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Let Us End with Prayer
By Karen Treat Churches struggle. Sometimes they are able to move beyond their brokenness. Sometimes reconciliation is not found. It is a process that is often complicated. Yet, in the beginning, middle, and end it is about God. It is about God and it is about the understanding that God is present right here and right now. Transformation for a …
Learning the Language of the Holy Spirit
By D. Grace Duddy This post emerged out of the research from Duddy’s M.A. Thesis, entitled “Hand, Voice, and Heart of God: An Adaptive Shift from Process to Practice in Discerning Communities.” Most congregations today have lost the language of the Spirit. While they proclaim the Spirit’s work through communities and individuals in the Bible, they have a difficult …
A Social Faith: Millennials and Bingo Night
Courtney Young is a graduate of Luther Seminary – M.Div. with an emphasis in Congregational Mission and Leadership. Missional, a Millennial, and a new mother, Courtney shares her thoughts with us here: When my husband and I moved to small-town Minnesota, an hour away from our closest family and friends, I suddenly found myself without the people who made …
Moving with the Spirit, engaging race and diversity
This week at Luther Seminary we honor Jane Buckley Farlee with the annual Race, Church and Change award. Her work with Trinity Lutheran Congregation, the only Christian community in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis (which is predominately Somali Muslim), demonstrates the flow and vibrancy of the Holy Spirit in that context.
Discerning mission: The Holy Spirit’s new challenge and opportunity
By Gary Simpson In his August 5, 2011, letter to the rostered lay leaders and pastors of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson highlighted the calling “to discern together” what the ELCA’s 2011 LIFT Report (Living Into the Future Together) confesses is our “missionary God.” It’s no accident that the Holy Spirit’s renewed call to apostolic …
How To Start a Church Without Money
Humble Walk mission developer, Rev. Jodi Houge, reflects on the benefits of being broke.
Good question: what’s the difference between worshiping together and worshiping at the same time?
From time to time we plan to post a “good question” at this blog, and deliberately invite responses. (We’re overjoyed, of course, whenever anyone responds to any post here.) This time I thought we could ask the same question Jodi-Renee Adams is asking in her very thoughtful blog essay on worship and spiritual formation. Amongst other questions she asks “what’s …
Leadership lessons
Every so often I run across interesting reflections from people outside of the “church world,” reflections that I think all of us who are seeking to serve in missional leadership could learn from. Here’s a great post about inter-cultural learning, written by Susan Campion, who is a consultant and businesswoman based in the Twin Cities. Among other aspects of her …