"The mission of the Church is to love Jesus Christ. Everything else is just strategy." Dr. Mark Allan Powell

This concludes my notes from Dr. Inskeep's presentation.

Sunday morning has a lot of competition now. How do we deal with what's out there? One church Dr. Inskeep described put up a tent on a soccer field, offering services before and after games.

People's first question is "Is this about me?" Lutherans tend to want to say "Oh, but it's not about you." But if it isn't about them, at least in the beginning, they're not interested.

How important is it to us to make disciples? Do we want people around who don't know the rules, who don't understand everything about the church?

We do not compromise our basic understanding of who God is and what God is up to. Everything around it is open for debate.

Lutherans have really important things to say about who God is. But we are unprepared for these changing times.

There was a huge growth, from 1990 to 2008, in people who say they have no religious affiliation. Another group that has grown is 'generic' Christians. Many of these people are young people thinking for themselves, and who find Lutheran woship to be irrelevant.

Church attendance has fallen significantly overall.

Why don't Lutherans talk? Our congregations are communal--designed primarily for the people who are here. We know how worship happens, how we serve ommunion, who sits where... And we are comfortable with that.

We want to leave behind the nervousness of everyday life. So we want things to be predictable and safe.

The more purposeful we are about engaging the community the less sure we will be about what is going to happen on Sunday morning.

I'm in my first hearing, with Kenneth Inskeep from the ELCA's department for Research and Evaluation.
There is a big debate going on whether the United States is becoming more secular, like northern Europe, or whether something unique is happening here.

Synod Assembly

I intend to send updates from the 2010 Eastern Washington-Idaho Synod Assembly to this blog.  We meet from April 23-25.