September 18, 2009

CHICAGO – Two independent Lutheran congregations in San Francisco watched the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis with special interest. St. Francis Lutheran Church and First United Lutheran Church were expelled from the ELCA in 1995 for violating church standards the assembly voted to change.

The 2009 Churchwide Assembly approved a series of proposals to change the denomination's ministry policies, including a policy to allow Lutherans in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as ELCA associates in ministry, clergy, deaconesses and diaconal ministers.

"What does this mean?" was a question asked at council meetings for both San Francisco congregations. "At this point there really were just more questions than anything else," said the Rev. Susan M. Strouse, an ELCA pastor "on leave" while serving as pastor of First United.

The Rev. Robert M. Goldstein, a retired ELCA pastor, serves St. Francis. He said that congregation's council is waiting to see how the ELCA Church Council, which meets here Nov. 13-15, implements the assembly actions. The Church Council serves as the legislative authority of the church between biennial churchwide assemblies.

In 1990 the ELCA suspended St. Francis and First United for "willfully disregarding criteria for recognition as ELCA congregations by failing to call pastoral leadership in accordance with church call procedures." The congregations were expelled Dec. 31, 1995.

St. Francis extended pastoral calls to Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart, a lesbian couple who had not been certified for ordination in the ELCA. First United called Jeff Johnson, who would not promise to refrain from homosexual activity as the ELCA expected of its pastors. The three were called to initiate Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministry, an outreach to the area's gay and lesbian community.

Approximately 30 Lutheran pastors and 30 pastors from other denominations participated Jan. 20, 1990, in an ordination ceremony for Frost, Johnson and Zillhart at St. Paulus Lutheran Church, San Francisco, an ELCA congregation.

Leaders at First United are weighing what their congregation has to offer the ELCA and what the ELCA has to offer First United, Strouse said. The congregation has been on its own for nearly 15 years and "doing what the church is supposed to do" without the distractions of "church politics," she said.

First United was involved in creating an extraordinary candidacy project and Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM), which credentials for ministry openly gay and lesbian candidates who are committed to lifelong, monogamous relationships and are otherwise qualified to serve as Lutheran pastors. Strouse said most questions she heard dealt with how the ELCA would treat ELM pastors.

If First United is going to consider seeking reinstatement as a congregation of the ELCA, "the policy would need to change, but there would also need to be some recognition of the wound that had occurred," Strouse said. First United and probably St. Francis would say they are stronger congregations for the experience, she said, but there has to be more than a "Come on back" from the ELCA.

Steven G. Johnson, president, First United, said he was "baffled by the ELCA's decision to take the extreme step of expelling us in 1995 for opposing a policy that we believed was unjust."

"This is an issue that has caused a great deal of pain for many people over several years. I believe that the decision (of the churchwide assembly) was long overdue," Steven Johnson said. "I do hope that some form of reconciliation can take place."

Kirk Alan Pessner, a council member at First United, said, "We made a prayerful decision in 1989 when we called Jeff Johnson as our pastor." Recalling Jeff Johnson's 10 years as a pastor of the congregation, he said, "That decision, in retrospect, seems like a ‘no brainer' now."

"We congratulate the ELCA. We are prayerfully hopeful that ELCA leadership and its congregations will move quickly to be fully inclusive of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) clergy and congregants," Pessner said.

Robert W. Byrne, a council member at St. Francis, said he joined that congregation because of its "historic principled stand within the institutional church (against the church's) discrimination against clergy and seminarians in committed same-sex relationships. I truly believe that being Lutheran calls each of us to be reformers, whenever and wherever we see injustice – as (Martin) Luther himself did."

"I have always hoped for and voiced my support for eventual reunion with the ELCA," Byrne said. "Others in this congregation hold different beliefs at present, and value the traditions and practices we were forced to create for ourselves over the past 20 years," he said.

Goldstein said the council at St. Francis planned a series of "cottage meetings" through September to hear from congregation members and build some consensus in advance of an Oct. 4 visit from the Rev. Nancy M. Feniuk Nelson, bishop's associate, ELCA Sierra Pacific Synod, Oakland.

St. Francis extended an invitation to the synod for dialogue several months before the churchwide assembly. "The forum is for members and Nancy to get the measure of each other on the concerns of St. Francis and the ELCA. It has developed more weight given the vote," Goldstein said.

The council "also hoped that since St. Francis and First United walked together through the trial and expulsion, perhaps they could walk together in the possible inclusion," Goldstein added.

The home page for First United Lutheran Church is at http://www.fulc.com/, and that for St. Francis Lutheran Church is at http://www.st-francis-lutheran.org/, on the Web.

ELCA News Service