Staff Blogs

By Meghan Olsen Biebighauser

Here we are! This is the week when we transition from our school year schedules and routines to our summer lives. For families like mine, with two kids in school and daycare and a spouse who teaches high school, this is a big change in routine and structure for all of us. School ends on Friday, Sunday school is over for the summer (but worship continues!), and graduation celebrations abound.

As I write this, my kids are out swimming for the second time this weekend, wet swimsuits hang in both bathrooms of the house, there’s a pile of sandals by the front door, the list of yard work chores gets longer by the day (basically taunting us at this point), and we had to make an emergency run for more sunscreen.

It’s still early in the summer season, but children are already returning to the Powderhorn Park public swimming pool.

Summer in this city is magical and we totally deserve it after the winter we endured. After weather that more or less required us to be inside, cut off from even our closest neighbors, aside from the occasional wave of a mitten-ed hand when you both find yourselves shoveling out your car before dawn, now is the time to re-connect.

The opportunities now are endless: street festivals, cultural celebrations, food trucks, visiting the lakes, cycling everywhere, wading pools, playgrounds — so many opportunities to be out in the neighborhood.

FOR OUR FAMILY, LIVING here in the Powderhorn neighborhood, being out in the community means meeting folks from all over the world who also call this neighborhood home. Last night my spouse and I sat on the edge of the wading pool watching our kids play in the crowded water. There were easily four or five different languages being spoken by the families at the pool. (Our kids were definitely the monolingual minority.)

But as we watched all of our kids play together, you’d never know that language could be a barrier. The kids greeted one another when new families arrived, and moved seamlessly from silly made-up game to silly made-up game.  One minute they were swim racing (I mean, as well as you can in two feet of water), then a handstand competition followed by a biggest splash contest. They did it all.

“As we watched all of our kids play together, you’d never know that language could be a barrier.”

I can only imagine what it felt like to be present at Pentecost, the miraculous day that the church was born and barriers of language were torn down as the Holy Spirit became unleashed in the world. But, in moments like yesterday evening by the pool, it feels like a glimpse of Pentecost. Our sons and daughters and children are prophesying.

I hope you catch plenty of glimpses of the Holy Spirit running wild in the world as you’re out in your neighborhood this summer.

By Bob Hulteen 

Since moving to Minnesota in 1991, it has become my mid-May annual ritual to watch the last moments of the legislative session right up until the gavel is pounded at midnight. (Thank you, TPT, for the long hours of coverage of hearings and debates throughout the session, including its final moments.) While attendance at legislative hearings for me most often is dictated by specific issues being discussed, the last moments of the legislative session includes a curiosity about how the representatives and senators will treat each other in a public space.

Well, last night I watched as Rep. Connie Bernardo (a Lutheran from New Brighton, by the way) carried the higher ed omnibus bill; Rep. Liz Olson from Duluth (and a Luther Seminary graduate) led the debate with Rep. David Baker on a conference committee bill responding to opioid addiction in Minnesota; and Sen. David Senjem (a Rochester Lutheran) called to account unanticipated spending on a bonding bill. Sure, some legislators whined that they hadn’t been included in discussions in ways they would have wanted, and others preferred to blame the victims than look for solutions. But, all in all, they accomplished some important goals, even if it will take another day or two in special session to make sure every “i” is dotted and every “t” crossed.

My examples above aren’t to imply that only Lutherans care about the common good. But it is valuable to be reminded that there are Lutherans who do feel called to the public square.

While listening to the debate in the Senate on TV last night, I could also hear chanting from outside the chambers in the cap rotunda. And, I am certain there were Lutheran friends there too, demonstrating through their presence a concern for undocumented people, unhealthy medical practices, underfunded schools, or declining farm supports. But they were present; they were motivated by faith to engage issues that affect people’s real lives.

