Thankfulness in all things Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18) Martin Rinkhart was a Lutheran pastor in Germany in the early 1600s. The Thirty Years’ War was raging throughout his ministry at Eilenberg, a tragic fallout from the Reformation we just […]

Caribbean Disaster Relief I write to you this month from the ELCA Conference of Bishops, where we have been eagerly awaiting word from our colleague Bishop Felipe Lozada of the ELCA’s Caribbean Synod, which includes the devastated U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) and Puerto Rico. The destruction was so very great from the two Category 5 […]

Together? I was privileged during the summer between high school and college to attend 23 days of Outward Bound in the Colorado Rockies. I was told that we would be climbing 14,000-foot peaks with very thin air, carrying heavy packs, and surviving on minimal food. Though I was a serious high school athlete in very […]

A pastoral message from Bishop Tim Smith When Wendy and I lived in Berlin on our seminary internship in 1984 and 1985, horror stories of the Nazi Regime of the ‘30s and ‘40s in Germany regularly shocked us. There was the spouse of a retired pastor whose reach across the dinner table to pass us […]

All she had… Jesus sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this […]

Partners congregational visits Synod Council members at our December 2015 meeting lamented that Mission Support receipts were nearly $178,000, or about 10%, behind budgeted expenses. The Council directed the NC Synod staff to develop a program whereby representatives would be trained to go to all of our congregations to lift up the many vital ministries […]

Holy Week My father-in-law always intrigued me with the stack of novels he brought to the beach for family vacations. Even more interesting was his habit of reading the last chapter first, wanting to know how the story ended, 

A Culture of Call As I write from the ELCA Conference of Bishops in Chicago this first week in March, there are many blessings to celebrate, yet many obvious and pressing challenges facing this church.

Prophetic voices If your measuring stick is the number of phone calls to the bishop’s office in the NC Synod to register complaints about their pastor, the first week in February is the winner thus far in my 18-month tenure. The reason?