Posts in ELCA
International Women’s Day, 3/8/2020
International Women’s Day, 3/8/2020

This year, on Sunday, March 8, your congregation has the beautiful opportunity to celebrate and honor women leaders around the globe. It is the perfect time for your congregation to take an offering for IWL, as it will go twice as far. Because of the generosity of IWL supporters, your congregation’s gifts will be matched dollar for dollar until we reach $100,000.

You can download this worship resource with prayers and hymns to use in your service, as well as this new bulletin insert. Thank you so much for celebrating with us and investing in the future of women leaders!

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ELCABrian FlatgardComment
ELCA Youth Gathering: Face of Grace
ELCA Youth Gathering: Face of Grace

At the 2018 ELCA Youth Gathering, I left each Mass Gathering feeling a buzz of energy, passion, and excitement that coursed through every extremity of my body like a wave of adrenaline. This feeling came from the power of experiencing God’s love, grace, and hope in community with tens of thousands of other equally energized worshippers.

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ELCABrian FlatgardComment
Faith Lens: Winds of Change
Faith Lens: Winds of Change

Asayel Slay, a female rap artist from Saudi Arabia, currently faces arrest and punishment by Saudi officials because of her YouTube video/song “Mecca Girl.” The work, which celebrates women in Mecca, has been condemned by conservatives as disrespectful toward the values and traditions that have long prevailed in Meccan society. Asayel’s supporters regard her as a champion of women’s progress in that society, while her detractors view her as a threat to social norms. Religious convictions animate both sides of the controversy.

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ELCABrian FlatgardFaith LensComment
Faith Lens: FakeNews
Faith Lens: FakeNews

Post-truth is an adjective defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” In 2016, “Post-truth” was Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year. In a July 2017 article by Lausanne Global Analysis, the term “post-truth” is closely linked with another popular phrase of our time, “fake news.”

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ELCABrian FlatgardFaith LensComment
ELCA partners with 2020 census
ELCA partners with 2020 census

The ELCA is an official partner of the 2020 Census as we work toward a just world where all are fed and further our commitment to greater justice in public policy and the electoral process. An accurate count determines electoral maps and ensures that $675 billion in federal funds justly go where they are needed most.

Posters are available from ELCA.org/resources/advocacy to help ELCA congregations encourage participation, particularly among hard-to-count populations such as people residing in rural areas, young children, LGBTQIA people, people experiencing homelessness, indigenous people, people who do not speak English, and racial and ethnic minorities. National Census Day is April 1, 2020, at which time all homes should have been invited to complete the census.

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Advocacy, ELCABrian FlatgardComment
Ashes to Ashes, Earth to Earth : #NoPlasticsforLent
Ashes to Ashes, Earth to Earth : #NoPlasticsforLent

When I was growing up on a small 3 acre farm in Tacoma, Washington with my two parents and three siblings, I HATED going outside and doing yard work. It was the last thing I wanted to do.

I would rather have been inside the house watching movies on our VHS player. On top of the mandatory all-family yard work on the farm, we lived frugally getting everything second-hand, including my school outfits which did not fit my fashion standards. At all.

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ELCA, LettersBrian Flatgard2020 Lent, Youth and Young Adult, Faith LensComment
Register early for the 2020 Rostered Ministers Gathering in Phoenix
Register early for the 2020 Rostered Ministers Gathering in Phoenix

Registration is open for the 2020 Rostered Ministers Gathering, July 20-23 in Phoenix!

Early registration (Feb. 20-May 20) is $245. Booking travel and hotel is your responsibility. Once you register, you will be provided with links to the three gathering hotels, each with a room rate of $139/night plus tax. A limited number of scholarships are available.

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ELCA, News, Grand Canyon SynodBrian FlatgardComment
‘Tis the Season: #NoPlasticsforLent
‘Tis the Season: #NoPlasticsforLent

This year at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly the body gathered – including a huge number of young adult voting members – called on the ELCA to get serious about its commitment to care for creation.

The #NoplasticsforLent initiative, led by young adults across the church, calls us to prayer for creation, to lament the ways we have been complicit in the degradation of the earth, and to action to care for our neighbor in fasting from the things that are hurting our planet.

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ELCA, NewsBrian Flatgard2020 Lent, Climate Change, Youth and Young AdultComment
ELCA Youth Gathering: Meet Claire
ELCA Youth Gathering: Meet Claire

I am thrilled to have the opportunity to serve as one of the Gathering Hosts for the 2021 ELCA Youth Gathering in Minneapolis, MN. This will be my third Gathering and I can’t wait!

Each Gathering has been different and brought something new to my faith. I am so excited to see what God and the Gathering teams have in store for each of us in 2021 and in these next 16 months leading up to it.

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ELCABrian FlatgardComment
Faith Lens: Listen Up
Faith Lens: Listen Up

In the last couple of months, it seems like there has been even more political news in front of us than usual. A presidential impeachment, Brexit in Europe, a cabinet shakeup in Russia – all of these events stacking on top of one another. Thanks to social media, we see much of these events as they happen. However, as technology improves, brand new problems are cropping up which we have to anticipate and deal with. Boston University professor, Danielle Citron, is tackling one of these problems: the rise of “deepfake” video clips.

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ELCABrian FlatgardFaith LensComment
Fair Housing and Everyday Jericho Roads- ELCA Advocacy Action Alert
Fair Housing and Everyday Jericho Roads- ELCA Advocacy Action Alert

When it comes to responding to homelessness in our congregations, often there is a will but not a way. We would help if we only knew how to do it safely, if we could guarantee that our money was not going to support an addiction, if we had more time to understand best practices and so on. Fear causes us to freeze and walk or drive past the neighbor in need on our everyday Jericho roads.

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Advocacy, ELCABrian FlatgardComment
ELCA Youth Gathering: Where I Belong
ELCA Youth Gathering: Where I Belong

I am an ordained pastor and serve on staff at a Lutheran Church, but I am not an ordained ELCA pastor. My background is Presbyterian. My first Gathering experience was in New Orleans for the 2009 Gathering, Jesus Justice Jazz. I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never been to Louisiana before, I’d never attended such a large youth event before, I was afraid of what it would be like to lead a group of a couple dozen youth and adults around a city that I had never visited. Why did I agree to do this anyway?

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ELCABrian FlatgardComment
Bishop Eaton: We are broken
Bishop Eaton: We are broken

In the February issue of Living Lutheran, ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton reminds us of our uniquely Lutheran understanding of the gospel and renews her call for studying Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. “Luther said he needed to study it every day—and he wrote it! Let’s do the same.” Read her column in English at https://bit.ly/2uhqshX and in Spanish athttps://bit.ly/2vXv90F.

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Bishop Eaton, ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardComment
Faith Lens: Going Viral
Faith Lens: Going Viral

Currently, the Wuhan coronavirus is one of the biggest stories in world news. At the time of this writing, the number of confirmed cases in China has surpassed 20,000, with at least 207 other cases being reported in over two dozen countries. Doubtless ,by the time you are reading this, many more people will have been sickened by this potentially deadly disease.

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ELCABrian FlatgardFaith LensComment
MYLE 2021 Theme
MYLE 2021 Theme

We’re excited to share the theme for the 2021 Multicultural Youth Leadership Event (MYLE): “Made Free.” The theme is based on 2 Corinthians 3:17: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

MYLE is a pre-event to the Gathering and the largest gathering of people of color within the ELCA. MYLE empowers young people of color and those whose primary language is not English to claim their story as a part of God’s story. For more information about MYLE, visit elca.org/MYLE. 

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ELCABrian FlatgardComment