ELCA Department for Communication, News & Information
8765 West Higgins Rd, Chicago, IL 60631 800/638-3522 ext. 2963
HEADLINES FOR ELCA NEWS RELEASE ISSUE #30, December 6, 1995
-- "SIGNS OF HOPE" IN THE ELCA
-- WOMEN PARTICIPATE IN MINISTRY
-- CONTINUING REFORMATION: HOPE, CHALLENGE
December 6, 1995
"SIGNS OF HOPE" IN THE ELCA
95-30-092-FI
The program was broadcast from the Lutheran Center's chapel
here to about 100 "downlink" sites in churches, schools and
offices. At least nine cable companies carried it live, and an
estimated 500 home satellite dishes were tuned in. The total
audience was projected to be 100,000.
Wyvetta Bullock and John Bachman hosted the broadcast,
as they do the ELCA's quarterly video news magazine,
"Mosaic." Bullock is executive director of the ELCA's Division
for Congregational Ministries. Bachman is a news anchor for
WHO-TV in Des Moines, Iowa.
For much of the program Anderson asked callers to
relate "signs of hope" they see for the church. ELCA Vice
President Kathy Magnus, Denver, joined the bishop to answer
general questions during the program's final hour.
The videoconference was interspersed with "clips" of
Lutheran ministries around the world -- turning abandoned lots
in Baltimore into urban gardens, bringing spiritual and physical
relief to hurricane victims, baptizing hundreds in Tanzania,
forming communities in Milwaukee#s inner city, ELCA colleges
educating Namibians to be the intellectual base of their young
country and scanning confirmation classes for 21st century
pastors.
A few of the callers were personally involved with those
ministries. Others expressed interest in issues from advocacy
efforts in state capitals to the books that Anderson has found
most influential.
Lutherans spoke of the difficulties and opportunities of
small congregations in urban and rural settings and the ELCA's
work to equip leaders to help those congregations meet new
challenges. They talked with the bishop about starting new
congregations, involving youth in young congregations and the
Church Growth Movement.
"Stick together" was the advise Anderson gave one
young caller who wanted to know how teen-agers can avoid all
the stress and temptations America offers. The bishop said
getting together with other teen-agers in youth groups and the
Lutheran Youth Organization can help. He also discussed
hopes for the ELCA's 1997 National Youth Gathering in New
Orleans. Another caller praised the love for Jesus that young
Lutherans express.
A member of the ELCA's South Dakota Synod regarded 25
years of ordaining women a "sign of hope" for the church. He
drew attention to that synod's new bishop, the Rev. Andrea F.
DeGroot-Nesdahl, who is the second woman bishop in the ELCA
and the sixth in the world.
Callers spoke of Anderson's interests in church art and
history. They weighed the importance of congregations
recording their own histories. They also considered the roles
of sacraments and liturgy in renewing the church.
While discussing the basic need of congregations to
learn Bible stories, Anderson noted the Christian education
materials published by Augsburg Fortress, publishing house of
the ELCA, Minneapolis. He said Presbyterian and Episcopal
congregations are using these materials too.
One call from Pine Lake Lutheran Camp near Waupaca,
Wis., reminded viewers that the ELCA's camps and retreat
centers are "signs of hope." Another call from Shalom Hill Farm
in Southwestern Minnesota detailed ways Luther Seminary, St.
Paul, Minn., uses the camp in training leaders for rural ministry.
Anderson talked with viewers about scholarships and
grants to attend ELCA colleges, universities and seminaries,
developing new programs in ELCA schools, recognizing
Lutheran faculty on non-Lutheran campuses and using
telecommunications to educate people away from campuses.
They also considered other ways to use communication
technologies to advance the gospel.
Conversations included topics from around the world --
volunteers teaching in Lutheran seminaries in Ethiopia,
assisting churches formerly behind the Iron Curtain and
military chaplains, especially those on their way to service in
the former Yugoslavia.
Some callers talked about close relations Lutherans feel
with other Christians in their communities and asked about the
ELCA's plans to vote in 1997 on proposals to enter into closer
formal relations with the Episcopal Church and the Roman
Catholic Church.
Anderson was asked to explain something he said
shortly after his election about the "spiritual junk food"
Americans are consuming. He said some have the impression
that religion offers "success," "a good feeling" or "easy
answers" to complex questions. Lutherans understand that
"God's love requires something of us," he said.
