wfn.org | ELCA Deaconess Community Elects Anne Keffer Directing Deaconess

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ELCA NEWS SERVICE

May 21, 2004

ELCA Deaconess Community Elects Anne Keffer Directing Deaconess
04-102-FI

     WARRENVILLE, Ill. (ELCA) -- The Ninth Biennial Assembly was
a significant moment in the 120-year history of the Deaconess
Community of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
After more than a year without a motherhouse or a directing
deaconess, the community met May 14-17 here at the Cenacle
Retreat House and elected Sister E. Anne Keffer to a four-year
term as its directing deaconess.
     The Deaconess Community is a community of lay women
consecrated by the church to a ministry of Word and service.
Sisters in the community work in a variety of settings such as
health care, Christian education and social services.
     Deaconesses are theologically trained and professionally
prepared for their careers.  They are called to ministry by
congregations and synods of the ELCA and Evangelical Lutheran
Church in Canada (ELCIC).
     "I can only believe that our deaconess community continues
because it is God's direction," said Keffer, director, Prairie
Centre for Ecumenism, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and a member of
the ELCIC.  She plans to move to Chicago as directing deaconess.
     In an interview Keffer spoke of internal and external
challenges facing the community.
     "We have left a big part of our history," Keffer said,
describing the internal challenge.  "We have sold our building,
which has been in the family for many years.  There has always
been a 'sacred space' connected to that house.	So, it's going to
take us a while to see what that means for us."
     In 1884 deaconesses arrived from Germany to run the German
hospital in Philadelphia.  They established the first U.S.
motherhouse.  The first U.S.-trained deaconess was consecrated
three years later.  The motherhouse served the community as its
central office, meeting place and retirement center until
November 2002, when the motherhouse was closed and the office was
relocated to the Lutheran Center in Chicago -- the churchwide
office of the ELCA.
     In February 2003 Sister Nora Frost resigned after 12 years
as directing deaconess to care for her father.	The community's
board of directors and many individuals provided essential
leadership in the interim, Keffer said, but more than a year
later the community still felt the loss of the directing
deaconess.
     Holding the biennial assembly in a retreat facility --
"somebody else's space" -- instead of the motherhouse was a
unique experience for many of the deaconesses, said Sister
Elizabeth A. Steele, chair of the community's board of directors,
Huron, Ohio.  She said the assembly handled several related
questions:  "How do you move into a new future?  How does that
relate to place?  Is that one 'place' or could it be 'places' --
places where sisters are in ministry and mission together?"
     "This is a time of continuing transition in the life of the
community -- leaving our longtime home in Philadelphia and coming
to Chicago and looking at positioning ourselves to move into
mission and ministry in the 21st century.  It's a different
time," Steele said.  "How can we be most effective in that
ministry?"
     Keffer said, "The external challenge at this time is to
connect with the church and the world in a way that is meaningful
for diaconal ministry."  The deaconess community has some work to
do with how it is perceived by those outside it, she said.
     "The 'who we are' is connected to the kinds of calls we will
be asked to take within the church," Keffer said.  She said she
will work toward the day when the directing deaconess does not
have to find calls for deaconesses but has Lutheran congregations
and agencies waiting in line.
     "I am committed to a way of life in which all we can do is
take the next step," Keffer said.  The doors of the motherhouse
may close, but the community will "continue on into this century
with strength and fervor," she said.  "It is just the next step
that we take."
     Keffer received a majority of the 43 votes cast on the
assembly's fifth ballot.  Sister Phyllis J. Enck, director of
Christian education and youth ministry, Christ Lutheran Church,
York, Pa., was the other candidate on that ballot.  Sister
Carolyn R. Hellerich, Lincoln, Neb., was a candidate on the
fourth ballot.
     The assembly elected Sister Carol A. Burk, publicist and
communication director, St. Philip's Episcopal Church,
Charleston, S.C.; Sister Melinda Ann Lando, pediatric nurse,
Bronx Lebanon Hospital, Bronx, N.Y.; and Sister Carol A. Wright,
parish assistant, Abiding Presence Lutheran Church, Rochester
Hills, Mich., to four-year terms on the community's board of
directors.
     Dr. Susan W. McArver, associate professor of educational
ministry and church history, Lutheran Theological Southern
Seminary, Columbia, S.C., presented the assembly with a history
of the diaconate and posed a series of questions:
  + What can the ELCA Deaconess Community learn from its history
as it faces a time of transition and change?
  + Are past issues that deaconesses and the deaconess community
faced still personal issues and issues for the community?
  + What should the community avoid in the 21st century?  What
should it be sure to bring from its past?
     McArver is also director of the seminary's Center on
Religion in the South.
     Steele said McArver helped the assembly deal with the proper
role of tradition in the community.  "She really was so right on
target with what we needed to be thinking about," Steele said.
"It was very helpful."
     "In the planning over the past few years, as we thought
about where we go into the future, we wanted to be more focused
on mission than on running a motherhouse.  Running a motherhouse
was a very expensive thing to do," Steele said.  "How do we focus
now in the future on taking those resources and translating them
into mission?"
     A mission development working group reported to the assembly
on proposals to seek, evaluate and select mission opportunities
for the community.  The assembly set aside money to help
deaconesses develop their ideas into new ministries, Steele said.
     The Deaconess Community of the ELCA is a member association
of the Diakonia World Federation -- World Federation of Diaconal
Associations and Diaconal Communities -- based in the
Netherlands.
     Lay ministers of the ELCA are associates in ministry,
deaconesses and diaconal ministers.  There are about 70 women on
the roster of ELCA deaconesses.
-- -- --
     The home page of the Deaconess Community of the ELCA is at
http://www.deaconess-elca.org/ on the Web.

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