c. 1995 Religion News Service

(Following is a collection of news stories compiled from RNS staff, wire and denominational reports).

Lutherans remain baffled by sexual issues

(RNS)-Leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, unable to create a consensus policy statement on contentious sexual issues, will instead draft a”message”on the topic.

Such a message, said the Rev. Charles Miller, executive director of the church’s Division for Church and Society will”help keep the momentum going in terms of our discussion of the subject.” Earlier this year, after vociferous opposition from many church members, church leaders scrapped an effort to develop a social policy statement on human sexuality. Critics charged the proposed statement would have permitted recognition of homosexual marriages, encouraged masturbation and promoted the use of condoms among teen-agers.

Rather than determining church policy, messages are meant to be”non-policy communications on timely, urgent social issues.”They are not meant to break any new policy ground.

Miller did not spell out what areas the message might cover but he said the proposed document might”have to push the margin a bit”because previous statements did not discuss such dilemmas as the exploitation of women in advertising. That issue, addressed in the scrapped proposed statement, was one on which there was a fair amount of consensus.

He said the message would also deal with the biblical debate surrounding human sexuality”because it’s been the very nature of the theological framework that’s been in dispute in the church’s discussion so far.”

United Church of Christ mission board making cuts

(RNS)-The United Church of Christ’s Board for World Ministries, with a $2 million deficit and facing continued declines in income, has adopted a series of cost-cutting measures to save money without reducing programs.

Officials of the 185-year-old agency-one of the oldest overseas mission agencies in the nation-said the measures, to be implemented over the next several years, will save $500,000 annually between now and the year 2000 and $1 million a year after that.”We’re making these cuts mainly to maintain our mission for the long term,while trying desperately not to cut our mission or program aspects,”said the Rev. David Hirano, executive vice president of the board.

The cuts will eliminate about a dozen administrative and support positions between now and 2000. Other measures including closing the board’s New York headquarters office and moving it either to Cleveland or Indianapolis; and doing more work in cooperation with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Adventists: One new member every 48 seconds

(RNS)-The Seventh-day Adventist Church has reported that worldwide it is gaining one new member every 48 seconds.

F. Donald Yost, director of archives and statistics at the church’s world headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., told a meeting of the denomination’s executive committee that in the past year the church has added more than 600,000 new members. Total membership now tops 8.6 million.

The fastest growing region of the church is in East Africa, where 149,598 new members were added to denominational rolls in the past year, an 11.7 percent increase.

Yost also reported that there was an increase in per-capita giving by church members, from $164.23 in 1993 to $168.66 in 1994.

Robert S. Folkenberg, the denomination’s world president, also told the 260-member executive committee that he was”saddened”by last month’s irregular ordinations of three women at Sligo Adventist Church in Takoma Park, Md. While women can perform virtually all tasks male clergy perform, they are barred from being ordained. Church officials insist the irregular ordinations are invalid.

Folkenberg said the Sept. 23 service, involving some of the church’s most prominent leaders and held in one of its most prestigious churches, was meant”to publicly embarrass the church.”

Christian Reformed regional groups struggle with women’s ordination

(RNS)-A half-dozen of the Christian Reformed Church’s 46 regional bodies have voted to allow local congregations to ordain women as pastors, elders and evangelists.

The actions-votes to declare the word”male”in the denomination’s book of Church Order”inoperative”-came in response to a resolution adopted by the small, theologically conservative denomination’s Synod, its top decision making body earlier this year.

At that time, delegates to the Synod meeting said that a regional body,-known as a classis-may,”in response to local needs and circumstances, declare that the word ‘male’ in … the Church Order is inoperative and may authorize the churches under its jurisdictions to ordain and install women”as pastors.

Classis Grand Rapids East, a regional group of churches in the Grand Rapids, Mich., area-a denominational stronghold-and one of the six to vote to declare the word male”inoperative,”became the first classis to actually allow women elders to be seated at a meeting of the body.

The issue of women’s roles in the church has been bitterly contested in the 85,000-member denomination for a decade. The Synod, at various times, has both moved toward allowing women’s ordination and has reaffirmed opposition to such ordinations.

One regional body, the Illiana Classis, which includes portions of Illinois and Indiana, took just the opposite stance. It voted to disobey the Synod resolution which prevents regional bodies from disciplining member churches that permit women elders or pastors and said it reserves the right to take disciplinary actions.

And briefly … Saying the collapse of communism has created great opportunities, the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention has set aside $10 million for”White Harvest,”a special mission effort in the former Soviet-bloc countries of Eastern Europe. The money supplements $4.8 million already committed to the area.

… Metropolitan Filaret, who led the movement to found a breakaway branch of Orthodoxy in the Ukraine, has been elected patriarch of the schismatic church. The church was formed when Filaret led a split from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1992 following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is not recognized by the Moscow mother church. In addition, several other Ukrainian Orthodox bishops, some of them loyal to the Russian Orthodox church, continue to oppose Filaret. There are an estimated 35 million believers in the Ukraine.

… Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have expressed dismay over a decision by the Walt Disney Co. to provide health insurance benefits for live-in partners of homosexual employees. The policy, announced Oct. 2 in a newsletter to Disney’s 70,000 employees, will go into effect Jan. 1.”This lamentable decision by Disney is yet one more indication of the radical gay rights movement’s efforts to get preferential treatment for its lifestyle,”said Richard Land, executive director of the SBC Christian Life Commission. A Disney spokesman, saying the company is”a family-oriented company,”said the new policy”brings our health benefits in line with our corporate nondisrimination policy.” … A judge in Upper Marlboro, Md., has sentenced The Rev. Thomas Schaefer, a Roman Catholic priest, to a 16-year prison sentence after Schaefer pleaded guilty to sexually abusing five young men over a 17-year period. Schaefer was sentenced to four consecutive four-year terms on child-abuse charges and to a simultaneous four-year term on a single count of sodomy. He will be eligible for parole in 5 1/2 years.

… The Rev. Carlos Valle, an Argentine clergyman who serves as general secretary of the World Association for Christian Communication, has warned that the concentration of worldwide communications media could lead to a time when”Mickey Mouse … will present the news.”Valle, speaking at the association’s Second International Congress, said the huge conglomerates have created a circle linking all parts of communications.”Giant companies publish a book, then the movie of the book, then CDs and tapes of the music from the movie and finally the video of the movie.”

MJP END