Another caller asked the bishop what surprises he
encountered during his first month on the job. Anderson said
he now has a better sense of the vast number of Lutherans
faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ. He's surprised how many
of them know how to use electronic mail.
During the videoconference phone calls, faxes and e-mail
messages arrived from Alaska, California, Georgia, Illinois,
Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, (St. Thomas) U.S.
Virgin Islands, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and Canada.
Lutheran Brotherhood, a fraternal benefits society based
in Minneapolis, provided funding for the videoconference.
##########
December 6, 1995WOMEN PARTICIPATE IN MINISTRY
95-30-093-FI
CHICAGO (ELCA) -- "We walk together with the whole church to
realize the full participation of women in its life," Joanne Chadwick,
executive director of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America"
Commission for Women, told an audience of 70 women. The group came
here from across the United States for a Dec. 1-3 conference #to build a
network of leaders."
The conference, "Walk in Newness of Life," instructed the
participants on the work of the commission and how it relates to other
parts of the ELCA. "It took eight years to grow into maturity -- to put into
words what we do," said Chadwick, referring to the start of the
commission with the ELCA's formation in 1988.
Many of the participants expressed a more personal maturity --
that the conference helped them put their own work into words of
"ministry."
When the Rev. Diane Jackson, Holy Cross Lutheran Church,
Herndon, Va., defines "women in ministry," she remembers "those
women, after pot luck dinners and when we would be cleaning or
decorating the church, who would allow me to help as a child and
always had time to answer my questions and gave me the dignity of
knowing that none of my questions were considered stupid."
Organized religion is "mainly a male-dominated area," said
Khamphanh Bouakongxaya, Christ Lutheran Church, Milwaukee. "We're
not trying to dominate. I heard women talking this whole weekend about
partnership."
"Women have gifts that should be tapped, just as men have gifts
that should be tapped," said Wendy J. McCredie, Immanuel Lutheran
Church, Seguin, Texas. "Traditionally women have been the nurturers or
have been expected to be the nurturers in our church, and men have
been expected to the bread-winners and to be out there in the nasty,
cold, hard world. But I think that a lot of that is changing and hopefully
the church can change with it, not in its ultimate mission but in the way it
carries it out in the world."
That traditional role as "care giver" has given women a distinctive
role in the church, said the Rev. Raquel Rodriguez, a Lutheran pastor
and program coordinator for Latin America, Christian Church (Disciples
of Christ) Indianapolis. "That is reflected in much of our work in ministry,
not only in terms of preaching but in how we interpret the gospel, the
parables, and how we can connect with daily life activities."
Lutherans began ordaining women in the United States in 1970,
but "women have always been in ministry," said Beverly Conway, who
will be ordained Dec. 17 at Bethel Lutheran Church, (Englewood)
Chicago. "Women have always been the ones to minister to their
families, their friends, in the churches. Women are ministers."
Lillian Johnson, St. Paul Lutheran Church, East Windsor, N.J.,
noted that about half of the conference participants were laywomen. "I
work in corporate America and that means taking the spirituality back to
the workplace and being able to share spirit and love and helping to make
right decisions with my co-workers," she said.
"Women in ministry ... means using the talents of half of our
membership in the ELCA," said Kathryn Swanson, director for women's
programs, California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Calif. "It
means creativity and new ways of doing things sometimes ... a strong
sense of sisterhood that I cherish for our beloved Lutheran
church." D#sire# Quintana, Apostles Lutheran Church, Brandon,
Fla., is a senior at Harvard University and attends University Lutheran
Church, Cambridge, Mass. "Women have had the opportunity to work in
different ways in the past because of some of the walls that were up,
but now we are moving into the more traditional areas of ministry, and I
think it#s more an extension than a new thing."
"A company of women ... a company of saints" is doing God's
work, said the Rev. Wilma S. Kucharek, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church,
Torrington, Conn. -- "women responding to the gospel and ministering to
make the world a safer and just place for all people -- women connected
to those faithful women of the past and working to bring the gospel to
those struggling in the present."
A panel of women presented theologies -- studies of God -- that
acknowledge the Christian ministries of women and non-European
cultures. Speakers related ways God is revealed through women of
African, Asian, European, Latin American and Native American ancestry
and women with disabilities.
Work groups addressed racism and sexism, networking and
organizing, inclusive language, and making the home, community and
world safe. Participants also discussed ways of sharing what they had
learned once they returned to their homes.
Chadwick and the commission's other three executive staff
members presented materials and told stories of the commission's
influence.
