Shrimp here, welcoming you to the Year of Our Lord, twenty-oh-nine, and in the Year of Our ELCA, twenty-one.
New year; old news. Three weeks ago the word began to go out that another ELCA congregation has called as a pastor a candidate of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries. This particular candidate, Steve Keiser, has been serving the Lutheran Church of the Holy Communion as "pastoral associate" for some nine years. On December 8, that congregation voted to call him as pastor. According to Lutheran (True!) Confessions, the extra-ordinary ordination has be set for January 25.
That would make Mr. Keiser, who seems to be a regular teacher at the Faith and Life Institute of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (which describes him as an "LTSP alum and Biblical Scholar"), the object of the eighteenth "ordination extra ordinem" since the practice was inaugurated in 1990.
Happy New Year! Shrimp out.
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3 comments:
As someone who attended this church for several months last year before realizing that the congregation was activist on the issue of gay ordination, it should be noted that this congregation has been planning to do this for some time. They planned a call vote back in the spring, and apparently it was just delayed until now. Claire S. Burkat, the Southeastern PA bishop, is a member of this church, and is very supportive of the ordination of openly gay pastors in the ELCA. I would not be at all surprised if she both attends and/or preaches.
Both my wife and myself have met with Steve Keiser several times and discussed the issue of gay ordination with him. I have to say that Steve is a generally nice person and is very open to discussing the Scriptures on homosexuality. While I have a lot of respect for him, I do not think he should be an ordained pastor given how he has chosen to interpret the Scriptures on homosexuality.
I am now a member of an ELCA congregation in one of the suburbs of Philadelphia. Hopefully, this will wake up some of the members in other churches in the synod to this issue and cause a call to return to the teachings of the Scriptures. However, I am not all that optimistic. If something doesn't happen, both my wife and myself will certainly leave the ELCA and the Southeastern PA synod, as I cannot in good conscience support a church who has abandond both Scripture and church history on the issue of homosexuality. I hope it doesn't come to this, but I fear that it will.
Bishop Burkat was neither present nor preached.
Yes, I have heard that Bishop Burkat did not attend and did not preach. However, she is a member of this congregation and has, thus far, remained completely silent. It would be nice for her to at least make a statement about the actions by Holy Communion. I don't think she should condemn the congregation, but she should at least recognize that what they have done is not appropriate at this time given the current process of debate and discussion occurring in the ELCA. She, like some other ELCA leaders, say much about their views on the topic with their silence. Of course, the ordination happened just a little over a week ago, and she may be figuring out what to say or do, but my bet is on continued silence.
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