This is Ben, and this is Main Street Lutherans.

Keith is not with us this week. He's got a lot of stuff going on, and we both do. But I wanted to get an episode out. This is episode 40, and we want.

To talk about the upcoming ELCA churchwide assembly.

But I thought before we do that.

We'Ll give you a quick synopsis of.

Where we're at as a podcast and share some things that maybe will get you excited and ways that you can help us out. All right, so we don't make a big deal about fundraising for the podcast.

Because that's not why we do this. But we have recently gotten contributions to.

Our tip jar, and we really appreciate that folks who are helping continue the work. It does cost us money to do this. It is not a major expense for us, but any, Any financial contributions are greatly, greatly appreciated. It shows us in a way that we are appreciated and that you like what we're doing and think it's important, and we really appreciate that. We also still have our T shirts for sale. There's a link in the episode notes and on our website to our store.

We've been asked for additional shirts.

It takes a bit of effort to.

Make new things there.

We're limited to how many things we can sell. I've been asked specifically to have a T shirt with a lighter color that can be worn in Arizona.

Too late for Senate assembly, unfortunately, but.

Should have considered that back then. But we will. Or, I'm sorry, churchwide assembly, which we're going to talk about today.

But we will.

We will work on that and see what we can do. We don't get regular reports on sales and we don't. We don't get any.

Anything from that until it reaches a certain thing.

And it hasn't gotten to. That may never.

But the T shirts are still out there.

Go for it. They're kind of fun. I've got one. It's nice and comfortable. I like it.

Let's see. We got lots of comments from recent episodes.

We're really happy about that.

Nothing really tied together. Lots of conversations about different things. One question that came in was, can.

I share your podcast on our church's website and social media and absolutely, go for it.

In fact, share as much as you feel comfortable.

That's how we get people listening, is from word of mouth. We don't spend any money on ads. We don't go out of our way to make this. This is a thing that we want people to find when they're searching, and.

We hope it's useful to those folks and we've heard that it is.

So appreciate that support as well by sharing the the episodes. Speaking of episodes, our upcoming episodes.

Pretty excited. We'll talk about one of the next.

Ones coming up here shortly that relates to the churchwide assembly, but also we have one lined up to talk about.

ELCA schools, parochial schools that are affiliated with ELCA congregations.

We are going to be diving into the word accompaniment in a way, or maybe several. We have a really great interview lined.

Up with somebody who's written something related.

In my mind at least, between our ELCA vision of accompaniment and Luther's Theology of the Cross. And that is exciting. We're going to really enjoy that. And I think we'll be able to dig in in a good way to sort of explain how the ELCA does evangelism through that and how I think we're the best people we can be in our postmodern age.

If you have suggestions for topics, if.

You can think of people who we really should be talking to, Keith and I are just two people and we are buried in our own things most of the time. And so please, please send us email, send us suggestions on social media and we will try to get those. We've got some people we need to bring back and we just need to get the schedules all straightened out for that. So we're pretty excited about what's coming up.

Also with this, we're going to change the format at the end.

We're, I think we're done with the catechism questions. We're going to move on to something else that might be, might be a lot of fun for folks.

If you want the catechism questions back.

Though, please let us know. I haven't heard anybody that's that's dying for them, so. So we will see.

All right, moving on to church wide assembly. In case you didn't know, the ELCA has a churchwide assembly every three years.

It is made up of folks who.

Are nominated by their synods to go to the churchwide assembly. It will happen this year in Phoenix, Arizona from July 28 to August 2.

And it is not necessarily the best.

Time to be in Phoenix, but I.

Assure you they'll be inside most of the time.

If you want to know more about.

How the churchwide organization operates, we have.

Some episodes From December of 2024 where.

We talked with the Vice President of the ELCA, Imran Siddiqui, about how the churchwide organization works. And we talked about ELCA Church Council.

Which he heads as the vice president.

Of the elca and we talked a little bit about how representation happens there.

So there are 845 voting members from our 65 synods.

And there will be lots more people.

Than just the voting folks. There are folks who are there to observe. There are folks who are there to speak.

There are folks there as part of a trade show or a. It's not really a trade show. It's a place for folks to experience different people, pieces of our church and some of the organizations that we're attached to.

The purpose of it is to vote. Voting will happen for leaders.

We rarely.

Well, every three years we vote for somebody.

In this round, we vote for six.

Year terms for the presiding Bishop and.

The secretary of the elca, who have both decided to move on to sort of retirement, if you will, and they.

Are not running for another term.

When we talked to Imran Siddiqui in December, we he said that generally people have, as presiding bishop and vice president of the ELCA, have run for two sequential terms. And that has been enough that 12 years may not be quite enough, but 18 is a really big commitment.

And so that is tradition for us.

At least at this point. We will also be electing half of.

The ELCA church council.

