April 8, 2005

VALPARAISO, Ind. – The leader of the 5-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) encouraged Lutherans who plan worship services to break down "walls of sin" that divide and to create "tables of reconciliation." That "principal image has shaped my understanding of leadership," the Rev. Mark S. Hanson told 500 Lutherans attending the Institute of Liturgical Studies, Valparaiso University, on April 5.

In his keynote presentation, Hanson offered several points on how presiding at "the table" is core to his understanding of what it means to be presiding bishop of the ELCA and as president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) – a global communion of 138 Lutheran churches in 77 countries, with 66 million members. The LWF is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

"To define my leadership as presiding bishop and have it shaped by my understanding of what it means to be presiding minister in the assembly means that I and all who preside must be attentive to the content of the mass," Hanson said. "Attentiveness to the content of the mass defines and shapes and gives content to our personal and communal life, to our faith practices, to our witness and work for the sake of the world."

"As we in this culture are increasingly pushed to get our market share in the religious economy, we will, I think, always be pushed by the tenets of American evangelicalism and fundamentalism to preach some other gospel for the sake of attracting and holding that market share," he said. "This culture has a curiosity" about religion and Jesus, "which, I think, is substantive."

On another point Hanson said, "To preside over the liturgy and over a church body is to call us to be attentive to the content of our speech. That means to be attentive to the grammar we use. My mother was a high school Latin and English teacher," he said. "What she forever taught me, what I then came to understand more fully as a theologian, is that we must be mindful of the grammar of God's grace. God is always the subject and the predicate, the doer and the deed, the actor and the action."

"The one called to preside in assembly and worship and over this church body in mission is called not only to be attentive to content but to the participants in the assembly's body and life. To preside is to be mindful of who is present and who is absent, or even more directly, who is welcomed into this assembly and for what reasons," Hanson told the Institute.

"Evangelism is not the work of a committee or strategy adopted by a churchwide assembly, for I have been called to preside over assembly and over church body that is by its very identity an evangelizing church. If the Means of Grace are central to the life of the community, there is finally no other way to describe this as an evangelizing church," he said.

Since 1948 the Institute of Liturgical Studies at Valparaiso University has gathered pastors, church musicians, liturgical artists and lay worship leaders together with scholars of worship and liturgy for study and reflection on the renewal of worship. The Institute plans programs on a three-year cycle. The theme for 2004-2006 is "Saying and Doing the Gospel Today: Mass, Ministry, Mission," which takes a fundamental look at the church's worship and ministry "to expose more clearly" the essential "connection between the gathered assembly and the mission of community." Participants engage in worship, seminars and workshops, plenary addresses and pre-institute seminars.

"We who lead and plan worship must periodically ask the guest, ‘What is it like to be in the midst of this assembly? Help us to see ourselves through your eyes.' The one who is asked to preside needs to push the question: ‘Who is being excluded from our assemblies and for what reasons?' For those in this church who think that our current discussions about the place of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church, that somehow that's a culturally privileged agenda or pre-occupation for the folks [at the churchwide office], I say to them, you're absolutely wrong. It's the body of Christ struggling with trying to discern who is welcomed among us and on what terms, and who shall be called among us that set apart for the ministry of Word and Sacrament," he said.

"To preside means to be attentive to the participants, to be in search of those not there and to look at ourselves with obstacles that we create as variances for those not hearing the word proclaimed, means that we will be an evangelizing church."

Citing that the membership of ELCA is less than 3 percent people of color or whose primary language is not English, Hanson said the church must work to become more multicultural. "We need to make connections," he said. "Our relatedness in Christ is far deeper than we these days are willing to acknowledge and more importantly to experience."

Hanson said that "until White [people] who are in the majority [of the church] confront the racism that is within us personally and within our institutions, we won't become different."

"The one who presides over the liturgy and is called to preside over this church must be always attentive to and mindful of the public character of all that we do," Hanson said.

"The ELCA is a public church open to all, on behalf of all and for the sake of all, for the sake of the life of the world." That "very simple statement" must be tested at every gathering and meeting of congregations, he said. "Are we public? Are we open to all? Are we there on behalf of all? I fear that what is often lacking in leadership is that connectedness."

"One area that we can make that clearer is to make public lament much more central in public worship," said Hanson. "Communal lament and communal discernment are marks of the assembly and marks of the church over which one is called to preside. How do we discern God's will in our lives?" He said, "To preside over the assembly and to preside over the church body means to walk with people who are seeking to discover meaning in their lives."

Hanson added, "The purpose can't be anymore clearer. Christ welcomed us to his table, breaking down the walls that we've erected as barriers that divide us from Christ, from one another and from the creation and is sending us out into the world with the ministry and message of reconciliation. There is work to be done."

ELCA News Service