A friend of mine, youth pastor, and Erik Ullestad left an elucidating comment on the previous post that was so good I decided it merited its own post.
His words are below the break. Erik, thanks for taking the time to post such a thoughtful and thorough comment.
My feeling is that there are three main categories the loss of membership falls into:
1. Folding Church: A church that closes its doors and ceases to exist. Most often, these churches are (A) in small dying towns, or (B) in a part of the city that used to thriving, but over time have become more economically depressed. (See - Central Lutheran on Des Moines’ east side.)
2. Cleaning the Roster: A church desires to have a true count of "active" members, so they send a letter to all inactive people and ask them to either start coming to church once a year (which is the membership requirement in most ELCA congregations) or indicate that they no longer desire to be a member of the congregation.
3. Leaving Mother Church: Churches that have left the ELCA for theological, political, and / or practical reasons. (See Lutheran Church of the Cross, Altoona) This reason is the one that, naturally, generates the majority of the discourse.
Like most Christians, ELCA Lutherans tend to find themselves fighting over homosexuality and abortion. The ELCA is taking its sweet time addressing the current Sexuality Statement, which does not permit the blessing of same-sex unions or the ordination of openly gay pastors. The fact that this is even being discussed has offended many people, who claim that the Bible is clear on this topic and there is no room for conversation about it. Others are frustrated that the ELCA has not changed its stance on this issue and have left the church.
The other big reason congregations are leaving has to do with the Call to Common Mission, an agreement that permits Lutheran pastors to preside over the sacraments (Baptism and Communion) in Episcopalian churches; and vise versa. The ELCA has similar agreements with other similar denominations, but what made the one with the Episcopalians so touchy is that the ELCA had to agree to installing bishops into the “historic episcopate”…something I don’t fully understand. The job description / authority / responsibility of being a bishop didn’t change, but they had to agree to the “historic episcopate”. (It also didn’t help that shortly after CCM was passed, the Episcopalians installed an openly gay bishop.)
Those three causes of membership decline don’t even take into account this PATHETIC number — 28% of ELCA members attend worship at least once a month. My belief is that the ELCA is seen as “my parent’s church”…and their parents are unable to articulate why they go to church…so the young people join a non-denominational church that appears more relevant and authentic.
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