By Pastor John Hulden

The obituary from the small-town newspaper said she was 93 years old. Edna had moved to the small town when she was in her early 20s. Yet until her dying days, the other townfolk would say, “She wasn’t from here.”

Doris moved to the big city from North Dakota in the 1950s when her husband got a job at the Whirlpool factory on the Eastside of Saint Paul. She was active in her little neighborhood church, was the de facto Altar Guild committee-of-one, raised some amazing children, but never could call her Saint Paul neighborhood “home.”

Jim is a lifelong Lutheran who became enamored with the Left Behind books he checked out from his church library. Since he began to believe the rapture was a sure thing, and maybe during his lifetime, Jim couldn’t understand why his pastor kept pushing for protecting the environment and saving the planet if nothing was going to last.

During the ELCA conflict over “CCM” – that was the one before the 2009 conflict – a youth director friend of mine in greater Minnesota was in a conundrum. He liked his pastor a lot and, … his pastor was steering the congregation out of the ELCA. “What should I do?” he asked. My response: “Theology wins.” Whatever you hold deeply will eventually come out in the way you act and make decisions. The youth director stayed put, and the church did not leave the ELCA. The pastor started a new LCMC (Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ) congregation on the other side of the small town.

“If you took ash, or soil from a potted plant, or a burnt candlewick, or oil, or your bare-naked finger, and made the sign of the cross on your forehead, does that mean you are connected to a place?”

Last week, many of us figured out a way to smudge a cross on our forehead.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Our second season of Lent during a pandemic began.

 

FOR A YEAR, WE’VE been stuck in place. Do you have a Theology of Place? (My favorite definition of Theology is “faith seeking understanding.”) How do you understand your place? Your township? Your neighborhood? Your town? Your city?

If you took ash, or soil from a potted plant, or a burnt candlewick, or oil, or your bare-naked finger, and made the sign of the cross on your forehead, does that mean you are connected to a place? To the little spot of earth you’ve occupied these past many months?

“Congregational leaders will try to figure out how to grow deeper in their faith and how to connect more deeply in their community.”

What if Edna would have been seen as a full partner/neighbor in that small town all those years? How might have that town benefitted more from Edna’s gifts?

What about your new neighbors? How can we listen to their story, and partner with them to make our corner of the world a better place for all?

What if Doris adopted her big city neighborhood as her own? How would her life, church, and neighborhood have been different?

What if Jim saw his role as tending God’s garden, instead of our time on earth as a holding place until the rapture takes some away?

 

A FEW YEARS AGO, our synod assembly met under the banner “The Word became flesh, … and moved into the neighborhood.” John 1:14 [The Message]

How do we as individuals and congregations grow deeper in our walk with Jesus?

Our synod was gifted with a Lilly Endowment Thriving Congregations grant that allows us to try an experiment. Fifteen congregations will work and learn together for two years. (And another fifteen the two years after that.) Congregational leaders will try to figure out how to grow deeper in their faith and how to connect more deeply in their community. They also might learn, just maybe, that, since the Word already moved into their neighborhood, sometimes faith practices and neighboring practices are the same thing.

Here are three opportunities to find out more about Thriving Congregations:

Info Session: Thursday, February 25; 6:30-7:30 p.m.
Info Session: Sunday, February 28; 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Tool Kit for Congregations Workshop: Saturday, March 13, 11:00 a.m.-Noon

*Edna, Doris, and Jim are made up stories that are true!