AFLC 2006 Conference

     Pastor Dave Johnson represented Silverhill's Zion Lutheran Church at the Association Free Lutheran Congregations' Annual Conference in Stanwood, WA, at the Warm Beach Conference Center, June 20- 23, 2006. The Annual Conference is the meeting at which representatives to the various corporations and organizations of the AFLC are nominated. The AFLC has a very loose structure in the sense that the Annual Conference does not control the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations. The Annual Conference is not unlike a rally, as opposed to being a formal, synodical business meeting. Each of the six corporation entities comprising the AFLC would continue to function autonomously whether or not the Annual Conference met. The concept behind the loose structure was to prevent any part of the church organization from dominating the whole. (The AFLC is comprised of about 280 congregations throughout the USA at this time.)

     AFLC President Robert Lee (l), familiar to a number of folks in Baldwin County because of visits to Zion Lutheran Church in Silverhill, posed briefly with Zion's Pastor Dave Johnson. Pastor Lee's Executive Secretary Charlotte Oswood (r) is a member of Pastor Dave's previous church in Minneapolis, MN.

     The predecessor to the AFLC was more centralized than the present AFLC. The previous body was ruled "synodical" in the mergers of the 1960s when its leadership elected to merge with a variety of other Lutheran groups. As a result, much of the predecessor body, the "Lutheran Free Church," was absorbed into the "American Lutheran Church" with limited opportunity of opting out of the merged church body. That new church body did not continue the traditional stance on the authority of Scripture previously present in the LFC. That ALC subsequently was absorbed into the "Evangelical Lutheran Church of America" which has embraced an even more limited view on the authority of the Scriptures. Many rural congregations have suffered in these series of mergers, because the successor church bodies have been more concerned with augmenting and nurturing large, urban churches. They have felt that rural congregations are marginal because they are generally smaller congregations with limited financial resources.

     Pastor Paul Nash was busy at events.  Pastor Dave and Pastor Paul shared a room during the Annual Conference.  "Greet my friends at Zion," were Pastor Paul's words as he ran off to another Home Missions mini-meeting.  Here at one such event, Pastor Nash (right) recognized folks working with "Builders Fellowship" which provides assistance to churches seeking to build or modify their facilities.

     Only 40 churches were able to disentangle themselves from that early merger in the 1960s, becoming the seed for today's AFLC. The result was the AFLC organization in the 1960s. The AFLC is the fourth largest national church body of Lutherans. Its member churches are urban, suburban, and rural. AFLC churches tend to be small, but several AFLC churches have worshipping fellowships of a thousand or more.

     Pastor Dave greeted congregational friend, Dr. John Eidsmoe.  This fellow Alabamian has a special affection for Silverhill's Zion.

     The AFLC remains orthodox, fully subscribing to the Scriptures. Today's society has attempted to remake the church in its own image, not the image of God. By some, the AFLC appears to be an anachronism because it subscribes fully to the Bible. The AFLC is a church body that recognizes the Bible as infallible ("the whole Bible is the Word of God") and inerrant ("there are no mistakes in the Bible or in its transcription by the 'amanuensis,' God's agent for writing down His Word").

     Unlike the synodical churches which include the largest Lutheran denomination, the ELCA, and the second largest, the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, the AFLC is totally congregational in its organization as an association of churches. This means there is no bishop or head of the AFLC as in the synodical Lutheran bodies. Instead, the AFLC is fully congregational in its church autonomy. It subscribes to the historical Christian and Lutheran Confessions and to a series of democratic principles and documents describing the relationships between member churches, the primary one being the "Fundamental Principles for Work." The AFLC Annual Conference elects a "president," but his office is limited; for other Lutherans, he might be seen as a kind of "bishop" for the Association.

     Pastor Dave reported that there were many resolutions passed at the Annual Conference, many including resolutions for prayer on specific needs and projects. Many nominations for other bodies within the loose AFLC structure were accomplished. A variety of other issues were discussed and positions taken. The Conference endorsed a formal position on women in ministry, for example, reserving the pastorate for male believers based on the "Order of Creation." This position relates to the leading of worship and teaching and is based on a careful study of the semantics underlying the original Greek text of the New Testament Scriptures. This position does not negate or undermine the role of every believer as a Christian priest in his or her own right as a believing Christian, as the Bible says. This is sometimes called the "Priesthood of All Believers" and is a position derived from Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and 1 Peter 2. All AFLC Lutherans are called on to use their gifts for the edification of the church, regardless of gender. The Conference commissioned missionaries to Uganda and Ukraine, on invitation from national churches. Numbers of affiliated corporation and organization reports were received by the Annual Conference. A summary of business is reported in the "Conference Report to the Forty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations" which is archived at Zion Lutheran Church and available for perusal by the curious.

     Zion Lutheran Church, Alabama's only AFLC Lutheran church, is located a block south of State Highway 104 at 15875 4th Avenue and 7th Street in beautiful Silverhill. It withdrew from the ELCA in the mid-1990s and affiliated with the AFLC. Historically Zion was part of the Swedish Lutheran Augustana Synod, a synod friendly to Lutheran pietism, a position less and less palatable to successive church mergers. It was fortunate in discovering that the AFLC is not unfriendly to Lutheran pietism, having former elements of the Hauges and other pietistic Lutheran churches in its association.