Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries

ENVIRONMENTAL MINISTRY: EcoFaith Recovery, Portland, OR: Rev. Robyn Hartwig: $4,500    

This grant will fund the continued development of EcoFaith Recovery as a ministry of Lutherans and ecumenical partners based in the Portland metropolitan area.  EcoFaith Recovery nurtures faith-based recovery groups and relational leadership networks to help individuals, communities and institutions emerge from our intoxication with consumerism to recover our relatedness to God, ourselves, one another, and the entire Earth community.

To do this, EcoFaith Recovery helps people discover their own stories, creates experiential opportunities for learning and spiritual practice, facilitates spiritual renewal through relational organizing, trains leaders willing to call their primary institutions into recovery, provides stipend internships for seminarians and young adults, and connects leaders and congregations by building and strengthening relational networks. In these life-sustaining communities, people reclaim their stories, their lives, their passions, their various calls to ministry, and their living connection with God. In the process, EcoFaith Recovery engages in theological reform, incites action to reduce the climate crisis, fosters the renewal of community life in the Pacific Northwest, and offers a practical model for people of faith throughout the country.

How will this ELM grant help you in your ministry?

Pastor Robyn: EcoFaith Recovery’s ministry is expanding rapidly. Over 350 people have participated in our retreats, small groups, classes, workshops, networking events, worship experiences, internships, and leadership teams, most of which are conducted in partnership with other Lutheran organizations. With funding from Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries and other sources in 2013, EcoFaith Recovery will offer additional leadership training, implement an expanded communication plan, and develop a three-year funding strategy so it can continue to welcome people of faith into recovery from unsustainable ways of life and into the kind of life-giving alternatives our faith calls us to pursue.

MISSION START: Spirit of Hope, Detroit, MI: Rev. Matthew Bode: $5,000

Rev. Matthew Bode will be expanding his duties from being the sole pastor at Spirit of Hope to being part of a team supporting five Detroit Lutheran churches. This will be a new multi-congregation parish. Spirit of Hope and its new partner congregations serve a diverse community across Detroit.  This grant will assist in Pastor Bode’s salary and allow him to serve as the only LGBTQ pastor in the five congregations.  Spirit of Hope has a long history as a congregation focused on social justice.

The funds provided by ELM will help Spirit of Hope maintain its ability to support a full time pastor in a community of lower income. As a full partner in the new parish, and as a full time clergy person, Pastor Bode has the opportunity to help the other four members of the partnership learn about and grow into being welcoming congregations to LGBTQ persons. Pastor Bode is a first time ELM Ministry Grant recipient. 

For more on ELM’s Ministry Grant program go to: https://www.elm.org/elm-grants/

One of the ways that ELM donors support ministry by publicly identified LGBTQ rostered leaders and seminarians is through the ELM Ministry Grants program.  Your donations to ELM fund this work. It’s inspiring to see how ELM donors are making possible all kinds of wonderful ministry throughout this church.

ELM Ministry Grants recipients are selected by our volunteer Ministry Grants Program team, led by Margaret Moreland. ELM donors have given away over $912,000 to ministry since 1995.

We are excited to announce a diverse group of ministries as our 2013 ELM Ministry Grants recipients!  In the coming days, we will feature one ministry at a time on the main page of our website: www.elm.org (just scroll down to our News Blog!).  By checking the blog each day, you can read in-depth about the ministries you support through your gift to ELM.  If you want to contribute to this important work, you can make an online donation by clicking here. 

Today we hear from  guest blogger Sara Cogsil. She recently completed her internship at Advent Lutheran Church in Cedarburg, WI and is a member of  Proclaim.

Home.

I have always had a difficult time defining “home.”

In reflecting on “home” over the past few years I began to think of it in terms of wherever I happen to be making a life for myself at any spot on this journey called life.I have used it to reference the city where I was born and raised, my grandmother’s house where I took up residence for some time in college, and both of my parent’s current houses although I haven’t ever lived in either.  I also refer to my current dwelling place as my home even though it has changed a dozen times since I was fifteen.

And it seemed to work until this past weekend.

