Lutheran Social Ministries Cross Bridge

     MILWAUKEE (ELCA) -- "Transitions: Bridges of Hope" was a theme that speakers found easy to address during the 1997 spring conference of the Association of Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations (ALSMO) here April 17-20.  At that conference 350 people saw ALSMO become Lutheran Services in America (LSA).
     "ALSMO was and is a bridge," said Joanne Negstad, LSA's president and CEO, St. Paul, Minn.  ALSMO was formed in 1995 by the National Association of Lutheran Ministries with the Aging and the Coalition of Executives.  The design of LSA was a priority of ALSMO's two-year history.
     Lutheran Services in America is one of the largest organizations of housing, counseling, child care, adoption, refugee resettlement, health care, nursing home and AIDS ministries in the United States and Caribbean.  About 280 social ministry organizations operating in about 3,000 locations joined the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in the partnership.
     "I'm really excited about the possibilities of gathering into one alliance the Lutheran social ministries that the LCMS and ELCA provide across the country," said ELCA Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson, Chicago.  "It is such a large ministry ... much larger than most of our congregations realize."
     "The Bible is about transitions ... into the garden, out of the garden ... into Egypt, out of Egypt ... into the wilderness, out of the wilderness," said Dr. Sarah Henrich, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn., as she led the conference Bible studies.  "How we handle transitions depends on hope."
     "The church is going to change in the next century.  Who is going to define that change?" asked Chris Grumm, executive director, Chicago Foundation for Women.  She invited Lutheran social ministry organizations to define the church as "a home for the homeless where resources are in abundance."
     "We are not defined by our needs" but by "the one resource for which there will never be a shortage," Grumm said.  "The risen Jesus is that resource."
     "We are living in a molten society" that will crystallize again, Anderson said.  "The question is whether or not it will crystallize again around some of the values that we have to offer."
     "We need to focus the church's resources on the weakest of our society -- children, children at risk, children in poverty," said the bishop.  "If the task is so big, then our ministry must be so broad."
     "The challenges facing social ministry organizations force them to cooperate with each other and with other church bodies," Anderson said. "You are a premiere example of what our ministry can be, not just to ourselves but to the whole society."
     "Life is a paradox" where contradictory things are true at the same time, said Robert Terry, consultant and social ethicist, Terry Group, St. Paul, Minn.  Identifying paradoxes is helpful in a time of transition, he said.
     "To work for change, stress stability," said Terry.  You will discover your basic values and be more willing to change the rest.
     "If we are mission-focused, that is, if we are really serving a need that exists in the community and we are competent and do that well, then there will be a place for us in the community," said the Rev. Nelson C. Meyer, LSA chair and president of Lutheran Social Services of Central Ohio, Columbus, Ohio.  "Our major concern in coming together in LSA is to struggle together so that we can find a more clear focus."
     "In your packets you have a blue-print for a new future," he told the participants.  "We did not ignore self interest, but we put it in its place -- behind Jesus Christ."
     "The tone of the conference is that the fullness of time is here," said Meyer.  "How can we be constructive and move on into the future?"
     "Visualizing the future is the key to transformation," said the Rev. Kenneth L. Bakken, a physician specializing in preventive medicine and pain, HealthVision International, Seattle.  "There must be a conspiracy among health care providers to give up competition for cooperation and balance."
     "During these days in Milwaukee we have celebrated the birth of LSA appropriately and well.  Now the work begins," said the Rev. Charles S. Miller, executive director of the ELCA Division for Church in Society, Chicago.
     "Confidence has given us an immensely good start," said Miller.  "The future now beckons us."
     "Our LSA journey has begun," said Bernice Karstensen, president of Lutheran Social Services of Kansas-Oklahoma.  "Our bridge of hope is the good news of Jesus Christ."
     "Jesus is our bridge from hopelessness to hope," said the Rev. Roger Heintz, Brookfield Lutheran Church, Brookfield, Wis. "LSA is a Jesus organization."
     The transition is not over, said the Rev. Carl H. Toelke Jr., LCMS director of social ministry organizations, St. Louis. "This is a process.  It is not yet what it shall be, and when it gets there it's going to change to what it will become again. So, I'm looking forward to it."

For information contact:
Ann Hafften, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://www.elca.org/co/news/current.html