Final Report of the CRLC (pdf) Download here

Response of the Church Council (pdf) Download here

Supplemental Churchwide Assembly Action

Contents CRLC & WV-WMD Final Report of the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church Churchwide Assembly 2025 Action Resources Commission Membership Commitment & Expectations Nominations Open Nominations Synod Council Nominations Appointment Churchwide Actions Creating the CRLC Churchwide Assembly 2022 Church Council of the ELCA Executive Committee of the ELCA

Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church on ELCA website ELCA.org/CRLC

CRLC & WV-WMD

Churchwide Assembly 2022 ordered the creation of the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church, and five months later the Church Council of the ELCA announced a nominations process for appointment to the commission. The WV-WMD Synod Council, in response and as part of the nomination process, ordered a town hall meeting on matters related to the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church so that attendees could receive background information, ask questions, and discuss making nominations for the commission with the intent that it would assist Synod Council in its deliberations. This was held Saturday, 25 February 2023. This page was originally developed to provide advance materials and resources for that town hall.

Final Report of the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church

The CRLC rose, delivering its final report to the Church Council of the ELCA. You may study the report itself: download here (pdf). N.B.: the report was delivered to Churchwide Assembly 2025. The CRLC had power only to recommend. Having risen (a parliamentary term indicating that an ad hoc committee has concluded its work, its report being forwarded to the superordinate body), the CRLC disbanded.

Response of the Church Council of the ELCA

The Church Council of the ELCA received the report of the CRLC and took it up at its April 2025 meeting. You may study the response of the Church Council, including what actions had already been taken and what matters would be forwarded for consideration to Churchwide Assembly 2025: download here (pdf).

Churchwide Assembly 2025 Action

First, a little background. Recommendation #1 of the CRLC report was stated as follows:

The Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church recommends that the ELCA Church Council immediately begin identifying and acting upon mutual accountability measures and compliance incentives across all expressions of the ELCA to ensure the proactive centering of dismantling racism within the denomination. These measures and incentives shall be guided by the recommendations outlined in the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Audit and the Strategy Toward Authentic Diversity.

To ensure timely action, all constitution and bylaw amendments needed for the development and implementation of these accountability measures and compliance incentives must be developed and advanced in time for consideration by the 2028 Churchwide Assembly. If by that time such measures and incentives have not been adequately identified or enacted, we recommend the ELCA Church Council call for a special meeting of the Churchwide Assembly to evaluate and enact necessary constitutional revisions that will enable and advance the ELCA’s commitment to anti-racism work.

To this, Church Council responded as follows:

    To receive with appreciation “Immediate Action on Dismantling Racism” Recommendation 1 from the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church, which urges the creation of mutual accountability measures and compliance incentives across all expressions of the ELCA to ensure the proactive centering of dismantling racism within the denomination; 
    To authorize the Executive Committee of the Church Council to consult with the Strategy Toward Authentic Diversity (STAD) Advisory Team and their resource staff to review the purpose of the advisory team;
    To request the Office of the Presiding Bishop, in consultation with the Christian Community and Leadership and Service and Justice home areas, to identify possible individuals for service on the STAD Advisory Team and to provide those names to the Executive Committee;
    To authorize the Executive Committee to appoint members, including a bishop and a Church Council member, to the STAD Advisory Team;
    To authorize the Executive Committee to identify persons from the Church Council to work with the STAD Advisory Team to create an ELCA handbook, including recommended diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) standards for congregations;
    To commit the Church Council to continue to work on cultural competency training in every official meeting of the Church Council;
    To encourage the Conference of Bishops to work on creating DEIA standards for synods (including synod staff and councils), and to continue to work on cultural competency training within the conference;
    To request the senior director, diversity, equity, and inclusion to report annually to the spring meeting of the Church Council regarding diversity of the synods and of the churchwide organization relative to historically underrepresented groups and assessments of initiatives that enable and advance anti-racism and diversity measures across all expressions of this church; and
    To designate financial and human resources to incentivize engagement in multicultural educational events and creation of materials for ongoing leadership development (rostered and lay) across this church.

