11 Reasons I'm Proud to Pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Since my "brand" of Christian is a tiny minority in this part of God's world, I get asked a lot of questions about our denomination. Most commonly either How are you different from the other Lutheran groups we know?  -or- Is that like Mormon or something?

I've been trying to create a short list of what's best about us, what makes us truly unique. Here's a first attempt:

11. Although we are "protestant" and in fact in a sense descended from the true founders of Protestantism (well, actually that honor goes to Jan Hus and the Moravians, but that's a whole other and more complicated story), we are Protestants of the Evangelical Catholic variety. We emphasize how to keep proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ clearly while maintaining as much of catholic substance and practice as possible. We're Protestant Catholics.

10. We have the best national youth gathering of any denomination, hands-down. 35,000 youth gathering in the abandoned places of empire (last two times around in New Orleans, this next time in Detroit). www.elca.org/gathering. You really have to see it to believe it.

9. Lutheran theology more faithfully proclaims the freedom we have in Christ than any other theological tradition of which I'm aware. When the gospel says you are free, you are free indeed. Love God and do what you will (Augustine).

8. We are widely and deeply ecumenical. I think we may be in full communion agreements with more denominations than any other denomination, including Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Moravians, United Church of Christ, and the Reformed church. Plus many more ongoing bilateral conversations.

7. We are a member of the Lutheran World Federation, which connects us to Lutherans in as far flung places as Iceland, Australia, El Salvador, Madagascar, India, Tanzania, and beyond.

6. We write social statements. Lots of them. Because we believe taking a public stand on matters of social justice is simply what Christian communities are called to do.

5. Conformity is not required in our denomination. Your average ELCA congregation may split about 50/50 Republican and Democrat, for example. We find ways to be different, together.

4. I've eaten lutefisk and heard a Lutheran mariachi band at church potlucks. The most important word in that last sentence is "potlucks," but the most intriguing words in that sentence are "lutefisk" and "mariachi."

3. Lutherans have the largest charitable organization in North America, Lutheran Services in America. Whether it is Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Lutheran World Relief, ELCA Disaster Response, Lutheran hospitals, and beyond, Lutherans have a deep and abiding commitment to service to the neighbor in need.

2. Lutherans do liturgy. Our approach to liturgy, however, is very "open concept." So liturgy is (often) accompanied by piano or organ, but it is also rock liturgy, frontier liturgy, or beyond. But Lutherans do liturgy, and it is a beautiful mark of who we are.

1. And we are committed to liturgy because it is worship context for the sacraments, the way and the place through which we meet and encounter Christ, who is hands down the best reason to be a part of the ELCA. Lutherans know Christ is the main thing.

Every denomination has a unique personality, a way of being in the world that contributes to the wider ecumene and Christian witness in the world. These are hallmarks of our personality. There are others. You're welcome to list them.

Mission, Communication, Worldview

Missional outreach in a pluralistic, post-modern, urban context is best accomplished by understanding and communicating through the hearer's worldview. This requires:

• Measuring communications by what people hear, not by what we say;
• Meeting people where they are, not where we are;
• Recognizing worldview differences are not limited to race and ethnicity but include generational differences and social orientations;
• Recognizing there is no 'right' worldview, just different ways of seeing the world;
• Supporting, leveraging and connecting with hearers' relational networks, thereby enabling ministry to have the widest possible impact;
• An emphasis upon incarnational and relational approaches to ministry.

Bonus points to whomever correctly guesses the source of this quote.

The beauty of being in East Fayetteville, Arkansas

A high for today: I re-discovered (for the umpteenth time) the beauty of East Fayetteville. I've walked all over this neighborhood, but there are still numerous beautiful homes and wonderfully appointed yards I haven't seen. I'm especially taken with the tall ornamental grasses some folks have growing.

Printed out a Google map and then covered it with my chicken scratches in order to create a strategy for wending my way through some more out-of-the-way neighborhoods in the environs around our church.

Why? Well, today I set it as my goal to hand delivered half of our fall stewardship packets to the members of my Shepherd Group. We organize our congregation into Shepherd Groups, based loosely on geography. Since I live very close to the church (about eight minutes walk on foot down Raven Trail), most of these dozen deliveries were within about a two mile radius of the church. Because we were encouraging our Shepherd Group leaders to hand deliver the materials, I wanted to take personal responsibility for delivering the packets to my own group.

Since I was delivering in the afternoon, I missed most people, and left the packets on their doorstep. I'll follow up with a phone call or Facebook message. Please know that when I stopped at your house, I prayed for you, and waved in a friendly manner at your neighbors.

To my peeps: If you are delivering these materials like I am, you have already discovered the difficulty  of doing what many delivery people do daily--finding your way around the surface of the planet. I so often sit in familiar space, or navigate digital or conceptual space, that whenever I have to find my way around geographical or cartographic space, I'm challenged. It takes a bit for me to get my bearings.

Then, in addition, to plan a series of stops on a map adds another level of complexity. Where should I go first? Are there obvious trajectories to head out on? How do I visit seven different houses without backtracking unnecessarily? How long will this take?

I decided to do the deliveries by quadrants. This afternoon I delivered seven envelopes in the northern portion of our neighborhood. Tonight I'll walk my own immediate neighborhood to deliver four envelopes to households who are our immediate (literally) neighbors. Then tomorrow I'll deliver two more packets to some houses that, although geographically only about half a mile from my house, are actually a five mile drive, because I have to around and over a creek and through some foothills to get back into their neighborhood, which abuts ours.

I like knowing my neighbors. It helps to know where they live. Blessings to all those who visit homes, and care about the beauty of where we are, and pay attention.

Low for the day: It's not as easy as we thought to recover the lost data of our church database as we make the switch to a more dynamic database where individual members manage their own information. We're excited about the switch, but it is a bit slow. Thanks to everyone who has promptly gotten on-line and figured it out.


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Oikonomia

Not only do the two alleged meanings of the term oikonomia--that which refers to the internal organization of the divine life, and that which concerns the history of salvation--not contradict themselves, but they are correlated and become fully intelligible only in their functional relation.

That is to say, they constitute the two sides of a single divine oikonomia, in which ontology and pragmatics, Trinitarian articulation and government of the world refer back to each other for the solution of their aporias.

         - Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory, 51

    Stanford University Press, http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=16145