Reflecting on the 2025 ELCA Churchwide Assembly

Beloved in Christ,

A party of 21 Nebraska Synod voting members attended the 2025 ELCA Churchwide Assembly this past week. What follows are my reflections on the week together in Phoenix and what I believe this means for the future of our church. 

Elections

• The Rev. Yehiel Curry, Bishop of the Metropolitan Chicago Synod, was elected to be the next Presiding Bishop of the ELCA. You can learn a bit more about Bishop-Elect Curry at the video below.

• The Rev. Lucille "CeCee" Mills was elected to be the next Secretary of the ELCA. Learn more about Pastor Mills here.
• Elections for the ELCA Church Council and various committees & task forces were also held. PMA Matt Schur, a member of Southwood Lutheran Church in Lincoln, was elected to a six year term on the ELCA Church Council. 

Social Teachings, Constitutional Amendments, Memorials, and Resolutions

• We adopted our newest social statement, Faith and Civic Life: Seeking the Well-Being of All. 
• We approved editorial updates to the 2009 statement Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust. These updates reflect contemporary legal definitions and actions for all marriage relationships and do not change the essence of the statement itself. We will begin a reconsideration process for the statement this fall, which will be addressed by the 2028 Churchwide Assembly. 
• We heard the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church’s final report along with the ELCA Church Council’s response to the report. The CRLC’s work also found its way into some of our constitutional revisions, many of which were debated in great detail in the course of the Assembly's work.
• Memorial D4 "Stand for Palestinian Rights and End to Occupation of Palestine" Adopted 742-38
• Calls for the ELCA, its members, congregations, synods and churchwide units to advocate for human rights and a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis by supporting policies that end the occupation, to join the World Council of Churches in calling for an immediate end to the mass killing in Gaza, to urge the Office of the Presiding Bishop to petition U.S. leaders to recognize and act to end the genocide against Palestinians, halt military aid to Israel used in Gaza, and support Palestinian statehood and U.N. membership, to reject forced displacement and settler violence, to promote prayerful engagement and solidarity with those working for justice and peace, including ELCA partners in the region, and to amplify the voices of local partners and strengthen the ELCA’s advocacy through the Office of the Presiding Bishop, the Middle East and North Africa Desk, the Sumud initiative, and the Witness in Society team, among other offices.
• Memorial A3 - "Indian Boarding School Remembrance" Adopted 779-7 
• Calls for the church to observe the National Day of Remembrance for Indian Boarding Schools annually, develop educational programs and materials surrounding the history and ELCA’s complicity with Indian boarding schools, and provide ongoing recognition and support for the continued work to locate all known records regarding the ELCA predecessor churches’ involvement with Indian boarding and day schools, among other actions.
• Memorial B14 - "Consideration of Recommendation 1 of the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church" Adopted 646-144
• Calls for the church 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, to request that the Church Council continue to work with the team to clarify the nature of mutual accountability, and to direct the Church Council to add a timeline to its actions taken and to provide progress updates to this church with a final report by fall 2027, including possible constitutional changes.
• We received the Common Statement on the Filioque. "Reception" means more than just hearing a report - it means we affirm the work that our ecumenical partners have done and will consider with care their recommendations related to bridging gaps between Lutheran and Orthodox churches.
• The Assembly approved an amendment setting a goal for youth (14-17) and young adults (ages 18-30) to make up 20% of Churchwide councils, committees, and task forces. 
• Special thanks go to Deacon Timothy Siburg of the Nebraska Synod for his service on the Churchwide Assembly's Memorials Committee. 

Worship, Prayer, Spiritual Practices, Speakers & Presentations

• The Assembly received the final reports of both Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton and ELCA Secretary Sue Rothmeyer, who were both celebrated after their presentations and at a banquet on Thursday evening. 
• Other speakers and presenters included Presiding Bishop Susan Johnson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada; Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism; Bishop-elect Imad Mousa Dawood Haddad of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land; Rector Chad Rimmer of Lenoir-Rhyne University/Southern Theological Seminary, and many others. 
• Daily worship was a highlight for many of the Assembly attendees. We heard from a variety of preachers: Bishop Elizabath Eaton; the Rev. Imad Mousa Dawood Haddad, bishop-elect, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land; Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie, General Secretary and President of the National Council of Churches; and the Rev. Wyvetta Bullock, ELCA executive for administration.
• On Tuesday evening, the ELCA's staff for Indigenous Ministries and Tribal Relations invited the Assembly to observe a powwow involving traditional dancers from a number of different tribes and nations. 
• On Thursday evening, AMMPARO hosted an impactful Candlelight Prayer Vigil for refugees and immigrants. 
• Voting members often paused for prayer before votes and even during plenary discussion.

