Title: Lutherans Open African American Strategy
ELCA NEWS SERVICE
November 22, 1996
LUTHERANS OPEN AFRICAN AMERICAN STRATEGY (95 lines)
96-28-085-FI
CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
has developed an "African American Lutheran Outreach Strategy"
with the blessing of the African American Lutheran Association
(AALA). The board of the ELCA Division for Outreach met here
Oct. 24-27 and asked for a report on ways to implement the 30-
some recommendations compiled by an 18-member advisory team.
The division provides leadership to the ELCA as it reaches
out with the gospel of Jesus Christ in the United States and
Caribbean and invites all people to a faith relationship with
God. Working with congregations and synods, the division
develops new ministries and supports existing congregations and
urban and rural coalitions.
The strategy is "a plan for more effective outreach work
among African American congregations that are supported by the
Division for Outreach," said the Rev. E. Taylor Harmon, the
division's associate executive director. "This is not a
comprehensive strategy for the ELCA."
The church already has a "Multicultural Mission Strategy,"
said Harmon, and the division is cited in that strategy as having
"lead responsibility for the start of new congregations in ethnic
communities and the support of ethnic congregations in rural and
urban settings."
The AALA adopted a convention resolution in July 1993 asking
the Division for Outreach "to join with AALA in developing and
implementing a comprehensive strategy for doing ministry with and
among African American people." At its next meeting in October
1993 the Outreach board responded that it was developing
strategies for ministry with a number of ethnic groups, including
African Americans, and welcomed the help of AALA.
The advisory team that drafted the strategy included 16
African American Lutherans, 13 of whom are ELCA pastors. Their
recommendations included the team's continued involvement in
implementing the strategy and expanded involvement of the
church's existing African American laity and clergy.
"This is an issue of empowerment as opposed to paternalism,"
the Rev. M.L. Minnick Jr., executive director of the ELCA
Division for Outreach, told his board. "We won't become an
inclusive church simply because we say we want to be an inclusive
church."
About 98 percent of the ELCA's membership is white, and the
church has a goal that 10 percent of its membership will be
"people of color or people whose primary language is other than
English" by the start of 1998. The Outreach strategy sets "its
own 10 percent goal for inclusivity by the year 2000, or to
significantly increase the 1 percent membership of African
Americans in the ELCA by the same year."
The advisory team presented statistics about African
Americans in the United States and in the ELCA. "One of the most
significant findings is that, as a church, we tend not to be
where the overwhelming majority of African Americans are in this
country," said Harmon. "Secondly, our congregations are not
located where the African American population is growing the
fastest."
Recommendations in the Outreach strategy range from
continued assessment of African American demographics to
developing specific "area strategies" for such U.S. cities as
Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and Dallas. The recommendations are
organized into six categories: general, assessment goals, new
congregations, congregational services, area strategies and
leadership.
"Leadership is the key," Harmon told the board. "The
leadership is there. The question is: Is the church ready for
that leadership to be a part of who we are?" He added, "The ELCA
is ready."
Among the "leadership" recommendations is continued and
strengthened support of the Lutheran Theological Center in
Atlanta, an African American emphasis of the Lutheran Theological
Southern Seminary, Columbus, S.C., through the Interdenominational
Theological Center in Atlanta.
The Outreach board also:
* Selected a search committee headed by the Rev. Julius
Carroll IV, Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Oakland, Calif.,
to review applications for the position of executive
director and to present a candidate to the board's March
1997 meeting. Minnick plans to retire in July 1997.
* Approved a new design for the Mission Builders program
-- volunteers who assist young congregations in building
their first church -- to expand its services and make
it financially self-reliant by 1999.
* Adopted guidelines to help synod bishops find leaders
who develop congregations related to the division.
* Approved a proposed 1997 budget of $13,531,955 including
$6,177,000 for work with new ministries and new
congregations.
* Asked the division staff to assemble a team to develop
"diagnostic tools and intervention strategies" for
congregations with declining membership.
* Received the first of two related papers on the
division's long-range planning and offered its
suggestions for an edited draft.
For information contact: Ann Hafften, Dir., ELCA News Service,
(312) 380-2958 or [log in to unmask]; Frank Imhoff, Assoc. Dir.,
(312) 380-2955 or [log in to unmask]
