This is Ben and this is Keith.

And this is Main Street Lutherans.

So today we're going to talk about the churchwide assembly that happened in July and then just into August this summer. We're in 2025 for anybody who's listening in later, later years. So Phoenix, Arizona, site of the churchwide assembly. The churchwide assembly brought up some ideas for me, some things we talked about in prior episodes, actually. So we have this churchwide assembly. This follows the year after the youth gathering in New Orleans. This is in the church wide assemblies in Phoenix. It's where our church gathers to make our big decisions, elect our leaders. We have these things. We also have a rostered leaders gathering that brings clergy together for a weekend, I think. And that happens every three years too. It seems like it's in that year be turned churchwide assembly and the youth gathering on the other side. So that should be next year. We have all these gatherings for particular groups, but I think we have smaller groups. And so one of the things I was thinking about is one of the things I really want to go to is theology beer camp that is put on by homebrewed Christianity. And this year it's going to be in St. Paul, Minnesota. And it's something I want to do, but it conflicts with something I do every year now, which is Santa School in Midland, Michigan. So my particular thing, but we've been doing the Festival of Homiletics. Keith and I went last year. I attended virtually this year. But I also a couple weeks ago went to the Hymn Society, which was a gathering of hymn people, so lots of Lutherans. We had some Lutheran dignitaries speak there, but a lot of hymns. So I went to an after hours thing, a hymn sing in a historically black church in Detroit. And it was fabulous. Probably 800 or so people singing hymns together with a pipe organ, a Hammond B3 organ and a grand piano up by the altar. So I was thinking about all these.

That was also a combined event with another gathering.

There's an organization called the national association of Negro Musicians and they were having a festival or some sort of conference at the Renaissance center in Detroit. And so they brought these two groups together to have a very specific gospel style hymn sing. And it had lectures in it too. So it was kind of interesting that way.

That just sounds amazing.

It was wild. I didn't even notice there was a drum set on stage until the very last song.

Right.

I texted a guy at work who told me that he'd gone to Morehouse College. And I noticed that two of the speakers were from Morehouse. And so I sent him a message on our work message system on teams. And about three days later I get a message from him, Hey, I was there too, but we didn't see each other because there are just so many people there. So what I've been thinking about, and I actually entered a conversation with Carla Christopher, who we had on a couple episodes ago, about the idea of having like minded people in our church gather for a smaller sort of event. I've been thinking about what groups would support that sort of thing and finding a place that could host back to, back to back events that are our church. But maybe we can use some synergy there so that a group doesn't have to do all the planning to get together and we could just have it available. So anybody that's listening, if you have an idea for that, if you've got a group that wants to get together, a lot of this is, is people that have similar, similar demographics. People, people who share something in common. It could be, you know, ELCA Lego fans or something like that. But, but more likely it'll be, you know, youth ministry people or people who, who are, you know, LGBTQIA plus folks might, might want to have a gathering space. But if we can move all these, if we can arrange a place where it could be very easy to do that, I'm thinking like a college campus where there are dormitories and food available so we don't have to do so much planning. That's my idea. Of course, the churchwide assembly is too big for that. And that's what we're here to talk about today. So we have the VP with us today. Thanks for joining us.

Of course. Good to see you again.

So, Imran Siddiqui, VP of the ELCA Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. There's a whole two episodes of this back last year, I think in September. So almost a year ago we talked and we talked about your, your role as the head of the ELCA Church council and you had a little bit of responsibility here at the churchwide assembly.

Yeah, just, just a little, not, not terribly much. I lit the candle every, every before every plenary and you got to give some awards. Oh, yes, I, I, the outgoing church council. I got to stand up there with a nice looking rondel, which is if you've ever been to Lutheran center. And you know that mosaic that's on the wall when you walk in? So they made a little, I don't know, a box or something that's really nice and they give it to everyone. So we took pictures with everyone that was leaving along with the Presiding Bishop. And then I got to also read a common commendation. They call it citation, but it sounds like I'm giving a speeding ticket for, for Secretary Rothmeyer. Then I flubbed some very important states while I was doing so. But aside from that, and I gave a report, you know, about 10 minutes or 10 to 15 minutes report. But aside from that, you know, I generally, that was, that was basically my, my role there. And Presiding Bishop Eaton was the one who was chairing the whole thing, so she was the one that had all the, the work really.

There are a lot of jokes about the Roberts rules of order, so, so all of the, the actions are on YouTube. They were live streamed and I think they'll, they'll be on there forever. I assume so, or at least three years maybe. I think the stuff from Columbus is still on there from three years ago, so probably be there for a long time. So if you want to see how it happened, we'll include links to that. So overall, how did churchwide assembly go?

Oh, you know, I always liked churchwide assembly. I always liked running into people and I know a lot of people were like, oh, Phoenix, this sort of thing. But you know, I was coming from Atlanta, which was the week that I was gone, had a record heat wave with a heat index of 106, you know, and that includes a. Was it. The Temperature is probably 95 and the humidity is probably 90% and I went somewhere where maybe it was 110, but humidity, I looked at my phone, it was 8% and I said this ain't bad. It was, it was, I mean I didn't think it was too terrible. And then also of course, you know, the hotels are like a block away from the convention center and we spent all day in a convention center that's super air conditioned and that sort of thing. But the fun part was just running into folks and talking to them. But the weird part this time was, you know, in previous church wide assemblies that I'd been to, I got to, you know, kind of experience it. And this time I was working, you know, and so I had to run back and forth to do various things. I think church council met a few times during it, so we had separate meetings and lunch and you know, that sort of thing. And, and every time I had to go somewhere in a certain amount of time I'd get stopped by about four or five people, which I'm like, oh yeah, more people know me right now and they're going to stop Me on the way. But in the end, you know, I just enjoyed talking with folks. I mean, that was kind of the. The fun part, you know, getting talking to folks from all across the country. And, you know, people like a youth voting member came up to me and said, hey, I wanna. I wanna try to pass something. Like, do you have any tips? And so I was working out with her. I'm like, well, this is what you probably want to try to do. And like, you know, this is a good way to try to sell it and, you know, like, little bits of Robert's rules on, you know, sort of help on the side a little bit for some other people. But, yeah, I mean, it was. It was fun. I mean, that food was great in the convention center. That always helps. And it was a good time.