BEFORE I COULD GET myself in front of the television on Monday evening, I attended a fundraiser celebrating the 40^th anniversary of the Lutheran Volunteer Corps (LVC), a national organization founded through the vision of one Washington, D.C., congregation. Literally, thousands of young people have been “ruined for life” by LVC. By coming into contact through their work of healing the nation, their communal living, or their commitment to sustainability, these young adults’ lives have been changed.

“Thousands of young people have been ‘ruined for life’ by the Lutheran Volunteer Corps.”

The gospel does that. LVC participants touch people’s wounds and they believe anew. They experience the struggles of vulnerable people and they can no longer live as if these folks’ lives aren’t valuable. Vocations have changed, thanks to LVC and organizations like it. For example, Jeremy Schroeder, an LVC alum, is now a city councilmember in Minneapolis and Ben Whalen, another alum, is on Richfield’s council. (Jeremy is currently a member of my congregation and Ben previously was active there.)

In the end, the test of our faith is how we treat each other. Like the elected officials, sometimes we do well; sometimes not. But we could all do better.

Thank God there are organizations like LVC that point us toward a gospel lifestyle. During its 40^th anniversary, you might want to take a look at its impressive legacy.

By Deb Stehlin

In the last two months, if you’ve asked me, “What’s new?,” I’ve exclaimed, “I’m a grandma!” And then, I probably whisked out my phone to show you a photo. Last weekend, we got to host an open house so that people in my daughter’s and son-in-law’s networks could come and meet this tiny, new life.

Each person I greeted at the door offered a quick hello and then looked past me to survey the room. They had arrived with one goal: They needed to find the baby and hold him.

What is it about holding a new human life? Time stops. The vast universe collapses into this freshly created face. Before you know it, your breathing and the baby’s breathing take on the same cadence.

THE WAY MATTHEW tells it, after Jesus rose from the dead, some of the women who were closest to him had a similar goal as the guests at our house. When they encountered the resurrected Jesus, their instinctive response was “I have to hold him.” Without even thinking, they took hold of his feet and worshiped him.

Allie Carlson-Stehlin with her former daycare provider, Debby Shepard, and Deb’s grandson Axel.

I imagine that time stopped for them, too, and that the vast universe collapsed into these now-alive feet. These feet carried the one who is New Life. These feet still carried wounds.

“Each person had arrived with one goal: They needed to find the baby and hold him.”

Before you know it, Jesus breathes into them and their lives take on a new cadence. They now have power to carry the news about this New Life to all who will listen. They all have the vision needed to order life and community in a way that reflects God’s love and justice. The Apostle Paul describes it this way: “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come!”

I’ve been lucky enough to tell about Jesus to people who hadn’t heard it before. I’ve witnessed New Life be born in people as they take hold of this liberating story. Time stops. The vast universe collapses into the fresh creation that will become their life.

I know, because that’s what happened when someone told me. Maybe it’s happened to you, too.

Remember that moment the next time you hold a baby.

By Pr. John Hulden

Ah! It’s the day after Easter Sunday.

For you churchy people – just accept that you are a churchy person since you are reading this churchy blog – this week after Lent/Holy Week/Easter Sunday is a time to catch our breath. It’s respite at least for a little while, before we start looking ahead to the rest of April, the many festivities in May, and then summer.

Isn’t that the way it goes? We get to one spot on the calendar and, as soon as we arrive, we begin looking ahead to the next stuff on the calendar.

Here is something to ponder while you catch your breath. Now is the time to set aside days in your summer calendar, not just for vacation, but for time for continued education, continued reflection, continued reading, continued wellness.

LAST WEEK I WAS on a 24-hour retreat at a bible camp with my colleagues from eight other synods in our region for who work with candidacy. We walk with folks who are following a call to serve as a deacon or a pastor in our church. What a rich privilege it is for me and your synodical candidacy committee to accompany our candidates. (Thank you, members of the hard-working MAS candidacy committee!)

I suppose it is fitting that we synod candidacy folks met at a bible camp. Bible camps help young people develop and discover their gifts for ministry. Bible camps are also where many young people deepen their call to Christian public leadership.

