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The following is a newsletter update from Rev. Kyle & Ånna Svennungsen, ELCA missionaries in Slovakia.   Greetings dear partners in ministry! We are writing to you from Bratislava, Slovakia. At Bratislava International Church, our theme for Lent is ‘Walking with Jesus: Repentance, Reconciliation, Restoration.’ This theme was chosen before the war in Ukraine began and it has taken on a whole new meaning in these last four weeks. Not only is there need for repentance, reconciliation, and restoration with our Creator; but also with one another. Someone once said, “Sometimes in the worst of times, you see the best…

ELCA Worship has provided a worship resource responding to the war in Ukraine. These resources are available from the ELCA.org Worship Resources area: https://elca.org/resources/worship#Liturgy. As we approach Holy Week and the Easter season, you may desire worship texts that hold in tension the joy of the resurrection with the reality of violence and suffering in our world in Eastern Europe and around the globe. Below are three newly composed worship texts by Gail Ramshaw available for use in your context during Holy Week. Guidance for use precedes each selection.    For Good Friday From the third century on, a central feature…

I was contemplating the absurdity of the man who claims to be a woman, who then puts on a swimsuit, enters a woman’s swim-meet, wins the contest, and then is declared the fastest swimmer among some of the top-tier women swimmers in the world. As I contemplated this, I tweeted the following: “You can identify as a bird all you want, but the second you step off the Golden Gate Bridge physics take over.” I elaborated further on Twitter, this way: And just to be clear, physics isn’t the judge, God is the Judge. When people rebel, and physics, physiology,…

ELCA World Hunger’s 40 Days of Giving Lent 2022 In English and en Espanol Week 4: Transformed in the Wilderness “They ate the crops of the land” (Joshua 5:12) Read Joshua 5:9-12 Psalm 32 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 Reflect The reading from Joshua for this week is brief, but it recounts the time the Hebrews, who left Egypt under God’s care, had so longed to see: the end of their exodus and the beginning of their life in the Promised Land of Canaan. No longer would their food rain down from the heavens; now, they would be fed…

Today’s post is written by Julie Grindle, Assistant to the Bishop for Candidacy and Mobility in the Upstate New York Synod of the ELCA. A past president of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians (ALCM), Julie also served on the Hymnody Working Group for All Creation Sings. This post was previously published in February 2021. It has been updated by the author to reflect our context in March 2022. New Fire. Easter Proclamation. Ancient stories. Baptismal waters. Bread and wine. This is the night. As you plan worship for the Vigil of Easter, All Creation Sings offers many and various…

Karl Barth wrote: “What took place on the cross of Golgotha is the last word of an old history and the first word of a new.”[1] Keeping in theme with this apocalyptic motif, Samuel Adams writes the following, with reference to Dietrich Bonhoeffer: In his Ethics, Bonhoeffer progresses from the disciple’s conformation to the crucified one to the disciple’s conformation to the risen one: To be conformed to the risen one—that means to be a new human being before God. We live in the midst of death; we are righteous in the midst of sin; we are new in the…

A message from Tammy Jones West, 2024 ELCA Youth Gathering Program Director— I’m just, It’s just…  Hello world. My name is Tammy Jones West. I am a Deacon in this church, from North Carolina, and I am serving as the Program Director for the 2024 ELCA Youth Gathering. I am honored to have been asked to serve in this way and a little terrified at the responsibility and scope of the work. I also know the impact and importance of this ministry and I will do my best to encourage, support and clear a path for the thousands of volunteers…

Elizabeth Hood, Palo Alto, CA Warm-up Question Have you ever felt lost? Lost something really important to you? Lost and Found After 106 years of searching, a ship lost miles below the icy water near Antartica was recently found! Explorer Ernest Shackleford’s ship, Endurance, was exploring these frigid waters when it became trapped by ice and could no longer move. Miraculously, most of the crew survived by making camp on a smaller boat on the ice, living there for months before they were rescued.  The Endurance sank and researchers have been looking for the ship ever since. Scientists say that…

John Webster offers too good of a sketch on a theory of revelation for me to simply pass it by without sharing it for you (and I’ll be using it in my doctoral study as well—which my topic has changed already, I’ll share what it is in an addendum at the end of this post). He synopsizes what I have often been after in many of my posts on the same locus. Let’s read along with him, and then I’ll close with some concluding reflections (and that addendum). The broadest outline of a diagnosis would be something like this: For…

Following are updates shared from submissions of the Lutheran Office for World Community and state public policy offices (sppos) in the ELCA Advocacy Network this month. Full list and map of sppos available. U.N. | Arizona | Colorado | Kansas | Minnesota | Ohio | Pennsylvania | Texas | Washington | Wisconsin   U.N. Lutheran Office for World Community (LOWC), United Nations, New York, N.Y. – ELCA.org/lowc Dennis Frado, Director The International Migration Review Forum (IMRF): was created by the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). is a Member State forum, with the participation of stakeholder including civil…