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AUBURN — St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 211 E. Ninth St., voted Sunday to break from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America because the denomination adopted a new policy regarding homosexuals in leadership last year.
“We think it’s inappropriate,” said St. Mark’s pastor Stephen Kummernuss. “It’s not consistent with the Biblical witness. … God loves all people, yes, but as for the requirements for ministry, we think this has to be the biblical model.”
The 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA adopted “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” by a vote of 676 to 338 on Aug. 19, 2009. It says persons of the same gender who are committed to each other and qualified may be ordained as ministers. The ELCA’s prior policy said a minister could be gay, but had to take a vow of celibacy.
The Auburn church’s congregation first voted on breaking from the denomination May 2, but the vote failed. According to Kummernuss, 97 members voted to leave the ELCA, and 54 members voted to remain. Although the majority voted to leave, the church’s constitution says a measure does not pass without a two-thirds majority.
“We were short by four votes,” Kummernuss said. “At that point, we lost a good number of members.”
Attendance in worship services declined after the vote, and the church’s income fell by 50 percent, Kummernuss said.
“The congregation can survive,” Kummernuss said, “but the church cannot survive with the same staffing (if numbers do not increase).”
The church’s building, on the southeast corner of Ninth and Van Buren streets near downtown Auburn, has no mortgage. The church has reserve funding to handle expenses through August, he said.
After the decline in members and money, congregation members approached the parish council and asked for another vote. Kummernuss visited and called on congregation members and worked to educate members about the ELCA’s decision.
Kummernuss told church members that breaking from the ELCA does not mean St. Mark’s is “anti-gay.”
“Many thought this was a referendum on homosexuality, and it’s not; it’s on biblical authority. It does not mean you’re anti-gay,” Kummernuss said.
Kummernuss added that many members also believed that the congregation would lose its church building if it broke from the ELCA.
“That’s not true,” Kummernuss said.
The congregation voted again July 4, with 161 members voting to leave and 25 members voting to stay in the ELCA. Kummernuss said some members who had stopped attending returned for the vote.
The church must vote in favor of the break again in 90 days before it takes affect. If two-thirds of the congregation votes in favor of the break, the church will join Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal), which will become the North American Lutheran Church, Kummernuss said.
Kummernuss expects that when the process is over, the Auburn church will lose about 10 percent of its members.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” said Kummernuss, who has been in the ministry for 33 years in Florida, New York, Maryland and Ohio. He has served in Auburn for nine years.
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