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ELCA NEWS SERVICE

October 16, 2003

Lutheran Men in Mission Optimistic about Future
03-188-FI

     CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The board of Lutheran Men in Mission
(LMM), the men's ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America (ELCA), expressed optimism after meeting here and in
Rosemont, Ill., Oct. 10-12 in conjunction with a Young Men's
Summit.
     "Our ministry continues to grow," said LMM President Heber
Rast, Cameron, S.C.  "With the outreach and the initiative with
our young men, it will only increase that growth."
     About 15 men between the ages of 18 and 34 came from across
the United States for the summit, and they established the LMM
Young Men's Council.  The group began planning for an event in
2004 that could attract about 500 young Lutheran men.
     "It was just a tremendous experience to see their enthusiasm
about the church and about the opportunity of establishing men's
ministries with their peers," Rast said.
     An outcome of the summit will be better understanding and
stronger communication across the generations of Lutheran men,
Rast said.  Young men share many of the same concerns of older
men, he said.
     Another board topic was a proposal the ELCA's presiding
bishop has shared with the church to restructure the churchwide
organization.
     Under the proposal, a Department for Congregational Life and
Evangelical Outreach would assume many of the responsibilities of
the current Division for Congregational Ministries, which houses
LMM.  LMM would move to a new Department for Youth, Education and
Lay Leadership, with the understanding that LMM would become self-
funding by 2005.
     Rast said it has always been LMM's goal to be self-funding.
"This is something that will spur us on to meeting that goal.  We
feel that it's doable," he said.
     The LMM board asked the ELCA Church Council, which will
consider the proposal at its November meeting, for three
variations to the proposal: that LMM continue with its current
funding from the church until Jan. 31, 2006; that LMM be housed
in the Department for Congregational Life and Evangelical
Outreach; and that the self-funded LMM become a separately
incorporated unit of the church, similar to Women of the ELCA,
the church's women's organization.
     "We are in a time of uncertainty for our church," Rast said.
"In spite of all that, I sensed a lot of enthusiasm from our men
with the opportunities that we have in front of us."
     The chief legislative authority of LMM is its assembly,
which meets every three years.	Its 2002 assembly approved a
three-year budget that takes the organization up to Jan. 31,
2006.  "We feel that by that time we will be in a position to be
financially independent and self-supporting," Rast said.
     LMM's next assembly and churchwide gathering in July 2005,
as well as the young men's event in 2004, will help the
organization rise to the challenge of becoming self-funded, Rast
said.
     "It was a very good weekend for us.  We have approached it
with a lot of optimism.  We see a bright future for Lutheran Men
in Mission," Rast said.
     "God has brought us a great bunch of guys through your
efforts," Sean L. Forde told the LMM board, following the Young
Men's Summit.  Forde is a pastoral intern working with LMM and
Zion Lutheran Church, Anoka, Minn.
     The young men are done talking and now they want to act,
Forde said.  They want to get to work on the young men's event in
2004, and they want to keep in touch with the board members.
     The board asked Rast to send letters of appreciation to
those who attended the summit and to provide summit participants
and board members with each other's e-mail addresses.
     In other business, the LMM board:
 + encouraged ELCA men to participate in the church's studies on
sexuality;
 + authorized its executive committee to name an ad hoc committee
to study LMM structures and to bring possible recommendations to
the 2005 LMM Assembly;
 + created endowments in honor of former LMM President Charles R.
Bruning, Minneapolis, and former LMM Director William "Bill"
Pollock, Sun City West, Ariz., who both died this year; and
 + accepted reluctantly the resignation of its vice president,
Allen Anderson, Paynesville, Minn., and named Charles Oestreich,
New Braunfels, Texas, to complete the unexpired term.
-- -- --
The "Proposal for the Future Design of the Churchwide
Organization" is available at http://www.elca.org/planning/ on
the ELCA Web site.  LMM has a home page at
http://www.elca.org/lmm/ on the Web.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org
http://www.elca.org/news