By Bishop Jen Nagel
What a week!
This was a big week here in the Minneapolis Area Synod.
On Saturday we celebrated the installation of our new Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Yehiel Curry. It was a wonderful service and day with great preaching (Rev. Dr. Kevin Vandiver, the senior pastor of Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Washington, D.C.), spirited music, powerful times of prayers, and a sense of the enormity of the Presiding Bishop’s call and our call as church in this new season. A giant thank you to Central Lutheran’s team for their generous hospitality—so well done! Many from our synod attended, as well as guests from across the church, our ecumenical partners, and church representatives from Lutheran bodies across the globe. What a joy to host this special celebration in our synod. (You can read more about and see pictures from the installation in this Living Lutheran story.)
Bishop Jen and Pastor Leila Ortiz at BTC
Now, I could stop there, but our synod’s annual Bishop’s Theological Conference concluded a week ago today. Many of the synod’s pastors and deacons came together for a time of worship, bible study, learning, and growth, with the theme Baptism in Muddy Waters. Our keynote speaker was Leila Ortiz. Up until a month ago, Leila served as Bishop of the Metro D.C. Synod, but now she is Pastoral Theologian in Residence at Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York City.
Leila grew up between Puerto Rico and New York and leans into the image of an estuary, the area where a river flows into the ocean, where the fresh water and salt water mix, where currents cross, where distinct plants and animals thrive in lagoons and bogs, where muck and mud are stirred in the mixing and mingling. This estuary eco-system is particularly rich with death and new life, always in a process of “becoming.“
A bird’s-eye view of an estuary
Pastor Leila captured our imagination and invited us into the ecclesial estuary. The word ecclesial is a fancy way of saying the church. She’s describing the church as an estuary, the church as a place where all the layers of who we are come together. The water isn’t pristine and clear in this space, but rather it can be a bit muddy, and it is rich, full of growth. In this season of the church and our world, this image of the church as ecclesial estuary landed well. It’s tempting to seek clear waters, to assume that’s the way it’s “supposed” to be, but actually, in an estuary, the stirred-up water is absolutely normal. Indeed, we are baptized in muddy waters. You can see more pictures from our Bishop’s Theological Conference below.
On Saturday, as we installed our first African American Presiding Bishop, the ecclesial estuary was particularly rich and layered. What a beautiful time of worship and an experience of who we are as the body of Christ. Our church has always been richer and more diverse than is sometimes noticed. If you attended the installation or watched online, I invite you to think back to what you experienced and how the mixing and mingling of identities added to the day. That’s the Holy Spirit at work in the ecclesial estuary, creating spaces of new life, renewing the body of Christ, inviting us—each of us—to be part of muddy baptismal waters.