    To receive with gratitude the memorials on “Consideration of Recommendation 1 of the CRLC” from the Pacifica Synod, Metropolitan New York Synod, DelawareMaryland Synod, and Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Synod;
    To acknowledge the importance of accountability in addressing racism within all structures of the ELCA;
    To affirm the work of the Strategy Toward Authentic Diversity Advisory Team and request that the Church Council continue to work with the team to clarify the nature of mutual accountability as referenced in Recommendation 1 of the CRLC Report;
    To direct the Church Council to add a timeline to its actions taken in response to CRLC Recommendation 1 and to provide progress updates to this church with a final report by Fall 2027, including possible constitutional changes, and
    To recommend that if this work is not accomplished by Fall 2027, the Church Council consider calling a special meeting of the Churchwide Assembly to enact necessary revisions to the governing documents of this church.

Resources

Synod Council ordered the bishop to provide appropriate resources in advance of the town hall. The rest of this page includes a synopsis of the actions taken by the Churchwide Assembly 2022, the Church Council of the ELCA, and the Executive Committee of the Church Council of the ELCA.

The following is curated for your consideration. You may also access an annotated bibliography here.

• Governing Documents
• Constitution, Bylaws, and Continuing Resolutions of the ELCA — includes the governing documents for the Churchwide Expression, the Constitution for Synods (with required provisions), and the Model Constitution for Congregations of the ELCA.
• Governing Documents of the WV-WMD Synod — includes links to this synod's articles of incorporation, constitution, bylaws, and continuing resolutions.
• Essays & Articles
  
• Riegel, Matthew Lynn. "Framing the Question (Bishop's Report, Part 2)." Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Assembly of the West Virginia – Western Maryland Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 16 October 2019.
• Riegel, Matthew Lynn. "The Prince-Bishop in Augustana XXVIII." Paper for the Academy of Bishops, 6 January 2023.
• Schmucker, B.M. "The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America," Lutheran Church Review (July 1887).
• Monographs
• Almen, Lowell G. One Great Cloud of Witnesses! You and Your Congregation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2001.
  
• Fortenbaugh, Robert. The Development of the Synodical Polity of the Lutheran Church in America, to 1829. Ph.D. dissertation University of Pennsylvania, 1926.
• The New Church Debate: Issues Facing American Lutheranism. Edited and with introduction by Carl E. Braaten. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.
  
• Olson, Kathryn Marie. "Toward Uniting a Fellowship Divided: A Dramatistic Analysis of the Constitution-writing Process of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America." Ph.D. dissertation Northwestern University, 1987.
• Trexler, Edgar. Anatomy of a Merger: People, Dynamics, and Decisions that Shaped the ELCA. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1991.
  
• Reports
• Report & Recommendations of the Commission for a New Lutheran Church, 29 August 1986.
• "Report of the 'Living into the Future Together: Renewing the Ecology of the ELCA' Task Force." With accompanying appendices. In 2011 Pre-Assembly Report, 2011.

Other resources may be added over time, so check back. Additionally, if you would like to suggest a resource, contact +Riegel.

Commissioners from WV-WMD

Laurel Muhly-Alexander

The Rt. Rev. Matthew Lynn Riegel, S.T.M.

Commission Membership

Commitment and Expectations

The Executive Committee of the ELCA published an outline of the commitment &expectations of members of the commission in the document, Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church: Information About Commitment and Expectations for Commission Members.

Nominations

Both the open nominations and the Synod Council nominations closed on 9 March 2023. A total of seven nominations of members of the WV-WMD Synod were received by the Churchwide Office through the open nominations process. It is possible that members of the synod nominated individuals who are not synod members; we would have no report of that. The WV-WMD Synod Council nominated The Rev. Jason Felici and The Rev. Ben Erzkus.

Appointment

Churchwide Actions Creating the CRLC

Churchwide Assembly 2022

Action taken by Churchwide Assembly 2022:

CA22.01.06. To receive with gratitude the memorials from the Northern TexasNorthern Louisiana Synod, Metropolitan Chicago Synod, Northeastern Ohio Synod, Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod, Southwestern Pennsylvania Synod, Allegheny Synod, Lower Susquehanna Synod, Delaware-Maryland Synod, Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Synod, and West Virginia-Western Maryland Synod concerning the restructure of the ELCA’s governance; and

To direct the Church Council to establish a Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church comprised of leaders of diverse representation from all three expressions that, working in consultation with the Conference of Bishops and the Church Council, shall reconsider the statements of purpose for each of the expressions of this church, the principles of its organizational structure, and all matters pertaining thereunto, being particularly attentive to our shared commitment to dismantle racism, and will present its findings and recommendations to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly in preparation for a possible reconstituting convention to be called under the rules for a special meeting of the Churchwide Assembly.(Carried 738-72)

