Pastoral Message

Dear Flock:

As a part of the now ongoing discussion about the future of our Moline/Rock Island ELCA ‘Augustana heritage’ congregations, you’ll remember that in August, Pastor Josh Ebener from our Northern Illinois Synod office came to give a presentation about the results of our Congregational Vitality Survey.   There were no surprises.  We all know what’s going on.  Less people in church – mostly older.  Giving at-risk.  Aging, expensive buildings that are not used anywhere near capacity.  Costs rising.  What the survey did and was always going to do was to get people talking about what we think the future of these seven congregations within 4.3 miles is. 

On October 13th, the church councils from all the congregations gathered at Augustana College to think about the problems – and start talking.  Each pastor offered a snapshot of their congregation.  We told about the character and ministries of each congregation.  We included average worship  attendance numbers from 2019-2023.  We told how much it costs per day to run our congregations – which, as a group is about $2,250,000 per year.   We also heard about the condition of the larger church organization.  In the Northern Illinois Synod, the average attendance of our congregations is 68, which puts us at First Lutheran exactly at average.  Half of the congregations in our synod have less than 50 on a Sunday.  Across the ELCA, there are only 140 students studying in our eight    seminaries (119 studying to be pastors; 22 studying to be deacons) while about 600 pastors per year retire.  The whole system is challenged and will have to adapt. 

Pastor Melinda Pupillo, chaplain at Augustana, did an excellent job of leading us through the conversation in a Spirit-filled way.   After we heard this information, she asked, “What is the Spirit saying to you?”   These are the things people said:  Bold steps.  Keep talking.  Big picture. Urgency.  Take time to mourn what is no more.  Vulnerable and open conversation without fear.  You can wait too long to act.  The building is not the Church.  Acceptance.  We are doing very interesting ministries.  There were other questions like, What would it take to be a church where younger people wanted to be?  How do we keep incarnating the central values of Christianity?  Does our Lutheran identity have to be primary?  What about the money?     

We in the Church are simply not economically “right-sized” in terms of our people and resources.  We are coming to realize that the Church likely will not be what it was, or even what it is, though we have no knowledge of how it will be.  However, we left the meeting with a positive understanding that collaboration has to be the future – and we need to start talking.  It is in a hopeful, possibility-oriented way that we’ll keep the conversation going and engage in ‘holy imagining.’ 

I’ll keep you posted.

Sincerely,
Pastor Dan