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- The final plenary session closes out the 2016 Churchwide Assembly. Technical difficulties couldn’t stop legislative action as voting members used cards instead of their personal machines to consider memorials.
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- Before the final plenary session, voting members and Grace Gathering participants joined for closing worship, which included music from a Dixieland band.
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- During the assembly, ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton presented Oliver Thul and Kayla Koterwski (not pictured) with a plaque in thanks and recognition for their service as the two youth members of the Church Council. Thul and Koterwski served from 2013-2016.
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- Kevin Strickland, ELCA executive for worship (left), Eaton and George Edward Battle Jr., senior bishop of the American Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, lead worship on Aug. 11. During the week, worship was in the middle of each day’s events, positioned as the center of the work and heart of the assembly.
The New Orleans nickname, “The Big Easy,” may have influenced the voting members of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, which met here Aug. 8-13. Most major decisions, including a breakthrough ecumenical agreement with Roman Catholics and the creation of a ministry of lay professionals called deacons, easily won overwhelming endorsement from the more than 900 voting members
The assembly, with Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton providing leadership that combined seriousness with a light heart, was remarkably devoid of the long lines of speakers at microphones seeking major changes in assembly actions, parliamentary challenges and sometimes heated disputes that occasionally mark church decision-making.
The election of William Horne of Clearwater, Fla., as the new ELCA vice president was preceded by enthusiastic tributes to Carlos Peña, who served two terms as the denomination’s highest lay officer.
The assembly endorsed a program for assisting refugee children, and heard accounts of Lutheran work around the United States, as well as such places as the Central African Republic, El Salvador and Papua New Guinea.
Eaton’s four themes were present throughout. We are church: each morning she greeted the assembly with“Good morning, church!” We are Lutheran: worship and devotions reflected the essentials of Lutheran worship. We are church together: fellowship and unity were reflected in assembly actions. We are church for the sake of the world: assembly actions touched on such things as ecology, fossil fuels, the Middle East, racism, sexual identity, support for military veterans and poverty in the U.S.
The next assembly will be in 2019 at a place yet to be decided.
Reports on the assembly can be found on this site under the “Religious news & social issues.”
