he said. This is the most powerful part of


his argument: “A denomination must maintain a strong confessional con- sensus in order to accomplish its God- given mission … confessional state- ments help to clarify a movement’s understanding of its mission, and, more importantly, the God who has called it to that mission.” The ELCA has a strong confes- sional and scriptural base to guide and propel its mission. Reading the Bible together opens up new vistas of mis- sional imagination for us. The Gospel of Luke, in the way


February 2011 23


DESIGNPICS


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