ELCA Department for Communication, News & Information
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HEADLINES FOR ELCA NEWS RELEASE ISSUE #08, March 23, 1995

-- CHILSTROM CALLS ELCA TO PRAYER FOR THE FUTURE
-- OUTREACH APPROVES URBAN INITIATIVE
-- DHES THANKS AND OFFERS PRAYERS FOR UPSALA COLLEGE
-- PAYMENT FOR ABORTIONS QUESTIONED

March 23, 1995

CHILSTROM CALLS ELCA TO PRAYER FOR THE FUTURE
95-08-027-AH

        CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Rev. Herbert W. Chilstrom, bishop of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, broadened the ELCA's
"Inquiry" process by issuing a "Call to Prayer and Reflection on the
Future."  He invited the church's 5.2 million members to "a season of
prayer for our church's future during Pentecost."
        The Inquiry has involved the ELCA in discussions over the past
year, together with leaders of other church bodies, about change in
American society and the world and the role of the church in the future.
        Chilstrom wrote, "I believe that we are growing in our
understanding of congregations not as the `religious establishment' in
their communities but as mission outposts in an increasingly unchurched
society."
        The two-page document names the fears facing U.S. churches:
"fear about a society in which religious faith is not a `given,'" fear that
youth will not find meaning in congregations, fear of being irrelevant, of
increasing human need, of loss of identity and sense of mission.
Chilstrom called upon the church's strengths: the strength of God, of the
Lutheran confessional heritage and of leaders and members.
        "I am asking not just for the occasional petition on Sunday morning
... but rather for deep and sustained prayer for our church by pastors
and lay people in congregations and in all the expressions of our
church," Chilstrom said.  The church season of Pentecost in 1995 is June
through November.
        The ELCA will experience a change in leadership this year as a
new bishop is elected at the 1995 Churchwide Assembly and election of
bishops occurs in 37 of its geographical synods.
        Coinciding with these changes, the Inquiry will draw ELCA
members together for "reflection" in three different settings:

                *Chilstrom asked congregations to undertake serious
discussion in the fall on "the heart of our mission" using materials to be
provided.
                *A series of "dialogue conferences" will involve invited
groups of pastors and lay people, up to 800 at some sites, in
conversation about current challenges and future hopes.
                *Another set of meetings called "future search
conferences" will bring together congregation members, synod
leadership, and churchwide and church-related agency staff.  They will
reflect on the past, seek common ground for purpose and begin to
developrecommendations for change.

        "Throughout this process, we intend to be open to affirming what
is working and to changing that which does not advance the mission
God has entrusted to us," Chilstrom said.  "At this stage in the Inquiry ...
we are not talking structure, however.  Rather, we are seeking as a
whole church to pray and think about our future in mission."
        The Inquiry was initiated by the ELCA Church Council in 1993.
The nine-member Inquiry advisory committee met here March 9-10 to
discuss the call to prayer and review the three forms of reflection.
Kenneth Inskeep, director of the ELCA Department for Research and
Evaluation, told the group, "Our folks struggle with what's going on in the
culture and what that means to the church.  Their feelings are
unfocused.  Our question is whether to resist cultural change or try to
benefit from it."
        The Rev. David L. Tiede, president of Luther Seminary, St. Paul,
Minn., said the reflection processes should "ask positive questions and
expect an environment of change."  He continued, "We should anticipate,
in the way we set this up; the questions should be apt for a changing
future -- not just what people think is wrong."
        Sociologist Charles Y. Glock, Sandpoint, Idaho, hopes the Inquiry
process will address three points of concern: "loss of members, the fact
that we have more followers than leaders, and the history of Christian
individuals at the forefront of change in areas such as civil rights, the
women's movement and changing attitudes toward gay and lesbian
people."
        Glock said, "This church was constituted by persons grounded in
the past and focused on the future."
        The Rev. Gerald W. Nelson, Our Saviour's Lutheran Church,
Naperville, Ill., pointed to church structures as possible "obstacles" to
change.  He said, "We need (our structures) to live together," but they
are not what we worship.  "People who love the church are holding it
captive."
        The Rev. Paul J. Blom, Houston, pointed to the need to start with
Scripture.  "How do we understand what principles we are going to use
so we can stand together on some basic things?"  He pointed to the
power of Martin Luther's repeated assertion in the Small Catechism, "This
is most certainly true."  Blom is bishop of the ELCA's Texas-Louisiana
Gulf Coast Synod.
        Inquiry conferences are scheduled between May and the end of
October at Los Angeles; Rock Island, Ill.; Minneapolis; Charlotte, N.C.;
Bismarck, N.D.; Columbus, Ohio; Eugene, Ore.; Allentown, Pa.; and
Seguin, Texas.

