The ELCA launched a five-year fundraising campaign February, 2014 called "Always Being Made New: The Campaign for the ELCA." The goal of this fundraising effort by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is to raise $198 million. (read here)
These type of campaigns, sometimes conducted by congregations, are last ditch efforts made to alleviate catastrophic financial shortfalls that often are the result of year upon year of expenses exceeding income. They are an act of desperation. A hail mary pass. The ELCA's magazine, The Lutheran, reports that “ELCA operating income ($72.3 million) for the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2014, was $2.9 million ahead of $69.4 million in expenses, but $4.1 million behind the previous year. Mission support — income from congregations through synods — stood at $48.8 million, $1.1 million below the previous year. 'We’ve come out of those years of steep decline, but we are still in a period of relative decline,' ELCA Treasurer Linda Norman said” (see here). How interesting that a denomination that leads people away from God and His truth is hurting for money.
8 Comments
Dave from Minnesota
6/7/2014 08:57:13 am
You mean those urban liberal hipsters, the people who support gay marriage, abortion and big government, aren't flocking to ELCA churches and dropping big bucks in the collection plate?
Reply
6/7/2014 02:25:28 pm
"Mission support," i.e. congregational giving to the ELCA, has dropped from more than $70 million in 2002 to its current $48.8 million. The real hemorrhaging began, understandably, with the ELCA's Great Apostasy of 2009. In pre-convention Feb. 2009, mission support was still $66 million.
Reply
sad pdx
6/9/2014 06:34:54 am
This is exactly the mistake my former church is still in the process of making. They think they can reinvent themselves as a social club for liberals, with religion. They believe this because a lot of the old folks there are disillusioned with religion but enamored of every lefty trend du jour, and they have pushed to make it essentially a community center that has worship on Sundays. What they don't understand is, while a 75 year old who doesn't really believe in Christianity might still belong to a church out of some lingering sense of obligation and habit, a 25 year old who feels the same way will NOT. They won't need church to give them an outlet for their gay pride environmentalist rantings, they can get that any thousand other places, and not have to get up Sunday morning.
Reply
A. Rindles
6/14/2014 03:05:12 am
The ELCA has now decided how much carbon dioxide U.S. power plants can safely emit, though they didn't say whether this decree is based on the ELCA's scientific expertise, or on divine revelation.
Dave from Minnesota
6/7/2014 09:02:11 am
I was curious about membership and attendance at Grace Lutheran in Eau Claire, Wisc. This is the church that voted to leave the ELCA, but the ELCA faught it in court and won. So the members left and started a new Grace Lutheran.
Reply
6/7/2014 11:13:32 pm
Dan Skogen thought that Grace ELCA (which renamed itself Amazing Grace) was going to combine with another (declining) ELCA church in town. He doesn’t know if that has happened. A year after its protracted litigation to seize Grace’s assets, Amazing Grace would not seem to be exactly overcrowding the large church building awarded to it by the judge. One of its two interim pastors is leaving, to be replaced by another half-time interim pastor [ http://grace-church.org/images/Grace_at_a_Glance_for_may_25.pdf ]. There’s not much of an office presence during the week (10-2:00, Mon.-Thurs.). There’s no annual report (listing member numbers and financial giving) that I can find online.
Reply
mich
6/11/2014 04:22:40 am
I have been trying to get my family's records from the Grace church for over a year they will not release them. Several folks have tried... they have no reason to covet what is not theirs. Saving Grace happens to be thriving and growing with over 600 members. Being set free of the elca was such a blessing!
Reply
Craig
6/14/2014 08:42:55 am
Are budget problems the reason www.elca.org has been down since early February?
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 Dan Skogen
Former ELCA seminary student and former ELCA member who is fed up with the ELCA's consistent mockery of God's Word. If you have been helped and blessed by Exposing the ELCA's ministry, please help us continue to proclaim the truth of God's Word to ELCA members who need to hear it.
Give online by clicking the "donate" button below: Categories
All
Archives
November 2024
Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. - Ephesians 5:11
|