Lutherans Seek a Remedy for Membership Loss

EVANGELISM

Like other mainline Protestant groups, U.S. Lutheranism has been failing to add enough new members to offset membership losses. In 1986, the 11,000 congregations of what is now the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) averaged fewer than one adult baptism.

The situation is no better in the second-largest U.S. Lutheran body, the more conservative Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), which last year, according to one synod leader, lost 51.000 members.

Many attribute the decline among Lutherans to a lost emphasis on evangelism. Determined to change this, some 1,000 Lutherans registered for the three-day conference “Lutherans Evangelizing Together” in late June in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Between 1,000 and 2,000 additional people turned out for nightly conference rallies. Even so, overall attendance was disappointing if the selection of the 15,000-seat Metropolitan Sports Center as the meeting site is a fair indication of what organizers expected.

The conference was intended in part to substitute for the annual International Lutheran Conference on the Holy Spirit, which customarily has drawn thousands of charismatics each August to the Minneapolis Auditorium, now being razed to make way for a new convention center. Perhaps due to the absence of a big-name charismatic leader among the major speakers, turnout of charismatics was low.

Most of the registrants, and all but one of the main speakers, came from the five million-member ELCA. The exception was Ronald Fink, president of the Atlantic District of the LCMS, who called evangelism “the battleground where the Lutheran church lives or dies—on every level.”

Fink said, “The Lord’s mandate to evangelize, make disciples, and to lift high the cross should be the primary task of Christians.”

Herbert W. Chilstrom, the ELCA’S first presiding bishop, said at the opening session of the conference that he was “ashamed to be identified with a declining mainline denomination.” Prior to becoming the leader of the ELCA, which was formed last year by a three-body merger, Chilstrom rallied the Minnesota Synod of the former Lutheran Church in America to annual membership gains.

The presiding bishop, who had insisted on including “evangelical” in the name of the new church, emphasized “absolute dependence on the Holy Spirit” in seeking church renewal. Stating that Lutheranism abandons its young people at confirmation, Chilstrom stressed the need for the church to encourage youth to be more bold about sharing their faith.

Conference chairman Merv Thompson, pastor of a fast-growing ELCA congregation in Burnsville, Minnesota, said in an interview that Chilstrom’s “powerful evangelical witness” provided people with “a wonderful sense of confidence” in ELCA leadership.

Thompson added that a Bible study led by David Tiede, the new president of Luther Northwestern Theological Seminary in St. Paul (the denomination’s largest), should assure evangelicals within the ELCA that they “have a strong evangelical leader at the seminary.”

By Willmar Thorkelson in Bloomington.

World Scene

NICARAGUA

Sandinista Crackdown

In the past, crackdowns by the government of Nicaragua have meant imprisonment for some evangelical pastors, allegedly for antigovernment political activities. But there are no indications that Protestant Christians in Nicaragua were directly affected by last month’s actions to curb opposition.

The country’s Sandinista government did, however, shut down the Catholic radio station Radio Catolica indefinitely, as well as the opposition newspaper La Prensa for 15 days. In addition, Sandinista police squelched a rally of political dissenters on July 10 in the town of Nandaime, 35 miles south of the capital of Managua. Police used tear gas and rifle butts to break up the rally; among those beaten was a reporter for the New York Times. The government defended its measures by claiming that the rally was part of a United States-orchestrated effort to overthrow the Sandinistas.

Among political opponents arrested as a result of the rally was Roger Guevara Mena, secretary general of the Democratic Coordinator, a coalition of opposition groups. Guevara, a Catholic who was interviewed by CHRISTIANITY TODAY late last year (CT, Jan. 15, 1988, p. 44), has voiced a commitment to peaceful political change in Nicaragua. According to Nina Shea of the Washington, D.C.-based Puebla Institute, Guevara was sentenced to six months in prison for disturbing the peace.

The Institute on Religion and Democracy, which monitors the political activities of mainline churches, has drafted a letter to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, deploring especially “the official silencing of Radio Católica” as a direct assault on the church’s freedom “to proclaim its message and to apply it to society.” The IRD is seeking signatures from leaders of mainline denominations and renewal groups within them.

CHINA

A Word On Forced Abortions

A Chinese government official has said that coerced abortions in her country are the exception, not the rule.

Shen Guoxiang, of China’s Family Planning Commission, told the Washington Post that her government hopes to meet its goal of holding China’s population to 1.2 billion by 2000. Thus it will train an additional 25,000 family-planning workers and attempt to discourage early marriages.

In this regard, Shen says China’s abortion rate is lower than Japan’s (17.1 a year per 1,000 women) and the Soviet Union’s (102.4 a year per 1,000 women, 10 years ago). The rate of abortion in the United States is 27.4 a year per 1,000 women.

HIGHER EDUCATION

Third World Seminarians

Three years ago, the Netherlands-based Tyndale Theological Seminary was only an idea. Founded by Robert P. Evans and sponsored by Greater Europe Mission, the school has operated successfully with help from visiting American faculty members. Earlier this summer, ten students received degrees and made history as Tyndale’s first graduating class.

Seminary president Arthur P. Johnston hailed the event as part of “God’s purpose and plan for world evangelism.” Half of Tyndale’s students come from countries representing the Two-thirds World. Graduates received either a certificate in Biblical Studies, master of arts in World Evangelization, or master of divinity degree. Some of these graduates have already begun ministries in their native countries or are serving as missionaries in other countries.

UPDATE

Lausanne Moves To Manila

The first World Congress on Evangelization was held in Lausanne, Switzerland, giving birth to the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization (LCWE) in 1974. A second congress sponsored by LCWE was to be held next year in Singapore, international headquarters for the organization. But due to construction delays in that city, the second Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization will be held in Manila, the Philippines.

Congress organizers agree the change might be confusing, and that it came as a surprise. “We were stunned,” said LCWE Chairman Leighton Ford on learning of the construction problems in Singapore. The official congress name will now be “Lausanne II in Manila,” and the selected theme is “Proclaim Christ Until He Comes: A Call to the Whole Church to Take the Gospel to the Whole World.”

CUBA

Church Is Off Limits

David Howard, executive director of World Evangelical Fellowship, recently found himself on an unexpected three-day vacation on the island of Cayo Largo, just south of Cuba. But he would rather have spoken at a pastors’ conference, which was his reason for going to Cuba in the first place.

Howard was assured prior to departing for Havana that the airline would secure his visa. However, upon arriving in Cuba, immigration officials said he could enter the country only by getting a temporary tourist visa. They told Howard he could neither preach nor attend church. In a memo to the WEF executive council, Howard wrote, “In all my visits to different socialist countries, this was the first time I had ever been denied permission even to attend church.”

Howard said a Christian colleague in Cuba was “terribly embarrassed and distraught about the situation,” and cautiously suggested Howard return to the U.S. Unfortunately, all flights were booked for several weeks.

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