Thanks for empathizing with me. I don’t know why I need to leave but I just feel uncomfortable. I too might be the only one who believes in theistic evolution and an old earth. I haven’t met anyone there who does.
While I'm not currently an official member, I have over the past couple months been regularly attending a congregation within the AALC (The American Association of Lutheran Churches, aka TAALC), formed by a number of congregations who were uncomfortable with the way the ELCA was going and formed their own synod, and which shares altar and pulpit fellowship with the LCMS.
It's a pretty conservative church, and officially the AALC rejects evolution; though I myself do accept the theory of evolution. I also expect that, on political and some social issues I may be in disagreement with official AALC views. That said, the word of God is preached here. The faith is confessed here. And that's what really matters to me. I'm willing to forego total and complete agreement on certain matters as long as the things that really really matter are here. Where the pulpit is used for God's word.
I feel like I should add, I had nothing but good experiences when I was with the ELCA, and never experienced anything objectionable in any of the preaching or in the confession of the faith in any congregation I was part of. But I have, admittedly, been uncomfortable in some ways with some of the things that have been allowed to happen under the ELCA banner, and perhaps the biggest issue: I wanted to know that I was part of an emphatically Confessional church.
I anticipate there will be road bumps. But I think when it comes to where we worship, we have to recognize that whatever our idealized churche(s) may look like in our minds simply don't exist in reality, and we should probably learn to let go of that. The question of supreme importance ought to be is if the central truths of Christ are here, do we agree that what is being preached as of first importance is a true and faithful preaching of the word?
If you believe that it is in the CC that you will partake and confess of the faithful truth of God's word, then that's where you should be; especially if you believe that the Catholic Church is the fullest and truest witness to Jesus. If you believe this non-denominational church is that, then on some level all that you can do is pray and go by your conscience.
All this to say, I get the difficulty here. I get that it's not easy. That it can be difficult to know where we should be because we want to be faithful to Jesus and we want to, prayerfully, rely on our conscience to aid us in making a determination of which church is most faithful so that we ourselves can partake fully in the truth. And, to make matters more difficult for us, there's no easy answer to that question. I think even the most loyal member of a congregation has to, on some level, acknowledge that we aren't granted the easy comfort of complete certainty.
While we are always going to fight and argue about whose church is God's Church, and regardless of how convinced or still confused we may be on that subject. I would like to also believe that we are works in progress, God isn't finished with us yet. And at the end of the day God is still going to get things right with us even if we bang our head on a few things or sprain our ankles a few times while we get there. That, ultimately, all any of us can really do is believe and trust in the Lord, and hope in God's grace. Not because we should say, "Oh, it doesn't matter what church you go to", but because all of our arguing and debating only gets us so far--eventually we have to confess that God has it figured out even if I don't. Let God be true, Paul says, and every man a liar.
-CryptoLutheran