In walking with our candidates in our synod, we hear wonderful stories about the many people in their lives who have pointed out their gifts for ministry. Many times the candidates themselves seem to be the last people to realize that God is calling them to be a deacon or a pastor.

I imagine you have been the Sunday school teacher or choir director or youth leader or confirmation small group mentor or pastor or deacon or friend down the pew to encourage and cajole a potential candidate into rostered ministry. Candidacy committees across the ELCA keep asking, “What makes for a good deacon or pastor?”

At the Bible camp last week, we pondered four important competencies for Rostered Ministers in the ELCA:

1. Leadership Competencies
2. Theological Competencies
3. Ministry Competencies
4. Wellness Competencies

How do we help form leaders to be mission-minded and adaptive in the way they approach ministry situations? Do we shape and organize instead of just fix? Will we be life-long learners with a faith seeking understanding? Do we walk and preach the way of the cross? How can we get better at the nuts and bolts of parish ministry? How do we attend our well-being as a leader in the church?

SO, CONGRATULATIONS, you have navigated through Holy Week and Easter Sunday celebrations (in addition to the pancake breakfast, Easter egg hunts, altar guild duties, decorating, un-decorating, redecorating, and bulletin prep)! Now as you look ahead, what is your best way to regroup/refresh/recreate/realize new and better ways to lead in this changing world? Might it be a silent retreat or spending a week with hundreds and hundreds of preachers at the Festival of Homiletics?

When you find the time in your calendar, perhaps you could use those four competences as a guide.

Thank you, churchy people, for your leadership in God’s Church!

Candidacy staff from the ELCA Synods in states that end in “ota” at Luther Crest Bible Camp, Alexandria, Minnesota. (It’s good to get together with other people with the same weird job. Yes, John is just making another shameless plug for churchy leaders to be in peer groups!)

By Brenda Blackhawk

As humans we have this incredible ability to move. By move I mean not remain stagnant. We can grow. We are forever making or facing transitions in our lives that will shape who we are going forward. When we are faced with such defining moments – holy occasions that guide us down one path or another – I think it is a good idea to listen. Sometimes God is calling us to serve.

I grew up in North Minneapolis in a mixed-race, multi-cultural family. Nothing about my personal life was monotone. My family, my friends, the people I dated, and my adopted brothers and sisters ranged far and wide in race, ethnicity, and culture. I didn’t know I was living a sheltered life until I went to Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.

“I grew up in North Minneapolis in a mixed-race, multi-cultural family. Nothing about my personal life was monotone.”

Now, Minnesota is not known for being particularly racially varied, though some areas do have quite a bit of diversity. Moving to Iowa, experiencing the culture shock, and witnessing blatant racism and deeply privileged ignorance contributed significantly to shaping who I am. I learned the terminology to talk about justice in productive ways. I joined an honor society dedicated to intersectional gender justice. I started participating in vigils and protests. The decision to move to Iowa ultimately changed my life.

I graduated in May of 2016. The plan was to be a writer and an editor — to make a good living doing two of my favorite things: reading and correcting people. But two weeks before I moved home to Minnesota, another one of my defining moments occurred and I listened to God.

THAT DAY I WAS working with my friend Karissa, both of us restaurant servers with the spirits of social justice activists. As soon as the lunch rush died down, she pulled me aside to tell me that a Black man in the Twin Cities was murdered by the police.

I started panicking. “What was his name? Where was he? Who was it?”

After several minutes of research on our phones, we discovered that his name was Philando Castile. I lived in desperate fear for the minutes leading up to that discovery. Karissa and I held on to each other and we cried for his loss. But, if I’m honest, I also cried out of relief that he was a stranger to me and not one of those young men that I already loved.

“After that moment, I knew I would never be fully satisfied with a career as a writer and editor.”

After that moment, I knew I would never be fully satisfied with a career as a writer and editor. In whatever direction I went, a justice component would be essential. I listened to God, who I believe was encouraging me to use my gifts and experience to fight for a more just world.

