-FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE-

-Prologue-

“20 For where two or three are gathered in My name [meeting together as My followers], I am there among them.” -Matthew 18:20 Amplified Version–

Dear Bishop Yehiel Curry and MCS Executive Staff Brothers and Sisters in Christ

  1. In this Part 3 installment of our Open Letter response to your letter of February 5, 2021, we want to address the following constitutionally confused, indeed constitutionally false, view of your document regarding the Synod’s current top-down attitude to our basically bottom-up congregationalist ministry.

2. Accordingly, your document falsely and errantly states: “As you know the Metropolitan Chicago Synod (MCS) staff and council have been meeting with Reformation members to prayerfully determine the viability of Reformation Lutheran Church. The congregation has not met since 2018 due to damage to its building and a dwindling active membership of 5-10 people.”

3. Reformation’s reply: Since the September 1, 2018 launch of the Curry MCS administration, we’ve met with your office only twice both on our initiative. More, said meetings were essentially courtesy calls. They were not substantive. The first was a 15 minute meeting at the Synod office (Fall 2018). The second was a coffee break meeting in late Winter 2020 with your new Director for Evangelical Mission (DEM), Rev. Robert Biekman, at LSTC’S Refectory. Hardly an expression of prayerfully meeting about the challenges facing our ministry.

4. More, our Congregation’s additional reply: Although it is certainly true we discontinued meeting at Reformation’s fellowship hall in 2018, it is completely untrue however, that we ceased meeting for worship as a congregation. Said meetings are detailed in items 4, 5, and 6 in our Part 2 response to your February 5, 2021 letter.

4b. More too, in the light Matthew 18:20 above, since when is the compact size of any active congregation become a key demerit in judging a local faith assembly’s viability? More also, governance decisions regarding the life (viability) of our local assembly is the sole (exclusive) purview of the local congregation and by no means the purview of MCS constitutionally speaking.

5. Your February 5, 2021 letter goes on to make the following constitutionally wrong-headed, inaccurate, and blaming-the-victim statement: “In consultation with the MCS African Descent Strategy Team it was recommended that Reformation Lutheran Church be closed for safety reasons…multiple liens and significant delinquent mortgage debt.”

6. Reformation’s reply: MCS and our congregation are organized as two separate non-profit corporations. We are each governed separately with our own distinct constitutions, councils, and executives. We do not report to MCS nor to any of its structures. Therefore, MCS cannot dissolve us nor otherwise manage us, nor make formal recommendations about our governing affairs. Our MCS-ELCA affiliations are strictly voluntary.

7. Reformation has no property mortgages. All our properties are owned outright by the congregation. Our debts are internal to the ELCA. They are therefore negotiable. They can be waived. More, the value of our combined properties is well over a million dollars. Accordingly, although we happen at the moment to be cash poor we are also relatively property rich.

8. More importantly, Reformation is legacy rich. Of the over 9,000 congregations of the ELCA, we hold the God given distinction of being young Barack Obama’s historic community organizing sanctuary/1985-87 plus.

9. More too, we are located in an historic City neighborhood adjacent to Chicago’s only historic federal national park monument community. Fortuitously declared so by the outgoing Obama administration. Accordingly, in Part 4 of this response we will outline our distinctive historic legacy as previewed here: https://partneringreformation.wordpress.com/

10. Channeling Luther, then, here we stand. We cannot and will not relinquish our birth-right for a mess of porridge. May Almighty God help us!

Respectfully submitted: Rev. Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma), Pastor, Council President, and Executive Director Reformation Church Chicago (Saving Young Obama’s Historic Organizing Sanctuary/1985-87), 3-5-21, Updated: 3-6-21, 3-11-21

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