News
By the staff of The Lutheran, ELCA News Service and Religion News Service
Church Council mulls mission & funding P
residing Bishop Mark S. Hanson told the ELCA Church Council at its April 13-15 meeting in Chi-
cago that the church launched more than 60 new congregations in 2011. More than half were in “diverse, multiethnic, multilingual communi- ties and communities in deep pov- erty,” he said.
Beyond those new starts, the 2011
Churchwide Assembly invited every ELCA congregation to “deepen [its] commitment to engagement in mis- sion” and “proclaim the gospel more clearly,” Hanson said. That’s an invi- tation to “more creatively and boldly proclaim the risen Christ and engage in the lives of our neighbors in lives of service,” he added.
Council members welcomed as a sign of hope that 2011 church- wide organization income exceeded expenses by $4 million. A significant drop in mission support necessitated a 2010-11 reorganization and elimi- nation of dozens of churchwide staff positions. In 2011 more synods increased, rather than decreased, their giving percentage to churchwide ministries, reported budget and finance commit- tee chair John Emery. “That’s incred- ibly good news,” he said. “We have good reason to be optimistic for the future, given that kind of faithfulness among our synods.”
Quote
Nuns have always had a different set of priorities from that of bish- ops. The bishops are interested in power. The nuns are interested in the powerless.
Roman Catholic author Gary Wills, writing in the New York Review of Books in response to the Vatican’s crackdown on U.S. nuns.
Council members voted to increase the 2012 churchwide cur- rent fund spending authorization by $1.3 million to nearly $65.5 million. They also increased the 2012 World Hunger spending authorization by $1.4 million to $19.9 million. Meanwhile, the $15 million
ELCA Malaria Campaign’s 2012 fundraising goal was set at $4 million for the malaria prevention and treat- ment work of Lutheran churches and groups in 11 African countries. Yet ELCA Treasurer Linda Nor- man cautioned that churchwide pro- grammatic expenditures will “remain at previously approved levels.” To help maintain and strengthen
mission support across the church, ELCA Mission Advancement was asked to produce resources for coun- cil members and others to use in con- versations. The council also voted unanimously to establish a process for forming a task force on mission funding, as well as a timeline and reporting process.
In other business the council:
• Acknowledged the dissolution of the churchwide Lutheran Youth Orga- nization and received a plan for new directions in ELCA youth ministry. • Adopted an interim process for ELCA corporate social responsibility work, approving documents to serve as a basis for shareholder advocacy, social screens for investment funds, consumer choices and more. Heard that consultant Pat Zerega, who car- ried out this work for the now-defunct Church in Society churchwide unit, is contracted to work part time on these issues through January 2013. • Asked the Office of the Presiding Bishop to respond supportively to the Southwest California Synod’s reso- lution on the closing of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
8 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
Cooperation (formally the School of the Americas). • Offered suggestions for the future of The Lutheran in a discussion led by the magazine’s editor, Daniel J. Lehmann. • Elected Joyce M. Graue, Raymond, Minn., to the council to complete a term ending in 2013.
Religious data online Want to learn more about faith groups in your zip code, county, city or state? You’ll find a variety of sta- tistics in the “2012 Religious Con- gregations and Membership Study” (
www.thearda.com/RCMS2010). Conducted every 10 years, the cen- sus counts and compares numbers of members, adherents and worshipers in faith communities. While main- line Protestants have lost ground, Mormons and Muslims are growing across the U.S. And while more than 80 percent of people in the U.S. claim Christianity, only 49 percent are affil- iated with a congregation.
Archives.com helps trace roots
Archives.com partnered with the ELCA to digitize and index 1,000 microfilm reels containing mil- lions of baptism, confirmation, mar- riage and funeral records. They will be available online later this year, accompanied by images of the parish books. Nearly all handwritten in Dan- ish, English, German, Norwegian and Slovakian from 1793 to 1940, these collections can help uncover informa- tion about ancestors that isn’t avail- able elsewhere online. “Researchers have long sought the ability to do easy searches for individuals across multiple congregations,” said Joel Thoreson, ELCA archivist, “Cur- rently, without knowing the exact
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