When will our congregations have a defining moment around justice? When will we see our collective power as a tool to do as Jesus did and care for the poor, defend the oppressed, call for justice? Can we do so today? Are we listening to “the still, small voice of God”?

By Pastor Kelly Chatman

Albert Einstein has been quoted to have said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” The congregation I serve is more than 100 years old and 50 years ago it was thriving, with neighborhood residents walking to worship on Sunday mornings.

The congregation was said to have had so many children that one of the classes was actually held in the boiler room. More recently we had reached a time when few people walked to church and few children attended Sunday school; the boiler room had become a quiet, seldom-entered space.

“Have we lost imagination for how and where God might show up.”

In spite of the changing circumstances, this congregation continued to do the same old things hoping and expecting a different result. In reality, people were not coming. The sanctuary remained beautiful, but seating space was readily available on Sunday mornings.

Desperate times demand desperate measures. I know this may sound shocking, but we tried something different.

REALIZING THAT CHILDREN WERE NOT flocking to participate in our after-school program, we noticed that a popcorn shop across the street had been closed for some time. The inside of the shop was in great shape and we began to wonder about that space as a possible location for our after-school program. We gathered enough resources to commit to renting the shop for a year and we launched our after-school outreach in the popcorn shop.

Three little girls who were sisters in family foster care began attending the after-school program. One of the girls asked our youth director, “Is [the after-school program] a church or a magical place?” It gets better. At the end of the year, the shop owner, who had been critical of the church, not only returned half the year’s rent, he had his son baptized at the church.

Not all the good stuff happens in the church building!

Sometimes our blessings come when we try new things. Sometimes magic happens in the boiler room. Sometimes it happens when we dare to encounter people who have given up on the church. Sometimes I wonder if God isn’t waiting for the church to show up outside the walls of our buildings.

“Sometimes magic happens in the boiler room.”

I wonder not because something inside is lacking, but because we have lost imagination for how and where God might show up. I mean, really, if Sunday school can happen in a boiler room and a popcorn shop can lead to baptism, maybe that little girl’s question is not such a stretch. Can the church also be a magical place?

So friends, let’s look around our church buildings and our neighborhoods. Where might there be opportunity to try something new as an outreach and service in your community? What opportunity might be waiting for our congregations and for us to become God’s imaginative people.

By Emilie Bouvier

Wednesday, February 6, was the day that Charo was taken away. Who is Charo (other than a famous flamenco guitarist), you ask? Charo is the name of the large, delightfully warm, conveyor toaster that graces the dining hall of Holden Village. That is, when there’s enough power to keep her plugged in.

February is an interesting month at Holden Village, the remote intentional community where I’m spending this year pursuing my art practice. It’s the month when the sun finally begins to rise higher than Buckskin peak, meaning suddenly we get more than just two hours of direct sunlight a day in the valley (celebrated in the obscure Holden holiday dubbed “Sun Over Buckskin”). But it’s also the month when colder temperatures and a growing snow pack begin to significantly slow the creek that supplies our hydro power.

“We get so used to everything being immediate and at our convenience.”

It’s re-shaping, really, to be living in direct relationship with what the land allows for you. On days that are cold or that an avalanche clogs the stream and the power goes out, you adjust. On cold days you add more wood to the boiler and take shifts waking during the night to keep it running. When the power goes out you work by the light of a headlamp and do another task that doesn’t require that tool (be it a miter saw or printer).

We get so used to everything being immediate and at our convenience. We get used to thinking we have enough control and technology to manage whatever weather or nature throw at us, keeping all systems running smoothly.

“It’s re-shaping, really, to be living in direct relationship with what the land allows for you.”

Occasional logins to Facebook have informed me that you all in the Twin Cities area have been experiencing this in your own way – as evidenced by the posts of parents with young kiddos or of friends struggling to drive to and from work on the dangerous roads. I know you have been experiencing your own unique agony of interruption and inconvenience in these past weeks.

Every once in a while, we get that painful and viscerally felt reminder from our dear environment that we are not in control and would do well to live within her bounds.