Yeah.

That's awesome. I really wish I could.

Yeah.

I've never been to a churchwide assembly, but I have been to several youth gatherings and I think there's kind of a similar vibe to it. And you wouldn't necessarily think that given that, you know, there's a fairly significant median age difference between the two, but there is something about gathering these large numbers of people together who may not agree on everything, but they're all passionate about the church and. And they love their congregations, their synods, their. Their organizations, whomever they're there to represent. But, you know, somehow they accepted that it was part of their call to attend this event together and to, you know, represent, to vote, to ask questions, to challenge, whatever it might be.

But they're all there.

You know, they're all there for the same reason.

And.

And that just has a certain spirit and a certain power to it that you just don't get to experience all the time, regardless of your faith or your role in the church or your work in the world, whatever it might be. And there's just. There is something neat about that kind of experience, no matter how many times you've done it.

Yeah.

And then it will especially shows itself during worship services. Right. Where there aren't people arguing against each other.

Yeah, yeah.

Because, you know, in the end, it's, you know, it's a. It's a big, long business meeting. But the worship services are when people come together and, you know, are able to be one together. You know, some of the. Some of the. The conversations get a little heated, so it's nice to have time for rest and prayer and, you know, song and so. Yeah, and I. I remember going to the youth gathering and there was that. When they had that. The big Huge gatherings in the evenings. Right. Whereas in churchwide assembly, you're there with everyone all day.

Right, Right.

So it's kind of interesting that way.

Well, in there, what, 800. 800 voting members.

800 voting members, roughly. I think there were a little bit more than that, but, yeah, 800 voting members. Then you have the staff.

Right.

That have to, you know, help the whole thing. And then you have various visitors and congregational observers, and in the end, it ends up being, like, 1500 folks.

Yeah.

And so, like, you know, and then you have people from other denominations that are coming to visit and, you know, lots of. I mean, it may not be 1500 in the. In the room at all times, but over the week.

Right.

You know, kind of. But there's the 800 voting members for. For sure in the middle, and then the staff has to be there the whole time. And so that's kind of an interesting thing as well.

So.

But lots of people. I remember the first churchwide assembly I went to was the one in New Orleans in 2016 or so, and that was the one with the grace gathering. So the worship services had over 2,000 people, and I was like, wow, 2,000 Lutherans in a room. Like, I don't.

And then he went to the youth.

Gathering, and then I went to youth gathering, and then I was like, how many? Like. And they were like, well, it's a little lower this year. It's only 15,000. You're like, oh, my goodness.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ab.

Yeah.

800, 1500. You know, when they all start to sing together, that's.

Yep.

That's meaningful.

Yeah, yeah.

When they're Lutherans and they sing together.

Yeah, yeah.

We can't speak for other denominations.

Right, right, right.

Well, and the thing is that on the. Unfortunately, on the. On the YouTube, you know, it's the. The folks aren't miked. Right. You can't really hear the singing, but there is one video that the ELCA put up on its social networks, and. And it might be on YouTube, too, but it's at least on Facebook where there's someone that has a mic and a camera down in the.

In.

In the pit or whatever, and you can hear everyone singing, and it's, like, fantastic, and it will send chills up your spine. But, yeah, everyone singing together is where it really comes together.

Yeah.

And I think that's true for. We talked about those camp experiences or the assemblies that we do, and I think all of those have an element of that. I remember going to a thing at Wartburg Seminary and having the chapel thing, it's just mostly teenagers that were there as part of a aal thing before they formed Thrivent. And the singing there was great. Even though it's high school kids that aren't supposed to sing hymns.

Right.

And still it was, it was wonderful. So. So. Yeah, well. So did anything happen? I mean.

Oh, no, nothing much.

Nothing much, no.

Well, obviously, you know, the, the big news items that came out of it is, of course, and we knew going in there was going to be a new Presiding Bishop and there was going to be a new secretary as both Presiding Bishop Eaton and Secretary Rothmire indicated that they were retiring. And so that was kind of dominated a lot of the pre assembly chatter, you know, dominated the chatter while we were there at assembly. I mean, it was the big, big things that we kind of had to, had to deal with. Like that was our big, our goal. We're going to come out with somebody that's going to lead this church, especially.

With the world's focus on the new Pope.

Right.

And so that's, that's kind of a little ironic, right, because we ended up electing Yahel Curry from metro Chicago. And apparently what we will find out is that his, his first call, Shek Chapel, I'm probably saying it right. Wrong, but that call was literally a few miles from where the Pope grew up. And so it's like kind of in the same general area. So I don't know, maybe Bishop Curry and the Pope can talk about, you know, deep dish pizza or something in the White Sox. And the White Sox, they're both White Sox fans. So. Yeah, that's the other thing.

There's something in the holy water in Chicago.

Yeah, yeah, it was very, very funny, all those ties. But yeah, that was a, A very, that was the first election. Right. So we did the Presiding Bishop first. And one of the reasons was, is because secretary. Well, Presiding Bishop, of course, is open to rostered leaders and. Or Ross, I'm sorry, pastors in the LCA only, because when I say roster leaders, that includes deacons and deacons cannot be a minister or cannot be a bishop because that has to be a minister of word and sacrament. The secretary is open to everybody. So they figure that, you know, folks that may, if their names are put forward for Presiding Bishop, they may choose to go that route instead.

Right.

It'd be really ironic if someone. Or really sad if someone got elected secretary and then said, you know what? I'd rather have this job instead. You know, sort of thing.

We'll go to number two, right.

So, yeah, and that one. And the presidency of election won five rounds, you know, and we knew it. I think we knew it would.

Right.

