(Note: the blue horizontal menu bar directly above lists the subsections of the "Introduction." Be sure to read each of these subsections before moving on to the next primary section, "Getting Started.")

Introduction: Changing Communities

The environment we live in puts pressure on us to define ourselves. Communities change. The cities siphon young people from rural America, and agribusiness alters the farm economy so drastically that towns die. Once-thriving congregations find themselves caring for a terminally ill community and perhaps having to merge in order to survive.

In large metropolitan areas, congregations share the fates of their neighborhoods, undergoing transformations as one group after another moves in and out. Some congregations in our cities have expressed five or six different identities, some of which reflect a particular ethnic group. Each change has left an indelible mark on the congregation.

In addition, the denominations that congregations belong to go through their own transitions. One group of Lutherans merges with another. Seminaries that once were sources of pastors for a congregation close, merge, or go through such changes in character that the congregations no longer recognize them.

Major movements in society also can have powerful effects. In the last half-century, for example, congregations have been powerfully affected by the professionalization of work, the civil rights movement, the rise of feminism, the sexual revolution, and global conflicts.

For congregations in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), there is yet another reason to probe their histories. In 1988 a new church was formed, the most recent step in a complicated American Lutheran journey toward union. Over the course of three centuries, many Lutheran groups have come together for confessional and ethnic reasons into a number of tributaries that have gradually flowed into even larger streams, which have kept merging until we finally have formed the ELCA. While this unifying process seems to have resolved many of the long-standing differences between various streams of Lutheranism, it also has brought all members of the merging churches to a time of self-definition.

As the ELCA grapples with major questions concerning the shape of its ministry, the nature of its relationships with other denominations and church bodies around the world, the future of its seminaries, and its stances on major social issues, it will also inevitably have to answer for itself the question, "What does it mean to be Lutheran?" This coming together also has offered each congregation of the ELCA an opportunity to redefine itself.

By honestly searching our past and discovering what has happened to us and who we are, we have the opportunity to enrich our understanding of who we are and our expression of Lutheranism with the rich, raw materials of our shared and distinctive heritages. As the ELCA grapples with major issues such as inclusiveness and multiculturalism, each congregation will find itself nudged to clarify its self-understanding. History is an indispensable resource for that process.