FOR THESE NEXT COUPLE of months, I know I’ll be learning a lot about my own consumption of electricity, and learning (sometimes painfully) what I can better do without. I’ll charge my electronics only at night, use hot water sparingly, only use the lights and equipment that I absolutely need, and have patience with my laundry as I hang it to dry.

As much as I’ve thought about these things before (hello, EcoFaith energy team), I’m definitely experiencing electricity differently when caving to my longing for a second (or third) cup of pour-over coffee could be the ill-timed power surge that causes of an outage for the whole village. Yet even when it’s uncomfortable to live with less, I’m also finding out what’s actually fairly easy to let go of and how much I really don’t need. In the end I’m grateful for the ways I’m learning and being shaped by the landscape and the limitations of the winter – even when I really miss the toast.

By Pastor Deb Stehlin

It feels like grace

As I write this post, there is yet another windchill warning, and more snow is expected later this week. As a traveling preacher, I had kind of hoped that getting where I need to go would become easier now that it’s March. But I have to tell you that I’m really grateful for the blizzard last weekend.

I was scheduled to preach at Holy Trinity Lutheran in New Prague. When it was announced that Sunday morning travel was “not advised,” I decided to drive there on Saturday and stay at a hotel. Pastors Ben and Alicia Hilding insisted on making the arrangements for me. That was kind.

When I got to my room, a gift was waiting for me. Wow! Kindness upon unexpected kindness. Then, I was told that the staff and their families wanted me to come to dinner with them at the Fishtale Restaurant. “As long as we’ve been thrown a curveball, we might as well turn it into a party,” said Pastor Ben. It felt like grace.

THAT’S WHEN IT BECAME clear to me: This congregation knows how to embody God’s love. We are pretty good at telling people that God loves them, but it’s really when we provide an experience of God’s surprising, unexpected, undeserved love that it really sinks in.

“When we provide an experience of God’s surprising, unexpected, undeserved love, it really sinks in.”

God did the same thing for us. Rather than using only words, God came to us in Jesus, who embodied a radical, self-giving, undeserved love. And then, Jesus told us to love others the way he loves us.

I have two days to decide what my Lenten discipline will be. Right now, I’m thinking that I’m going to look for ways to demonstrate God’s surprising grace whenever I can. Because when you’ve received it, it’s not something you can keep to yourself. God’s grace is something you just have to give away.

By Pastor John Hulden

I go out to church now
     workin’ my committee for the Lord
I go every second Tuesday night
     workin’ my committee for the Lord

Jesus called disciples
     workin’ that committee for the Lord
yeah he went down to the lakeshore
     workin’ that committee for the Lord

Deward, Jean, Darlene, Vickie, Marlene, Tom, Alan — I can’t even begin to list all the church council presidents I worked with and learned from in my first 26 years in the parish. Today especially, I’m grateful for lay leaders in our ELCA congregations. Oh my goodness, what a gift they bring with their passion and leadership to congregations.

But why am I grateful this particular day?

Because miracles do happen. Two-hundred-and-fifty church leaders showed up this snowy Saturday morning — after a very snowy week — to do churchy work. Say what? 250? Yikes!

The synod’s annual Tool Kit and Conference Assemblies event just finished. There were churchy workshops about “Financial Best Practices,” “Safety and Emergency Preparedness,” “Who lives in my Neighborhood?,” “Connecting with your Community,” “Ready to Talk about Culture and Race?,” “Maximizing the Value of your Real Estate,” and more.

Teams of leaders came from congregations across our synod. (“Snowy roads? Big deal! I’ve got churchy workshops to go to!”) Speaking of miracles, most even brought their pastors.

IN MY WORK FOR YOU, one of the many blessings is to meet lay leaders – church council presidents, call committee chair people, confirmation mentors, choir members, music leaders, volunteer parish nurses. The wonderful list goes on and on.

And what to lay leaders do? They meet in meetings!

