From the Desk of Pastor Marsha
What’s Happening 4.25.24
This is our fourth week of addressing “The 5 Tasks of Interim Ministry”.
Renewing Denominational Ties: Congregations often are not aware of the support and resources they receive from their Diocese and National church. That relationship is normally more visible while the structures of the church beyond the congregation are engaged in working with the congregation in moving through the interim period and seeking to find the right rector to call. The transition time helps raise the awareness of a congregation to its denominational heritage, ministries and resources.
Zion has been working with the synod quite a bit in the last few years, yet I imagine most of us could not list five tools that the synod provides, or even the wider ELCA. For many reasons, congregations over the last 40 years have moved away from seeing themselves as a part of the wider church doing ministry throughout the world.
In the early and mid-part of the 20th century congregations were just being introduced to the wider world. We were just learning about places like Africa and were sending missionaries to share the gospel. We were just learning about the poverty in many 3rd world countries and how the church could live out Christ’s mission over there with support of blankets, medical supplies and food.
Women’s groups, in particular, found their niche in raising funds for missionaries, and making quilts for those in need, sending layettes and more. While they may not be allowed to be leaders in their own congregation, they were allowed to use their leadership, intelligence and gifts to serve those halfway around the world. And they carried it out with great passion and success.
Churches, in general prided themselves at being able to share the gospel not just down the street but in places they would only hear about from missionaries who would come home, travel to various congregations and share how people lived very differently in other parts of the world, and how this church could be a part of it by financial supporting them.
At some point, I’m not exactly sure when, or why, we started to focus more on our own backyard. People still wanted to share the gospel, but they wanted to do it locally, both in dollars and in energy. Perhaps because we could see on the nightly news and, eventually on the internet, what is going on around the world, literally 24/7. We no longer needed missionaries to come and share with us about other cultures. Perhaps because our trust level of the “larger institution’, whether it be a church or the national government, significantly declined starting in the 1960’s. But statistics have shown that financial and other support for worldwide missions has continually decreased since the later part of the 20th century.
Yet, the wider church, in particular the ELCA, Lutheran World Relief, ELCA World Hunger, ELCA Global Mission, Young Adults in Global Mission, International Leaders Program, all of these programs/organizations are doing Christ’s work in the 21st century through the dollars we send to our local Southeastern Iowa Synod, and then on to the ELCA office in Chicago. Not to mention what our local SEI Synod does on behalf of those of us in southeastern Iowa. Which could be a whole other article.
I would encourage you, when you have a few minutes, to check out https://www.elca.org/. Just type in that address and start to explore all the many, many things the wider church does in the name of Jesus, on behalf of us.
And then check out, https://www.seiasynod.org/staff and see all the ways our synod supports local congregations and local ministries in the name of Jesus, on behalf of us.