And there was lots of, lots of, you know, people jockeying for the role, it seemed like. And it ended up being, you know, ended up being Bishop Curry. After the third ballot, he took a, he, he went up pretty high and then kind of kept that, that margin a little bit and through the fifth ballot. And so, and then it was, it was very, you know, it was a very powerful moment because, you know, he is, of course, the, the first, the African descent, first person of color who's a presiding bishop that we're going to have. So that was incredibly powerful. And then in the secretary election as well, it was kind of interesting. The numbers just kind of went up and down. And we elected Cece Mills, who's, who's assistant of the bishop currently in North Carolina and will be until this fall, I think, November 1st, when she starts. And, and Bishop Curry is going to start October 1st, which is a quirk of, because the assembly was over two months, basically how. When they start. But. And both Secretary Elect Mills and Presiding Bishop Elect Curry are both team candidate. And I think that's, you know, that we haven't had those before either in these positions.

And team is, it's.

Oh, Keith, can you.

I'm even on a candidacy committee and I mess up the acronym every time. But basically it is someone who comes into rostered ministry in the ELCA by what's considered a non traditional path. So rather than somebody who goes to college, gets a bachelor's degree, maybe they have a career of some sort or not, but then they go to seminary essentially as graduate school, get a master's in divinity, and are ordained as a pastor or a deacon. A team candidate is someone who may or may not have been to college, but either doesn't have a bachelor's degree, maybe has an associate's, or, you know, has, has not, is, is not in a place in their life where they are able to go to seminary and get that master's degree. And so, but, but rather than allowing, you know, just anybody to become ordained in elca, they go through a similar candidacy process, but they, they have a more limited, I should say probably a more focused education on those things that enable them to get into their area of ministry. And it's particularly team candidates, a couple of things. They tend to be lifted up by a specific community to lead that community. So whether that is a community of persons of a particular ethnic background in an urban setting, for example, or perhaps a small rural setting and where. So you, you don't have someone, they're having a hard time perhaps you know, drawing or employing a pastor, let's say full time. And so someone from that community is lifted up and identified as this team candidate and they become that community's pastor and that's where they are ordained into. But having them been ordained after that call concludes, in whatever may manner it may, they're ready to or able to move on to any other position open to any other ordained person in the elca, including even Presiding Bishop, which is pretty cool.

And I looked it up. It's theological education for emerging ministries is what.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

And it's a fantastic program and hopefully this shines a light on, on, you know, because we have a lot of folks that may feel the call after they've done work, you know, kind of otherwise.

Right.

And then they say, you know, I'm feeling this call, but I don't really want to go back and do all this, you know.

Right.

Schooling, three, four, five years of classwork and an internship and quit my job and move my family and.

Yeah, well.

And presenting Bishop Elect Curry mentioned in his, in his speech and you know, acceptance speech, if you will, he mentioned that he had lots of careers before that. He had his own business. He, I forget what, what his industry was. Was he an accountant or something like that?

Teacher as well.

A teacher. So, so he, he has all these things and the last thing he really needs is to have to go to school to. Well, because you had a four year degree onto seminary and you've got eight years of a lot of discernment and when you've already discerned, it's frustrating to have, have that. I, I can speak to that from experience here lately. Right, Keith.

Right.

But so, so we've got, you know, we've got these, they're not really shortcuts. They're ways to, for the church to respond to gifts.

Correct.

And we have not had those very much.

Yeah.

It's just a different kind of path.

When Keith went to seminary, they tried to discourage people from going to seminary because of the financial aspect.

Right.

And so, and also seminaries are inexpensively.

Or free now anymore with lots of scholarship opportunities.

Right.

And team seems to be a way that actually the church is meeting people kind of where they're at and seeing what's going on in the, in the country.

Yeah.

Abraham, I'm curious because you're in a position of leadership in the lca. I'm Curious your perspective on the, the position of vice president in particular and that it is, as you, as you mentioned, open to either an ordained or non ordained member of the elca. So it could be anybody.

You mean the secretary you're talking about? Yes.

I'm so sorry. Yes, yes.

Yeah.

And secretary is interesting because, you know, after all, the current occupant of the office is a deacon. And it is unfortunately it's the only officer position or it's Deacon and treasurer are the only officer or I'm sorry, secretary and treasurer are the only officer positions that a deacon can be when they were considered lay. They could be Senate vice presidents, but not the case anymore. And, and of course they cannot be presiding bishop. And so, but one of the things that's very interesting about that position of secretary is, is it does require a kind of a very, you know, kind of a very specific skill set.

Right.

And so it, we kind of, we don't want to kind of shut ourselves off from the skills of someone who's a deacon. And, and Deacon Sue Rothmire is, has a encyclopedic knowledge of the constitutions and bylaws and containing resolutions. I mean, I, I swear there is no one in this church that knows them as much as she does. And, and if she was denied the opportunity to run for that would be a very, that would be a loss. And so it's one of those. Now, now Secretary Elect Mills is a minister of word and sacrament. And, and also she is, she is also African descent. So she is the first African descent or person of color that is in the office of secretary as well. But to have, you know, kind of that open and the, the person that finished in third name is Josh Tatum and he is a layperson. He is a synod attorney in the Indiana Kentucky Synod. He's at a, you know, he's at a law firm and he has, you know, kind of those skills, a separate sort of skills as well. And so I think it's one of those things that it's, it's great that it's open and it's something that I think is a, is a good idea. And so I'm glad that we had, and we've had over the history of the elca, we've had a layperson in that role.

Right.

David Swartland, we've had a deacon in the role, you can see Roth Martin, we've had of course, ministers of word and sacrament.

So, so about these roles, will they, so, so Bishop Curry, he's bishop now in Metro Chicago So he doesn't need to move. But does the secretary live in Chicago? Is that an expectation or is that so.

So that's an expectation.

Yeah.

