Gay Rights Advocate to Be L.A.’s Next Lutheran Bishop : Leadership: The Rev. Paul Egertson, a North Hollywood pastor who teaches at Cal Lutheran University, said he was surprised to be elected.

A North Hollywood pastor anduniversity professor who advocates opening the ministry to gays and lesbians will become the Los Angeles-based bishop next year of a Lutheran denomination that recently rejected such a proposal after bitter controversy.

So, who can blame the Rev. Paul Egertson for describing himself as “surprised” when he was elected bishop of 152 congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

“My identification with a minority position in the midst of the nationwide controversy made me think that a majority of delegates would not vote for (me),” Egertson said.

Egertson, 59, has been well-known to Southern California Lutherans for his continuing education work at Cal Lutheran University, but he also has been a part-time pastor for two years at St. Matthew’s parish in North Hollywood, which has welcomed gay and lesbian congregants since 1985.

“We were shocked--we thought there was no chance of his being elected because our (parish) is known for including gay people,” said Michael Nelson, who chairs St. Matthew’s evangelism committee. “We are sad to lose him because Dr. Egertson has brought us an expansive view of the Gospel, just lately getting us to start a ministry to the deaf.”

Egertson told delegates during last Saturday’s balloting that his oldest son was denied ordination after graduating from a Lutheran seminary because of Evangelical Lutheran Church policies barring non-celibate homosexuals from the ministry.

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At that point Egertson was one of three remaining candidates in the convention to fill a post vacated by Bishop J. Roger Anderson, who became pastor of a church in Arizona. Egertson went on to win the six-year term as bishop on the seventh ballot, 222-201, over the Rev. William Bartlett of Laguna Hills.

In the opinion of Cal Lutheran President Luther Luedtke, Egertson was elected neither because of nor in spite of his position on gays and lesbians.

“He’s a man of extraordinary compassion who has had long experience in ministry as a pastor and in continuing theological education,” Luedtke said.

Egertson holds a doctorate from the School of Theology at Claremont and recently took law courses at Pepperdine University to become certified in “alternative dispute resolution,” so he can assist in arbitration and mediation outside the court system.

He has been pastor of three churches, including Faith Lutheran in South Gate and St. Timothy’s in Lakewood, and from 1979 to 1992 directed Cal Lutheran-based theological extension curricula for ministers and lay people.

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Luedtke said that the Southern California (West) Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America could not be classified as either liberal or conservative.

“What distinguishes this synod is a cultural and social diversity that has moved us far beyond the Northern European stereotype to a cosmopolitan community,” said the former administrator at USC.

Bishop-elect Egertson said in an interview that he recognizes that divisions within the organization are too deep to change church positions on sexuality at present.

That was evident a year ago when angry parish reactions poured into the Chicago headquarters after a draft statement on sexual mores proposed recommending that sexually active teen-agers use condoms, that non-compulsive masturbation is healthy and that the church should re-examine traditional disapproval of committed gay and lesbian couples.

The response led to the preparation of a second, more traditional draft, released last month, which says the Bible teaches that sex between people of the same gender “is not in accordance with God’s will.”

Nevertheless, the draft also called for respect for gay and lesbian people and for their civil rights. While continuing present policies, the church will engage in study and discussion of the issues, the draft said.

“The theological work necessary to undergird a change in our church has yet to be done,” Egertson said. The first draft was written by a task force broadly representative of the church’s membership, but the group did not have enough biblical and theological scholars, he said.

Egertson said that he and his wife, Shirley, were confronted by the issue 15 years ago when the oldest of their six sons, Greg, said that he was gay. “He changed the way we thought about homosexuality.”

The son, now an administrator at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, studied for the ministry at Pacific Lutheran Seminary in Berkeley in the late 1980s despite scant hope that the new Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the product of a three-way church merger in 1988, would suddenly modify its criteria for ordination.

Egertson continues to conduct Sunday services at the 100-member St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in North Hollywood, where a support ministry for people with HIV infection and AIDS was organized last spring. He led a memorial service at the church Wednesday night for one such victim of AIDS.