Sunday, May 2, 2010 - Blog 4

By the Numbers

If you’ve been to synod assembly in recent years and thought the turnout for this one was a bit sparse, you’re right. There had been speculation that such would be the case, because of both the economy and an anticipated boycott by congregations unaccepting of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly actions on sexuality issues. As of Sunday morning, 552 assembly participants had checked in, including 13 youth voting members and 453 other voting members. Those figures compare with 649 participants last year, including 18 youth and 534 other voting members.

Haiti: Land of Opportunity

According to a video shown at the final plenary, Lutheran World Relief has received more than $8 million for disaster response in Haiti. “And this work will continue for as long as it takes,” the closing frame of the video states. The offering at the Opening Eucharist on Friday evening, designated for Haitian disaster relief, totaled $7,845. The assembly closed just before noon on Sunday, but for Pastor Joseph Livenson Lauvanus of Haiti, the day was just beginning. From Orlando he drove to Venice to speak that evening at Emmanuel Lutheran Church, where he served an internship. Then he headed to Tampa for more meetings the next day. On Tuesday he was to return to Haiti.
Pastor Livenson had been visiting Florida congregations long before the tremor struck last Jan. 12, seeking monetary support for l’Eglise Lutherienne d’Haiti to build a permanent church structure that would also serve as a community education, health and social center. Synod conferences had embarked on projects to raise funds for this purpose. After the earthquake they put those projects on hold and channeled the money raised – plus a lot more – to disaster response instead. Mid-Gulf Conference congregations raised more than $25,000.
On Sunday evening, Livenson spoke to about 150 Emmanuel Lutheran members and friends about his hopes and concerns for Haiti’s future. The island nation has long been by far the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. As catastrophic as the earthquake was, he sees it as “an opportunity to change the lives of our brothers and sisters.” But the manner and management of aid has to change first.
Official estimates put the death toll at 220,000. “We can talk about a million people, maybe more,” Livenson says. “Just from Carrefour [the epicenter of the quake], more than 200,000 are gone.” The looming crisis is hurricane season, only weeks away. Because the hills have been denuded of trees, which Haitians cut down to make charcoal for cooking, storms each year trigger mudslides that destroy villages and leave hundreds dead. People who fled to the countryside after the earthquake have poured back into Port-au-Prince and are living in huge tent cities “because that’s where the food is being given out.” Livenson has no confidence in Haiti’s government and says “we have so many organizations trying to help that it is chaos.”
The key to being effective, he says, is to help the people help themselves. He wants money for materials and investment in infrastructure, not food and water and flimsy tents. He wants to go to the Haitian congregations (there are 12) with support for projects and call on them to provide volunteers to do the work. An immediate project is to install tents anchored in concrete and designed to withstand both hurricanes and earthquakes – not in “tent cities” but on the sites of the destroyed homes of residents. Down the road, he says, “we are going to invest in fish farms and agriculture farms, raise chickens and develop crafts to market in the Caribbean.” And expand the coffee and sugar production that already exists in Haiti. “You have to empower people, give people ownership, help them to help themselves,” he says.

If you can read this . . .

. . . you could almost certainly read the texts of the hymns and songs of praise that were projected onto the assembly hall mega-monitors on occasion when it was time to sing. Therefore, we don’t need to have them printed in a “Worship & Song Book” any more. Personally, this writer in principle prefers the tactile pleasure of the printed page over the digital screen, small or large. But this is about economic and environmental reality in tough times.
This year’s book was 72 pages; there were never enough copies when it came time to use them, so let’s assume they printed, say, 600 – at considerable cost. The book could have been reduced by a third by leaving out the sing-along songs. In recent years, countless congregations (to say nothing of our synod) have abandoned printed and snail-mailed newsletters in favor of electronic editions to save both dollars and trees. Granted, Lutherans are above average when it comes to singing, and a lot of us like to harmonize on our hymns. If you’re a tenor, alto or baritone, the projected text isn’t going to help. But you can always bring your own hymnal. Or improvise.

Cover Story

One assembly participant insists he has the answer to the financial crisis at Augsburg Fortress. Develop and market a carrying cover for the “Lutheran Study Bible.” The baby-blue tome, in both soft and hard cover, “is too fat to fit in regular zipper cases,” he says. “Everybody would want one.”

The Dearth of Youth

The voting-member parent of one of this year’s youth voting members said she’s not surprised only 13 congregations sent young people to the assembly. “The kids most interested in going are the ones already over-extended, and they’re the ones looking toward college and can’t afford to skip a day of classes,” she said. “If you’re in an advanced-placement course, you can’t miss even one class.” Would it help to have assembly a month later, after school lets out? “That would be even worse,” this mom says. “They already have commitments for all summer long.”

Mixed Messages

It’s ironic that the images of soup kitchen operations in an assembly video aired on Sunday showed the food being served in Styrofoam containers. Last year’s assembly passed a resolution from the floor calling on the synod and its congregations to aim at reducing energy use by 25 percent by 2020. This year the topic never came up. Maybe next year it will be the subject of a workshop.
The synod office does get kudos for keeping its word about cutting back on paper. Participants were advised in advance that printouts of materials would not be available at the assembly and that they should bring their own from home. And that’s the way it was. Except for the revised agenda and candidate bios for elections, there wasn’t a lot of paper to be seen. Even the daily Cross±Currents newsletter took down fewer trees, due to technical difficulties. It came out with four pages in full color on Friday, a front-and-back page black and white version on Saturday and a four-pages with color again on Sunday.
(BTW, the contents of the Saturday and Sunday newsletters consisted of five of the blogs by Zach Harris and Johan Berg that you see here, too -- plus a listing of congregational anniversaries on Saturday and a lot of color photos on Sunday.)

Money Matters

When the assembly took up the resolution to adopt the proposed revised budget for the current fiscal year (which ends next Jan. 31) and the proposed budget for the year after that, there was no discussion from the floor. The measure passed 267-12. Given the angst about reductions in giving, staff and program cuts, and uncertainty about the duration of the Great Recession, that’s curious. But maybe not. The Synod Council had already approved the budgets. Continuing to reflect a commitment to “God’s work. Our hands,” the plans include keeping the synod’s covenant to increase its proportion of congregational giving each year that goes to the ELCA. It will be 51.25 percent for this fiscal year, and then 51.5 percent for the next.
A few congregations are withholding funds or enabling their members to do so in protest of changes occurring in the church. Others are increasing their giving with enthusiasm, celebrating the work of the Spirit within the ELCA as its members continue “Together in Mission.”

T.T.F.N.

Ask a “Winnie the Pooh” fan if you don’t know what that means. Come back next year, as a volunteer if not a voting member or staff. And think about volunteering for Churchwide Assembly next August, again in Orlando, too. The synod office can tell you how.