Secretary like Mills is currently lives in North Carolina and Chewell the expectation she'll move to Chicago and, and go into the Lutheran center and her office is on the 11th floor, the same as the presiding bishop's office. And so they'll be just down the hall from each other and then the treasurer is a few floors down. I think she's on floor six or so. So funny enough, I was, I was talking to the, to the treasurer Lori Fetich and I mentioned, you know, now you're the only non person of color that's an officer of the elca.

Which.

She thought was a great thing as well. So yeah, it's interesting how one assembly has kind of flipped the script so to speak. And then also you know, of course we had, we had other elections right. You know half the church council gets elected. Every church wide assembly. The, it used to be that you know, used to have every two years right for church wide assemblies. So they'd do a third, a third, a third and then when they went to every three they did a half and a half which is, is not the best because just when people start to learn how to do things, they gotta go. So we elected half the, the church council this time around and so will be, I'll be meeting them when we onboard them in the next church council meeting when we're all together in Minneapolis in October because we're going to meet right before the installation of Presiding Bishop Elect Curry which is on October 4th in Minneapolis at Central Lutheran 2pm you can, you can come if you're in the area or if you want to fly there, that's fine too.

I'm guessing it'll be live streamed.

Yes, it will be live stream. That is, that is for sure. So you can, you can do that too. You can watch it from the comfort of your own couch.

Imran, remind me again how many people serve on church council churchwide?

Well it, it can vary but it's, it's roughly around. So at least half of the synods right. Will send. So they, they, they go back and forth. So it's kind of like 30. So I guess it's 32 because from synods and then we can add at large's based on certain things that we would like to. So church council decides what we need. Do we need a general at large? Do we need a specific at large? So this time around we Asked for an at large member that had financial experience and we asked for an at large member that had legal experience. So those are two at larges that were elected this time around. So it's around, it's around 35. And I have to look at the numbers to see if that's where we are still, if I think and see if there's any other at larges that we have from before. But it's a right around that number. And then there's liaison bishops that are not full members but they are constitutionally required to be there, I guess one for each region. And then we have advisory members which are presidents of the ethnic specific associations as well as the president of reconciling works. So those make up kind of the, the church council, but those advisory members have voice but no vote. The liaison bishops have voice but no vote. There's 35 folks that have voice and vote and they're, you know, made up from the synods and a few at larges.

Gotcha, thanks. And so those elected members of the council are six year terms.

Yes, that's a six year term. No opportunity for re election unless you're an at large. And we decide to do another at large. But yeah, because what happens is after the six years, because you're paired with another synod, it goes to the other synod.

Right, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Thank you.

Cool.

Yeah.

So let's see other various boards and commissions and stuff. I'm sure there were lots of appointments to different things.

So if anyone has been to a churchwide assembly, you'll know there's something called a common ballot. And there is. Oh, I can't. 20 of those on the common ballot are church council or maybe a little more. Yeah, 20 of them are church council or a little less than that. And then the other ones were, you know, the board of appeals and the nominating committee and those sort of things. And then you have all the separately incorporated ministry boards. So like the ELC foundation and you have. And some of those are uncontested, but some of them are. But it ends up being like it's like 100 page documents or something like that. And I'm pretty sure that by the end people are just kind of going eeny meeny miny mo. I wouldn't suggest that no one people have not read all the, the bioforms, but I would not be surprised. There's a lot of people on that list. And so. And there's everyone has a bioform obviously. And so, you know, there's a lot of reading. And sometimes people don't realize it until it's three days out and these sort of things. But yeah, we elected quite a. Quite a few things that were there, so.

And then.

Yeah, and then those happen. A lot of those folks aren't in the room and so they get informed about it after the fact or, you know, hopefully they get an email. I'm not entirely sure.

So, stepping back to the elections of the presiding bishop and the secretary, were there people who were nominated who had interesting stories? I always imagine that, like, I was thinking myself, like, what if somebody had to get ahold of me? But I'm at band camp at Bowling Green State University, you know, would Bishop Chris know how to contact me? You know, so. So are there any interesting stories that come from that or is it. Is it usually pretty well known?

I mean, sometimes people get missed, but a lot of times what happens is that those folks maybe don't get that many votes. So in the end it doesn't matter as much.

Right.

Yeah. There was a weird situation for secretary where someone on the first ballot that had a lot of votes pulled their name out. However, there was another person on the ballot that had the same last name and a very similar first name.

Yeah.

That picked up those votes. And so we had to redo the second ballot because it's like, you have to, like, that's not the same person. Like, just so you know.

Right.

So. So that was an interesting thing that happened, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't that someone wasn't contacted and then just totally than think. Yeah, the other interesting thing that happened was in the bishop election, for those of you who watched, they all did theirs on Zoom. You notice because one of the candidates couldn't make it out to Phoenix in time. And so it was a show of solidarity. The rest of the top seven decided they would also do theirs at Zoom in one of the conference or one of the rooms down in the Phoenix Convention Center. And so that was something I had not witnessed before. One of the things I would ask your listeners to look at was during the secretary election of the top seven, Keith Fry, who's currently in the office of the Secretary, discerned that, you know, what, Overnight he said, you know, the spirit is not calling me to this. And he gave this absolutely amazing speech and it's probably one of the best four minute speeches I've ever heard.

It was excellent.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was. He's saying that he, he was not called to this, but then he talked about what would make A good secretary and, and taking the attributes of previous secretaries and, and, and, and it was just very, very beautiful. And so Keith is actually retiring at the end of this year from his role. But yeah, that's. The bear sometimes will move in weird, interesting ways. And Keith was open to it. You know, he just kind of.

He.

Thought the spirit was telling him to put his name in. Then he realized no.

Well, in the way that speech worked because he starts with the attributes of prior secretaries and it really sounded like he was setting up that these are the attributes and I'm going to show you how I fit all those things. And then the brakes hit and he's like, but this isn't me. And it was just so honest and I felt for him. Yeah, it was so, so heartfelt. And that's not an easy speech to give because somebody has voted for you and feels that you deserve to be there. If you're in the top seven, there are a number of people. And so you are potentially letting some people down who, you know.