Whether we think it is a bane or blessing, the people of God need to organize themselves by meeting in meetings. Meetings move the mission of God forward through the ministry of a congregation. Well, that’s what I think happens at church meetings. Plus, a meeting gives the people of God the opportunity to grow, learn, support, and pray together. (Yes, don’t forget to check-in with each other and pray at your meetings!)

That reminds me of a missed opportunity for most of my last call up in Moorhead. It was only the last year or two I was there that I had the wherewithal to go visit the funeral servers as they got the funeral lunch ready. I would gather them together, thank them for their ministry, and then we’d pray. We’d pray for the grieving family. We’d pray for God to bless the funeral service and the hospitality offered. It took me 15 years at that call before I figured out that praying with the funeral servers just might be a good idea. Because after all, they were “workin’ their committee for the Lord”!

And, here are the last two verses of Jonathan Rundman’s song:

Luther took his hammer
     workin’ that committee for the Lord
yeah he walked up to the front door
     workin’ that committee for the Lord

Mildred goes to church now
     workin’ her committee for the Lord
she got her needle and her thread now
     workin’ her committee for the Lord

(Thanks to Jonathan Jonathan Rundman for allowing me to share these lyrics. You can find the song at track #10 on the Reservoir album at http://jonathanrundman.com/music.)

By Emilie Bouvier

Hush, hush, my little root … my little pod
Hush … hush … my little grandmother

I read these words from Meridel Le Sueur two mornings ago to a room of women, rapt with silence, early in the morning on the first full day of the annual winter women’s retreat at Holden Village. My eyes strained as they read the lines in the low light, with images of my original artworks projected behind me. I chose to pair my “land-formed” photographs, as I like to call them, with texts of women – mystics, poets, theologians, and ordinary women who shared with me their wisdom. This cloud of voices spoke together about the land, about fire ecology, justice, seed and egg, grandmothers, light and obscurity.

After the last reading and the silence returned, I listened. I invited the room to share responses. One by one, these women started sharing deep and moving stories. One spoke of her love of the plains, the landscape she grew up in. Another shared through tears of emotion what it meant to her to trace her grandmother’s journey of immigration, and her learnings of how family histories are passed through our bodies, especially in the bodies of women. Another confided her struggles with male images of God and her longing for spiritual experience of God through the feminine. Another shared her own experience of forest fire, loss, and reshaping of her relationship with the land.

“The beauty of difference is that we each get to tell our own stories.”

I was floored. There was no way I had expected this deep or vulnerable of a response so immediately. This was the first time I had tried out pairing the images directly with reading that have grounded their making. In some ways it was hard to not jump in and start explaining, to let the varied voices have their own integrity and give them time to speak. But this clearly worked. Why?

THEN IT HIT ME – an old insight, returning. In my seminary days, I took a class with Sarah Bellamy of Penumbra Theatre, entitled Bearing Witness, the Power of Story. One of the many things I learned from her is that the best way to tell a story is not in the abstract, but in the particular. If you try to say something that speaks to everyone, you may well end up speaking to no one. But if you tell your own story in all its particularity and detail, it has the power to stir up story in others – even if that story for them is quite different.

This speaks to me also in the story of our faith. Holden is a place rooted in Lutheran-Christian identity but is open and welcoming to people of all (or no) faith background(s). I worship beside fellow community members who identify as agnostic, Buddhist, atheist, and non-denominational. Sometimes, in the presence of difference, we want to pull back and make a space held and word spoken one that encompasses everything – leaning toward the abstract and open. Yet, I think that can often do us a disservice. The beauty of difference is that we each get to tell our own stories, and in their gritty particulars, invite the experience and emotion of others, even if sometimes it’s held in tension with our own.

“If you try to say something that speaks to everyone, you may well end up speaking to no one.”

As we find ourselves in the space between the incarnation and the cross, I hold to the particulars of our Jesus story – the water-breaking, baptismal-claiming, teaching, healing, dying, rising, story of Christ. As we journey through these seasons, I hope you meet God in the details of the stories and that they give you good courage to share your own.