Rostered Ministers Gathering: Register by 3/31/2023 for best rate

All rostered ministers in the ELCA are invited to join colleagues July 17-20 in Phoenix, Ariz., for the Rostered Ministers Gathering. Early registration will close March 31, and online registration will close July 1, 2023. Learn more and register today! And check out this special invitation from Bishop Eaton.

If you like to welcome people, help with registration, or have the gift of hospitality, please connect with Pastor Doug Dill: pastordoug@centrallutheranaz.org or 402-235-6969. Click here to register as a volunteer at elca.org.

ELCA, Grand Canyon Synod, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 20, 20232023 Rostered Ministers GatheringComment

Multicultural Youth Leadership Event (MYLE): 2024 ELCA Youth Gathering

The Multicultural Youth Leadership Event (MYLE) is a pre-event to the 2024 ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans. From July 13-16, youth of color or those whose primary language is not English, will gather together to worship, celebrate, and learn from one another. Dr. Kelly Sherman Conroy (she/her), the director of MYLE, shares an invitation to be a part of this faith formation event. To learn more about the 2024 Gathering, visit elca.org/Gathering and watch the video in this post.

ELCA, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 20, 2023Young Adult Gathering, Youth and Young Adult, 2024 ELCA Youth Gathering, MYLE, the tAbleComment

ELCA Disability Ministries March 2023 newsletter

Click here for the ELCA Disability Ministries March 2023 newsletter, with a reminder that March is Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month. If you want to learn more, please go to the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities site.

April is Stress Awareness Month. If you're struggling or reaching out to help a friend who may be struggling with stress, consider some of the many resources on coping and managing stress by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

ELCA, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 17, 2023Disability Ministries, ELCA Disability MinistriesComment

ELCA Advocacy March 2023 updates

ELCA Advocacy provides their March 2023 updates. Click here to read the UN and State edition, and click here to read the Advocacy Connections from the ELCA advocacy office in Washington, D.C.

ELCA, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 17, 2023Advocacy, ELCA AdvocacyComment

ELCA Coaching Courageous Leadership: Living and Leading with Resurrection Faith

Join us online Wednesday, March 22, 2023, as we hear from Rev. Jeff Linman. Join ELCA Coaching every Wednesday at 11am MST/PDT, noon MDT, as we practice Courageous Leadership. Log in info is on the ELCA Coaching website.

ELCA, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 16, 2023Coaching, ELCA CoachingComment

Global Links: March, 2023

ELCA Global Mission shares their Global Links newsletter for March, 2023, featuring: A Milestone for Women Leaders in the Holy Land; news around the world, our global partners, and how to get involved.

ELCA, Global Church, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 15, 2023Global Links, Global MissionComment

Café: March, 2023

The March, 2023 version of the Women of the ELCA’s monthly newsletter Café is available, including: Feeling my feelings as spiritual practice; Blessed are those who grieve; monthly dinner; podcast; and more. View all posts at boldcafe.org.

ELCA, Grand Canyon Synod, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 15, 2023Women of the ELCA (WELCA), Café, 2022 Advent and ChristmasComment

Administration Matters: March, 2023

The March, 2023, bimonthly e-newsletter for ELCA congregational and synodical leaders is here, featuring: updated tax guides, Rostered Ministers Gathering early registration, ELCA Federal Credit Union ministry card, unemployment exemptions for churches, and how to keep your building safe from wayward vehicles.

ELCA, News, Leader ResourcesBrian FlatgardMarch 15, 2023Administration MattersComment

For What Shall We Pray? 3/15/2023

For all who are anxious for their financial future after this week’s bank collapses and for keen and collaborative wisdom among those crafting policies in response…
For peace and protection for our transgender siblings, and especially transgender youth, as 41 state legislatures consider bills restricting and revoking their rights…
For a path forward and a renewed commitment to the common good amidst continued political partisan division in the United States and across the globe…
For people on the west coast of the United States, Australia, and Kenya who are living with extreme flooding; for those facing threat of sever storms on the east coast of the United States; and for victims of Cyclone Freddy in Malawi…
In thanksgiving for recently negotiated peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia…
For the people of El Salvador, living under a century of civil conflict…
For Muslim siblings preparing for Ramadan…
For all caregivers who provide for, educate, and nurture children…
For all navigating news of pregnancy, expected or unexpected, and for their support systems…

ELCA, PrayersBrian FlatgardMarch 14, 2023ELCA Worship, For What Shall We PrayComment

Faith Lens: Seeing Possibility

Yvonne Shortt is an artist who uses grasses, clay, moss, and other natural materials to create beautiful sculptures of people’s heads. Slowly over time Yvonne began losing her eyesight because of a rare genetic disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa. Her story is part of a documentary called Adapt-Ability by filmmaker James Robinson which highlights how her limitations are really a gift to her art.