                [To receive the full text of Bishop Chilstrom's Call to Prayer

        ##########


March 23, 1995

OUTREACH APPROVES URBAN INITIATIVE
95-08-028-FI

        CHICAGO (ELCA) -- "We rejoice in celebration of the history of
our church and its faithful proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in
the city," begins an "urban initiative" affirmed by the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America's Division for Outreach board when it met here March
16-19.
        Times have changed, according to the initiative.  The urban
audience has been "ethnically and culturally homogeneous."  Now the
church must speak to "the ethnic, cultural and economic diversity of
American society, most particularly among the 80 percent of people who
live and work in urban communities."
        The initiative follows a rural resolution the division brought to the
ELCA's 1993 Churchwide Assembly, the church's chief legislative body.
The board planned to come up with a similar resolution on urban ministry
for 1995, said the Rev. Warren A. Sorteberg, ELCA director for
congregational outreach services.
        "After several drafts of an urban resolution," he said, the division
decided instead to "shape a statement of intentions and goals for urban
ministry which will be attached to the Division for Outreach report to the
assembly."  An urban resolution may still come to the 1995 Churchwide
Assembly, but if so it will originate from some of the ELCA's 65 synods
involved in the drafting, Sorteberg added.
        The initiative defines itself as a way "to shape urban outreach
and ministry based on the context and culture of the target community.  It
is a statement of process, guidelines and structures aimed at effective
urban ministry."
        An urban ministry staff team organized in February is to carry out
the initiative's six-point work plan for 1995.  The Rev. Jerrett L. Hansen,
Baltimore, is the team leader.  Other members are the Rev. Ruben F.
Duran, Chicago, James L. Sims Jr., Oakland, Calif., and Sorteberg, who
serves as the team's advisor.
        The work plan is:

        + meet with church staff in at least 12 cities;
        + assess current and future ministries in each city;
        + develop a network of 50 specialists in urban ministry;
        + study existing models in the ELCA and other denominations; +
develop general plans for ministry in small, medium and    large cities; and
        + plan an urban convocation.

        "Urban ministry takes place at the grass roots," said Sorteberg.
Rather than initiate programs from its central offices in Chicago, "the
division wants to listen and to provide resources for the variety of urban
ministries that emerge in those locales."
        The staff team is an example of the new "team culture" the ELCA
Division for Outreach has established, "rather than the hierarchical
direction of one person in charge of a program," said the Rev. John F.
Nelson, Calvary Lutheran Church, Allendale, N.J.
        In February the unit began dividing its work into four categories:
division services, synodical outreach services, new congregations and
congregational outreach services, said Nelson, who chairs the division's
board.
        "We have emphasized that our primary calling under Christ is the
establishing of new congregations and to try to make all 11,000 of the
congregations of the ELCA mission stations responsible for evangelism
in their communities.  That has not wavered from day one," he said.
        "In spite of the fact that the church at large sees establishing new
congregations as one of its primary goals," said Nelson, "the funding has
not matched the mandate."
        ELCA synods have identified 206 potential sites for new
congregations in the United States and Caribbean, said the Rev. Robert
S. Hoyt, the division's director for new outreach ministries.  He told the
board that its 1995 budget can support 30 new ministries, and gifts
through the Mission Founders program will back another 30 new starts.
        The board gave special recognition to Lutheran Brotherhood, a
fraternal benefits society based in Minneapolis, which provided the ELCA
and its predecessor church bodies with almost $25 million in the past 20
years for establishing new congregations.

