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Jill Fabricius Keith: Building relationships in Indigenous communities

Jill Fabricius Keith: Building relationships in Indigenous communities

It’s a sunny day in the Wind River Range of Wyoming. A group of Indigenous people and I form a circle to burn tobacco and offer a prayer of thanks to the Creator for the plants we’re gathering today. Once we pray and provide an offering to Mother Earth, we scatter across the wide-open space to dig up roots and collect berries.

For five years I’ve been listening, learning, collecting plants and building relationships with the Restoring Shoshone Ancestral Food Gathering (RSAFG) group from the Wind River Indian Reservation.

ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardNovember 15, 2021Living Lutheran, American Indian and Alaska NativeComment

Bishop Eaton: Live from Church Council

Bishop Eaton: Live from Church Council

This week, Bishop Eaton comes to you masked and vaccinated from Church Council as they gather to make important decisions for this church.

Bishop Eaton, LettersBrian FlatgardNovember 15, 2021Comment

Rev. Aaron Fuller: Our Collective Healing on this Veterans Day

Rev. Aaron Fuller: Our Collective Healing on this Veterans Day

On November 11, 2021, the nation will observe Veterans Day. It is a day set aside to recognize veterans’ service in the Armed Forces, past and present.

Congregations across the ELCA have chosen to recognize veterans in worship. Others have chosen not to. Both choices are faithful expressions of people’s deepest convictions. I want to offer why all congregations should consider acknowledging veterans in their worship services around Veterans Day this year.

ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardNovember 11, 2021MilitaryComment

Bishop Eaton: Tending God's garden

Bishop Eaton: Tending God's garden

Caring for creation is not just a boutique issue for the few, but a faith issue for all of us. As COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference, is underway in Glasgow, Bishop Eaton reminds us that we are called to tend God’s garden and be good stewards of creation.

Bishop Eaton, LettersBrian FlatgardNovember 9, 2021Climate ChangeComment

Ryan Cumming: Remembering Martin de Porres and Elizabeth of Hungary

Ryan Cumming: Remembering Martin de Porres and Elizabeth of Hungary

This month, we commemorate two particularly inspirational Catholic saints, Martin de Porres on November 3, and Elizabeth of Hungary on November 17, who each exemplified “faith active in love” in important ways. What might we learn from these important leaders?

ELCA, Stories of Hope, LettersBrian FlatgardNovember 9, 2021ELCA World Hunger, HungerComment

Rev. Lisa Heffernan: Disability Ministries update

Rev. Lisa Heffernan: Disability Ministries update

Greetings! My name is Rev. Lisa Heffernan, and on June 1st I began serving as coordinator for ELCA Disability Ministries. I work remotely out of South Dakota, where I am also serving as a part-time interim pastor with a congregation.

As a person with a disability (spina bifida), this ministry is especially close to my heart and I’m excited for where God is leading us in 2022 and beyond.

ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardNovember 5, 2021Disability MinistriesComment

Bishop Eaton: What is The Lutheran message?

Bishop Eaton: What is The Lutheran message?

The Lutheran movement has a distinctive voice. The world has been saved and redeemed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and it’s not our effort but God’s. And it’s a gift! Bishop Eaton encourages us to revisit the small catechism this Reformation Day and recall the Lutheran exposition of the gospel.

Bishop Eaton, ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardNovember 2, 2021Reformation SundayComment

A Cup of Generosity: A stewardship plan for 2022

A Cup of Generosity: A stewardship plan for 2022

The best stewardship campaign I ever planned was not done in the fall, but over Lent. I am writing this now in case anyone wants to think about doing it next spring.

About New Year’s I asked people to begin thinking about the most generous person they knew and to write a short story about what they had observed about that person that made them think that way.

Letters, Grand Canyon SynodBrian FlatgardNovember 1, 2021Stewardship, A Cup of Generosity, GCS Stewardship TeamComment

ELCA opposes designation of Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations

ELCA opposes designation of Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America joins 14 other Churches and church-based organizations in a letter to Secretary of State Blinken to express concerns about the recent Israeli decision to label key Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations as “terrorist organizations.” Read the letter as PDF or in this post.

ELCA, News, LettersBrian FlatgardOctober 30, 2021Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Relations, SumudComment

Pastor Kristin Engstrom: A New Call in Zambia

Pastor Kristin Engstrom: A New Call in Zambia

Pastor Kristin Engstrom writes to share her new call with ELCA Global Mission as the Facilitator for Leadership Development and Capacity Building with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zambia. She also celebrates four years of the YAGM Senegal program.

Her YAGM Senegal blog will remain online, and she is now posting to her new blog.

