Valparaiso to Call Woman Pastor: For the first time in its 83-year history as a Lutheran institution, Valparaiso University has begun a search to hire a woman pastor to serve on the school's staff. The new pastor will hold the position of Associate University Pastor. The expectation is that the new pastor will come from the ELCA (the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod does not yet ordain women). Valparaiso is not affiliated with either denomination. Bishop James Stuck of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod of the ELCA is collaborating in this appointment.
The new Associate Pastor position will be funded through a $3 million endowment from a group of anonymous donors. The donors will also provide $300,000 to fund the job during the first three years when the endowment money cannot be used.
Interested parties may apply or nominate someone by contacting Reverend Joseph R. Cunningham, Dean of the Chapel of the Resurrection, (Joseph.Cunningham@valpo.edu).

Issues, Etc., Etc.: Without much apparent effort, the abrupt cancellation of Issues, Etc., a popular radio program on the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) radio station KFUO has become the occasion for a number of people to vent their frustrations with the direction and leadership (particularly President Gerald Kieschnick) of the LCMS. On March 31, the Wall St. Journal published President Kieschnick's rebuttal to the Journal's March 28 opinion piece titled "Radio Silence." Dr. Kieschnick was adamant that the Synod was unified: " In truth, last summer the LCMS had its most positive and unified convention in years."
But later that day, a friend of ours forwarded an over-amped blog entry that reads in part:
These are dangerous times for Lutherans who have not signed onto Kieschnick's Purpose-Driven Ablaze Movement. The cancellation of the Issues Etc. radio program is proof enough for us that Kieschnick intends to use corporate take over tactics and informational subterfuge to destroy any and all who would dare to question and challenge HIS vision for the LCMS. Therefore, in order to protect ourselves while we shine the light of truth on Kieschnick's agenda so that there can be real debate regarding its merits or lack thereof, we have no choice but to write from behind a mask.
The blog in question is Save the LCMS which proclaims itself to be a "Christ-Centered Cross-Focused Resistance Movement."
Elsewhere, Augsburg1530 ("A grassroots movement to find out why Issues, Etc. was canceled / preserving confessional, sacramental, liturgical Lutheranism") offers Mollie Ziegler Hemingway's response to Pres. Kieschnick's rebuttal letter and also invites interested parties to register for an April 14 demonstration.
There is no shortage of more moderate voices calling for the return of Issues, Etc., but we have to wonder how the show could possibly succeed in this emotionally charged context.

Hearing Season Begins: Hearings on the ELCA's Draft Social Statement on Sexuality have begun, and the first on-line account (Church People Gather to Discuss Sex) of a synod's hearing on the Draft Social Statement on Sexuality has appeared on Pr. Donna Simon's blog. Pr. Simon describes the March 27 hearing at Trinity in Lawrence, Kansas (Central States Synod), where there were 17 attendees: 8 pastors, 5 lay people, 1 bishop, 1 bishop's assistant, 1 synod office staff person, and 1 former member of the Sexuality Task Force. Pr. Simon reports:
The majority of folks in the room were in favor of change in current policy. A couple didn't say much, so it is hard to know where they stand. The bishop's assistant is definitely "stand-fast," as were two of the pastors. One of those pastors expressed the common concern that this is a church-dividing issue which we are not ready to tackle. The other is a mission pastor in our synod. His concerns are couched in the language of "evangelism," which he is always quick to remind us is the "E" in "ELCA."
His credential--to use organizer language--is that his is the "fastest growing church in our synod." This was actually the first thing he said at the meeting. It seems to give him the sense that his words deserve extra weight. His church presents its mission as reaching out to the unchurched. His definition of "unchurched" seems to include mainly very conservative folks. He also mentioned wife-beaters, twice. He claims to be moving them all more to the center, which he may well be doing.
Here are some of the things The Mission Pastor had to say:
The Statement is "wishy-washy" about sin. Lutheran theology teaches that we are all sinners (hum along if you know this one). The Statement seems to tell lesbian and gay people that they are not sinners, and we (Lutherans) don't teach that. That sort of teaching "provides ammunition for 'The Enemy,' however you define 'The Enemy.'" (This is verbatim; I wrote it down.) He went on to talk about how we (Lutherans) lift up all sorts of examples of sin, and don't rank them. For instance, we would call it sin for a pastor to drive a giant, gas-guzzling SUV.