        ##########

March 23, 1995

DHES THANKS AND OFFERS PRAYERS FOR UPSALA COLLEGE
95-08-029-LC

        RIVER FOREST, Ill.  (ELCA) -- The board of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America's Division for Higher Education and Schools
(DHES) thanked Upsala College for its 102-year history in higher
education at its meeting here, March 17-19.  Upsala is moving toward a
cessation of its operations and liquidation.
        Upsala College, East Orange, N.J., has faced severe strain
because of its inability to restructure and refinance debts.
        Upsala's debt is between $10 and $15 million, reported Dr. James
M. Unglaube, ELCA director for colleges and universities.  The college is
in default of about $1.4 million in principal borrowed from four other ELCA
colleges, ELCA campus ministry and the Mission Investment Fund.
        The board expressed thanks to those "ELCA agencies and
institutions who shared their resources through loans to Upsala College
in an attempt to assist in its survival."
        It joined "with all members of the Upsala College community as
they mourn the loss of their college, even as we express thanks to them
for their support and loyalty."
        Some see this loss as an abandonment by the Lutheran church,
said the Rev. Stephen P. Bouman,  New York, board chair.  The story of
the massive efforts and risk taken by colleges and ELCA institutions to
save Upsala needs to be told, he added.
        "This college was the first [to close]," said Dr. Mary Ellen H.
Schmider, Moorhead, Minn.  "We are in the same family.  What does one
do when one member of the group is in trouble?  I see some policy
questions here."
        The board expressed concern and offered prayers "for current
students who will need to complete their studies at other institutions" and
faculty and staff, "for an orderly transition into new employment
opportunities."  About 56 faculty and 45 staff will lose their jobs when
the college closes in May.
        The board called upon the ELCA Church Council to arrange for an
appropriate moment of thanksgiving for Upsala College as part of the
1995 Churchwide Assembly and encouraged the ELCA's New England
and New Jersey Synods to arrange for their respective synod
assemblies to provide appropriate moments of thanksgiving for the
college.
        Upsala College, named after the largest university in Sweden,
was founded in 1893 by the Swedish Augustana Synod.  It is one of the
ELCA's 29 colleges and universities.
        In other business, the board discussed the possibility of
establishing an Academy of Lutheran Scholars.  The goals include
creating a community of "teachers/scholars who would bring their
intellectual talents to bear on issues of faith and life that are intrinsic to
the community of faith," introducing new faculty to the Lutheran tradition
in higher education and identifying and recruiting potential Lutheran
faculty.
        Participants would include members of the faculties of Lutheran
colleges and universities and Lutheran teachers at secular institutions
who share special interest in the vocation of faith and learning.
        Activities would include an annual convocation around specific
issues and an annual conference on formation in the Lutheran tradition.
A third dimension would be a fellowship and referral program designed
to "identify, encourage and support potential Lutheran college faculty
members."
        Outside funding assistance will be sought to fund the academy.

        ##########

March 23, 1995

PAYMENT FOR ABORTIONS QUESTIONED
95-08-030-FI

        CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Medical and Dental Benefits Plan
covering clergy and other workers of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America has been called into question for reimbursing expenses
associated with abortions.  The plan is managed by the ELCA Board of
Pensions in Minneapolis.
        The Rev. Thomas J. Brock, Hope Lutheran Church, Minneapolis,
and eight other signers, sent a letter Feb. 18 addressed to the pastors
and church councils of all 11,000 congregations of the ELCA.  "I hope
you will be upset and shocked to learn what I discovered recently:  our
ELCA health care plan pays for abortions, no questions asked," the letter
begins.
        Responses to Brock's letter have come from the ELCA Board of
Pensions and the church's Division for Church in Society.  DCS is
responsible for studying social issues and preparing social statements,
such as the social statement on abortion that the ELCA adopted in 1991.
        Under changes in the health plan, members recently selected
primary care physicians from a prepared list.  "I called the clinic listed
near my home to check if they perform abortions, since I believe
Christians should not do business with abortion providers," Brock wrote.
        Brock said he learned that the clinic does perform abortions, and
that "the ELCA plan pays for abortions" without questioning the reasons
for the abortions.  His letter asked if such practice was compatible with
the church's social statement on abortion.
        DCS sent "an analysis of the ELCA social statement on abortion
regarding coverage of abortion under a health plan" to all 65 synodical
bishops of the ELCA on March 10.  The analysis cites "basic" sections of
the statement and draws "some implications of this statement."
        "The statement provides moral guidance for three kinds of
situations under which abortion may be morally responsible, and one
situation where it is not," said the analysis.  Abortion may be responsible
in cases that endanger the life of the woman, cases of incest or rape,
and cases of "extreme fetal abnormality."  The statement opposes ending
what would otherwise be a live birth.

        Other than those four circumstances, the analysis said, "the
statement does not provide explicit guidance."  The statement "neither
calls for nor prohibits further inquiry or probing to ascertain whether or
not a given abortion is morally responsible."
        John G. Kapanke, president of the ELCA Board of Pensions, and
Kathryn A. Helmke, vice president for medical and dental administration,
sent a memo to the bishops March 13.  They explained that the term
"abortion" applies to a variety of medical circumstances, including
miscarriages, therapeutic abortions "where the woman's life is at risk or
she is the victim of rape or incest" and elective abortions.
        The process doctors must use to report abortions for coverage
under the church's health plan is not specific about circumstances
surrounding treatment, said the memo.  The board has not asked for
such information, "because of the extreme sensitivity involved when a
woman is treated for a miscarriage or a therapeutic abortion."
        Kapanke and Helmke ended the memo with the possibility that the
ELCA Board of Pensions could change its practices regarding abortions.
        If the board chooses to exclude elective abortions from coverage
under the plan, "it would be necessary to ask questions concerning the
reasons for an abortion," they wrote.  "Developing the specific list of
questions and certifying the veracity of the response ... is the difficult
challenge before the board."

        -- 30 --
and Reflection, contact Brenda Williams, 800-638-3522, Ext. 2963]