Lutheran Services in America is 'Building Communities'

ROSEMONT, Ill. (ELCA) -- "Building Communities" was the
theme of the 2004 annual conference for Lutheran Services in
America (LSA). Almost 400 executives, staff members and friends
of Lutheran social service agencies studied facets of the theme
through speakers, workshops and worship here March 31-April 2.
"We have at least 100 social ministry organizations
represented here," said Jill Schumann, president and CEO,
Lutheran Services in America, Baltimore. "We have more than 85
chief executive officers here. We have at least 14 organizations
that have five or more people here. So, we have both depth and
breadth," she said.
LSA is an alliance of 296 social ministry organizations, the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Lutheran
Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS). The independent health and human
service organizations employed more than 150,000 staff members
and served more than 6 million people in almost 4,000 communities
across the United States and the Caribbean in 2003, and they
reported combined revenue of $8.2 billion.
"'Communities' is what Lutheran Services in America has been
about since its beginning," said Ruth Henrichs, chair of the LSA
board and president and CEO of Lutheran Family Services of
Nebraska, Omaha. LSA organized in 1997.
"Community is always built when people of faith come
together to worship and to learn and to share knowledge.
Community is always strengthened through relationships and
through sharing," Henrichs said. The conference was both an
opportunity to learn about how to build communities and "actually
doing it by building the relationships within the LSA member
network," she said.
"We worked carefully as a planning group to identify
speakers and breakout sessions that would illuminate the theme
and that would illuminate it from different perspectives,"
Schumann said. There were four keynote addresses.
Dr. John "Jody" P. Kretzmann, co-director of the Asset-Based
Community Development Institute, Institute for Policy Research,
Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., told the conference that
every community has the "assets" to solve its own problems. A
community must identify those assets and have "the confidence to
believe in what we know," he said.
The Rev. Arthur A. Just Jr., professor of exegetical
theology, dean of the chapel and director of deaconess studies,
Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind., said Jesus
redefined community. God's law was often used to separate some
people from the community, but Jesus made God's love the
community's core value, he said. Concordia is an LCMS seminary.
The Rev. Delores Brown-Daniels, vice president of mission
and spiritual care, Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center,
Chicago, said community in the workplace is often defined by
race, faith or class. She encouraged her audience to take the
risks necessary to pull down those barriers in their workplaces
and build a community that treasures every member through
honesty, respect and spirituality. Brown-Daniels is a pastor of
the American Baptist Churches and United Church of Christ.
There are conversations across the ELCA about what it means
to be a "public church," said the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding
bishop of the ELCA. "Social ministry organizations are already
that public church," he said. "Help us raise up leaders for a
public church."
Thirty-five breakout sessions were offered at five points in
the conference schedule. Topics included building relationships
between boards and CEOs, advocating child-welfare legislation,
linking services to the needs of the community, caring for
caregivers and diaconal ministry in Silesia, a region of Europe
chiefly in the Czech Republic and Poland. Five of the sessions
involved tours of Lutheran social ministry sites in the Chicago
area.
Several groups met before the annual conference, including
the Council for Human Resource Management, Lutheran Adoption
Network steering committee, LSA board of directors, LSA
Disability Network and National Lutheran Counseling Coalition.
A panel reviewed "Caring for Health: Our Shared Endeavor," a
social statement on health, healing and health care that the ELCA
adopted in August 2003. Speakers were the Rev. Stephen P.
Bouman, bishop of the ELCA Metropolitan New York Synod,
the Rev. Donald A. Stiger, director, Lutheran HealthCare,
Brooklyn, N.Y., and the Rev. Gregory J. Wilcox, director for
spiritual ministries, Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan
Society, Sioux Falls, S.D.
The Rev. Ronald W. Duty, assistant director for studies,
ELCA Division for Church in Society, hosted the pre-conference
panel discussion. "A ministry of healing is integral to the life
and mission of the church," he said.
The conference opened with worship provided by St. John
Lutheran Church, a Missouri Synod congregation in Wheaton, Ill.
St. Luke's Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation in Park Ridge,
Ill., provided the closing worship service.
LSA presented two 2004 Awards of Excellence in keeping with
the conference theme -- one for building community within the
social ministry organization and one for programs that contribute
to the building of the surrounding community. Alaska Children's
Services, Anchorage, won the award in the internal category for
its Service to Others projects; and Diakon Lutheran Social
Ministries, Allentown, Pa., won in the external category for its
work in Urban Congregational Health Ministries.
During a one-hour business session April 2, members approved
a budget for fiscal year 2005 of almost $1.7 million for the
alliance. The budget included a 3 percent increase in the LSA
dues schedule.
Representatives of the social ministry organizations elected
three directors to the LSA board: Dr. David Geske, president and
CEO, Bethesda Lutheran Homes and Services, Watertown, Wis.; Mark
Peterson, president and CEO, Lutheran Social Service of
Minnesota, St. Paul, Minn.; and Patricia Savage, president and
CEO, Allegheny Lutheran Social Ministries, Hollidaysburg, Pa.
The ELCA appointed Chris Andersen, executive director,
Lutheran Community Foundation, Minneapolis, to the LSA board.
Those completing their service on the LSA board were Madelyn
Herman Busse, diaconal minister and assistant to the bishop, ELCA
Rocky Mountain Synod, Denver; Jane Hartman, president and CEO,
Lutheran Services in Iowa, Waverly; Dr. David Jacox, president
and CEO, Mosaic, Omaha, Neb.; and Gene Svebakken, president and
CEO, Lutheran Child and Family Services of Illinois, River
Forest.
The LSA board elected Suzanne Gibson Wise, president and
CEO, Lutheran Family Services in the Carolinas, Raleigh, N.C.,
its chair-elect for the next year. Roger G. Miles, president and
CEO, Lutheran Child and Family Service of Michigan, Bay City,
succeeded Henrichs as LSA board chair at the close of the
conference. Henrichs remains on the board as past chairperson.
"There were all these wonderful leaders who helped in the
formation and creation of LSA seven years ago," Henrichs said.
"My role was to transition the board through a second phase. Now
we're on the launch pad to phase three," she said.
"Phase three is taking the strengths of 296 wonderful social
ministry organizations and all of their connections and the
church bodies and mobilizing that for a different level of
effectiveness and impact," Schumann said.
"There are some things we can do together that are greater
than the sum of our parts. This is the time to identify and to
move forward on those things that can best be done together,"
Schumann said, "for the sake of the world and especially for the
sake of the world in Christ's name."
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The home page for Lutheran Services in America is at
http://www.lutheranservices.org/ on the Web.

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