Bishop Hutterer: Welcoming the ELCA to Phoenix for Churchwide Assembly 2025
Dear Church,
At the end of this month, July 28 – August 2, 2025, about 1,000 people will gather in the Phoenix Convention Center for our Churchwide Assembly– right here in the Grand Canyon Synod! Just as congregations come together for annual meetings, and synods host synod assemblies, our wider church – the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (the ELCA) – meets in a churchwide assembly every three years. The Churchwide Assembly is the primary decision-making body of the ELCA. I write today as we prepare for another milestone assembly.
The assembly theme is For the Life of the World, a theme rooted in the Nicene Creed (this year celebrating 1700 years) and the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “The church is the church only when it exists for others.”
The Grand Canyon Synod is allocated 9 Voting Members to the Churchwide Assembly. Thanks to those who accepted these nominations more than a year ago and are giving of time (often vacation time) and soul to participate. Additionally, observers, resource people, advisors, and other visitors from our synod will be attending.
The assembly days will be full. Worship and Bible Study ground our days and are a highlight for me and for many. Our business will include two social statements: one on Faith and Civic Life and editorial updates to Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust. There will be action related to the recommendations of the Commission for a Renewed Lutheran Church (CRLC). Our Sarah Morris (Our Saviour’s Lutheran, Phoenix) served on that Commission.
We will act on memorials and resolutions sent from synods around the church; some will come en bloc and others will be debated by the assembly. We will elect a new ELCA Presiding Bishop and ELCA Secretary – these decisions will shape the trajectory of the church for years to come. We will do business (reports, budgets, elections, and more). We will worship together, including a pow wow on Tuesday evening (Vicar Wanda Frenchman and Pastor Mary Louise Frenchman are helping to plan this) and AMMPARO and the Grand Canyon Synod is hosting a vigil related to immigration on Wednesday evening.
How can you be engaged in this summer’s ELCA Churchwide Assembly?
Pray. Add the Assembly to your weekly intercessory prayers. Pray for the churchwide assembly, for those attending and for safety in travels (and as they navigate Phoenix in the heat), for the churchwide staff and many volunteers from this synod and beyond who make it happen, and for the Holy Spirit’s power moving and shaping us in this time. Invite your congregation to join you in praying for the assembly.
Volunteer. Hosting the Churchwide Assembly is a major undertaking, and we are deeply grateful to all who have already offered their time and energy. Special thanks to Mary Beth Baron, our Volunteer Coordinator, whose dedication and hospitality have been instrumental in welcoming the wider church to Arizona. We still need more local volunteers for a variety of roles. If you or someone you know is interested, please sign up at gcsynod.org/cwa.
Learn more. Explore this webpage for links to all sorts of information about the assembly, resources (bible study and worship information, schedules, reports, proposed social statements, resolutions, and more), and updates. While geared toward voting members, these introductory videos offer helpful basics about who we are as the ELCA. Additionally, this is the place to find the lists of those who have been preidentified as possible nominees for the role of Presiding Bishop and Secretary. (Even though some have pre-identified, there is still an ecclesiastical ballot.)
Note that the materials linked on this page change: more will be added in the coming weeks, and some materials (such as the bios for those preidentified) will be removed at the start of the assembly. This is also the place I’d look for links to watch the assembly live. Keep checking back!
Share. After the assembly, there will be opportunities for people around our synod to hear more from some of those who attend. Conferences or congregations may choose to host gatherings and invite Churchwide voting members from the GCS to share their experience. Watch for opportunities, and consider talking with your pastor or deacon, or the conference dean to explore opportunities.
A gathering like the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, by its nature, and particularly at this time in history, is a container for the possibilities and the pain of our life together. How do we stay rooted together? How do we make a space to hear well the experiences of other voices? How do we act meaningfully for the life of the world? I pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance for our time together at the Churchwide Assembly and I covet your prayers for our Church, Christ’s Church.
In Christ,
The Rev. Deborah K. Hutterer
Bishop
Grand Canyon Synod of the ELCA
