It was official as of Tuesday evening that I am no longer a member of any church. I am officially a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of No-mans Land. Which is basically to say, I hold to the symbols of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, I just have no congregation to be a member of. As you might expect, this shocked quite a few people. The thing is, I have been planning to leave for quite a while. My family does not understand why I made this move. As I mentioned before, I am extremely confident in this move and why I made it. The Benke situation has a lot to do with it. I wanted to make sure I am at a church that, in 2004, would bail out of the Synod if need be. I do not want to be part of a Synod that allows heterodoxy to mingle with orthodoxy.

Telling my handbell choir I am leaving went very well. They all seemed to understand why I decided to leave and why I went about doing the things I did recently. I like the people I directed, and I still consider them friends. Too bad I had to do this.

I am off to Alaska a week from today. I shall be cruising off the coast of Canada a week from tomorow. There should be internet acess on the ship, so I will blog my experiences in Alaska and Canada. It should make for some interesting reading, and also be a way for my friends (I have those) to keep up with what is going on.