Synod's Loss of Members Predicted by Reclaim News Since 1995
By Rev. Jack Cascione

 

The Synod released its report on membership for 2000 over the internet on Nov. 12, 2001. The total membership statistics at the end of 2000 indicate the biggest single-year loss in baptized membership since 1978 and the largest single-year confirmed membership drop since 1988.

Baptized congregational membership declined in 2000 by 28,342, from 2,582,340 to 2,554,088. In 1999, the loss was 11,000 and in 1998 the loss was more than 18,000. That adds up to a loss of 50,000 in the past three years.

Why the drop in membership? The following statement is being put out by the Synod's news service:

"Dr. John O'Hara, research analyst for the Synod's Department of Planning and Research, said that he believes part of the drop can be explained by the 'considerable number' of large congregations he knows of that have cleaned up their membership rolls in the past year."

What is this that we read? The large churches are cleaning up their rolls! Weren't we told that the future growth of the LCMS was to take place in the large Church Growth style congregations?

Unlike Dr. John O'Hara, this writer has been predicting since 1995 that the LCMS's decline would intensify the more the majority of the Council of District Presidents promoted the Church Growth Movement, contemporary worship, and Leadership Training.

The focus on growth instead of doctrine means the Synod will continue to decline. This is the era of church shrink.

This writer has no illusions that people may suddenly pay attention to what I have been predicting. Only the Stock Market pays attention to those who accurately predict long-term market trends and explains the forces that drive them.

Rather, the goal is that some lay people will realize that there are LCMS pastors who are able to read and understand the Bible and fully expected what is now taking place in the LCMS because of the Church Growth debacle.

This writer's prediction was that the decline would intensify after 1999, driven by failed Church Growth millennial expectations, with disastrous declines by 2005. Neither the Synod nor the conservative know-nothings of "Vision," "Affirm" and "Balance" will ever publish the following reasons for the Synod' decline in membership as quoted from the following articles by this writer:

April 1995
"By fiat, the Council of Presidents has simply suspended the Synodical Constitution. They are not planning for the growth of the LCMS as they dream, as they hallucinate, as they fantasize, but its destruction. . . . Who will make the COP demand that every LCMS church use the name "Lutheran" and use doctrinally pure hymn books, catechism, and agenda in church and school? . . . While American evangelicalism sheds its doctrine and practice like kids at the beach, the Catholic church is printing tens of millions of the largest catechism ever published in America. Do you think they know something the others don't know? Maybe they plan to be around after 2005."

January 1996
"Once the worship and the operation of the congregation become the responsibility of the pastor, we have an absolute guarantee for LCMS shrink. What was nearly three million members in 1969 will be closer to two million by 2005. It will take till 2005 for the church growth model that is driven by the charismatic style of Assembly-of-God-worship to collapse. Collapse of the millenialist churches will also devastate all the congregations that adopted their worship style and structure in the LCMS."

November 26, 1997
"At the [Michigan District] South and East Pastors' Conference, Rev. Mike Ruhl spoke about the flat line of district membership. Well, prepare yourselves to ride this horse, as he called it, right into the ground. With no clear confession you [the Synod] will only suffer losses and decline. By 2005 your losses will be staggering. Perhaps then you will be meeting to di scuss the new shopping center where your [District] headquarters now stand."

February 1999
"Church Growth style Mega Churches will be dinosaurs by 2005. There never was nor will there ever be a religious movement that survived by claiming it had no theology. Just ask the Episcopalians. Church Growth/Leadership Training must collapse because the same millennial hype that will build up their statistics for the next two years will tear them down by 2005. A religious movement that surveys its market to discover what it should teach is no religion."

January 2000
"The financial figures for the Texas District are typical of many LCMS districts. They have increased their staffs, decreased their support for Synod at large, and opened fewer mission congregations. In other words, they have increased the bureaucracy and decreased their mission out reach at home and through the Synod. There is little wonder that the larger districts are growing more slowly and the Synod as whole shrank by more than 18,000 baptized [members] in 1998."

August 29, 2000
"To the [Synod's] Task Force [on National/District Synod Relations] we say: The District President is not the Church! Without lay people you don't have a church! When this writer was 17 in New York City the Atlantic District had 155,000 members. Now it has 40,000 members. This is the handwriting on the wall for the Synod's 'large' districts."

