How many of you think this updating will stop mainline decline?

Me neither.

Another mainstream Protestant Church working hard to push out all its members who believe in the Christian moral Tradition and the Bible.  The gainers will be the Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical churches which will be enriched by having new members whose faith is alive, strong and willing to stand up against the moral evils infiltrating even those churches. Sadly, it leaves the mainstream Protestant churches even more susceptible to becoming nothing but the secular culture’s corrupt servant.

Bishops in the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination have approved preliminary steps to welcome a group of openly gay and lesbian ministers as official clergy with new liturgical rites.

“The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Conference of Bishops approved a draft proposal on Monday (March 8) for the new rites, which include prayers and the laying on of hands by the local bishop, according to the denomination’s news service.

The proposal only applies to 17 pastors who had followed normal ELCA procedures for education and ordination, but remained barred from the denomination’s official clergy roster because of their sexuality. The clergy are all members of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, a group devoted to gay rights in the ELCA.”

This violates so many of the ELCA’s own policies, in addition to the violation of adhearance to the teaching of Scripture and Apostolic Tradition.  The “new liturgical rites” are designed to look like an ordination, without actually being an ordination, so that the ecumenical agreements (with both TEC and within the Lutheran World Federation) can be met, at least on the surface.  In other words, the ELCA will pay lipservice to how it has set policy in regards to the rite of ordination to the Holy Office of Word and Sacrament. 
  And there are guaranteed to be more “joys” yet to come!

They’ve been the secular culture’s corrupt servant ever since Henry VIII put aside Katharine of Aragon, and that accelerated at the ‘Enlightenment’ and became more blatant after the 1960s… after which they lost their clout in society.

(Difference between this and the post-Constantinian and mediæval church: churchmen were sometimes very corrupt but the church didn’t bend its principles.)