Right.

And so that's a very brave thing to do. And I was, I was, I was admiring that. So, yeah, so let's see. We, we also dealt with statements. We have a new, a new statement of faith in civic life.

Right.

Yeah. Social statement and on faith and civic life that we voted on and approved.

Yeah.

And so that was.

I.

This has been something that's been a lot of work and I think that the folks that were involved in that task force did a great job. And so I think, I know a lot of people, especially over the last year or two, have been really clamoring for, hey, you know, do we have something that we can use when people say why are you talking about politics? Not in a partisan way, but why are you talking about politics?

Right.

And this social statement really addresses that head on. It also denounces Christian nationalism in the document as well, which I was happy to see. And so those things really were important and I think that I was glad that it passed. And it was, it was something that passed overwhelmingly. So now it's a part of the social statements of the church.

Excellent.

We also updated the human sexuality gift and trust with language that fits modern situations of particularly dealing with queer marriage, those things.

So, yeah, so in that one, and Roger Willard, who's the head of theological ethics at the church organization has been tried to be very clear about this and has said it over and over again that, you know, the whole, the, the reevaluation of human sexuality as a two step process. Right there Were three years ago there were two. There was a, there was a resolution for represent council and there was a memorial as well. And the memorial had to do with updating the language because Human Sexuality Gifted Trust came out in 2009. That was before same sex marriage. So it has a lot of awkward language to avoid necessarily saying marriage because that wasn't the legal position of the country. And so part of this was to update that language to add marriage to make it clearer in those respects. It was. They called it a non substantive change. Right now there was a resolution as well that was brought up about looking into the bound conscience positions. The four bound conscience positions. The same task force that did the pre. This work on human sexuality gift and trust is working now on those bound conscious positions. And this task force includes members that are of all four positions as well. And so they're going to start working on this fall. But they wanted to make sure that they got the kind of that non substantive language out first so they could really dedicate themselves to this work which is going to be probably a little more difficult to say the least.

Yeah. Keith, do you want to talk about what Bound Conscious means or I can do it.

I'm going to be taxed on details, specifically the four positions because it's, it's. I, I have it's even fairly recently in the last year. I know I read this, this statement and. But it's not language that sticks in my head. So found conscience was the. Is the notion that especially at the time when this was adopted there was not consensus on what the ELCA says or believes I think would be a fair statement about the status of human sexuality, especially people in the queer community who are in, you know, what back in those days were called like open loving relationships. And, and whether that is considered a sin or not. And so the concept of bound conscience was to, you know, it's. Some people would say it was brilliant, some would say it was frustrating, some would say it was wrong. Which I think is why it's being reevaluated now that we did not need to agree and we could still be together as church. So some folks believe, you know, this, this way of being is sinful, some folks do not. And then some folks are somewhere in the middle. And bound conscience would permit you to hold your own belief and yet also hold one another as siblings in Christ. In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Did I fudge that? Well enough to make sense?

And particularly it allows congregations particularly and clergy particularly not to perform same sex weddings. Right, right, right.

Congregations. Yeah, or congregations to call, you know, pastors who are, say, gay and married.

Right. Yeah.

It was still too per. And, And. And not have their sin and say, but, you know, you have to call whatever candidate we put before you. You know, you always have a choice in candidates anyway, so it's a little wonky, but. Yeah, the.

But there's that perception that the synod controls who the candidate is. And a lot of people in the, in the call process at congregations think that the synod gives you two bad candidates and one that they want.

Right.

I mean, that's the perception.

Sure. Yeah.

It's not really true.

Yeah.

But, yeah, we don't really have three candidates to give them anymore.

But. Right. Yeah.

And so, yeah, I will say.

And so.

And then, yeah, the, the. The thought was, yeah, it was a, A compromise at the time because people weren't on the same page. And so it's good time to revisit it and just to see, you know, how can this actually be made into something that makes sense now, you know, and, and people think that it's already a done deal. You know, it's been decided and it's going to be, you know, and if you hold to certain positions, you. You will be ostracized. But nothing has been decided yet. I mean, it's like I said, there's people from all four positions on the, on the task force. And what I hear, they have a fantastic working relationship, all of them. And so, you know, they're. They're going to start working on that now and see what comes out of it. And so I don't know what's going to come out of it, but I'm.

Hopeful we'll see in Des moines.

Yeah.

In 2028.

Right.

Where everyone wants to go in July. So. Yeah, so also we had a.

I.

Don'T know, it wasn't a statement, but it was a resolution about justice for Palestinians and Israelis.

So that, that was a. That was one of the memorials that was separately taken out of the on block resolution and discussed. And so it was a. It was kind of a. Something that was talked about quite intently. So the interesting that happened is that there was the memorials committee took out a certain statement, and then a bunch of folks wanted to be substituted for another statement. And so the Morris community said, okay, that that's fine. You know, we. We think this one might be a better as a substitute. So. And the substitute kind of asks, you know, the presiding bishop to kind of talk or send a letter and speak out about what's going on. In Palestine and about denouncing the genocide that's happening in Gaza and talking about, you know, trying to advocate for peace in the region. And so, you know, kind of that's, that was a memorial that was discussed and it was pretty intently discussed. But I think that the original memorial, a lot of people thought it didn't necessarily go far enough because it talked about, you know, affirming what the church is already doing. And a lot of people wanted a little bit more than that. And so the substitute was something that I think a lot of people more jived with.

Right.

And so that one kind of passed because it was more action oriented and kind of saying, hey, let's do things to try to, you know, to try to make sure that, that we stand against, you know, the continuing war and the, in the, and the genocide that's happening. And so, yeah, that was kind of a big discussion that, that we did and passed.

Yeah, so those were, those were the big things. I think that that hit the news at least in, in ELCA channels.

Well, there was the other thing too.

Right.

The commission.

Oh, right.

The big thing. The commission. Well, supposedly the big thing, but it didn't really have as much impact and it might have been because of the elections.

