September 23, 2009

CHICAGO – Members of Ebenezer Lutheran Church, Chicago, decided to take matters into their own hands and rewrite their constitution as a matter of justice. According to the congregation's president, Stephanie Frank, "All people are entitled to an equal opportunity to serve at every point in the life of the church."

A congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Ebenezer is in search of a pastor. Its 250 members want someone who can engage in mission and ministry in the neighborhood.

Located in Chicago's Andersonville area, Ebenezer has a diverse membership with "a good mixture of families. We have families with two moms and families with two dads. We also have lots of children under age 6 that have different combinations of parents," Frank said.

"Engaging in the community and addressing social justice issues are legacies of our former pastor, the Rev. Paul F. Koch," who retired in June, Frank said. "It's also important for us as a congregation to take a stand on equal rights for gay and lesbian people," particularly partnered gay and lesbian Lutherans seeking to serve as pastors in the ELCA, she said.

In calling a pastor, "we ultimately want the best person for the job," Frank said, but do not want the congregation's choices to be limited.

Since the formation of the ELCA in 1987, the denomination's ministry documents state that "ordained ministers who are homosexual in their self understanding are expected to abstain from homosexual sexual relationships."

This summer the ELCA Churchwide Assembly approved a series of proposals to change 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.

But members of Ebenezer felt they couldn't wait for the assembly's decisions and changed their constitution, creating an avenue to call a gay or lesbian pastor in a committed same-gender relationship. "The constitution identifies who we are as a congregation," Frank said.

"Two months before the assembly, I wasn't sure that (the proposals to change ministry policies) were going to succeed," said John Elmquist, a member of Ebenezer. He said the assembly's actions are a "positive step in the right direction" and have taken "the edge off" in the congregation's work to modify its constitution, a process that began two years ago and ended in May. Elmquist took an active role in reworking Ebenezer's governing documents.

The constitution reflects two intentions of the congregation, Elmquist said. One is to consider clergy not only from the ELCA clergy roster but from Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM), an organization that credentials qualified candidates of "all sexual orientations and gender identities" for ordained ministry. The second was to make the ELM provision effective immediately, despite any possible recourse from the wider denomination.

"For many years we've had same-gender couples as members of Ebenezer who lead us in ministry in so many ways. They've kept the church door open, particularly with their passion for ministry. There's nothing that should disqualify (partnered) gay and lesbian Lutherans for the ministry," Elmquist said, adding that Ebenezer has been blessing same gender relationships for about 10 years.

Elmquist and Frank informed the Rev. Wayne N. Miller, bishop of the ELCA Metropolitan Chicago Synod, of Ebenezer's intent to change its constitution. "We were aware that it's the bishop's job to honor the integrity of the ELCA constitution. (Miller's) response was that the congregation's constitution should be in line with the governing documents" of the church at large, Elmquist said.

"We have a friendly working relationship," Miller said.

"When members of the congregation came to see me, we talked about calling a (partnered) gay or lesbian pastor and whether or not the re engineering of their constitution is the right way to do it," Miller said. "A congregation's constitution is a covenant between Ebenezer and the other 10,396 congregations of the ELCA. I consider this relationship a union that cannot be negotiated unilaterally. Both sides of the covenant must be in the conversation."

Miller said he offered Ebenezer two choices. The first was "changing the constitution and stepping out of covenant with ELCA congregations. The other choice would be to defy its own constitution and provoke a response from me," he said. "What I said to them is that they can observe how I've behaved in the past, but I wasn't going to promise anything."

With the assembly's actions, the situation changed, Miller said. "A new course has been determined. We don't have a policy change at the moment, but we've signaled our intent for change. So, the position that puts me in as bishop is that if the congregation were to begin an interview process with a rostered openly gay or lesbian partnered pastor, I would urge the congregation to move slowly until the ELCA churchwide organization implements the changes. That would not trigger a disciplinary action because it's a matter of time."

"If the congregation chooses to call a pastor not on the ELCA roster, that would be more of a problem for me, because it opens up a loophole through which many people can jump," Miller said, adding that he's not comfortable with the idea of clergy being called to serve a congregation based on a single issue.

"There's a great deal more involved in choosing the right pastor than that person's opinion on a particular issue," Miller said. "It's also important to say that that can filter up. (Synod) bishops could be elected based on this or some other issue rather than a complete picture of the synod's needs."

Miller said the ELCA is "in a transition period, and common sense is in order." He said the objective "is to move through this transition in a way that's fair and orderly and reasonable."

Information about Ebenezer Lutheran Church is at http://ebenezerchurch.org/, on the Web.

ELCA News Service