ELCA Outreach Board Sets the Tone for Lutheran Mission at Home

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- "Three content sessions" set the tone for the next two years of work for the board of the Division for Outreach (DO) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), said Dorothy Baumgartner, chief administrative officer of Trinity Lutheran College, Issaquah, Wash. Baumgartner was elected to a second two-year term as DO board chair, when the board met here Sept. 27-30.
Kenneth W. Inskeep, director of the ELCA Department for Research and Evaluation, presented current research on Lutheran identity. The presentation included demographic information about population shifts across the United States.
"While we've been hearing about some of these demographic shifts for quite some time, that was probably the first time the board saw it laid out in that particular way," said Baumgartner. Lutheran congregations are located in places people are leaving, and they are not located in the places people are going, she said.
That information fortified the division's emphasis on starting new congregations, said Baumgartner. "Our mission opportunities are in places where the people are and that means a lot about how we allocate resources," she said.
Another part of Inskeep's presentation dealt with differing perceptions of what it means to be Lutheran, especially between Lutheran clergy and lay members. He said the Lutheran church has a message that would be warmly accepted by people who don't identify with any church, if that message were more clearly communicated.
Inskeep "had some conclusions about the kind of message that really reflects who we are as Lutherans in a very succinct way," said Baumgartner. "It's some confirmation of things we've known for a while, but it helps to add some data behind the perceptions -- to help us to focus for the future," she said.
The Rev. David L. Tiede, president of Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn., led the board's second content session on how the church's eight seminaries can be resources for "a church in mission."
"Luther Seminary has done extensive work in assessing its work," said Baumgartner. "There has been some very good thinking about the role and the function of the seminary."
While the seminary has operated as an academic institution, Tiede said it is revisiting its purpose to prepare and send out evangelists. "'Evangelical Lutheran Church in America' is more than a name; it's a calling" to be in mission across the United States and Caribbean, he said. "Now what can the seminaries do to help?"
Tiede told the board that ELCA seminaries strive to give the church's clergy and lay leaders a better grasp of the realities of God's world. Rather than training people to do God's work, he said the seminaries are trying to help the church see what God is doing through the ELCA and to equip leaders who can assist God in that work.
The Division for Outreach has identified leadership development as "critical for the kind of work that we do," said Baumgartner. "The seminary is one of the most significant places where much of that leadership is going to be developed," she said.
"We have not taken any monumental action," said Baumgartner, "but the board and the division are thinking about our work in relationship with the other units and institutions of the church."
The board's third content session included a joint meeting with the steering committee of the ELCA Commission for Multicultural Ministries. The commission provides advice, counsel and services to assist the ELCA in working toward full participation of African American, Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latino/Hispanic, Arab and Middle Eastern, and American Indian and Alaska Native peoples in the church.
The Division for Outreach has developed "ethnic-specific strategies" to develop new congregations and to support existing congregations in each community the commission has identified.
The commission and division share "very similar passions," said Baumgartner. Some frustrations between the two units have grown out of failures to better communicate the processes by which they do their work and to share the information they use to make decisions, she said.
"It has sparked for us significant conversation about how we function and how we do and do not overlap," said Baumgartner. "It has given us the opportunity to raise questions about our interrelatedness with the Commission for Multicultural Ministries."
"We started to identify some things that we need to do about including some of the commission's people in our conversations on ethnic-specific strategies," she said. "We've exchanged some reports on occasion in the past, but we haven't had as much integration."
"We have to start with the acknowledgment that we are here for the same reason and that we have a common purpose. As long as we know that, we can do great things together," said Baumgartner.

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