Pr. Sophie is all a-Twitter. Again.
Pr. Sophie's Tweets:

Hot Dish Hotline: "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." What have you seen or heard that other people really need to know about? Use the Hot Dish Hotline to submit your item online.

I pointed out that we don't legislate against pastors who drive giant, gas-guzzling SUV's, so it would seem that we are in the business of ranking sin. He conceded that point...
Our bishop, who has been on a long journey of acceptance, said directly to The Mission Pastor that he heard his concerns about change and its effect on our outreach, but that he had also just read Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" again, and believed Dr. King was right in calling white pastors out for saying "now is not the time."
I always appreciate [the bishop's] struggle to be faithful and pastoral to the many folks of different opinion who people the ELCA churches of Missouri and Kansas.

Save the ELCA: We'd like to thank the folks over at the Shellfish Blog (aka Save the ELCA) for compiling the most complete list of published comments on the ELCA's Draft Social Statement on Sexuality that we've run across so far. We don't always see eye-to-eye with Shellfish, but they've done some great work cataloging comments by bishops, former bishops, religion editors , and others. We don't think that should be a thankless job, so hey, thanks! And besides, Save the ELCA is not nearly as hightstrung as Save the LCMS.

Ask Pastor Sophie!: Pr. Sophie Fortresson, our resident expert on all matters of theology, Lutheran etiquette, and social protocol, answers questions submitted by our readers and occasionally simply volunteers advice when no question has been asked. If you have questions (and who among us doesn't?) send them to pr_sophie@lutheranconfessions.com.
Dear Sophie: In the ELCA's Draft Social Statement on Sexuality the word "consensus" came up a lot when talking about queer sexuality and why the ELCA will not say anything definitive on the matter. I wonder what is the biblical precedence for decision making by "consensus?" In my remembering: prophets never needed consensus; Jesus never waited for consensus; the Reformation was not started by consensus; and the ELCA constitution says nothing about consensus when it requires pastors to speak for justice. Is the ELCA becoming as useless as Jeremiah's linen loincloth (Jeremiah 13:1-11)?
Confused Beyond Consent, The Great Lakes Synod
Dear Confused: My goodness, what an interesting question. Thank you so much for asking it. It's not often that one has the opportunity to offer advice about church polity (the troublesome business about consensus) and personal hygiene (those ruined linen panties in Jeremiah) in one fell swoop.
Like you, Pr. Sophie at first thought the draft social statement seemed to be all about consensus (or the lack of it). But when she went back to count the number of times "consensus" is used in the document, there were, to her surprise, only two (line 1117 and line 1132). Of course, both were in the discussion of "same-gender-oriented" people and relationships.
Pr. Sophie believes this is an odd use of the concept of consensus, which is actually a very rigorous standard for any group understanding: when decisions are made by consensus, anyone may veto a decision. Pr. Sophie is confident that the level of agreement in the ELCA about same-gender-oriented issues falls far short of that standard.
Alas, you are correct that the ELCA is not like the prophets, not like Jesus, and not like the reformers. You are also correct about the ELCA constitution. Not only is there no mention of consensus with respect to the pastor's responsibility to witness for justice, there is also no mention of consensus in relation to the church's decision-making.
However, the ELCA is attempting to survive disagreement, and that is all too rare in the Lutheran tradition.
Pr. Sophie suggests that with respect to the draft Social Statement, references to our lack of consensus should not be understood as either an excuse for inaction or an impossible precondition that must be remedied before any action may be taken. To call attention to the absence of consensus is in fact, a call to repentance, a call to stand humbly before God.
And that brings us back to the linen panties In Jeremiah 13. God tells Jeremiah to get some nice linen underwear and put them on. God then tells Jeremiah to hide the underwear in a rock near the Euphrates River. Sometime later, God tells Jeremiah to retrieve the hidden undergarment. Jeremiah does so, only to find that the underwear are "marred" or "spoiled" or "ruined". They are, in fact, dirty, and no one wants to wear dirty panties. We don't know much about Jeremiah's personal hygiene, but it's a safe bet that he did not need God to explain this.
God, however, reframes the whole incident:
"For as the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah...but they would not hear."
And so perhaps the lesson of Jeremiah, which of course no one wants to hear, is that we are God's underwear. Oh my.

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