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DEFROCKED
Abstract: What does it mean to be defrocked? Here's what the ELCA thinks.
Letter from Bishop to (former) Pastor: Please bear in mind that, from the perspective of this church, you are now to function as a layperson in a congregation. While you are not on this church's roster of ordained ministers, your ordained status is in suspension.
As someone who is not on the roster of ordained ministers of this church, you must no longer perform any duties or acts associated with ordained ministry. You are not to use the title 'Pastor' or 'the Reverend'.
Neither are you to baptize, preside for Holy Communion, perform marriages, or wear vestments normally associated with an ordained minister such as a stole or clerical collar,.
If under some circumstances, you were asked to fill-in due to the absence of a pastor, you could do so not as a supply pastor, but as a layperson serving without clerical vestments in leading a Service of the Word."