Each churchwide assembly elects half of those folks.

And those are people nominated from the.

Synods to represent synods on church council.

There will also be voting for policies and advocacy and there will be voting.

For budgets or the budget for the next three years. And that is, you know, as we say, our theology, our actions speak through our budgets, where we put our emphasis. And so that is the overview in this assembly.

Look for the schedule. We'll have links to different parts of this.

There are going to be a lot of links to this episode.

The schedule has these things called plenary sessions. And then there are other things in between those. So there are worship services, there are moments of reflection, there are speakers who.

Will speak about a variety of things.

But there are also experiences. There will be a powwow.

There will be some time to experience different things in Phoenix. And so folks will be very busy while they're there.

The plenary sessions are the sessions where.

The business is done and all are.

Gathered at the same time. There are no breakout sessions that are.

Going on, no other activities that folks are at.

So all voting members are expected to.

Be there during those times. And part of that reason is that.

The voting will happen there and the.

Information about people and issues will be discussed and shown there. So let's go to what People will most reflect on, I think, from this.

And that is our voting for offices. So those particular officers, the presiding bishop.

And the secretary of the elca, are very important.

We just saw the election of a new pope done by the cardinals.

This might be considered our equivalent to that. The presiding Bishop doesn't have full control of the church or the congregations, but.

They do speak on our behalf.

And so what their priorities are, what they. What they want to speak to, are important for determining what the next three. Well, the next six years of our identity as a denomination will be on the national stage and international stage. Yeah. So like I said, there are 845 voting members.

They will all vote electronically. There's a system set up for this voting. They will vote in the plenary sessions.

Not every plenary session has a vote for these officers.

Some of the plenary sessions have two things of voting. Let's get to the methods.

So we'll talk about how the presiding bishop election will occur, and then we'll talk about the secretary. It's slightly different.

For the Presiding Bishop.

The first ballot is nominating only, which.

Means that all the nominees come in.

On that first ballot. And if there is no count, there.

Is no way to win. On the first ballot, nominees are able to remove themselves.

There will be lots of people who were not necessarily wanting to be nominated.

To be the presiding Bishop that will be nominated.

They will be notified by their synod bishops and they can remove themselves from the ballot and so from nomination.

So they will appear on the first.

Ballot, but they can remove themselves from the second ballot. What's important about that is that the.

Second ballot, once a name appears on the second ballot, it cannot be withdrawn.

So if someone is not able to remove themselves from that, they will continue through, say, somebody is not reachable by their bishop. If they make it onto the second ballot, then, and they continue to be in the top group to move on, they could potentially be elected without that. Now, that is unlikely to happen partly because of what happens on the second ballot. Well, on the third ballot, really. So the second ballot happens later on, it's going to have all the nominees that remained on the ballot and are.

Eligible to receive votes.

Realize that this is all this has to be a person who is ordained as a minister of word and sacrament, and so that limits it to our clergy. On the second ballot, there is a.

75% threshold to win.

So of those 845 voting members, 75% of those have to vote for a single person in order for them to be elected the bishop. On the second ballot. That is unlikely to happen when there is not a continuing Presiding Bishop at the second ballot.

Seven nominees with the most votes remain.

To be on the third ballot.

So that'll be counted and they'll move on to that. So seven.

So we've gone from an open nomination to seven people by the third ballot. For the third ballot, biographical information is.

Distributed to the voting members.

So you get, you get a summary.

Of those people and then those nominees.

Those seven people are invited to address.

The assembly for four minutes.

And then when they vote, when the voting members vote, 2/3 are required to win that vote. And that usually won't happen right then two thirds will be quite a bit, and the three, most of those will pass on to the fourth ballot when we get to the fourth ballot.

So these folks have addressed the assembly.

With their own speeches, four minute speeches, and the three folks that get the.

Most will move on to the fourth ballot. That fourth ballot involves a Q and a.

This is going to happen with the.

People at the convention. The voting members can submit questions to the Executive Council of the LCA Church.

Council, which would include our Vice President, Imran Siddiqui.

And anyone who's on the Executive Council.

Who has been nominated for the Presiding Bishop is not part of that group.

In choosing the questions. But the Executive Committee will choose the questions and the format of being asked.

The nominees will get two minutes to.

Answer and they'll be asked those questions.

In a rotating order.

After that is complete, they will take.

A vote and the threshold to move.

On to a fifth ballot if necessary.

Or, I'm sorry, the threshold to win at that point is 60%, which is more attainable.

So often that happens. And then in the same plenary session.

They will report the results of the fourth ballot and the top two from the fourth ballot will appear on a fifth ballot.

There is no more speaking at that point.

The winner is the majority vote getter.

And in case of a tie, the ELCA Treasurer's vote is set aside and only counted if it breaks a tie. So we should know by the end of that and we'll get into the.

