PENTECOST, June 7, 2025
Recently, Barna and Fuller completed a two-year study of the ELCA, providing strategic recommendations for the ELCA to live into its vision to reflect God’s love in the world.
You can download the report here: https://resources.elca.org/wp-content/uploads/strategic_recommendations_report.pdf
The report insightfully notes, “…the Church in the U.S. is currently in a season of decline and transformation, and the methods and structures that have gotten the ELCA to this point are not likely to move the ELCA into the future.”
Indeed, worship attendance in the U.S. peaked in the 1960’s. The church in the U.S. has been in decline my entire life. The ELCA is not unique. The LCMS, UMC, ECUSA, PCUSA, and other churches have seen decline. In 2024, the Southern Baptist Convention reported its lowest membership in 50 years. Nondenominational churches have seen some moderate growth, which some attribute to its more flexible, less hierarchical structure, entertainment-style worship, conservative theology, and charismatic, male, leadership, but the birth of the nondenominational megachurch has not changed the equation, just shuffled the deck. The Catholic Church has seen decline in spite of the influx of Latino immigrants, who have kept some parishes alive while many others have been closed.
In other words, the ELCA is a small part of a massive cultural trend it is unlikely to buck unless it wishes to adopt non-denominational theology, structure, and worship style. Nevertheless, the report finds signs of hope, and an opportunity in this season that may never come again.
The report offers signs of hope. There are spots of vitality where we might pay attention, and opportunities that we might seize. There are thriving places. We have ample resources. Our network of camps and campus ministries is a huge asset. Research shows, when people join ELCA congregations they have a very positive experience. We are at church that is aware of the challenges, and open to any possibilities.
Light of all this, Barna/Fuller identifies five commitments that must be embodied across the ELCA.
Commitment #1: Cultivate congregations that are warmer, more inviting and more invitational in nature.
Commitment #2: Enhance ELCA-wide efforts to nurture and strengthen faith and spiritual formation.
Commitment #3: Tangibly and significantly incorporate and empower young people in all levels of the Church’s life.
Commitment #4: Provide greater empowerment, equipping and tools for lay leaders to carry out the work of ministry and be the Church in the world today.
Commitment #5: Rethink, refocus and reorganize the ELCA’s educational systems and structures to serve the current (and rapidly changing) needs of the ELCA.
With each of these commitments came specific recommendations.
COMMITMENT #1 – Cultivate congregations that are warmer, more inviting and more invitational in nature.
People join ELCA churches have a good experience, but seem reluctant to invite. We are not as warm and inviting as we think we are. There’s a disconnect between our good intentions and our actions.
- Develop and provide widespread evangelism training for rostered leaders and ELCA members in a way that is natural for and fits ELCA theology and culture.
- Lean into existing strengths of inclusion and being welcoming to those who are LGBTQIA+ and invest more effort and resources in supporting ministries that do this well to expand and replicate those ministries.
- Provide training for churches and leaders to focus more on creating relationships and other spaces of trust outside of worship services.
- Develop a scalable model where ELCA congregations provide hospitality and create reciprocal partnership with immigrant communities and churches.
- Support congregations in conducting a “language audit” to ensure that their language is clear, understandable and welcoming to newcomers.
COMMITMENT #2: Enhance ELCA-wide efforts to nurture and strengthen faith and spiritual formation.
Healthy congregations have members with a deep and vibrant faith. What is the vision? What is the plan to deepen spirituality across the church? 
- Provide national-level training for rostered leaders on encouraging spiritual practices and other forms for deepening spiritual formation of congregants.
- Explore and elevate approaches to spiritual formation that extend outside of worship services or are less Sunday-focused.
- Heighten approaches to faith formation that are action-oriented and lean into the ELCA’s strengths of being focused on justice and love of neighbor.
- Identify a set of best practices and creative ideas on new forms of discipleship.
COMMITMENT #3: Tangibly and significantly incorporate and empower young people in all levels of the Church’s life.
Young people are one of our greatest opportunities to fuel innovation and growth. Let’s renew the church through faith of its youth.
- There is currently a shortage of ministry and program offerings in ELCA congregations designed for or focused specifically on teenagers, young adults or families with young children.
- Train rostered leaders (not just youth leaders), as well as lay leaders in the ELCA, in current best practices for how to engage and respond to this younger generation.
- Utilize the Growing Young Assessment tool to conduct an audit across all levels of the ELCA, including local congregations and synods.
- Increase investments in camp and campus ministries.
- Every office and ministry of the Churchwide Organization, every synodical leadership team and every local congregation should identify a list of young people they are mentoring and investing in and with whom they are sharing the keys of leadership.
- Pursue greater effectiveness with people of color and those who identify as LGBTQIA+ through a stronger focus on listening to, learning from and tangibly empowering these young people with resources and decision-making ability.
COMMITMENT #4: Provide greater empowerment, equipping and tools for lay leaders to carry out the work of ministry and be the Church in the world today.
Many churches still view clergy as the paid professionals who do the ministry. Let’s renew the priesthood of all believers and equip our people.
- Create national-level training for lay leaders that can be adopted and / or contextualized by synods and local congregations.
COMMITMENT #5: Rethink, refocus and reorganize the ELCA’s educational systems and structures to serve the current (and rapidly changing) needs of the ELCA.
ELCA seminaries can broaden their mission to equip all the people of God to be evangelists and serve in ministry.
- In addition to the current competencies being developed for rostered leaders and SAMs, consider developing additional training that is needed immediately for the continuing education of rostered leaders and training of lay leaders.
- Launch or partner with an existing organization to provide digital courses, microcredentials and certificates for high-quality, accessible training.
- We strongly recommend that the Churchwide Organization play more of a guiding and coordinating role in developing SAM training and standards.
- Invest in more embodied and experiential forms of engagement and learning (such as apprenticeship-based models or service-learning and field education).
Closing thoughts
So there you have it.
- Cultivate warm and inviting congregations
- Strengthen faith formation
- Empower young people
- Equip lay leaders for ministry in the world
- Reorganize ELCA educational systems
There is much more information in the report, with specific ideas and rationale for each recommendation. A lot more can be said about each of these areas. I would love to be involved in this work in some way as I step down as bishop. I hope we will take this report seriously and organize ourselves around it.
“…our review of recent historical documents for the ELCA revealed no shortage of clear strategic plans. However, it was less clear that the ELCA has been able to stick with and see through those past strategic plans.”
If not, then synods, which are often drivers of congregational initiatives, and congregations themselves can take them seriously.