You see this past year while I was completing my internship in Cedarburg, WI, two men who were pastors to me died.  Pr. Joe was serving my “home congregation” and Pr. John had retired from my “home synod.”

One saw a call in me before I saw it myself; the other gave me the nudge to go to seminary.

One was a mentor in college, one was a mentor in seminary, and both were mentors in the pastoral office.

One death was somewhat expectant, the other was a shock, and neither was easy to accept.

I knew they both had joined the church triumphant, but I became more aware of this reality when I travelled to Cambridge, OH and joined the worshiping community of Christ Lutheran Church once again.

It was in sitting in the pew between my partner and a dear friend, I experienced God anew.

It was in looking at that old familiar cross and hearing the Baptismal waters in the font where God claimed me that I was home!

Home in the Body of Christ.

Home as I gathered around the table joined by my life partner, my dear friend, and the saints, especially Pr. Joe and Pr. John.

Home as I was sent back out to the calling in which I yearn to follow.

Home in the loving embrace of the Alpha and the Omega.

Home as a Child of God.

Thanks be to God.

Sara Cogsil is currently a senior at Trinity Lutheran Seminary. She is originally from Cambridge, OH. She anticipates graduating in May and looks forward to where God might be calling her to next.

 ” I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.   – Isaiah 43:19

It was on Reformation Day just five years ago that Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries came into being, the result of a merger between Lutheran Lesbian & Gay Ministries and the Extraordinary Candidacy Project (read more about the history here).

2007 was a very uncertain time in the Lutheran church for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people called to ministry. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s policy at that time demanded a life of celibacy for LGBTQ people called to rostered leadership in the church.  Many LGBTQ rostered leaders had left or been forced to leave, and many future leaders were abandoning or delaying plans to begin seminary.

Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries was making a new way in the wilderness and new rivers in the desert for those supporting the ministry of LGBTQ people.   Our work continued the reforming tradition that began with the prophetic acts of extraordinary ordination on January 22, 1990.  Over the years, a total of 18 people were extraordinarily ordained, dozens remained in rostered ministry, and countless people stayed connected to the Lutheran church because of this ministry.

Since the ELCA changed their ministry policies in 2009, Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries has focused its energy on being a resource for LGBTQ rostered leaders and seminarians, ministry sites, and church institutions as we all live into this changing church.

The work of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries is as relevant and vital as ever. The increased numbers of LGBTQ people who began seminary after 2009 are moving into the stages of internship, assignment, and call. Seasoned LGBTQ rostered leaders who once imagined they would only find one or possibly two calls in their lifetime, now can imagine following their call to ministry in a variety of settings throughout the church. Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries is poised as a resource not only for these leaders, but for the ministry sites calling them and the church institutions–candidacy committees, call committees, synodical offices and Churchwide leaders that engage and interact with them.

Since 2009, Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries has launched Proclaim, a professional community of Lutheran rostered leaders and seminarians who publicly identify as LGBTQ. This group has grown to 116 strong in just over a year.  We have also launched a Candidacy Accompaniment program, which has connections with all ELCA seminarians and a growing number of partner theological and divinity schools, and is working with nearly 40 future leaders in the Lutheran church.  We have continued and redesigned our Ministry Grants program to ensure we are putting our treasure where our heart is by directly funding ministries and congregations led by LGBTQ rostered leaders.

Your financial support is greatly needed. Our work has more than doubled since 2009 and this ministry is funded almost entirely by individuals and congregations.  You can make your Reformation Day gift here right now, by following this link to donate.

God continues to call this ministry to do new things and we are responding to the needs of the church.  And it’s a joyful and marvelous experience!

“For we do not Proclaim ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord…”  2 Corinthians 4:5

 

The 6th annual Herconference is a gathering for spiritual seekers, faith and community leaders, artists, dancers, poets, Interfaith leaders, scholars, musicians, men and women, — to experience and discuss the urgent implications of God/dess imagery and gender issues which transform the church, the world, and our daily lives so that together we seek and speak justice.

