Green Jello Hotdish

At times, I’m embarassed to be a member of the ELCA. (Technically, I hold no membership at the moment–my home congregation cut me from the rolls for “not attending in more than one year,” which is a whole lot of ridiculous, but we won’t go there.)

In an era of more fast-paced lives and issues of social justice and religious tolerance, the ELCA builds up its own organization, becoming more and more bloated and stressing its “corporate feel.” The churchwide organization is more concerned with business appearances than it is with slowing down, being concerned for the individual people and the ministries it performs.

I don’t say this as a blanket statement–but we have now had two church conferences back-to-back at Carthage. One, a Missouri Synod conference, went smoothly, with few problems and people genuinely happy to be here and happy to learn more about their church and get involved. This ELCA conference is laden with people and leaders who need everything–yesterday–and if they don’t get their way are ready to pout. It has a corporate America feel, as opposed to religious undertones of compassion, love and thankfulness to be in each other’s company.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 1st, 2005 at 9:11 am and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.