"Called to common mission, the agreement for full communion between the ELCA and the Episcopal Church-USA, continues to generate a lot of conversation and controversy two years after the ELCA approved it. The agreement began to be implimented in January of 2001. At our upcoming Churchwide Assembly in August 2001, there will be several constitutional changes to be voted on. If adopted, I believe these changes would give the ELCA the "wiggle room" on the issue of ordination and the historic episcopate which I have been working for and have favored over the last several years.

The changes would allow for ordination in unusual circumstances, which would allow for the option of a candidate for ordained ministry not being ordained by a bishop. Both the Episcopal Bishops and their House of Deputies have indicated if such ordinations occurred in the ELCA it would mean the individual pastor could not serve in an Episcopal setting. That seems like a reasonable consequence to me and one, I believe, candidates could accept as well.

The question for us at the Churchwide Assembly will be about whether the ELCA can accept such circumstances and accept that we all do not agree on these issues and grant ourselves this flexibility. I am in favor of the proposed constitutional, bylaw, and guideline changes coming to the August Assembly of the ELCA, as I know them at this writing (April 2001). If passed they would indicate to me that the church has listened to synods like ours that have registered our opposition to the mandatory imposition of the historic episcopate. If passed, they would also indicate that we are ready to move on as a church. I have given my best effort to representing the opinions of this synod on these issues in every arena of the ELCA over the last several years. Now I serve on the joint commission, which is an Episcopal/ELCA committee charged with implementing the agreement. I was appointed to that group by Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson because of my stance, as were the other members. For these reasons, I am now hopeful that our church can come together and move on. The adoption of the constitutional and related changes in the August ELCA Assembly will be, to me, the beginning of that moving."