Last week, the second-largest Lutheran congregation in Minnesota took its ball and went home, so to speak.
Hosanna Lutheran in Lakeville, with an average Sunday attendance of 4,500, decided to withdraw from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America over the denomination’s August vote to allow gay pastors.
A church of that size and resources can weather such a schism, but it’s another story for the Rev. Michelle Rowell’s meager flocks.
Rowell helps serve five rural ELCA churches in the St. James area, the largest of which has fewer than 200 members.
The gay-pastor decision has become an elephantine wedge issue among ELCA members nationwide, and scores of congregations have either cut their ELCA ties or are considering doing so.
But in rural areas rife with small parishes whose long-standing members skew elderly, withdrawal may not be a viable option for any number of reasons, not the least of which is: Where would they withdraw to?
“That’s the question,” Rowell says. “It’s not an easy thing to do.”
She says no one among her congregants is planning to leave the ELCA at present, but that’s not to say church members aren’t agonizing.
Some people are perfectly fine with the ELCA’s decision, and others are anything but fine with it, she says.
Therein lies a conundrum. She says some people have threatened to leave if the group of rural churches opts to remain with the ELCA, while others have said they’ll leave if the churches part ways with the ELCA.
This damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t dynamic has prompted Rowell to remind parishioners of the big picture.
“What I’ve been saying for months is that every Christian structure on Earth is broken in some way, and no matter what we create will not be perfect.”
In other words, be careful what you wish for because internal discord besets all faiths, and breaking away from one church body to re-form or join with another is hardly new and never a panacea.
Rowell says some people, upon further reflection, are realizing this.
She speaks of a pastor friend who early on proclaimed that he was going to leave the ELCA. He spoke from his passion, not from his head, she says, and now he’s backpedaling.
Meantime, Rowell says her rural parishioners continue to talk, continue to try to find some middle ground, however tenuous, in what has become a type of zero-sum theological game.
“Nothing will happen quickly, and we realize we’re going to lose no matter what we do,” she says.
“On the other hand, God has worked with broken churches throughout the centuries.”
Brian Ojanpa is a Free Press staff writer. Call him at 344-6316 or e-mail bojanpa@mankatofreepress.com .
