A Letter about Zion

[This is one of the most difficult letters a parish pastor could find himself writing, and a member of a congregation receiving and reading. spt+]

                                        December 21, 2018
                                        St. Thomas, Apostle

Dear members of Zion, family, and friends of the congregation,

    Peace and all good.

    “When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
    we were like those who dream.…” _{(Psalm 126)}

    Several years ago I realized that Psalm 126 had become my favorite psalm. This is partly because I have served this congregation called “Zion” ever since my ordination. The psalm begins and ends with rapturous joy. But in the middle you realize this joy is sung in the midst of despair. For some 2500 years, not a week has gone by without some of the children of Israel or the followers of Christ praying this psalm. And most of those years were not good ones for the city of Zion (Jerusalem).

    During this last year at Zion we have struggled to arrange our governing documents so that the congregation, with fewer people willing and able to take leadership and make decisions, could continue to legally manage its own affairs. Pending approval of the Central/Southern Illinois Synod Council at its next meeting in January, we have accomplished that.

    Anticipating that approval, the Congregation Meeting last November 11 elected four people — Linda Husby, Marian Meinert, Mike Schwindenhammer, and Becky Zentko — to the Congregation Council and approved a budget for the year 2019 — thus giving the Council authority to spend available funds.

    The meeting was then opened up for general discussion of Zion’s future ministry, following-up on discussions from earlier meetings. The conversation was frank and heartfelt, and included discussion of finances, building needs, and the continued ability of the congregation to support a pastor. At its conclusion, the congregation’s voting members voted to set Sunday, January 27, 2019, as the date for Zion’s last regular worship service. The Council has determined that service will begin at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, so that pastors and members of our sister congregations can also participate.

    This decision is but the first step in concluding Zion’s ministry, a mission first planted in 1882 by St. Paul’s Lutheran Church as a parochial and Sunday school at the corner of Easton and Hayes, which organized as the Zion congregation in 1894.

    To accomplish the next significant step, Zion’s Council has called for a Special Congregation Meeting on Sunday, January 20, 2019, immediately following the 10 am service. The purpose of this meeting is to consider a resolution to dissolve the congregation and to appoint trustees to oversee that process. All voting members are urged to attend this meeting. Voting members are defined in Zion’s Constitution as confirmed members who, “during the current or preceding calendar year, shall have communed in this congregation and shall have made a contribution of record to this congregation” — that would be the years 2018 and 2019.

    It would be after this meeting that the trustees — whom the Council recommends be the elected members of the 2019 Council named above — would provide for the sale and disposition of Zion’s assets. Because Zion is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization, there are strict Internal Revenue Service rules and federal and state laws regarding the disposition of the church’s assets. They may be sold or given to similar tax-exempt organizations (such as other churches, church agencies, or charitable organizations) or government agencies for a public purpose.

    But anything owned by the congregation is “permanently dedicated to an exempt purpose,” so property cannot be given to members of the congregation or others. Certain records and other historical materials will eventually be placed in the ELCA Regional Archives at Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. The trustees will seek to honor the purposes for which things have been given to Zion, and your suggestions for suitable recipients or assistance in sales will be appreciated. Under our Constitution, at the final dissolution of the congregation — and that will take some time — any undisposed property passes to the Central/Southern Illinois Synod, ELCA.

    Members of the congregation will want to consider where to transfer membership. We will be providing information about nearby Lutheran congregations to assist you. We will also be arranging for continued pastoral care of those who are homebound or may be unable to arrange the transfer of membership. Details of these will be forthcoming.

    You are probably aware that I have been open to receive a new congregational call. But the process takes time and it is unlikely that I will have received and accepted a new call by Zion’s final services. Nevertheless I have tendered my resignation as Zion’s Parish Pastor effective January 31, 2019. I appreciate your prayers for the discernment of a new call and, if it is necessary, for an appropriate interim pastorate until then.

    “Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed,
    will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.”
                                                                    (Psalm 126:7)

    Faithful followers of Christ are not exempted from disappointment or sadness, worries or fears. We find these even in the tender Christmass story. But they are never the end, or even the focus, of the story. Over the next few weeks we will continue to celebrate at Zion the Holy Communion and hear the Gospel each Sunday at 10 am, as well as on Christmass Eve (for the 125^th time!) at 7 pm. While, sadly for us, Zion congregation will soon no longer proclaim the Good News, the joyous message of redemption in Christ will still be proclaimed by those whose Christian Faith has been instilled here. Thanks be to God!

