Old Mergers and Acquisitions

THE TURBULENT '60's

Many of us would rather not pay much attention to the “alphabet soup” of church mergers of the last century. I say alphabet soup, because of the abbreviations for these church bodies. ALC, LCA, LFC, ELCA, and even our current AFLC. They are irrelevant history, we may think. But with the exception of the last group, they are all connected by one tragic dark thread. Well, bear with me as we consider the high stakes involved behind the scenes that affect who we are today.

Our church started, and our building was constructed in 1959. This is where we join the story.

United Lutheran’s existence was due to a previous merger into the ALC in 1960. Did our shiny new church have anything to do with these events? Yes! When the UELC joined the ALC we did too, merging with another small church in town.

Fast forward to a letter dated August 1986 addressed to the United Lutheran membership, Ken Marquardt our pastor from ‘77-02 reported on the then newly forming Lutheran merger and church body to be known as the ELCA. Yes, another merger. The letter was to call a “Quorum” of various congregations for open discussion and a straw vote on the upcoming changes of yet another new synod. Our congregation would send delegates to the national convention later that month in Minneapolis. (I was in seminary at the time also in Minneapolis. I would be ordained the following summer.)

Pastor Marquardt wisely reported that the old church bodies would go out of existence at the moment the new church began in January of 1987. (Just like in 1960.) He writes, “While there are some good elements within this system, there are major problems which should give to critical examination...The greatest threat to the life of this New Church is the ever weakening view of God’s revelation which is Scripture. [he cites the actual wording.] He comments that is very different from that of their current body the ALC.

Pastor Ken goes on the letter to cite examples on changes toward the Lutheran Confessional writings, which he acknowledges may “be subtle” but he says are “cause for concern”.

To restate, 25 years earlier, in 1960 not just local churches, but at least two other church bodies went out of existence for a large merger into the already existing ALC. You see big mergers were a fairly frequent occurrence in the last century. And each and every time, bad things happened in the church’s view of the Bible. And the merger shadow grew.

While we are on the subject of the early 60’s in our case, not only did the Gethsemane and St. John’s Lutheran who make up our current church here on this corner cease to exist as individual entities, the UELC, our Danish synod and another religious body the LFC (Lutheran Free Church—ethnically Norwegian) also ceased. These were good Bible believing church bodies with schools, missions programs, publishing etc. all by themselves. Gone.

Who is the LFC and why are we mentioning the Norwegians? We’ll get to that.

I could list the Soumi Synod (Finns) and the other branch of the Danes as well, which went into the LCA—1962, another merged product of the decade. Gone. The sad consequence is the unique identities of these individual churches, and their religious bodies ceased, and were offered on the altar of unity and compromise. What is the unsaid, and unstated truth is that while unity and unifying had some benefit, the deletion of identity was much more of a threat than advertised. But an even darker unstated threat loomed not only the compromise, but the single unified system was vulnerable for takeover. And that is the alarm Pastor Ken Marquardt was sounding some 25 years later and yet another merger on the table.

But something unusual happened in 1960. A minority in the LFC, or Lutheran Free Church tried to exit, but a judge actually ruled that their name, property, and very identity were now part of the merged American Lutheran Church and were not able to be rescued. That included Bible schools, seminaries and publication materials and whatever assets and resources were held. So this small group had to start over from scratch, and even form a new name in 1962. It is called the AFLC. They had to form new schools, and a new publications and new churches. Even one church building in North Dakota was paddle locked, during the merger, preventing the congregation and pastor from entering.

Why did they go through all that? It was not buildings, and budgets or their identity. Even in 1960, they saw the compromise on the Word of God in their seminaries, and in addition, what we call today “globalism” just beginning to take shape, in the World Council of Churches. And for the Danes in the ALC, yet another merger on the table in 1987. Things would only get worse.

Just under 15 years after pastor Ken wrote that letter, United Lutheran, would exit that system and join this group called the AFLC started in 1962—two years after United Lutheran began. You see the connection?

This church escaped what we know now was the Marxism’s long march through the institutions. That is literally a quote of the Marxist theorist Gramsci and the march had already begun in academia, and higher levels of education. The next destination was the institution of the church. The unified merged church and it’s seminaries and colleges was an easy target. Pastor Ken saw something he didn’t like and along with many in the congregation, took action.

That is our identity, not as a follower and just one in a thousand churches that are carbon copies of a now hetrodox church body. But a church that has deliberately preserved a godly Bible believing heritage, to be truly a Christ-Focused, Word Centered Family. What a story!

That’s my two cents...

Pastor Tom