The conference takes place November 2-4, 2012 at Herchurch, 678 Portola Dr. in  San Francisco. 

The 2012 theme is  Earth herbody –spirituality, politics and praxis for a sustainable world. Rev. Robyn Hartwig, director and founder of EcoFaith Recovery is a keynote speaker. Robyn is a member of Proclaim and a 2012 ELM Ministry Grant recipient. EcoFaith Recovery develops and supports spiritual recovery from the addictive patterns of human life that contribute to the climate crisis, heighten social injustice, deprive people of spiritual meaning, and threaten life on earth.

Registration is $195  which includes keynote presentations, two workshops, musical, two lunches, two breakfasts, Saturday dinner, coffee hours and receptions, materials and conference activities.

For more information go to: http://herconferencesf.org/

 

Spirit Day is today. Go Purple!

Millions of Americans wear purple on Spirit Day as a sign of support for LGBTQ youth and to speak out against bullying. Spirit Day was started in 2010 by teenager Brittany McMillan as a response to the young people who had taken their own lives. Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries is joining in this Spirit Day and encourages all of our supporters to wear purple, to Change your Facebook photo purple and speak out against bullying. 

Rev. Cindy Crane, Proclaim member & 2012 Ministry Grant recipient writes about her anti-bulling work in a special guest blog.

Very recently the ELCA Conference of Bishops voted me back on to the clergy roster after being officially off of the roster for 12 years and on a leave of absence for two years preceding the time I left.  Back when I began wandering without a sense of place outside the land of ordained ministry, I never imagined I would return to the roster with a part-time call to do anti-bullying work from a faith perspective.  And yet this feels right in many ways.  I’m bringing together years of work in a secular organization that dealt with LGBT issues in schools and bullying for any reason with my experience in the church.  Thanks to the grant from ELM and its wise requirement that the concept grant I received last year be given to rostered individuals working with a team, I got to create a meaningful ministry with my ordination finally recognized again.

The team I work with includes Travis Currier, Miriam Mueller-Owens, Sierra Mueller-Owens, and Rev. Matthew Kruse.  The new middle schooler in our group came up with the name, Lutherans Against Bullying (LAB) for us after the adults anguished for months over a name that would fit us just right theologically.  I like the acronym, LAB, because we are a kind of laboratory in the South-Central Synod of Wisconsin.

Targets of bullying can experience their way of seeing life altered.  Marueen Duffy and Len Sperry talk about this in their book, Mobbing.  Mobbing is bullying by more than one person and involves institutional buy-in.  Duffy and Sperry mention that someone mobbed can experience their entire world view change.  Targets of mobbing begin to see the people around them through the lens of their mobbing experience.  The trauma they had at school, work, church, a condo association, or other place in their community becomes the long-term filter through which they see life.  Ruth and Gary Namie at the Workplace Bullying Institute say it’s the long-term effect of trauma that causes counselors to name it as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and that if you have PTSD from being bullied that would make your workplace, school, etc. a war zone.  Duffy and Sperry cite cases of suicide resulting from mobbing; they even call mobbing a contemporary legal means of murder.The whole issue of bullying engages me personally because of the statistics I’ve seen manifested in the faces of young people and individuals of all ages.  How we respond to the temptation to abuse power, how we find inner strength when feeling washed over by a bullying situation, and how we choose to respond as witnesses to the bullying of others strike at my faith.  And I think of faith as not only being about belief, but also how we see or how we are graced to perceive our relationship with God and our neighbors.

When talking to an adult group recently about bullying I pointed to Marcus Borg’s book, The Heart of Christianity, in which he has a section on faith as seeing.  For an exercise I asked people to reflect on challenging experiences they had that brought them closer to God.  Then I asked people to think of experiences they thought moved them away from their faith or tempted them to cynicism.  What pushed them away?  What brought them back?  I shared an experience of my own in which I was starting to feel cynicism was defining how I looked at life.  It was like grace to recognize that I was seeing people unrelated to a trauma that colored my vision.  My eyes opened suddenly and unexpectedly.