Reflections

This is my second Churchwide Assembly, and it was a very different experience than my first (2022, as a replacement voting member and as bishop-elect). Some of you may remember that 2022 was a very difficult year for the ELCA. We were still working our way through COVID-related trauma and also struggled to deal with trauma within the church, some of it self-inflicted. I remember the plenary room feeling very anxious throughout the 2022 Churchwide Assembly; in 2025, anxiety was not nearly so rampant, even as we considered major leadership elections and further work we need to do as a church. We celebrated the ministries of Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton and Secretary Sue Rothmeyer, giving thanks for their good work as leaders of this church. We acknowledged that changing structures and structural issues in this denomination is difficult, and that there is much work left to do, but I believe we also allowed ourselves to acknowledge that there are signs of hope that may not have been so apparent three years ago. 

I knew this was going to be a momentous Churchwide Assembly. I wasn't prepared for how the election of the presiding bishop was going to affect me emotionally. When Bishop Yehiel Curry was announced as the next presiding bishop of this church, I found myself tearing up. Some of that, I believe, is knowing the quality and character of our Presiding Bishop-Elect. Some of that is knowing what this election means for our church. Just as Presiding Bishop Eaton's election spoke volumes in 2013, so do the elections of Bishop Yehiel Curry and Pastor CeCee Mills in 2025. The repercussions of these elections will ripple through this church for years to come. So, yes: I had a very quiet little crying session as we stood and applauded the election of our new Presiding Bishop, and I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one who did, either. 

I asked our voting members to summarize their Churchwide Assembly experience in three words. Mine are: Changing - Determined - Hopeful. We are not the church we should be - not yet. But we are also not the church we were - not anymore. As a GenXer, I know I'm supposed to be suspicious of institutions (if not outright dismissive), but I continue to see signs of the Spirit's work in this church throughout all of its expressions. God is up to something in this church: from the smallest congregations to the Churchwide office, there are people who just will not give up on this church, and I saw that determination in abundance more than once during the Churchwide Assembly. It reminded me of the quote that Rector Chad Rimmer used to close his presentation: 

“This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness, not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise; we are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished, but it is going on; this is not the end, but it is the road; all does not yet gleam with glory, but all is being purified.” Luther, Defense and Explanation of All the Articles (1521)

"This is not the end, but it is the road." Amen, Brother Martin. Here in Nebraska, it's good to be on that road together with all of you. 

Bishop Scott

Sermon for Maundy Thursday: "Unsurrendering Love"

Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged for treason by the order of Adolf Hitler at Flossenburg Concentration Camp on 9 April 1945 - eighty years ago last week.  I have been continually challenged and comforted by Bonhoeffer’s writings and the stories of his life, most notably his choice in 1939 to return to Germany and continue his work in the Confessing Church, resisting both the Nazi Party and the majority of German Christians who had fallen in line with the government.  He had the option to remain in the United States, but Bonhoeffer insisted, “I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.”  Within months Bonhoeffer was a co-consiprator against Hitler, working to smuggle Germany Jews out of the country, using his ecumenical contacts to try and alert the Allies to the presence of an active resistance within Nazi Germany, and providing counsel to the people who were involved in several plots against Hitler from within the military intelligence community.  Bonhoeffer was arrested in April 1943; after a lengthy period of imprisonment and interrogation,  Bonhoeffer and others were sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, then to Flossenburg, where they were executed.    

In a July 1944 letter from Tegel Prison in Berlin to his friend Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer wrote something I want to tie to the gospel reading for this service:

“Christians... have no last line of escape available from earthly tasks and difficulties into the eternal, but, like Christ himself, they must drink the earthly cup to the dregs, and only in their doing so is the crucified and risen Lord with them, and they crucified and risen with Christ.  This world must not be prematurely written off...”

“Like Christ himself, [Christians] must drink the earthly cup to the dregs.”  In the Gospel of John it is written, “Having loved his own who were in the world, [Jesus] loved them to the end.”  This commitment to see things through “to the end” is, I believe, the essence of what gathers us here tonight.  

Tonight is Maundy Thursday.  “Maundy” comes from the Latin mandatum, “commandment.”  We call it “Maundy Thursday” because of what Jesus said to and did for his disciples on his last night together with them.  He kneeled and washed their feet, a chore generally regarded as beneath even the lowliest servants.  He broke bread with his friends, even though one of them would leave the meal to betray Jesus to the authorities who wished him dead.  He commanded them:  “love one another as I have loved you.”  Then Jesus continued to love his disciples to the very end of his life; abandoned, rejected, scorned, humiliated, flogged, crucified and executed.  These are the deeds of the One who loves his followers to the dregs, to the very end, to the bottom of the bitter cup.  

This is not an easy thing for us to gather and remember.  It is a far cry from Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem that we celebrated on Sunday.  Even the crucifixion is easier to handle if it’s interpreted in a certain way.  I remember a shirt I used to wear that had a picture of Jesus doing a push-up with the cross on his back with a “Lord’s Gym” logo underneath.  The idea, of course, was that Jesus took on the cross the way the Cornhuskers take on the Hawkeyes, or Reál Madrid takes on Barcelona:  the ultimate rivalry, the grudge match, the game in which the good guys must emerge triumphant. 

