News

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Nancy D. Arnison, Minneapolis, will become director for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's (ELCA) World Hunger Program effective July 5. Arnison is completing work for a doctorate in theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Arnison, 49, succeeds the Rev. John Halvorson, who served as...

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota, St. Paul, is offering professional counseling and trauma support services in Red Lake, Minn., after a student killed five others students, a teacher and school security guard, and wounded several others at Red Lake High School before killing himself March 21. Other...

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Rev. W. Arthur Lewis, director, Lutheran Theological Center in Atlanta (LTCA), announced plans to retire at the end of the current academic year or when a replacement is appointed. The center is a program of the eight seminaries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)...

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- According to mission personnel of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) serving in Indonesia, prayer and contributing money remain the best methods to support recovery operations following a Dec. 26 tsunami that claimed more than 200,000 lives in several coastal countries of the Indian Ocean. Rosella...

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Trustees of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Board of Pensions spent much of their Feb. 25-27 meeting here discussing challenges in long- and short- term strategic planning for the retirement and health-care plans of ELCA clergy, lay ministers and employees. Some of the challenges cited...

DUBUQUE, Iowa (ELCA) -- Saying he wanted to express "a profound word of gratitude for your ministries," the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) addressed nearly 250 people here March 13 at the opening session of the 24th annual Rural Ministry Conference. The Rev. Mark S....

DALLAS (ELCA) -- The Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) advised its church to commit to "interim Eucharistic sharing" with the United Methodist Church, a step that may lead to a full-communion agreement between the two churches sometime in the future. The ELCA Conference of...

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The two boards of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Division for Church in Society (DCS) and Division for Ministry (DM) met here March 10-12 in small groups and in plenary sessions, together and separately, and drafted a joint response to a report and three recommendations...

DALLAS (ELCA) -- While expressing gratitude for leaders in the church who prepared the report and recommendations on homosexuality released Jan. 13, the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) raised some concerns about the recommendations in his report to the ELCA Conference of Bishops. The Rev....

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Katherine Sprutta Elliott will become the third editor of "Lutheran Woman Today" effective April 1. Lutheran Woman Today is the magazine of Women of the ELCA, the women's organization of the church. Elliott succeeds Nancy J. Goldberger, who became editor of Lutheran Woman Today in 2001. Nancy...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (ELCA) -- The Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), challenged the values reflected in the federal budget that U.S. President George W. Bush proposed for 2006. Hanson and four other church leaders...

DALLAS (ELCA) -- Overall financial results for 2004 were "mixed" for the churchwide organization of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), said Christina Jackson-Skelton, ELCA treasurer, in a report here March 5 to the ELCA Conference of Bishops. The ELCA Conference of Bishops is an advisory body of the...

DALLAS (ELCA) -- The Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), acknowledging its members are "not of one mind" on issues related to homosexuality, sent a message to the church at the conclusion of its spring meeting here. The conference urged the church to affirm two...

"Jesus entro y, poniendose en medio de los discipulos, los saludo diciendo: !Paz con ustedes"! (Juan 20:19). Jesucristo resucitado se aparece a sus discipulos la noche de Pascua. Escondidos tras puertas cerradas con llave, ellos se sienten aterrados. ?Se puede dar una descripcion mas adecuada que esta de nuestro contexto...

"Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.'" (John 20:19) The risen Christ appears to his disciples on Easter evening. Behind locked doors, they are terrified. Is there a more apt description of our contemporary context than this? We are fearful people: frightened by the possibility...

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Seventeen theologians of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) issued "A Statement of Pastoral and Theological Concern" March 1, warning their church against accepting three recommendations on homosexuality that a task force for the ELCA Studies on Sexuality developed for the 2005 Churchwide Assembly in August....

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and Starlight Home Entertainment, Inc., Los Angeles, entered into a new agreement in February to make select original episodes of "Davey and Goliath" available on DVD for the public. Davey and Goliath is a classic stop-motion animated television series starring...

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- "Introducing the New Testament" is Mosaic Television's March 1, 2005, release, a 30-minute program that focuses on the origins of the New Testament and on its authors. The program examines the New Testament in three parts: the Gospels, letters and the book of Revelation. Mosaic Television is...

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The board of directors of Wittenberg University unanimously elected Dr. Mark H. Erickson as the university's 13th president, according to a Feb. 28 news release from the university. Erickson, vice president for administrative and government affairs, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa., will assume the role of Wittenberg president...

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The steering committee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Commission for Multicultural Ministries (CMM) recommended that the ELCA Church Council endorse two ethnic-ministry strategies and asked the ELCA Office of the Presiding Bishop to commend the concept of a "European American anti-racism association" when it...