                                        Your servant in Christ,

                                        The Rev. Steven P. Tibbetts, STS
                                        Pastor and President

The ELCA's Newest Bishop-Elect

"The Reverend R. Guy Erwin, a member of the Osage Nation of Oklahoma, is the first American Indian bishop in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America." Yes, I had to do some hunting to find this as the lede for a report of the Bishop-elect for my home synod, but I did find it -- at indianz.com. That's because everyone else is focussing on him being the first openly gay pastor to be elected Bishop of an ELCA Synod.

It happened last weekend as the Southwest California Synod met in Assembly in Woodland Hills, California. One can see the towers of the Marriott Hotel where the election happened from the front porch of my parents' home. As if that weren't personal enough, Dr. Erwin, the Gerhard & Olga Belgum Professor of Lutheran Confessional Theology at California Lutheran University, is the Interim Pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Canoga Park. He's my mother's pastor. She speaks very well of him.

But there is more to the story. Prof. Erwin's ordination was the subject of an article in The Lutheran magazine's July 2011 issue entitled "R. Guy & Keith Fry ...." Subtitled "Ordination stories move church forward," the article began,

R. Guy Erwin's ordination on May 11 proved quintessentially Lutheran: Two ELCA bishops and a former bishop played key roles; the service doubled as a "teaching" moment for California Lutheran University students, and the 75-member university choir led the 450-strong congregation in singing the final hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God."

The symbolism rang poignantly true since Erwin, 53, serves as the Gerhard and Olga J. Belgum Chair in Lutheran Confessional Theology at CLU in Thousand Oaks; taught Lutheran studies and church history at Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Conn., for several years; and studied in Germany for his doctoral thesis on Martin Luther's era.

You can read more of that article here, but the full article is behind a pay firewall. Yes, I had some thoughts on this when I read it, which I put into a Letter to the Editor -- which did not get published.

Editor, The Lutheran magazine:

The article "R. Guy & Keith Fry... Ordination stories move church forward" (July, pages 32-33) exemplifies much more than simply "how openly gay leaders are finding their full expression as rostered ELCA pastors." While the 2009 Churchwide Assembly committed the ELCA to "finding a way" for those in committed same-sex relationships to serve as rostered leaders, that same Assembly resolved only a few moments later, "to recognize the conviction of members who believe that this church should not call or roster" such persons. As I read these enthusiastic reports of partnered gays and lesbians being received or ordained into the ELCA, I find myself wondering if we are already at the stage of needing to "find a way" to include those of us ELCA clergy who remain convinced this church has made a grave error.

Furthermore, R. Guy Erwin's ordination exemplifies even greater change in the ELCA's standards for ordination. For years some of us have argued that the ELCA needs to be more flexible about the lengthy and expensive requirements for ordination to enable congregations that cannot support full-time compensation to nonetheless be served by called pastors, only to be met with either silence or great resistance from ELCA authorities. Now we read of a college professor flying through the candidacy process in 9 months and being ordained to serve a "specialized call" that doesn't appear to be anything different from his prior vocation -- two things that have been virtually impossible. How is it that these sorts of changes in ELCA ordination practice suddenly become accomplished, without discussion or even prior announcement, when the candidates are in committed same-sex partnerships?

Yours,

The Rev. Steven P. Tibbetts, STS
Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church
Peoria, Illinois

Two years later, nothing has happened in the ELCA to make me feel any better about progress on answers to my questions. But I don't want to make this post sound like sour grapes, so for the moment at least, I'll just let my comments of two years ago stand. Because what the election of Pastor Erwin is show me just how much my thoughts of four years ago have settled in my spirit. The heart of my letter to the congregation I serve from the 2009 Churchwide Assembly remains true, except that it is not the open wound of August 2009. I quote two paragraphs in full:

By these actions, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's teaching and practice on marriage, family, and sexuality has not only departed from the faith and teaching of the Holy Scriptures and nearly 2000 years of Christian teaching, it is proclaiming what the Apostle Paul calls "another gospel."


One of the things that I was taught from a young age and have grown to experience more and more over the years is that a Lutheran pastor relates to the denomination differently than the laity and congregations. When I was ordained, the ELCA became my church. On Friday afternoon, I lost my church.