Right.

But the Commission for Renewed Lutheran Church came up with 13 recommendations earlier this year. And we as church council forwarded, I think it was seven of them for constitutional change because some of them didn't.

Need to go to churchwide assembly. Some of those corrected on directly by council.

Right, right.

And the church council acted on six of them, I believe. And, and we actually did. And I, I spoke about one in my report that we authorized the association of Senate Vice Presidents. And so we were able to do that by continuing resolution, which church council can do by itself. And there's some other things church council did was there's going to be a task force of interdependence and purpose which is really going to dig into how many synods should we have. It was. And what should they be doing. It was kind of a task that this commission thought was a little too. I mean, they did kind of the groundwork and the lang of the foundation. They said we need a smaller, more focused group to work on this part. There was also a financial coordinating task force done to kind of make sure that. So that was all passed by church council. There was some that were constitutional amendments that were involved and they went through. I mean, one of the things was we added to the Constitution as continuing resolutions. We added some DEIA language, diversity Equity, inclusion, accessibility. But there was one part that had to be a constitutional approval, and then there was one part of the constitutional approval that was taken out. So one of the things the commission suggested was that the church council should have the ability to approve a constitutional change that was approved at a churchwide assembly. And then it goes into effect.

Right.

Instead of waiting another three years.

That's right. And that got pulled out.

And that.

That was a very long discussion. And in the end, there was no vote on it. There was no consensus on it. And, and I think, I know, I know you're probably going to ask it, but if it doesn't, if nothing happens with it and it just goes. It automatically goes to the church council to decide what to do with it.

And.

But of course, the question is, if it's a constitutional change, you know, the church council might not be able to do it itself. Right, right. So. But yeah, that took up a lot of time as well in that respect. And so there was no real consensus on that. You know, some people really thought that it would, it would speed things up. And then other people said, you know what, we should really take our time to discuss base constitutional changes, especially if we're thinking about doing how many synods we got.

So there's an irony then, if church council then approves a measure that allows them to change the constitution by changing the constitution.

Well, the churchwide assembly had to vote on it, first of all. But, yeah, so part of the issue was people brought up amendments, and then folks were like, well, what does this really mean? And the office of the secretary and legal counsel said, we don't really know. Like, we need time to actually look at this. So one of. I think what we did end up approving on that. I was incorrect in saying we did nothing on that. We, I think we agreed to refer it to the office of secretary just to see what. Because one of the questions that rose up was what happens if the church council votes no? Does it automatically just go the same process, go back to church for assembly and the LEO council, Tom kind of.

Said, well, I don't.

I don't know. I mean, actually, I don't know if it goes back to the next. That might kill it. And so people were like, oh, wait a second. And it's like, we need more time to actually review it and find out what this does. So, yeah. And then of course, you know, the friend of the podcast, Carla Christopher, she gave a report with Leon Schwarz on the commission, did a fantastic job. So, yeah, it was good to see Them and they did some significant work.

So, yeah, that was fun to see. The thing that I saw a lot of talk about was a suggestion. I think it was a memorial to increase youth participation in. Was it churchwide activities or. I was unclear. I just heard the. The objections and the. And things to it. So.

So right now there is a goal of 10% of all bodies. Right. So that's everything that's not just churchwide, but synod level, you know, etcetera, have to be made. There's a goal of 10% youth, young adult. So the resolution was to make it 20% as a goal.

Right. Not as a.

Let's define that. So. So youth and young adult.

Yeah.

So what is the bottom age for youth?

I think the bottom age for youth is. Is it confirmation age? Is there any real bottom.

I don't.

I think it's just confirmation age, but I think there might be a minimum.

So they'd have to be a confirmed member. That would be a minimum.

So I think it's a 12, maybe the minimum, and it goes up to 30.

It used to be 35 for young adult.

Yeah, it might be 35.

And I think that's a. That's a Nash or an international thing for, like, the Lutheran bodies. So.

Yeah, so that was. That was something that required a lot of conversation. I mean, the other thing, and one of the reasons that makes that interesting is one of the continuing resolutions that church council passed was what we call the hug. Historically underrepresented groups. So one of the things that the commission recommended, or one of the things actually that the DEIA audit recommended. Remember last churchwide assembly, they asked for a DEIA audit of the governing documents. They recommended that in addition to 10% people of color, we do an additional 10% of historically underrepresented groups. And that could be people of color, that could be lgbtqia, that could be youth socioeconomic. And so, yeah, so that was passed. And then, of course, then we have an additional goal of youth membership. And so the interesting conversation was, you know, people were arguing, and people were arguing against it, and.

And. And.

But it was funny. The youth were all arguing for it and kind of saying, if you want to show youth that they're valued, this is one way to do that.

Right, right. And.

And a lot of the folks that were against it were saying, well, you know, we can't get them to show up, you know, speaking of youth and young adults. And it's, you know, so it was kind of this back and forth that it didn't really like There was no, unfortunately, there was no real meaning of the minds there. I mean, I, you know, personally, I think it's probably a good idea, but, you know, people were kind of going back and forth on it in a way that was very well.

And there were questions that if it's a minor, are they able to participate in these things? You know, because some of these, some of these committees deal with employment stuff and contracts and things like that. And, and the assumption is that youth and young adult is going to be under 18.

Right.

But there are plenty of law school graduates that are 32.

Exactly. So, yeah, and there was, there was. On the last day, someone did do an apology for, you know, kind of some of the words that were used against youth and young adult. You know, kind of there were these very like, unfortunate, I will say unfortunate, but probably should say something even stronger words about how young folks don't basically don't understand these things or, you know, they aren't mature enough to handle these things. And when you're talking about young adults as well, like, that's pretty offensive.

Right, right.

Magically, at 35 years old, you develop a sense of community or something.

Yeah, that's right. Don't you know that? Of course.

