At the Annual Meeting (1/23), part of my report was asking questions about what might be next for the congregation. I raised the issue of even though we have a lot going on within the congregation, we still need to look at questions like what are we not doing that we should be doing? What areas of ministry should we be increasing? What areas of ministry need to be tweaked to increase its effectiveness?

As I have been thinking about this, I was at a meeting for the synod and a person was talking about the ELCA Church-wide offices and some of the restructuring that they have been undertaking. As they have been looking at restructuring, they began to coordinate ministries of the ELCA under what Bishop Hanson has stated are the two core principles of the ELCA. Bishop Hanson stated, ‘the two strategic priorities are: 1) accompanying congregations as growing centers for evangelical mission, and 2) building capacity to alleviate poverty while working for justice and peace.’

As I reflected upon these two strategic priorities, I began to think about how we, St. Paul-Borchers, can be a part of the second priority. How can we help to build capacity to alleviate poverty while working for justice and peace? For some, you may even be wondering what this last statement even means. I think that building a capacity to alleviate poverty for local congregations is about being involved with local ministry centers that assist people who are in need. Locally, those places are groups like Anchor House, Closing Center, Food Pantry, Provisions, Habitat for Humanity, etc.

This whole notion of a priority of alleviating poverty comes out of Scripture. James 1:27 speaks about ‘religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.’ Additionally, in the Gospel of Matthew (25:31-46) when Jesus talks about the separation of the sheep from the goats he talks about caring for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine (clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, visiting those in prison, looking after the sick). It seems that he is calling us (as disciples) to partake of these activities. From these and other scripture verses, it is clear that part of our ministry as a congregation should focus upon being involved with local mission centers (like clothing ministry, food pantry, etc.).

As a congregation, we have done some to assist those places and others like them; but I wonder if maybe we need to do some more—both supporting them and learning more about them. Honestly, I know very little about some of these places—and I am guessing that if do not know much about then I am probably not alone. One of the things that we, as a congregation, might be able to do is to increase the awareness of some of these ministries along with providing some opportunities for people to support them if they so choose to do so. At the council meeting in January, the council began talking about our support of the Clothing Center. Out of this conversation came the thought about possibly having a couple of times a year mission moments or something along that line where we take a small amount of time to uplift up the ministry of one of the local mission centers along with an opportunity to support that mission center. We may also use the newsletter as a place to provide some information about these local places that provides assistance to people in need.

The goal of these opportunities would be to lift up additional ways that we, as a congregation, can do God’s Work with our hands within our community.

If there are other ways that you can think of that we can as a congregation seek to live out this strategic priority of building capacity to alleviate poverty while working for justice and peace; please talk with me so that we can envision even more possibilities for being a place that seeks to bring light to our community.

Pastor Steve