Since 2009, the church I serve has still not bothered to offer justification for what its leadership is implementing full steam ahead. As I wrote elsewhere, "but I'm discovering that I did my mourning for the ELCA as a church in 2009-10. I'm sad, but in the same way I was sad when my Grandmother, who had slipped into dementia years earlier and would not have known who I was, died. Memories for what was, and now the lingering is over."

Guess Who Got Posted at Chaos Manor?

Friday I posted to my Facebook page the link to yesterday's memorial for Ray Bradbury at the LASFS Clubhouse, commenting, "Oh, to be living in LA!" (For some reason, probably because Thursday evenings were for choir practice, I never actually made a meeting of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.) Well, I still haven't experienced it personally, but it seems I was sort of there anyway. Read it here!

I haven't been this excited since LA sports radio legend Jim Healy acknowledged on the air a note I sent him from here in Peoria!

Cable and the Decline of Broadcast News

Dear CNBC:

Oh, dear. I'm not sure whether the plural of "Leaf" (as in Nissan Leaf) is "Leaves" or "Leafs." One thing I know, however, is that it is *not* "Leaf's." I'm trying to imagine Huntley, Brinkley, Chancellor, or even Brokaw (to name some of NBC's news luminaries) letting such poor English show up on the screen repeatedly on their newscasts -- as I saw early this afternoon.

Steven Tibbetts

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Dear All Things Considered

Subject: TSA Scans and "Pat Downs"

Dear All Things Considered:

Regarding the story this evening (Monday, 11/15) on the TSA Scans and "pat downs" of airline travelers and the interview with Dave Barry:

Perhaps you can help me understand what is so humorous about ordinary citizens being subjected to invasive body scans and searches simply because they are traveling by airplane. The reports of acts by agents of our own government sound more like something one might have heard from the darkest days of Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany, not in the land of the free or a
nation conceived in liberty. Or are we indeed now living in a dystopian future that authors like Huxley and Orwell warned us about in fiction more than half-a-century ago? Are we free citizens or subjects of some faceless "czar?" Since going through an American airport now seems to routinely require indignities that convicted felons cannot be subjected to except in extreme circumstances, I'll find some other way to travel.

Steven Tibbetts
Peoria, Illinois
listening on WCBU, Peoria

= = = = =
Interestingly enough, the spell checker on Outlook flags "TSA" and suggests "TSAR."

Letters to the Editor

I couldn't resist. After reading this from the Reader Forum of the Peoria Journal Star for last Friday, February 12...

Prayers aren't helping
We had World War I - and the people prayed.

We had World War II - and the people prayed.

We had the Korean War - and the people prayed.

We had the Vietnam War - and the people prayed.

We're having the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the people are praying.

We've had tsunamis, earthquakes, riots, famine, AIDS, 9-11, plane, ship and car wrecks, cancer, polio, dictators, gangs, rapes, sexual abuse of children, lying politicians, drug abuse - you name it - and the people prayed, and prayed, and prayed.

If you truly believe that God created the heavens and Earth and that He is a "loving" God, why has He done nothing in the history of the world to stop this madness? After hundreds of billions of dollars have been given to churches and their leaders, not one single prayer has been answered in the history of civilization. Try to prove me wrong.

Ask your religious leader about this and he'll spout the usual "God works in mysterious ways!" Really? Prove to me that He is going to stop wars and famine and cure cancer, and then I might listen.

What better mind control could there be than inventing "Heaven" and "Hell" to control the people? How many times have you been told, "Stop that or you'll go to Hell!"?

Wake up, people.

John Cullen
Peoria

...I couldn't help it, and I sent the following last Saturday evening.

Dear Editor:

re: John Cullen's "Prayers aren't helping" in the Reader Forum of last February 12

I am tempted to observe that the wars ended. However I expect that Mr. Cullen would, as he does in his letter, continue to list more and more things that aren't happening the way the "God" he envisions ought to do things. Those familiar with the Holy Bible know that both scoffers and believers have been making such lists for thousands of years. Frankly such discussions today better prove the skills of the debaters, rather than the subject being debated.

To his demand that "religious leaders ... prove to me that He is going to stop wars,... and then I might listen," this Christian pastor responds: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

And when he begins to get that, I pray that he will be ready to listen -- a become part of a long conversation.

Yours sincerely,

The Rev. Steven P. Tibbetts, STS
Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church
Peoria, Illinois

And leading off this morning's Journal Star Reader Forum, there it was, slightly edited, under the title "Proper beginning needed in prayer conversation."