Territorial Bloggings

I’ve got a bunch of posts rattling around my head as a result of the recent ELCA Churchwide Assembly, my viewing of the ALPHA DVDs, the upcoming LCMS Convention, and various discussions & goings on at church (and yes, these are, actually, all relatively related…). So the good news is that, as soon as I can get enough discipline to put form to my thoughts, I’ll be generating some actual content!

The first post, then, is one regarding a lesson that gradually dawned on my as I watched events unfold at the CWA last week. Setting aside the obvious shock and dismay that I felt about the slide into apostacy by the Assembly (wrt blessing same-sex relationships & ordaining clergy in active same-sex relationships), I wondered about just how they could get to a point where their polity allowed this to happen.

As I’ve had it explained to me, the ELCA does not employ the same type of directly representative polity, especially on the national level, as we do in the LCMS. Rather, they purposefully employ a more demographically selective representational polity. Whereas the LCMS has “delegates”, the ELCA has “voters members” — and this is a distinction with a difference, for a “delegate” denotes representing someone “back home”, while the “voting member” represents no one by him/herself.

This is important, especially when taken in light of ELCA’s decision to employ, for lack of a better word, quotas, so as to ensure proper diversity within the Assembly. Thus, the Assembly doesn’t represent the makeup of the larger church body, but more so what they want the church body to be. These voting members are selected at the synodical (or district, in LCMS parlance) level, in more of a top-down way, so as to ensure the diversity goals are met.

This can, as we have seen, result in a deliberative body that is oftentimes substantially of a different mind than what’s out there “in the pews”. This tendency can be exacerbated when there is top-level leadership in place that wants to enact more radical change for the church body.

Now, as to my concern (or, if you prefer, the lesson…).

Many of the structural changes that are being proffered by the LCMS Blue Ribbon Task Force on Synod Structure and Governance (BRTFSSG) deal generally with the composition of conventions, both national and district, and more specifically with how delegates to the national convention are selected.

Currently, the practice is that each congregation belongs to a circuit within a district. For district conventions, each congregation sends a clergy and a lay delegate. For national conventions, each circuit sends a clergy and a lay delegate.

One of the proposals put forth by the BRTFSSG would have national delegates selected & determined at the district convention. Other proposals had different variations. In general, however, it seems to be an accepted article that change in how representation is determined is necessary.

My fear is this: unless we are very careful, we could easily end up with a either a top-down process (wherein the concept of every member having a truly & practically equal voice is lost), or a skewed and less-than-representational national voting body (wherein important changes could be driven by an agenda of the few, rather than by a representative consensus of the many…).

There are many more obvious (and perhaps interesting) lessons that could/should be learned from the events of the past week; however, I would argue that paying close attention to polity parallels is one that will pay us significant dividends.

-ghp