It should be noted that the memorial advanced to Churchwide Assembly by the WV-WMD Synod was not identical to that which was adopted by Churchwide Assembly. The resolving paragraph of the WV-WMD text is as follows (for full text, click here):

Resolved, That the West Virginia – Western Maryland Synod in assembly memorialize the 2022 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Church in America to direct the Church Council to establish a Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church that, working in consultation with the Conference of Bishops and the Church Council, shall reconsider the Statements of Purpose for each of the expressions of this church, the Principles of Organization, and all matters pertaining thereunto, presenting its findings to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly in preparation for a reconstituting convention to be called under the rules for a special meeting of the Churchwide Assembly.

It should also be noted that the Northern TexasNorthern Louisiana Synod, Northeastern Ohio Synod, Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod, Southwestern Pennsylvania Synod, Allegheny Synod, Lower Susquehanna Synod, and Delaware-Maryland Synod all advanced memorials substantively identical in the resolving paragraph to that of the West Virginia-Western Maryland Synod. The Metropolitan Chicago Synod and the Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Synod, however, included an additional directive element, and it is the version advanced by these two last synods that was adopted by the Churchwide Assembly.

The Memorials Committee of the Churchwide Assembly recommended the following operative action in its initial report:

To refer the memorials to the Church Council for further deliberation and definition, specifically to determine the goals and boundaries of any proposed changes to the constitution, especially those related to Chapters 4 and 5; the need for a Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church; and the need and scope of any proposed reconstituting convention, with recommendations to be presented to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly.

You can review the background information provided by the Memorials Committee in the published Report of the Memorials Committee (see p.48).

During the course of the Churchwide Assembly, the permitted petition was submitted to request substitution for the recommendation of the Memorials Committee. The Memorials Committee, in response, moved the substitute operative:

To direct the Church Council to establish a Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church comprised of leaders of diverse representation from all three expressions that, working in consultation with the Conference of Bishops and the Church Council, shall reconsider the statements of purpose for each of the expressions of this church, the principles of its organizational structure, and all matters pertaining thereunto, being particularly attentive to our shared commitment to dismantle racism, and will present its findings and recommendations to the 2025 Churchwide Assembly in preparation for a reconstituting convention to be called under the rules for a special meeting of the Churchwide Assembly.

There was debate and amendment on the floor and one minor amendment, the insertion of the word, "possible." You may review the legislative update (see p.4).

Church Council of the ELCA

Action taken by the Church Council of the ELCA at its first meeting following Churchwide Assembly 2022:

CC22.11.38 To establish a Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church consisting of no more than 35 voting members, directing the Executive Committee of the Church Council to initiate the process of forming the commission, fulfilling the responsibilities of the Church Council related to nominations in accordance with 14.41.01.c., and receiving nominations to fill positions allocated in the following manner:

• Three voting members from each region for a total of 27, two of whom will be selected from nominations received by each Synod Council or Synod Council Executive Committee and one of whom will be received through an open nomination process;
• Each Synod Council or Synod Council Executive Committee will be invited to submit two potential nominees;
• Up to 8 at-large voting members will be selected from either the synod nominations or the open nomination process;

To populate the commission according to the representational principles of this church, requiring that at least 25% of the commission be persons of color/primary language other than English; and striving for at least 20% of members to be youth/young adults;

To request the nomination process be completed prior to the April 2023 Church Council meeting, presenting a slate of nominees to the Church Council for action; and

To invite this church to join us in prayer as this church embarks on this process of renewal.(Carried)

Executive Committee of the ELCA

Though we do not have in our possession the minutes of the Executive Committee of ELCA, we are informed of the following as the course mapped out by the Executive Committee of the ELCA.

• The nomination process will open on Jan. 9 and close on March 9, 2023. Each synod is invited to nominate up to two people to be considered for appointment.
• Two individuals in each region who have been nominated by their synods will be appointed for service.
• In addition, a third individual from each region and up to 8 at-large members will be appointed from among the synod nominations and the open nomination process.
• The Executive Committee will present a slate of nominees for the Church Council to consider at its 20 April 2023 online meeting.
• The Office of the Secretary staff will notify members of their appointment.
• The first meeting of the CRLC will be held in-person 13-15 July 2023 at the Lutheran Center in Chicago.