The Rev. Jan Erickson-Pearson spoke of her work as project
director of the ELCA's Strategy for Responding to Sexual Abuse in the
Church.
Jean Martensen, director for education, talked about recalling the
lives of Lutheran women in church history, including an account of
recent gatherings in Beijing.
Charlotte Williams, director for cross-cultural advocacy,
discussed mentoring, a "name exchange" and other ways to encourage
full participation for women of all cultures in the Lutheran church.
Each of the ELCA's 65 synods were invited to send a
representative to the conference. Some synods sent more than one
participant. Four synods were not represented: Caribbean, Northeastern
Iowa, Northeastern Ohio and Northwestern Ohio Synods.
##########
December 6, 1995
CONTINUING REFORMATION: HOPE, CHALLENGE
95-30-094-CL
PHILADELPHIA (ELCA) -- There is a connectedness of
concerns that should not be allowed to degenerate into a
competitiveness of concerns, said the Rev. Barbara K. Lundblad, Our
Saviour Atonement Lutheran Church, New York. "A destructive
divisiveness can occur when people refuse to see the connections,"
she said. Lundblad spoke during a "visioning" session at the "Continuing
Reformation: Hope and Challenge" conference here in November.
About 175 people took part, mostly from the Northeast and
Mid-Atlantic states from Maine to Virginia. Planned by a group of
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America members, the conference came
a year after the Reforming Church: Gift and Task conference held in
Minneapolis.
The events shared many of the same presenters, but the
Minneapolis conference focused more on issues regarding human
sexuality, while the Philadelphia conference had a broader
focus. The connection of concerns can be overwhelming, said Dr. Larry
Rasmussen, Union Theological Seminary, New York, joining Lundblad in
the summing-up visioning session. "We need to address a little piece,"
but "we feel we need to address the whole, because we see the
interconnectedness of concerns," he said.
We need zones of experimentation, Lundblad said. We need to
be pioneering communities, Rasmussen added. Churches need to be
true sanctuaries where everyone is safe, he said. "We do not have to
agree with everyone just agree that it is a safe place."
Dr. Darrell Jodock, professor at Muhlenberg College, Allentown,
Pa., and Dr. Diane Jacobson, professor at Luther Seminary, St. Paul,
Minn., conducted a dialogue on the authority of the Bible. Jodock spoke
of the "unauthority of the Bible," saying that the Bible "invites us to see
for ourselves the truth toward which it is pointing."
Jacobson said "unauthority makes me nervous," but added that
the "Bible can have no meaningful authority if not known well and
intimately over a long period of time."
"Authority is found not so much in telling us what to do but in
switching our paradigms as to how the world works," she said.
The Rev. Karen Bloomquist, director for studies in the ELCA#s
Division for Church in Society spoke on "Security, Livelihood and Hope in
a Market Society."
People feel betrayed by economic changes that eliminate jobs and
decrease benefits, but instead of discovering commonality with others
who suffer economic deprivation many tend to lash out at others. They
find scapegoats in foreign workers, immigrants, women or people of
color, she said.
"Self-sufficiency gets raised up as ideal no matter that it clashes
with theological norms that we are dependent on God and
interdependent on one another," Bloomquist said. "The family too can get
caught up as a site of
consumption," and "relationships end up being replaced by commodities."
The Rev. Herbert Anderson, an ELCA pastor on the faculty of
Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, said the future of family and future
of society are the same agenda. "A society that rewards selfishness
should not be surprised that it faces a crisis in families," he said.
Diversity of family forms is more a part of the solution than a
problem for families, he said. "We need to be strengthening family in
diversity rather than eliminating diversity."
He said the church needs to rethink its understanding of marriage
to make it possible to bless same sex unions well as heterosexual ones.
"All human beings need to love and be loved."
Elizabeth Bettenhausen, director of studies, Women's Theological
Center, Boston, spoke about the connectedness of body. Over the past
year she has had three brain aneurysms, cranial surgeries and other
health problems, followed by brain seizures just weeks before the
conference. She spoke in a reflective, poetic way of the body and spirit.
And, through it all God runs, she said.
The conference included numerous workshops on such issues
as spirituality, church growth, pluralism, the urban church and AIDS.
Mari Irvin, president of St. Francis Lutheran Church, San
Francisco, led a workshop on her congregation's decision to call two
gay pastors. The action brought discipline action leading to its expulsion
from the ELCA the beginning of next year.
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