ELCA and the Ministry of Connectedness
I was standing in line at the Phelps County Fair waiting to get some BBQ sandwiches. When one couple standing nearby learned that I was the pastor of the new ELCA Lutheran church in Holdrege, NE, they had a few things to say to me. You see, they had been connected to the ELCA at [...]
Passion and Mission
This article was written for the March 2010 issue of The Messenger, the newsletter of St. John Lutheran Church, Sterling, IL. In the last month, I’ve been thinking a lot about passion. What is that we are truly passionate about? What motivates us? What gives us zeal for life and a willingness to serve? The [...]
2 min Intro to the Missional Church
I liked this video a lot – the missional church movement can be very buzzword-y, but this is dead simple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arxfLK_sd68&feature=player_embedded (via JR Woodward)
Service Project: Back Seat Bags
You’re driving along, and you stop at a stop sign or traffic signal near a major highway. You see a man, dressed shabbily, standing by the side of the road with a cardboard sign. Maybe it says he’s a veteran, maybe he needs food, transportation, or a job. What do you do? Most Christians do [...]
Two natures in Christ, two arms of mission
Food for thought: Just as there are two natures in Christ, the human and the divine, so there are two forms of mission for the Church in the world. We would do well to learn from Jesus, who often used physical, human work (healing, miracles) as a means to share a broader divine reality (salvation [...]
Missional Congregations
A short blurb from an interesting article I stumbled across about the difference between Maintainance and Missional Congregations. The that reminded me most of something I’d seen before was #10: 10. When thinking about growth, the maintenance congregations asks, “How many Lutherans live within a twenty-minute drive of this church?” The mission congregation asks, “How [...]