ELCA, Leader ResourcesBrian FlatgardMarch 14, 2023Youth and Young Adult, Faith LensComment

Reinterpreting John 9

The healing of the blind man in John chapter 9 is one of my favorite healing stories in the whole Bible. I love this story because in this story Jesus confronts and rejects the common belief that disabilities are somehow caused by sin.

I commend to you the book A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disability by Kathy Black. Kathy Black is an ordained Methodist minister who has served as the chaplain at Gallaudet University and pastored two churches for deaf persons.

ELCA, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 13, 2023Disability Ministries, ELCA Disability MinistriesComment

Created to Be | 2024 ELCA Youth Gathering

During the summer of 2024, the ELCA Youth Gathering, MYLE, the tAble and Young Adult Gathering will center around the theme of “Created to Be” which comes from Psalm 139. To learn more about the 2024 Gathering, visit elca.org/Gathering and watch the video in this post.

ELCA, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 13, 2023Young Adult Gathering, Youth and Young Adult, 2024 ELCA Youth Gathering, MYLE, the tAbleComment

Nourishing community and cultivating joy in Federal Way, Wash.

If you visit the Saturday-morning farmers market in Federal Way, Wash., you might see Kay (Kyong Yon) Mattingly smiling and dancing with her friends from Dasom Bi-Cultural Cooperation, a ministry of Light of Grace Lutheran Church. The ministry hosts a booth with a variety of Korean goods for sale, but the members also seek to bring joy to those around them – and create it for themselves.

ELCA, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 13, 2023Hunger, ELCA World HungerComment

Book Review: The Pretty One by Keah Brown

Keah Brown, a journalist, has filled this book with her essays. In each standalone essay, Ms. Brown addresses a particular issue of life as a black woman living with Cerebral Palsy in a mostly able-bodied white America. She discusses the depression that comes from internalizing the “idealized body” of the able-bodied world we live in.

ELCA, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 13, 2023Disability Ministries, ELCA Disability MinistriesComment

ELCA Disability Ministries Grants: Next Steps for Applicants

Thank you so much for your support of what we do at ELCA Disability Ministries. Especially, we thank God for you and the way the Spirit is moving you to make accessibility and equity for people with disabilities a priority in the lives of your ministries.

ELCA, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 13, 2023Grants, Disability Ministries, ELCA Disability MinistriesComment

Roma refugees from Ukraine face racism, discrimination

Mariia Simian, from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, is living through war for a second time. Just three years old when World War II tore across Europe in the 1940s, she says the memories haunt her.

“I remember everything,” she says. “I often remember. My mother hid our whole family from this horror wherever she could – in the basement, in fields behind the house – because the Nazis were looking for Roma.”

ELCA, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 13, 2023Lutheran Disaster Response, Russia and Ukraine WarComment

ELCA World Hunger's 40 Days of Giving 2023: Week Three

In Ghana, water scarcity threatens the lives and livelihoods of nearly 90% of the population. Even in urban areas, more than half the people lack access to clean, safe water. In developing countries such as Ghana, almost 80% of illnesses and deaths are caused by water-borne diseases, which in turn are driven by people needing to rely on unsafe water sources.

ELCA, News, Leader ResourcesBrian FlatgardMarch 13, 2023Hunger, ELCA World Hunger, 2023 LentComment

ELCA Conference of Bishops Discusses Exchangeability, Cuba and More

The Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) met Feb. 28–March 4, 2023, at the Eaglewood Resort in Itasca, Ill. The conference, an advisory body of the ELCA, comprises 65 synod bishops, the presiding bishop and the secretary.

ELCA, NewsBrian FlatgardMarch 13, 2023Conference of BishopsComment

How do we go in peace to love and serve the Lord in civic life?

The ELCA invites you and your congregation to explore this and other questions by using "A Study Curriculum on Civic Life and Faith." View a video on this question in this post, along with a PDF guide.

ELCA, News, Leader ResourcesBrian FlatgardMarch 10, 2023Advocacy, ELCA AdvocacyComment

SOFIA: A Ministry Sprung to Life

As part of the latest Stories of Faith in Action, we share a story about the Delaware-Maryland Synod and the North Ave Mission (NAM) community (view online or as PDF). “Everything that has sprung to life at North Ave Mission is a vision of the early community. We’re a mix of worshiping community, mutual aid organization, harm reduction, housing, leadership development, even advocacy. But Family Life is our center and our locus.”

View all the Stories of Faith in Action here, and how your offering becomes mission support.