We are gifted with a diversity of color and ethnicity in the community of pastors and other restored leaders. Church professionals are ordained, consecrated, and commissioned women and men. We support fraternal insurance agencies that partner with congregations, leaders and synods in many helpful ways that in fact often rescue our programs. As each of these milestones was addressed and crossed over by our church, some said that we were charting a new course. But as Lutherans, I believe it is better to say that our reformation is ongoing and that God is still working with us, on us, and through us.
Church is always in the process of being reformed.
The road for the ELCA has widened to recognize full communion with Presbyterian, Reformed, United Church of Christ, Moravian, and Episcopalian Christians. We have signed a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification with representatives of the Roman Catholic Church. We are in ecumenical dialogs with several other denominations. It means that we will embrace a form of the historic episcopate, something which is, in fact, not necessary for the true unity of the church but something which is very important to our Episcopal sisters and brothers and many Lutheran sisters and brothers throughout the world. In typical Lutheran fashion, proponents and opponents of the historic episcopate both stand on biblical passages to support particular postures and we debate the language of our Lutheran confessions and draw differing conclusions from them.