WordAlone is a Lutheran grassroots network of congregations and individuals within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States. According to its website, WordAlone advocates reform and renewal of the church, representative governance, theological integrity, and freedom from a mandated historic episcopate. The group is generally considered theologically and socially conservative. As of 2005, approximately 215 congregations have officially joined the organization. Reform efforts Among other campaigns, WordAlone seeks to pare back what it sees as a top-heavy administrative structure in the ELCA, returning much authority to congregations and freeing up funds for more aggressive mission work. This is in general keeping with conservative renewal movements in other mainline denominations, reflecting an anti-bureaucratic posture against what it believes to be the source of errant teaching and ethics. More recently, WordAlone has turned its attention to the issue of sexuality in the church. The ELCA has officially welcomed homosexuals within its congregations since 1991, but it has struggled in recent years over whether non-celibate homosexuals in stable relationships should be ordained as ministers and whether ministers should be permitted to bless same-sex partnerships. Groups such as Lutherans Concerned/North America are presently advocating for such ordinations and blessings. Groups such as WordAlone advocate a traditional understanding of marriage, sexuality and sexual orientation. Perhaps more controversially, WordAlone also started a body called Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) which is now legally and organizationally separate from WordAlone though there is some cooperation between the two. LCMC provides organizational resources for congregations that are dissatisfied with the ELCA leadership. Churches that join may either remain members of the ELCA or other Lutheran denominations or may sever such ties and claim the LCMC as their only denominational affiliation. The LCMC describes itself as a "centrist" Lutheran organization and permits the ordination of women. This sets the LCMC apart the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the two major confessionalist Lutheran bodies in the U.S. In keeping with its emphasis on congregational authority, the LCMC rarely makes statements on social or theological issues, although it has issued an "admonition" that sexual activity take place "only within the boundaries of marriage between one man and one woman." The Institute of Lutheran Theology was also started by the WordAlone Network. History The group began as an electronic-mail discussion group in 1996. Its members coalesced in opposition to