Barbara Coloroso in her book, The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander, spends time discussing how bullies can influence others to change the way the way they view someone the bully has decided to target.  The target gets labeled as someone you can view with contempt and that becomes the standard for how that student is viewed.  She cites examples of students switching schools and having totally new experiences in how they are perceived.  She also has some great advice for how parents can determine if one of their children is being bullying or is acting as a bully and how to engage with them.

LAB explores reasons for bullying.  We spend some time looking at the bully, the target, and how families can get involved.  However, we focus mainly on the witnesses of bullying.  In many cases we believe it is the culture of a community that makes it possible for bullying to thrive.  In a student panel on bullying, led by one of our LAB team members, the youth panelists came up with ways you can be an ally to someone being bullied.  It might involve doing something bold within the bullying group or reporting incidents to an adult, or just going up to the person bullied afterwards and letting them know you didn’t like that they were treated poorly.  Is the latter too simple?  In an atmosphere in which a youth is experiencing contempt or as Rabbi Michael Lerner calls bullying, an act of desanctification, can one person doing something small make a difference.  We believe that even a simple gesture that gives the message, I don’t see you in that way, can be powerful.

For an exercise, ask a group of a time that one person made a difference to them.

Bullying is abuse.  It can change the way we see ourselves, another person, even life.  Actively not joining in campaigns of descanctifying of our neighbor matters to the way we live, to our faith and to others around us.  And actively giving the message, I don’t see you that way, to someone bullied makes a difference; by grace it even gives us an opportunity to share our lens of faith and hope.

Cindy Crane was one of the founding volunteers of Extraordinary Candidacy in the Midwest. She lives in the Madison, WI area.

Today we hear from guest blogger Rebecca Seely, 2012 Workin Scholarship recipient and Proclaim member. Other seminaries have created or are in the process of  starting similar LGBTQ student alliance groups. ELM will feature guest blogs from them in the future.

Greetings from the delightfully foggy campus of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. The fall semester has gotten off to a great start. Study, worship and fellowship are all in full swing. The big news from September is that an official LGBT/Queer Student Alliance has been founded at PLTS. While there have been groups of LGBTQ students meeting for years at PLTS, this is the first time that the group will be officially recognized as part of the PLTS Student Association. This recognition is exciting because it will hopefully help to facilitate more support (and even funding??) for the group from the institution. Sean Raghailligh and I have agreed to take the lead as alliance coordinators.

While we have not yet planned any official events, a highlight of the semester was a dinner party thrown by Pastor Jeff Johnson for Lutheran LGBTQ seminarians, clergy and friends in the Bay Area. The dinner was an awesome opportunity to connect with old friends and meet new people. As a seminarian, it was particularly meaningful to have the chance to be around so many amazing LBGTQ church leaders in one place and to be welcomed into that community. It was like a mini Proclaim retreat!

We will be meeting soon as a group to discuss our priorities and plans for the months to come. We look forward to keeping the Proclaim community up to date on the happenings here at PLTS!

Rebecca Seely graduated in 2012 from Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. She is fulfilling her Lutheran Year at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary this year.

 

On Sunday, October 14 First United Lutheran Church of San Francisco hosted a Service of Healing & Reconciliation to mark their return to the ELCA. After calling openly gay pastor Jeff Johnson, First United was suspended in 1990, then expelled in 1995. Their actions, along with those of St. Francis Lutheran Church began the movement that became Lutheran Lesbian & Gay Ministries, then the Extraordinary Candidacy Project and eventually to the formation of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries.

During the service this weekend Bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod, the Rev. Mark S. Holmerud, preached and the Reverend Jeff Johnson presided. Rev. Susan Strouse, pastor at First United, blogged about the service and process leading up to reconciliation:

Tomorrow, the congregation I serve will rejoin the denomination which expelled it years ago. To say that the wounds of that expulsion have disappeared or no longer have some spots that are still sore would be wrong. Wounds must be acknowledged and treated with tenderness. But we must also acknowledge and be open to the healing work that is happening within us.

Read Susan’s full blog post here. Susan was on the ELM Roster for a period of time when her call was in jeopardy because she was serving First United.