Schedule here in a little bit.

So the ELCA Secretary is very similar in structure.

This will happen later in the plenary sessions.

People will be nominated that can be lay members and ministers of word and sacrament. When they vote, when they get to.

The third ballot, they have to fill.

Out a biographical information sheet that also.

Includes a background check. And so they, they will go through all that. So between the third and, or between.

The second and Third ballots.

All that is done and the information about the folks is distributed for that third ballot. And so we'll get to the schedule here in a little bit. So other things that they will be voting on.

Amongst that are some issues that we've talked about already.

We talked about the CRLC proposals that that will come up before the churchwide assembly. We're finally there for the CRLC proposals to be voted up or down and then for the church council to take.

Action on those things. We will also be proposing budgets for.

Fiscal years 20, 26, 7 and 8, which gets us up to our next churchwide assembly. We will be doing some language updates.

To the social statement Human Sexuality, Gift and Trust. We will be considering a new social.

Statement entitled Faith and Civic Life Seeking.

The well Being of All.

And we'll have links to those or at least the Senate assembly pages will. We will also have constitutional amendments, some.

That just update the language to language.

That better fits with what we do. There is also a topic that some.

Folks are talking about where we're adding synod authorized worshiping communities to the constitutions.

To the synod constitutions primarily, which allows.

Those synod authorized worshiping committees to get.

Representation in elections at synod assemblies. The this has entered my radar because there is a group that seems to.

Be paying some money to get this.

Into the discussion somehow, particularly on social media. If you're not familiar with synod authorized worshiping communities, they are.

Well, that's what they are. The synod has authorized usually funds the startup of these groups. We might have called them mission churches.

At one point, but the, the pastors are appointed and so these are groups. I can think of a couple of these.

One of the ones in our synod is a food truck ministry that we want to bring on.

Pastor Anna McCants was able to get.

A significant grant from the pilot pen.

Company on TV just a month ago or so.

And that is a synod authorized worshiping.

Community because it operates a bit strangely.

It is a food truck, a laundry truck.

They have laundry facilities on a trailer. They also have a shower truck, a shower trailer. And so they go to people experiencing housing problems to communities and offer the ability to wash their clothes, get some food to eat and take showers. Things that respect them as human beings.

There's another synod authorized worshiping community in.

Our synod that meets in a comedy.

Club on Sunday afternoon and evenings and.

They have sort of an inspirational speaker and they have community building activities there with some particular points. So it doesn't quite fit the the.

Idea of a congregation, but it is.

Worshiping together and trying to be innovative in our space. And I haven't gotten to be there yet, but I'm looking forward to going once it lines up with my schedule here. So those are going to be talked about. They might make it to be talked about on a greater basis. And I think part of that would be because there's some people trying to make an issue of it. And so we may get to talk about that a little bit later in episodes.

We will talk with someone after the assembly to go over details that I'm.

Not equipped to see when I going through the stuff.

We've got memorials that are being proposed.

Memorials are things that are voted on at Senate assemblies.

They propose language for something that should be adopted by that they think should.

Be adopted by the Churchwide assembly. And when they do that, they propose this language. There's a committee that goes through those.

Groups them together and makes recommendations. And most of those are grouped together.

To be approved in Mass.

Others are set aside to be discussed separately.

That document had almost 100 pages and so there's a lot going on there. But we but we'll hopefully talk about some of that in future episodes.

So what do we want to look for with this?

The Senate assembly ends on August 2nd.

August 2nd is when we will install.

The Secretary of the ELCA. The Presiding Bishop will be installed in October, so we will have a installed secretary by the end of the assembly. And we will have a presiding bishop elect at the end of the assembly. And they will not be installed until October 2nd, I believe.

So when will we see these things?

Because what will probably be most noted immediately is that we have a new presiding bishop elect. And that's what will make the news. Unless there's something that I don't foresee coming out of this. So the first ballot for the presiding bishop is on plenary one, which is.

Monday, July 28, in the evening.

That might be pretty late because we.

Are in Pacific time zone for this, because this is a nomination only thing.

It will take overnight to process all these things. Remember that the bishops have to contact people who've been nominated. So they will vote or they will cast those nominations as votes on the.

Evening of Monday, July 28.

They will be reported in plenary two.

Which.

Starts Tuesday morning Phoenix time, but 1:15 Eastern time, 1:15pm on Tuesday, if you're on the east coast or the or Michigan. And so that's when we'll start to hear things about who's been nominated. You might hear that your pastor or somebody you know has been nominated. That's always fun to hear the fourth.

Ballot, which is the first one where.

We expect to see a final result.

Happens in plenary five. So the fifth Sunday session, and that.

Is Wednesday afternoon, that starts at 2 in the afternoon or 5 o' clock Eastern Time and that will report in.

The same session and then they will cast the fifth ballot.

