At the weekend of November, 25 and 26, the Direction of the Encontrão Movement congregated in the Center of Pastoral and Mission (CPM) in Curitiba-PR released an Open Letter in support to the Congregation of Lajeado (below).

The “Disciplinary and Administrative Process” dragged over two years and culminated with the conviction of the President of the Congregation of Lajeado, Mr. Charles Jorge Schwingel, and the president of the Parish of Lajeado, Mr. Egon Schwingel. Both are volunteers who over many years have dedicated themselves to the edification of the church at local and regional level. They had lost the “position and the function for which they had been elected” and “the mandate and the right to the exercise of the function for four years”. Beyond them the ministerial coordinator was condemned to leave the parish. Pastor Rudi Tünnermann in the last decade has been contributing with exemplary communitarian work for the growth of the Lutheran Congregation of Lajeado.

The Encontrão Movement denounces and opposes the institutional authoritarianism and the absolute unpreparedness and evident lack of exemption of the synodal and national Legal-Doctrinaire Commissions, running over “due process of law”. Its arbitrariness intends to obstruct the autonomy of the congregations guaranteed by the Constitution of the Church. The only reason of this conviction was the fact that these brothers justified their absence in a meeting of “fraternal discipline” for not having received the dossier with accusations (against them), a right that the Brazilian Constitution guarantees to them.

Read below open letter and annexes with information about the process:

Open letter of the Direction of the Encontrão Movement in support to the Congregation of Lajeado

For I tell you that unless your righteousness
surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers
of the law, you will certainly not
enter the kingdom of heaven.
Mt 5.20

Beloved brothers and sisters in the cause of the Kingdom

The direction of the Encontrão Movement followed actively all course of the process moved by a group of the Congregation of Lajeado against the ample majority of the members and against the democratic rules established by normative documents of the IECLB, attempting against clearly against the autonomy of the Congregation.

The president of the Synod of the Taquari Valley received a representation of this group of members that was not able to impose itself in the Assembly of the Congregation. The transaction of the process occurred with many imperfections and culminated in the unprecedent conviction of the coordinator, the workers, the presidents of the congregation and the parish for a supposed disobedience to the authority of the synodal pastor of the related Synod.

The president of the legal commission of the IECLB did not recognize the effort carried through for the presidency of the IECLB, disrespecting the conciliatory process lead next to the community the order of the Synod. The result of the process came to harm the good course of the work of the congregation and ministers.

Ahead of the resultant spiritual and communitarian damage, the Direction of the Encontrão Movement hugs the brothers and sisters of the Congregation of Lajeado together with their ministers, victims of an injustice, expressing it to them the deepest solidarity with the exemplary ministerial work carried through in this community. This love and brotherhood enclose the solidary support to the decisions that the congregation come to take through its sovereign instance - the Assembly of the Congregation.

Searching always, the obedience to the Gospel of the Kingdom, that direct the Church for a justice that exceed the formality of the laws established by human institutions in all time, express to the congregation and to the ministers of the Congregation of Lajeado, our brotherhood. “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.” (2Tm 1.7)

Curitiba, November, 26th, 2006.

National direction of the Encontrão Movement