No one comes out triumphant on Maundy Thursday.  Judas left to betray Jesus to the authorities. Peter and the rest of the disciples fell asleep while Jesus prayed and ran when Jesus was arrested.  And Jesus?  He surrendered.  Utterly.  No resistance, no protest of innocence.  Jesus let himself be taken into the hands of authorities who would rather see him dead than hear any more about the relentless, unconditional love and mercy he had been preaching.  

There’s only one thing Jesus did not surrender on his last night with his disciples:  his love.  The gospel of John tells us, “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.”  
He surrendered his privilege when he knelt and washed his disciples’ feet.  
He surrendered his trust when Judas betrayed him with a kiss. 
He surrendered his dignity when the priests and authorities questioned and tortured him.   
He surrendered his power and his authority when he was paraded through the streets and crucified, an execution meant for the deadliest enemies of the state.  
But Jesus would not surrender his love for his disciples, then or now. 

This is what it means to “love to the end.”  This is what makes Jesus’ commandment a “new” commandment.  There was nothing new about the commandment to “love one another”— that had been one of the two great commandments since the time of the Exodus.  What makes Jesus’ commandment “new” is Jesus’ living example of the lengths to which that love will go.  God will give up everything else in God’s unsurrendering love for sinners.  This is not the sort of love you find in a Hallmark Christmas movie or a Harlequin romance novel - that’s the sort of love the Greeks called eros, and while there’s nothing at all wrong to have that kind of love, it’s not the word that’s used here. The Greek word used in this chapter of John is agape. Its Hebrew equivalent is chesed. It’s the sort of love that sacrifices for the sake of the beloved. In the Psalms we translate it as “lovingkindness” or “steadfast love,” and above all else, it does. not. surrender.  Ever.  This love drinks the earthly cup to the dregs.  This love goes all the way to the end.

This message of love hasn't been getting a lot of air time recently in this part of the world.  You and I both know that there are a lot of people right now who insist that there are limits and conditions to God's love, and that there are limits and conditions on how God's church should be living out that love in this part of the world.  Allow me to make this as clear as I possibly can:  those. people. are. wrong. The God we worship loves you without limit, without condition.  The God we worship will love you all the way to the end.  The gospel is clear:  in a world that has always been far too worried about what separates us and makes us different, the unsurrendering love of God is the thing that unites us in love and makes us siblings in this family God has called together from all across the world.  

The first letter of John says, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”  Take this time tonight and consider what it means to be God’s beloved. You, tonight, as you are in this moment, are the intended recipient of God’s unsurrendering love.  The cross is the final proof of God’s relentless, unsurrendering love.  The gospel says “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.”  You are his own, brought into the body of Christ through your baptism in his name.  You are his own in the world, tonight, remembering the night long ago when Jesus gave us this meal by which we remember his love for us, and in which we are made part of the story ourselves.  Now, friends, know this – to the very last end of all that was, is, or ever will be, you are the object of God’s unsurrendering love.  Believe in that love – live in that love – serve in that love, now and forever.  Amen.

Cultivating Love through Response

We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love…So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another…Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear…Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

—Ephesians 4.14-16, 25, 29, 31-32—

A few years ago, when my wife Kristin and I were serving a congregation in Iowa, we became friends with John Sheahan, the local middle school principal. John was a member of the other ELCA congregation in our school district, and our churches cooperated on a number of different ministries, including a shared youth ministry program. When John retired from the middle school, he discerned a call into ministry and entered the TEEM program at Wartburg Seminary. I was blessed to serve as a clergy mentor to John during his time at Wartburg; I say “blessed” because I learned as much or more from John as he did from me.

On Prophetic Preaching: A Statement

“As a prophetic presence, this church has the obligation to name and denounce the idols before which people bow, to identify the power of sin present in social structures, and to advocate in hope with poor and powerless people. When religious or secular structures, ideologies, or authorities claim to be absolute, this church says, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority’ (Acts 5:29). With Martin Luther, this church understands that to rebuke those in authority through God’s Word spoken publicly, boldly and honestly is not seditious but “a praiseworthy, noble, and particularly great service to God.’”

So says Church in Society: A Lutheran Perspective, the first ELCA Social Statement, passed in 1991. Our confessional witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ has always included a political dimension. The Reformation would have been very different if Luther had not been protected by a politician, Elector Frederick the Wise, following his refusal to recant at the Diet of Worms. Luther regularly exhorted the nobility of his day to provide for the people entrusted to their care, regularly providing private counsel and public statements on the issues of his day. The church and the state being accountable to each other and to God from their respective realms of authority has been a mainstay of Lutheran theology and practice for over 500 years. 

Many people have said a lot of things about Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon yesterday at the National Cathedral. While Bishop Budde is not sworn to the same confessional teachings as I am, being a minister of the Anglican communion, I found her words to be exactly the thing to which the ELCA committed itself over 30 years ago: a bold, honest, public rebuke of those in authority, an act of advocacy on behalf of those who have neither the power nor the means to offer that word themselves. I applaud her courage and I gladly join her in exhorting those in authority, regardless of their party, faith, or any other affiliation, to realize that their words, principles, and policies will affect more than their supporters, and that they have a duty and responsibility to all of the children of God that have been entrusted to their care.