So we should know, or we will know by Wednesday afternoon in Phoenix or in the evening on July 30 for the other time zones.

All right, so for the secretary, the first ballot is in plenary five, the.

Same plenary session that the presiding bishop elect will be elected. And so then the fourth and fifth ballots for that happen on Friday in plenary 10. And so that is Friday afternoon, August 1st. And so we'll expect to hear from that. That probably won't make news. We also will be paying attention to the CRLC resolutions. There are things dealing with, we talked about that in one of our recent episodes. There will be things about.

Applying anti.

Racism to our Constitution and looking at that. We'll be looking at cost sharing for.

Disciplinary actions and synods.

We're looking at the issues of normalizing how ministers of word and service or deacons are treated as far as pay and how their representation happens at the synod and churchwide levels.

So those things will happen.

They'll be talked about. And so those are what I'm particularly interested in to see what comes out of that concerns though. I'm concerned about this. I'm concerned about this churchwide assembly, if not this one, the next one.

Several mainline churches have had significant declines.

In their denominations after their national meetings. The United Methodist Church is definitely the big one that I've been thinking about. That's just recently. They voted for some issues that we've dealt with before, but it causes schism within their church. They had a big falling out, a.

Lot of congregations left.

And maybe we've already had that happen, maybe it won't change in this. But there are folks that are disappointed with our denomination. We are one of the more progressive denominations in Protestantism, but we are very similar to the other mainline denominations. And so we're not really that different. But a lot of people in our church are more connected to the Missouri Synod way of seeing things. And so there are a lot of folks who are finding reasons to leave. And a churchwide assembly is one of those triggering events that could do that. I'm also wondering if there's anything, you know, so is there anything in our, in our assembly that could divide the congregations enough to trigger a Larger exodus. On the other side of that, if.

We'Re not taking decisive actions at this.

Assembly, and there doesn't seem to be anything that's standing out tremendously, is that.

Also causing us damage?

Is the Spirit asking us to do something that we are unwilling to do.

For one reason or another?

Is that it? And, you know, that connects to how is the Holy Spirit guiding our voting members? And are we listening for God's, God's Word through this? Are we, we. Are we paying attention? A lot of times our politics, not just our federal secular politics, but the politics, the, the way that we are a community in our church, we gets in the way of how the Spirit wants us to move. And so I'm curious to see where we are led. And one of the ways that we.

Will see how we're being led is.

The speeches that are given at the third and fourth ballots of third and fourth ballots for the presiding Bishop.

They will speak to particular issues that.

They think are important for our church, for our denomination going forward. And what are those things that will enliven the spirits of our people who are voting? What is it that will grab their attention and will set the mood for the next six years?

I'm also curious what will come up.

That isn't on my radar? You know, I've got a very focused look on these on the church from, you know, suburban Detroit. I don't really know what's going on in Minneapolis, say, or Chicago or in, you know, you know, North Dakota, for that matter. And in fact, if you've got stuff that you're.

You're curious about, go ahead and send them in. We can talk about those things with.

Imran Siddiqui, who will join us in a few episodes to review the assembly.

It's his first churchwide assembly as the.

Vice president of the elca. If he decides to run again, he'll get a second.

Well, a third that he'll get to do.

But he will be the vice president of the next churchwide assembly in 2028, and we'll find out where that is.

I'm going to include a link to his churchwide assembly report in the notes. It doesn't get distributed as part of.

The ELCA's documents for the Churchwide assembly. And he's asked people to share it. So there we go.

All right. So that is our churchwide assembly. My notes on it, at least at this point.

I really want to hear your feedback on all this. I'm excited to see what happens. We had hoped that either Keith or I could be there or both of us, but that just didn't work out in this case. Maybe next time. We've got three years to plan it out. All right. So we would usually do catechism questions.

We have not done any here for.

The last couple episodes. What I would like to do is I would like to. I'd like to change this up.

I want to.

We got it.

We got a suggestion a bit ago.

That we might do a segment about our synods or our regions or maybe even our congregations. So here's what I'm going to do.

I would like you to tell us.

About your congregation or I would like to have representatives of synods to tell us about what makes synods and the congregations in the synods special in your region.

I'm going to make Google forms for both of those.

We're going to link to those in the episode notes. I'm going to put them on the website and we will have a. We'll go through those and we'll try to do as, as it was mentioned, a better know your synod, just like Stephen Colbert used to do on the Colbert Report. So we'll do that. You can respond. You can respond to those by clicking those links. You can also email us or use social media or our phone number. We love to have phone calls come in on our phone number. All those things are in the episode notes. So Main Street Lutherans is hosted by.

Keith Fair and Ben Fot, and the.

Show is produced by Phote Media Productions. Find all our contact information, links and a transcript in the episode notes. Until next time, go in peace.

Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.