So, yeah, people were pretty, pretty keyed up on that. And I think that's part of, if I remember right. On, on Friday. Was it Friday or Saturday? There was a, A bunch of speaking. I think it was on Saturday before everybody left, that there was a lot of talk, people bringing up motions to apologize and stuff. And it seemed like it took hours.

It did.

It did not actually take hours. But yes, it felt like, but it.

Pushed a lot of business back.

Right.

So what happens to all those things that didn't get talked about during the churchwide assembly?

So they go to church council, basically, the church council, whatever it can do. Right. Because if it's a constitutional amendment, the church council can't do anything really with it. But the resolutions and memorials, the church council decides. And Bishop Eaton said from the pony, by the way, just so you know, as a reminder, these things will go to church council. And then if I recall correctly, I think, like the conversation for something went really quick and it might have been the referring of the, of the, of something to the, to the secretary.

Right.

And that went super quick when people realized, oh, wait a second, you know, you know, this is going to go to church council and we, we want to have a say in it.

So. Yeah.

So again, does, how often again does church council meet?

Church council meets twice a year. No, the executive committee of church council meets every month, but the church council itself, which we'll have to deal with, you know, all these things we meet this year we're going to meet in October for two days. It's an abbreviated meeting because we have the installation, but then we meet in the spring. So we meet once in the spring, once in the fall, so.

Well, that'll be fun. You'll have two days to go through all that stuff, huh?

That's right. Yeah.

And we have to orient some new folks as well.

So, so do you have like a get to know you game already picked out?

No, no, I, I, I just show up. I don't, I don't run that one, but I think I help. I don't.

You wish you did.

No, I don't wish I did.

Time for the party games.

That's right.

But you know, so a lot of those things will be, but you know, one, one of the things I mentioned is the unblock stuff.

Right, right.

That's all that has all ended up passing.

Right.

Some, a lot of those things. So people might ask whatever happened to this memorial? And it's like, well, it was in the on block and no one took it out. So, you know, whatever the memorial committee recommended, that's what happened.

And that was 90 some pages, if I remember right.

That was, that was a substantial amount of pages. Yes.

Yeah.

90 might be underselling it in the end. I don't know. It could be because he had a supplemental report as well. And, but yeah, so those things. And you know, the something will come out on the website, I'm sure by, you know, in, in a few weeks or or so detailing all the stuff that happened.

But you know, and Living Lutheran has, has things day by day, the motions that happen and, and things that get kicked back to the next day or the next plenary session.

Right.

And that sort of stuff. So some really interesting speeches. So for anybody that wants to go back through and see what happens, the speeches that happen in. Was it plenary session three, I think is when the seven folks speak.

Yeah, that might be right.

Yeah.

For bishop. And then later it's going to be like seven or eight for the secretaries. Those speeches really inform us of where people in leadership positions, because everybody who makes it to that stage is in some form a leader in the church, whether they're laity or clergy or an officer or works in churchwide offices. They have a perspective on the church and they have a reason for wanting to be part of that and help lead the, the national church. And so those speeches tell us a lot of things, tells us a lot about which way we're. We're headed, even if they don't, if they're not elected to those positions and they're influential. The other thing was Bishop Eaton's speech that she gave, so her final report and yours, too. But, but Bishop Eaton, I actually used her in a sermon this past Sunday because she, at one point, she looked like she was just throwing the boxing gloves down and was going to go, you know, straight fist on this. And she. She said that. That the church needs to be. The elca needs to be better at identifying ourselves as doing the work of Christ. And that if we can't do that, that there are plenty of. She quoted a former bishop as saying, there are plenty of social justice working atheists out there that are doing a wonderful job. And so we have to be committed to our distinct mission of being equipped to spread the word and the sacrament and that if we stop focusing on that and we get lost in all the other side stuff, that we may as well just close our doors. No, she was very frank about that. And it was a really good. A really good speech. It was startling. You don't want to hear the Presiding Bishop say, you know, one of the options on the table is we could just close down right now. Yeah, but she was being frank and in a position. And I think I commented on Facebook on one of your things that I appreciated seeing her in an unscripted place. I mean, she was scripted, but. But she was speaking from her heart, not representing the church directly. You know, she stepped aside from that role and spoke as Elizabeth Eaton as opposed to the Presiding Bishop. And I really appreciated that. And I think it's a speech that has been separated out. So you can find just that speech on YouTube and we'll have a link to it. But I really appreciated that talk.

Yeah.

And she's kind of said a little bit of that here and there.

Yeah.

In various. And I think they're even wrote a Living Lutheran article on it. But that's been something that she's kind of very focused on, and I'm glad that she kind of highlighted it in her last remarks. You know, she had a report or final report, but then she also had, you know, we honored her. And then she spoke a little more afterwards, too. And same thing with Secretary Rothmeyer. But yeah, she. I mean, this was something that's very dear to our heart about, you know, kind of, you know, the Rotary Club does good things. She. She likes using The Rotary Club does good things.

Right.

How are we different than the Rotary Club?

Right.

What's what, you know, what is our reason for, for being sort of thing. And that, that came through. I, I think and I hope it touched people a little bit as well.

Well, it did me. So you can share that if you see your. I don't think I'm making it to St. Paul or Minneapolis in October, but you never know.

You never know.

Yeah.

So let's see, anything else? So the next churchwide assembly is in Des Moines, Iowa. That will be electing a new vice president perhaps, or maybe somebody run for re election.

One of those two. One of those two. But yes, there will be a vice president election.

Other officers too.

Treasurer or no, treasurer is elected by the church council. At some point the church council decided. The treasure needs a specific knowledge that, you know, it had. It was better for the church council to make that decision. And Lori Fede did get elected to another term by the church council or the six year term, I want to say last year. So yes, it'll be a vice president election. We'll be talking about the second part of human sexuality, Gift and trust. It will be Bishop Curry's first assembly as chair. So it'll be the. We'll see. And then whatever happens in the next three years.

Right.

You know, anything can happen. You can, a curveball can be thrown or something happens in the world that we need to deal with. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we'll be in Des Moines, so.

