In a letter to the church released today (April 3,2011) National Church Council put forth motions to be approved by the convention. The motions are the result of the hard work of both the Structural Renewal Task Force, and the Human Sexuality Task Force.
Click here for the FULL NEWS RELEASE.
Summarizing the Release:
Structural Renewal
- ELCIC to be reorganized into 3 Synods.
- Conferences to be reconfigured into “areas” (groupings of congregations)
- Synod & national conventions to be held every 3 years and national convention to be smaller in size.
Human Sexuality
- The Proposed Social Statement on Human Sexuality be adopted. Appropriate motions arising from the statement prepared by Faith, Order, and Doctrine Committee.
- Motion 1 – Affirmation concerning the Unity of the Church. Citing Article VII of the Augsburg Confession – “it is enough for the unity of the church to agree concerning the teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments”. The motion identifies that any attempt to divide the church over a question of adiaphora is an unacceptable confusion of Law and Gospel and any person or organization should refrain from any actions that would divide the body of Christ.
- Motion 2 – Motion on Presiding at or Blessing Marriages. This motion would open the door to allow rostered ministers to preside at or bless legal marriages according to the laws of the province where they serve.
- Motion 3 – Motion on Standards for Ordination and Consecration. This motion recognizes that sexual orientation is not a factor which should disqualify someone from rostered ministry.
This promises to be a very exciting convention for our National Church. I encourage you to leave your comments. I encourage respectful debate but I won’t print or leave on the site anything I think is hateful in nature.
Shalom, Steve
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Great idea, Steve. I look forward to reading your observations and comments on the convention’s proceedings.
Thanks to a favourite and respected theologian for pointing out the following error in my original summary. They wrote:
In the blog you say: “The motion identifies that any attempt to divide the church is an unacceptable confusion of Law and Gospel”. Actually the statement says that any attempt to divide the church over a question of adiaphora is a confusion of Law and Gospel. If the question involves the Gospel itself, then, tragically, we sometimes have to risk the unity of the church in order to witness to the Gospel. The point here is that sexual ethics are adiaphora, that is, something about which it is OK to disagree and remain in the unity of the Gospel. The statement says that no matter how much you and I might disagee over an interpretation of a point of Law and no matter how much our disagreement distresses us, such an issue is outside the “it is sufficient” of Article VII and therefore is not a legitimate cause for you and I dividing ourselves from one another.
My summary has been corrected.
Steve