At least 200 area Lutherans and many of their pastors convened at First Lutheran Church in this community Sunday afternoon to discuss the background and potential response to last year’s controversial Evangelical Lutheran Church in America vote, which permits sexually active pastors in committed homosexual relationships to serve as clergy.

People in attendance were from multiple Lutheran churches, and they listened as the Rev. Mark Chavez, director of the Lutheran Coalition for Renewal, explained the history behind the controversy and what his organization is doing to help groups that are choosing to leave the ELCA because of that decision or others.

He was also expected to speak in Rochester later that evening.

Chavez said though the recent controversy with the ELCA has been focused on this specific issue, it actually stems from something larger. He described what was at the root of the problem as an “underlying crisis of the authority of God’s word.”

This crisis goes back at least to the 1980s, he said, as evidenced from previous assembly votes dealing with other issues. The sexuality concern was only one concern.

Chavez said the formation of the ELCA accelerated but did not create the oncoming crisis. The crisis actually faces every single Christian church, he said.

Because of these concerns, Lutheran CORE — a coalition of worshipers, churches and reform groups whose goal is to work for the renewal of Lutheran churches — has announced they intend to form a free-standing synod, separate of the ELCA structure, to work toward a possible reconfiguration of North American Lutheranism, he said.

This will give people leaving the ELCA a denomination to join.

He noted he thinks it will take many years to work through the crisis.

“It looks like God is shaking up all the churches in North America,” Chavez said.

And many churches are caught somewhere in between, he said.

The ELCA formed in 1988 through a merger of three Lutheran branches — Lutheran Church in America, American Lutheran Church and Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America comprises 4.8 million members and nearly 10,500 congregations across the United States and the Caribbean, according to its Web site. It is the fourth-largest protestant denomination in the United States and the largest Lutheran denomination.

The Rev. Daniel Baker of First Lutheran Church in Albert Lea said the Sunday gathering hopefully gave area Lutherans a way to learn more about the issues and to find out what options are possible, what others are doing and how they can all work together for the same goals.

Baker said his Lutheran church is struggling, with people on both sides of the fence.

He said pastors talk about the issue weekly, and his congregation passed a value statement defining marriage as between a man and a woman. They have not taken any further action to separate themselves from the ELCA.

One church that has, however, is Zion Lutheran Church in Clear Lake, Iowa, which in December voted to leave its denominational ties to the ELCA.

The Rev. Dean Hess of that church explained the process his church took. He said his congregation didn’t want to be associated with the values passed by the ELCA and that is why they held a vote.

In the end, the church got the required two-thirds majority vote needed to pass the resolution, based on the number of people present during the vote.

He encouraged other churches who may be considering similar action to be sure to follow their churches’ constitutional guidelines carefully and to have a core group in the congregation that is unified around the goals of the church.

“You need to follow what you think is faithful to God’s will or call to us,” Hess said.

He noted his church would love to come alongside congregations struggling with this issue.

Two other speakers with the Wittenberg Institute in Everett, Wash., an independent Lutheran graduate school, talked of how their institution could offer trained pastors for churches that are leaving the ELCA.

There are also other Lutheran resource centers that can provide assistance for churches departing the ELCA.

The meeting was put on under the efforts of the local chapter of the WordAlone Network, a grassroots Lutheran network of people and congregations committed to the word of God and the traditional teachings of the Lutheran Church, according to its Web site.

The network is concerned that the ELCA is turning to authorities other than the authority of God’s word in the scriptures.