By Bishop Ann Svennungsen How important is it for a pastor to know how to form and lead a healthy community? In addition to teaching pastors how to preach, teach, and provide pastoral care, should seminaries teach students the skills to build community? This was not a part of the curriculum in the 1980s when [...]
By Bishop Ann Svennungsen I have a new resolution: “Each year, take at least one of group of synodical leaders on a week-long mission trip.” Just last Thursday, 16 of our synod’s rostered leaders returned from a ten-day visit to our companion synod in Leipzig, German. It was the week of Germany’s premiere celebration of [...]
By Emilie Bouvier “Think of a time in which you powerfully experienced public space.” This is what I asked a room of faith leaders this week at the Peer Group Lunch and Learn I led this week. We went around and told stories (in two sentences or less!) about everything from rallies to hospital waiting [...]
By Bishop Ann Svennungsen Hymns for $300: “If you cannot preach like Peter, and you cannot pray like Paul.” “What is ‘There is a Balm in Gilead’?” This was not your grandparents’ synod assembly. Instead of multiple resolutions, we had multiple table conversations; instead of perfunctory reports, we heard the ELCA’s Ruben Duran tell how [...]
By Rev. Deb Stehlin If you stop by the synod office this week, you’ll see stacks of boxes, file cabinets, and books shelves all over the place. We’re re-configuring our offices to make room for Jaddie Edwards, our new racial justice organizer. She and Emilie Bouvier, our eco-faith organizer, will take up residence right across [...]
By Bob Hulteen The Metro Transit bus route 2 includes a long section of Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis, so I can pick up the bus just a block from my house and get dropped off less than a block from work. Most days the 2 bus is my mode of transportation to work. And I [...]
By Bishop Ann Svennungsen There are a varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. Just as the body is one and has many members, so it is with Christ. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12) At our office, there is no time when the above [...]
By Rev. Craig Pederson At the change of each season, I relish the opportunity to return to the campus of my alma mater, Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter Minnesota. I have the privilege of serving on the college’s Board of Trustees. Meetings of the board are generally held over the course of two very [...]
By Rev. Deb Stehlin I grew up in a faithful Catholic family. Being Catholic as an Augsburg student was never really an issue until one Sunday when the choir sang at a Lutheran worship service. When it came time for Holy Communion, all my sister sopranos went forward, but I stayed seated, saying under my [...]
By Bishop Ann Svennungsen Thanks to the thoughtfulness of a fellow Concordia College alum, I attended last Saturday’s world premiere of “The Passion of Jesus Christ” by Rene’ Clausen. Commissioned for the 125th anniversary of the college and the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the composition draws the listener into the profound emotion, the moral [...]