March 19, 2001
"What Is Wrong With The Church Study Committee"
"It is all a little too late to close the barn door. The Committee speaks about a Synod of 2.5 million. When the Synod originally asked the Committee to give a report in 1995, it used to be a Synod of over 2.6 million baptized. By the time the Synod realizes the Committee failed to identify a practical course of action, it will be a Synod reduced to 2.4 or 2.3 million. The Synod's reluctance to encourage the laity to involve themselves in maintaining the correct worship and practice in their congregations through Voters' Assemblies is a virtual death wish for the LC-MS, a church body founded on congregational polity."

June 3, 2001
"During an astounding era of expansion from 1847 to 1969, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod grew from 12 to 5,600 congregations with 2,786,102 baptized members in the United States according to the 1969 statistical yearbook . . . . In the so-called era of the "Church Growth Movement" promoted by many LCMS District Offices, the Synod's rate of decline is actually speeding up. Tens of millions of dollars of Synodical funds have been diverted to support larger district offices, staff, programs, and gimmicky grow-quick-plans advocated by self-styled Church Growth gurus and experts."

July 23, 2001
"Within the next few years many of the pastors who promoted the Church Growth Movement in their congregations will be looking for early retirement or a new call. . . . Wait till we see the statistics for 2000 in the LCMS after a steady diet of Church Growth and Leadership Training for the past 10 years."

July 25, 2001
"It really doesn't matter what people think about Promise Keepers, they are finished. When they shrink from 80,000 to 7,000 in Detroit that says it all for the Church Growth crowd. They have no glue, no cohesive doctrine, and no unity. They are just a crowd. Compare them with the Synod's largest congregation in San Antonio that shrank from 2800 in attendance a week to 1200 a week. The crowd has no loyalty. It is led by fads. Get rich quick also means get poor quick."

Now on November 18, 2001, like many LCMS Districts, the Michigan District is trying to distance itself from the name "Lutheran." "The Michigan Lutheran" is changing its name to "Michigan In Touch." The presumption is that "Lutheran" doesn't sell. In the centerfold of the November 2001 issue is a picture of new members joining, "NewLife Community Church," the word "Lutheran" is not stated.

If the Ford Motor Company had the same problem with its name that many of the LCMS District Presidents and executives and PLI are having with the name Lutheran, Ford would be bankrupt.

Doctor O'Hara knows very well that when LCMS people who have been schooled in Church Growth/Contemporary Worship move to a new location they are just as happy in a near by Baptist/Pentecostal/Church Growth Community style congregation. They have no "customer-loyalty" to Lutheranism because they don't know what it is. They have no desire to start their own LCMS congregations. If the LCMS were operating as a for-profit-corporation, the majority of the COP would be fired for incompetence. They know less than their Seminex-walk-out professors from the 60's and 70's.

However, there are some on the COP, like Montana District President George Wollenburg, and the District Presidents from Northern Minnesota, Central Illinois, South Dakota and Wyoming who have a great deal of understanding of what it will take to turn the Synod in the right direction. Their voices are being ignored.

The Willow Creek model doesn't work with infant baptism and the real presence in the Lord's Supper.

The Synod is experiencing a major leadership vacuum in the COP and the LCMS Presidency. The LCMS clergy who have an inordinate amount of power in the Synod keep electing officials out of self-interest rather than the defense of Lutheran Doctrine. A church body not intensely focused on its doctrine cannot survive.

Our prediction is that due to September 11, 2001, the decline in the LCMS membership may slow or even reverse in 2001 but will continue to decline in 2002 and start heading for real fallout by 2005. At that time, there may be serious talk about dividing the Synod, the Lutherans will go their way and those who say, "we all worship the same God" the other way, i.e. what is left of them.

Even if statistical reports from the Synod are not accurate in the coming years, the decline in funds will soon follow the decline in membership.


Rev. Jack Cascione is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church (LCMS - MI) in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. He has written numerous articles for Christian News and is the author of Reclaiming the Gospel in the LCMS: How to Keep Your Congregation Lutheran. He has also written a study on the Book of Revelation called In Search of the Biblical Order.
He can be reached by email at pastorcascione@juno.com.

November 20, 2001