That'Ll be in Des Moines.

Yeah, get your, get your reservations now. So we'll have, we'll have links to anything that we've got links for in the episode notes. As always, it's a pleasure to talk with you face to face here over, over Zoom. To be fair with everybody else, it's your, your presence on social media, on Reddit is fabulous. It is great to see somebody active and participating and, and getting people talking about things.

It gives us a lot of content.

Well, that's true, that's true.

Well, no, thank you. I appreciate it. And that's kind of one something I, I hope for. When I got into the role, I said, you know, a lot of people in the congregation level says, I don't know any, you know, I don't know what's going on in church wide. No one talks to us in churchwide. And so I was like, well, why don't I actually talk to folks and maybe evaporate some of those silo feelings and see what happens?

Yeah, that's Fantastic.

And hopefully it's working. Unfortunately, I think some of our congregations don't participate in those pieces. And so we still have some folks that need to be reached other ways. But that's not your job.

We'll do our best somehow.

Right?

We'll try to do that in some ways.

That's right. There you go. You have a role in this, too.

Yeah.

I think there are a lot of people picking up. There are some new podcasts related to the ELCA that are coming out in some video forms and stuff like that. So, yeah, we'll talk about more of that here in future episodes for sure.

But all good stuff.

It's great having you. I hope the weather in Atlanta's well, you said it's 79 now, so.

Yeah, it's nice. Well, it's kind of rainy, but aside from that, it's nice.

Yeah.

Imran, thank you again so much for being with us one more time.

Of course. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely.

You know where to find me.

That's right. We just fly. We light up the signal.

That's right.

Well, thanks once again to Imran Siddiqui. Mr. Vice President, it's always a pleasure to talk with you and I know you're listening. So we hope we'll have you on again soon about nothing particularly controversial, because that would be great, but it's always been a delight and we're so happy to have you as part of our church.

I think that should be our new tagline, Main Street Lutherans. Nothing particularly controversial.

Might work. Might work. That might be controversial.

Might be.

We'll ask Reddit. All right, so we have another submission for our better know a congregation. This is, this is becoming one of our favorite things to do. We get to talk about congregations that are not ours. Eventually we'll get ours in there somewhere.

But.

So we had Todd. Todd nominated his congregation. Keith, you want to talk about it?

Yeah.

Todd attends Peace First Lutheran Church in Astoria, Oregon. And it's interesting that it's a merger congregation from two churches that originally had been named separately, Peace Lutheran Church and First Lutheran Church. So they, in the merger, they, they come up with the, the new name Peace First With Church. They are, like I said, in Astoria, Oregon, which means they are a part of the Oregon Synod. The pastor there is the Reverend Stephen M. Kineberger, and they also have a youth and family minister named Dawson Mangles. The website of the congregation, if you want to look them up, is PeaceFirstLutheran.com and I can tell you that it's such A unique name that when you start typing those first two portions of that end piece first, Google knows who you're looking for at that point. And they have 296 members in their congregation.

Yeah. Todd told us that they're very proud of their Social Justice Book Club, which looks like it has a new book for each month that they meet. They are studying the Heather Cox Richardson book that she wrote over the last several years here, and that's their next one. Their worship times are on Sundays. They have two services, 8, 30, and 11. And they are both traditional services. Their mission is together in Christ, we welcome all and seek to bring healing and wholeness, inclusivity and blessings to our neighbors. We ask in our form, which you can find the link to in the episode notes here, what is a favorite song or hymn? And we didn't get an answer on that. But by watching some of the services during the summer, Peace first has a hymn. Sing along. And so the beginning of the service, they ask for people to suggest hymn numbers, and they call them out. One of the services I watched, they said one of the prior weeks a kid was there, and they called out a random number, and it was a Christmas song that they ended up singing, but they sang it anyway, so that's fun. We also ask if the congregation had a mascot, what would it be? We didn't get an answer on that. But I can tell you that the high school are the fighting fishermen. And because of where Astoria is on the southern part of basically the delta or the mouth of the Columbia river out in the Pacific Ocean, there is a lot of fishing out there. So that's perfectly appropriate. And it's not inappropriate for a church to consider themselves fishermen as well, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So there you go. Fighting fishermen. Well, fighting for Peace first might not seem so great, but it. That's right. Fighting for Peace fishermen. How's that sending.

Sending mixed messages there?

There you go.

We also asked that he is especially proud of his congregation. He's fairly new to not only Peace first, but to the elca. He had grown up in his younger years in a. In a more conservative upbringing and then left the church for a bit and. And then some. Somewhere along the line, discovered that there was. Was, you know, a wing of the church that was a more progressive experience than he was used to. And so when he got home to Washington, this. So Astoria does sit right on the border between Oregon and Washington. And so even though Todd lives apparently in Washington State, he goes to church in Oregon and really enjoyed this congregation. It's an RIC church, so they stand up for. For people of color and racial justice in the LGBTQ community. And he's really excited that the congregation and the pastor both show support for these communities. So that's pretty awesome.

Yeah. In fact, one of the churches, when they merged together, the campus that they didn't keep was sold to a Latinx community organization, so it's now a community center for Latinx folks. The area which they take a lot of pride in, actually. We'll link to the video there. On their YouTube channel, they have a video from the time of the merger that went through the history of all the Lutheran churches, how they combined together to make up what is now Peace First Lutheran Church in Astoria. It's a really neat little thing, about 11 minutes, and it's worth taking a look at.

See.

See how that does. And then maybe think about doing that for your own congregation. That'd be a lot of fun there and. And very useful, I think, for. For putting things into perspective. Let's see.

Thanks. Thanks, Todd, for reaching out to Main Street Lutherans for listening and for contributing information about Peace First Lutheran Church. Glad to hear from you.

Yeah.

So Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fotograph, and the show is produced by Foot Media Productions. Find all our contact information, links and a transcript and a link to our T shirt and a link to nominate your congregation or synod in the episode notes. Until next time, go in peace and serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.