Update: I am pleased to report that Synod has been made aware of this situation, and the people in charge of RSOs are addressing this. For that reason, I’m removing all the the former verbiage in this post regarding Lutheran Community Services Northwest so as to turn the heat down and allow the situation to be addressed.

Kudos to Synod for addressing this matter, and doing so with apparently limited personnel.

All of that said, I posted nothing that was not a matter of public record. Anyone can go to the website of any RSO and easily discover for himself whether the RSO is, in fact, “in harmony with the doctrine and practice of the LCMS.” In many cases, it’s as easy as doing a search and looking for such terms as “LGBTQ,” “gay,” “ELCA,” etc. Moreover, this issue was already all over social media. I do think our leaders would do well to realize that things they may consider to be private are already public.

Given that RSOs statuses are only reviewed once every five years, and given that oversight over these many organizations is a herculean task, and given that folks at Synod have recognized this one as a problem and have already begun a process of rectification, I’m deleting my post from Gottesblog. For historical purposes, I have archived the post at my own personal Substack. Moving forward, I will be happy to praise Synod in the future if either: LCSNW repents of its practices that violate Scripture, or Synod removes RSO recognition of this organization, and I’m confident that this will happen.

And I realize that things take time. But, again, I am optimistic that this matter will be resolved scripturally.

That said, I don’t know if folks who work at Synod really understand just how public this matter is - and was, well before I wrote about it here. If the goal is to keep things under wraps and handle this in the same way that, say, a pastor would handle a private sin in his congregation - that ship has long since sailed. We are dealing with public entities and public policies that are already posted publicly online. And I hope our leaders understand just what a black eye these matters are to those of us in the member parishes, especially we parish pastors who are members of Synod.

At any rate, I have some suggestions as to how we can be more responsive and responsible as a synod to quickly-changing morals and mores among those who bear the Synod’s seal of approval. I will write about this shortly at my Substack.

And I think it would behoove Synod to encourage suggestions for structural improvement - especially from her members.

Thank you once again for taking action!