Letters, Grand Canyon SynodBrian FlatgardOctober 28, 2021Pastor Kristin Engstrom, Global Mission, Young Adults in Global Mission, SenegalComment

Bishop Eaton: The power of silence

Bishop Eaton: The power of silence

How long can you spend in silence? Did you know that God appears as “sheer silence” in the Bible? Learn why Bishop Eaton’s spiritual director recommends 20 minutes of silence each day as a faith practice.

ELCA, Bishop Eaton, LettersBrian FlatgardOctober 26, 2021Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, Living LutheranComment

Bishop Eaton: A pastoral letter regarding the actions of the Reformed Church in America General Synod 2021

Bishop Eaton: A pastoral letter regarding the actions of the Reformed Church in America General Synod 2021

Like many of you, I have been praying for the Reformed Church in America (RCA) as it met in General Synod, Oct. 14-19, in Tucson, Ariz. For nearly a quarter century, we have grown in full communion with the RCA, sharing in mutual ministry and mission. We have come to know each other through our common witness to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Bishop Eaton, ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardOctober 22, 2021Reformed Church in AmericaComment

Bishop Eaton: We are invited into silence

Bishop Eaton: We are invited into silence

Bishop Eaton reminds us that spending time in silence is a spiritual discipline, a way of being in God’s presence. Read her October column for Living Lutheran in English at https://bit.ly/3jfr8dL and in Spanish at https://bit.ly/3n5x8ab.

ELCA, Bishop Eaton, LettersBrian FlatgardOctober 21, 2021Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, Living LutheranComment

Bishop Eaton: Why we need new, young and diverse people

Bishop Eaton: Why we need new, young and diverse people

Most of you have heard of the ELCA’s goal to engage 1 million new, young, diverse members by the end of the decade. But what about the rest of us, the ones already engaged? Bishop Eaton has your answer.

Bishop Eaton, ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardOctober 18, 2021Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, ELCA Fund for LeadersComment

Angela T. !Khabeb: Harvest Ground

Angela T. !Khabeb: Harvest Ground

It’s harvest season in various parts of the United States. I’m mindful of a parable Jesus shares about a harvest where the crops were infiltrated by weeds. Jesus compares the kindom of God to a farmer who sows good seed in his field. While everyone is sleeping, the enemy creeps in and sows weeds in this farmer’s field.

ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardOctober 14, 2021Living LutheranComment

Bishop Eaton: Run, don't walk

Bishop Eaton: Run, don't walk

Join Bishop Eaton in giving thanks for this year’s Fund for Leaders recipients, a scholarship program which supports seminary students. We’re grateful for all future ministers, their confidence and courage to lead the church, and the ways they share the love of God in Christ with God’s people. Are you considering a call to ministry? Visit: elcaseminaries.org/

Bishop Eaton, ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardOctober 12, 2021Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, ELCA Fund for LeadersComment

Bishop Eaton: Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2021

Bishop Eaton: Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2021

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we celebrate the heritage and contributions of Indigenous members of our church and society. Bishop Eaton also invites us into a time of confession and commitment.

We confess the church’s failure to address the racism that has so damaged Indigenous communities. We commit to working cooperatively to promote justice for Indigenous people, participating in acts of advocacy, practicing land acknowledgements and taking seriously the experiences of our Indigenous neighbors. Together we are all children of God, redeemed by Jesus, sustained by the Spirit.

Bishop Eaton, ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardOctober 11, 2021Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, American Indian and Alaska NativeComment

A Cup of Generosity: How to give when feeling overwhelmed

A Cup of Generosity: How to give when feeling overwhelmed

But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. —Matthew 6:3

Do you ever feel like neither your left or right hand know what to do about giving? Do you ever feel overwhelmed with all the needs in the world and all the requests for money and help that you get knowing you don’t have the resources to help them all?

Stewardship, Letters, Grand Canyon SynodBrian FlatgardOctober 1, 2021Stewardship, A Cup of Generosity, GCS Stewardship TeamComment

Angela T. !Khabeb: Grounds for forgiveness

Angela T. !Khabeb: Grounds for forgiveness

My father taught me how to pray the Lord’s Prayer when I was a little girl—much too young to understand what trespasses or forgiveness meant.

Forgiveness is an inescapable aspect of the human condition, touching nearly every facet of our lives. Yet it seems as if the concept of God’s forgiveness has been co-opted by pop culture, which has left it somewhere between a buzzword and a spiritual practice.

ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardSeptember 28, 2021Living LutheranComment

Presiding Bishop Eaton urges humane treatment of Haitian and other migrants

Presiding Bishop Eaton urges humane treatment of Haitian and other migrants

Our church teaches that, as a matter of dignity for all people, the U.S. has an international and moral responsibility to honor the human rights and dignity of migrants, and to not be silent in the face of racial injustice against people of African descent.

Bishop Eaton, ELCA, LettersBrian FlatgardSeptember 27, 2021Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, Immigration and RefugeesComment