InterActs ELCA Newsletter
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Lutheran World Federation Membership
Lutheran World Federation (LWF) membership increased to more than 68.3 million in 2007, up from 66.7 million in 2006 and 66.2 million in 2005. The increase is attributed to a growth of 2 million members across LWF member church bodies in Africa. Asian churches also had an increase of 100,000 while other regions showed slight decreases. Including non-LWF members (such as the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod), the number of world Lutherans stands at 71.8 million. Some 3.5 million Lutherans belong to non-LWF member churches, a decrease of 0.5 percent. Germany, which has many LWF and non-LWF churches, has the highest number of Lutherans in the world (12.6 million), Latin America and the Caribbean had 822,074 LWF members, a slight decrease. The largest Lutheran churches are: the Church of Sweden (6.9 million), the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (4,869,157), the ELCA (4,774,203; a 1.6 percent decrease) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (4,632,480; a 32.4 percent increase).
Source: The Lutheran, May 2008, page 48
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2007 AGORA Annual Report
Last year, the board worked hard to revise our mission statement to emphasize our role in helping congregations “grow and flourish” in their neighborhood and to build bridges for immigrant worshipping communities and lay ministries.
As diversity increases in our communities, membership in our churches is not increasing. More and more we realize the mission field is not necessarily in other parts of the world, but in our own cities and suburbs. In Bloomington alone, with a population of 85,000, there are 8 ELCA congregations with a total membership now of 10,240—down from 12,000 in 2003. We expect cultural diversity to be 50% by 2013 and a population of 90,000. Our schools and workplaces are recognizing this change and are providing programs and support to help our new neighbors become acclimated, but the churches are slow to act.
Our synod and church-at-large have established efforts to help in the missionary field, here and abroad, but none have been as influential as the direct approach of Agora.