wfn.org | Lutherans Celebrate Global Hope

[George Conklin <gconklin@igc.apc.org>]

News from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

July 9, 1996

LUTHERANS CELEBRATE GLOBAL HOPE

     SPOKANE (ELCA) -- "Born Anew to a Living Hope"
was the theme when more than 600 members of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America gathered June
27-30 at Whitworth College, Spokane, Wash., for the first
of three 1996 Global Mission Events. Still to come are
events July 18-21 at Augustana College, Sioux Falls, S.D.,
and July 25-28 at Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove,
Pa.  In 1995 Global Mission Events drew more than
3,000 people.
     At Spokane Musimbi Kanyoro, secretary for women in
church in society, Lutheran World Federation, Geneva,
Switzerland, told the group, "Hope is to be lived out.  To
hope for justice and peace and to be a peacemaker is to
work for the elimination of injustice."
     Kanyoro said, "We hoped the walls would come down
in Eastern Europe, that apartheid would end in South
Africa.  If we hope for democracy we must practice
democracy in our relationships.  Hope for wholeness
means confessing our brokenness.  Our deeds express that
which we hope for."
     Kanyoro asked, "How can we be the Church gathered
in Spokane without worrying about the burning of Black
churches in this country?  How can we be the Church if
the fear of guns does not keep us awake, if we do not ask
`Why are guns so precious in this country?'"  Hope entails
risk, Kanyoro said, and there is risk in working for peace.
     The Rev. H. George Anderson, presiding bishop of the
ELCA, was a keynote speaker.  "It's a good time to talk
about hope, in the midst of disaster, difficulty, pain,
persecution, peril and the sword, " he said.  Anderson said
renewed terrorist activity in Saudi Arabia "pushed off our
pages the terrorism in our own country, the burning of
African American churches."  He said, "We see terrorism
when it happens in other countries, but white Americans
do not see terrorism at home the same way our African
American sisters and brothers do."
     Anderson asked, "Is hope really futile?  Are things
getting any better?"  He walked the audience through 2000
years of Christian history and asked, "Do you think the
God who brought us through persecution, respect,
collapse, reformation and bloodshed can take us into the
next century?"
     Christians, he said, "live in a world created day by day,
year by year, with the opportunity to be faithful in witness
and service."  As they leave this event, Anderson said,
participants go out "into a new world, a bigger world, the
creation subject to futility but groaning and waiting for the
revelation of the Child of God."
     In her Bible lecture the Rev. Barbara R. Rossing, New
Testament professor, Lutheran School of Theology at
Chicago, called hope the fundamental orientation to
Christian life.  "Hope is a profound sense of joy in the
future," she said.
     ELCA missionary staff from many countries took part.
Deanna Isaacson, a nurse midwife working in Liberia,
spoke of rebuilding the Lutheran hospital that was
destroyed in the most recent violence there.   "Phebe
Hospital is again a place of refuge.  In the face of all that
could lead us to despair, our Liberian sisters and brothers
refuse to let death have the last word.  We are standing on
their shoulders as we carry on a mutual ministry of help
and hope."
     A special guest was Bishop Abel Mwanbungu of the
Ulanga Kilombero Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Ch
urch in Tanzania.  The Tanzanian church is a "companion"
to the ELCA's Eastern Washington-Idaho Synod, which
hosted the global event.  The Rev. Yutaka Kishino,
mission director of the ELCA's Pacifica and Southern
California (West) synods, preached for the event's closing
worship service.  Music from Africa, Asia, Latin America,
North America and Europe was presented by Barbara
Ames, Raymond Jones and Jo Morris of New York, the
Rev. Tony Machado, Minneapolis, and the Rev. Pablo
Obregon, Willmar, Minn.  Youth and children took part in
special global programs and activities designed for them.

[ELCA News and Information: 8765 W. Higgins Road,
Chicago, IL   60631; phone 312/380-2963]