2025 in Review: Celebrating a Synod Built Up in Christ

As 2025 comes to a close, the Office of the Bishop invites you to take a moment to look back with gratitude on a year shaped by our synod theme: Build Up the Body.

Across Arizona, southern Nevada, St. George, and the Navajo Nation, congregations, leaders, and ministry partners lived this calling in countless ways—welcoming new pastors and deacons, gathering for worship and discernment, advocating for justice, caring for neighbors, raising up young leaders, and walking together through moments of both joy and grief. In visible and quiet ways alike, Christ’s body was strengthened through your faithfulness.

Our 2025 Year-in-Review Newsletter, now available online, offers a month-by-month snapshot of what God has been doing among us. From ordinations and installations to advocacy days, anniversaries, global partnerships, and the hosting of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Phoenix, this collection reflects a synod shaped by shared mission and deep connection.

As you scroll through the year, we hope you’ll recognize familiar faces, congregations, and ministries—and see your own place in this larger story of Christ at work among us.

Looking ahead, we enter 2026 under a new theme: Rooted in God’s Story. Grounded in God’s promises and faithfulness, we continue forward together, trusting that the same Spirit who has sustained us will keep forming us for the sake of the world.

Read the full 2025 Year-in-Review Newsletter here.

With gratitude for all that has been—and hope for all that is to come.