How did the ELCA start? Find out in this 30 minute documentary from MOSAIC. The video features rare footage and interviews with key leaders from the ELCA’s three predecessor church bodies, the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.
Included in the program are portions of interviews with the Rev. James R. Crumley Jr., bishop of the former LCA; Dr. Dorothy Marple, coordinator of the Transition Team for a New Lutheran Church; the Rev. Rev. Robert J. Marshall, LCA president; the Rev. David W. Preus, president of the former ALC; the late Rev. Jacob A. O. Preus, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS); and the Rev. John H. Tietjen, president of the LCMS Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.
Others in the program include members of the Commission for a New Lutheran Church, some of whom are now ELCA staff, and the Rev. Lowell G. Almen, ELCA secretary since the church was formed. The merger that formed the ELCA “is the result of a process that [had] been in action … 10 years,” David Preus said in the program. “I continue to feel that we would have done much better taking a slower course.”
“We could not depend on our Lutheran national heritage any longer,” said Tietjen in his MOSAIC interview. “We were becoming a truly American church.” When the AELC, ALC and LCA merged, the dismantling of existing church structures in favor of the new ELCA was difficult for many people, according to the documentary.
“It was tough on people,” Marple told the MOSAIC crew. “It was not so tough on me, because I had made a choice not to become a part of that new structure. But, it certainly was true with a number of people.” The “Story of the ELCA” also examines how the ELCA’s churchwide office was located in Chicago, and includes some comments on the church’s future.
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