“Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also”: Funding the ELCA’s Reconstitution – Rev. Dr. Kim Beckmann

 The denomination of my seminary, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is having their national assembly next week and it is going to be intense. Fully 10 of the ELCA’s 65 synods have submitted resolutions to force the national leadership to rewrite the constitution, and they are focused and organized. In a standard move, the national leadership published a response to the resolutions that included vague acknowledgement with a pre-emptive bill for such a reconstitution process: up to $4 million – and our author has something to say about it. Please read, comment, and share!

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Jesus said: Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give the realm to you. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Be dressed for action, and have your lamps lit”

Luke 12: 32-35  from Gospel for 9th Sunday after Pentecost

The churchwide staff writing the response to the ten synodical reconstitution memorials have done us a favor. When Jesus’ good news to us this Sunday during Churchwide Assembly reminds us both not to fear, and that where our treasure is our heart will be also, we know that it would cost this church approximately $3.5 – 4 million dollars to hold a reconstituting convention to put our treasure where our hearts should be.

From the Report of the Memorials Committee: "A conservative estimate would be $500,000. In addition, a special meeting of the Churchwide Assembly would cost up to $3 million, based on the budget for the 2022 Churchwide Assembly."

I used to be one of the staff members asked to write these backgrounds. You can guess the directions we were given by reading the Report of the Memorials Committee: Thank the synods for sharing. List all the ways the churchwide organization and its decision-making bodies are already doing the thing and have it covered. Highlight the strained staff capacity, and the budget analysis. Recommend a referral to one of the structures that has governed the thing the memorial seeks to change to assure nothing does, or at least that the control stays in the CWO.   I almost have to admire the new twist: pointing out any discrepancies or constitutional faux pas to discredit framers as… clumsy or fuzzy.

Let’s be clear. The memorials calling for reconstitution ask us to start over.

Not just tinker.

We now know the costs involved in merging three majority white Lutheran church bodies and relying on a commitment to reach a 10% quota of people of color by whatever long past year we had set for ourselves. Only to finally admit, as the whitest denomination in the United States at 97% , we can’t even bear those fruits we may even desire, from the root stock we inherited. We are in bondage to sin and can’t free ourselves. We have done harm to the BIPOC and other marginalized community members and leaders who have long and historic roots and contributions of their own in the Lutheran tradition.

We now know the costs of setting tables for a rich banquet where we expected far more guests to take up the after-the-fact invitations, with hopelessly complicated patterns for seating and rules about what cutlery is appropriate for what course. The costs for setting white tables to plan the feast’s menus and etiquette and guest lists based on white spheres of influence from each family branch’s elite. The costs of idolatry of beautiful ideas, like the three expressions. This is where it ends up…

…with our own video evidence as damning as any cell phone videos that have cut the hearts of our nation with conviction.

We aren’t confused about whether we want an audit or a reconstitution. Knowing exactly how we set things up to fail our best dreams about ourselves as anti-racist individuals in an anti-racist church, is a useful exercise of truth and reconciliation for the new thing that has to happen from scratch.

We are clear that no amount of three-year cycles of tweaking will fix this.

“Receiving with thanksgiving” – the “thanks for sharing” of the churchwide organization – is just another “thoughts and prayers”. 

Our lamps are lit. We are demanding action, not study or delay or giving it back to the churchwide structures that are part of the problem. We are looking for the kin-dom. The realm of God come near that is God’s good pleasure to give us all.

Followers of Jesus know that grace is free. But it isn’t cheap. It’s very costly. And the writers of the Report of the Memorials Committee have only reminded us of the cost of discipleship. And of what is priceless; and never wears out, gets stolen, or chewed up.

For where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.

The Rev. Dr. Kim L. Beckmann

9th Sunday after Pentecost, 2022

The Rev. Dr. Kim L. Beckmann served as Director for Candidacy and Women in Ministry in the ELCA until the position was eliminated in 2009, then as a member of the Goodsoil legislative team for ministry policy change and LGBTQIA+ advocacy until 2016. She was a faith-based organizer for Equality Illinois in the successful effort for marriage equality. Dr. Beckmann has served a 20-year ministry in a two-point parish in the Upper Peninsula, interim pastorates in Metro Chicago, and interim positions at LSTC as instructor in Homiletics, Ministerial Leadership, and Director of Contextual Education.