Title: Starting New Congregations a Priority for the ELCA ELCA NEWS SERVICE
October 3, 2006
Starting New Congregations a Priority for the ELCA 06-148-MRC
CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Starting new congregations in the United States and the Caribbean is a priority of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). According to the Rev. Ruben Duran, "We're in the business of forming healthy, vital and mission-minded communities of faith that see themselves not as an end but as a means by which God can do more work in the world."
A strategic direction of the ELCA churchwide organization is to assist members and congregations of the church to "grow in evangelical outreach," said Duran, director for new congregational development, ELCA Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Ministry (EOCM).
"Right now we have 177 ministries under development. Many of those are in the Midwest and Northeast United States, where the Lutheran presence is still strong. Other ministries are developing in the Southeast, like Florida, and parts of the Southwest," he said.
EOCM is working on 56 proposals for new mission starts in 2006, Duran said. "We have the funding and everything else needed to start these new ministries except leaders, people with the call and gifts needed to create new congregations in the ELCA. We call these leaders mission developers," he said.
"Right now we're starting somewhere between 30 and 35 new congregations a year. By the end of 2006 we will possibly have started 40, given that we're blessed with leaders. Otherwise, we'll repeat what happened last year. We approved 52 proposals and started 38 because we couldn't find mission developers."
Although "numbers" are not his goal, Duran said he would like to see the number of proposals for new starts reach 100 in the next few years. "The idea is to change behavior, to think about mission for the future. That's really what all mainline denominations are after. It's about mission. A church serves as a vehicle to reach all of God's creation," he said.
Mission Developers
Pastors and lay leaders whose vocation is to provide visions for starting new congregations in the church gather together annually at the ELCA Mission Developers' Training Conference held in August. The 2006 conference focused on theological foundation, leadership development, reading the context and assessing the health of congregations, according to Duran. "Led by practitioners, staff of EOCM and other ELCA churchwide units, the training conference aims at preparing and supporting mission developers for this unique task," he said.
With the help of colleagues from across the church, "we've developed a profile summarizing the characteristics of someone qualified to start a new congregation," said Duran. "There are 16 basic characteristics, and eight of those are sort of 'knock out' factors. For example, motivation is a key factor. A mission developer must wake up in the morning wanting to do this kind of work. She or he must see this ministry with a deep sense of call, a spiritual call. Another characteristic is having the capacity to envision a new community of faith and engage everyone around him or her in creating that community. This is not only a skill but an art, with an ability to listen to people, hear their needs and dreams, connect those with God's dreams and, out of that, develop a collective vision. Another characteristic is that a developer must be able to read a community, learn about its context, fall in love with the neighborhood, allow people of the community to love him or her back, and join them in building a community that reflects God's love, peace and justice for all," he said.
"The Holy Spirit has given gifts for all the baptized, including some with the ability to create new communities of faith. There are people already in our (congregations) and many more not yet in our churches, who are or will be gifted for this type of ministry. We want to meet them and encourage them to explore this opportunity," Duran said.
Entry Points for New Starts
"New starts are a way to reach groups of people not currently being served through existing ministries," said Duran. "These geographical, socioeconomic, ethnic and generational gaps can be bridged with intentional, strategic congregational development initiatives that emanate out of mission thinking and a passion for people to experience God's wholeness," he said.
Some entry points for starting new congregations include: + Churches starting churches -- congregations that show signs of health and are mission-minded take the initiative to extend their ministries into other communities + A congregation or a group of congregations can choose to support a new start already in progress + Worshiping communities authorized by a synod, otherwise known as "synodically authorized worshiping communities" -- communities with ministry potential that, upon consultation with synod leadership, become authorized to conduct worship and explore their potential to serve, grow and multiply + Local leaders taking the initiative to start a new ministry where there is little or no Lutheran or Christian presence + Ethnic-specific communities. "Ethnic populations continue to expand," Duran said, "presenting great opportunities to develop new work among them. African American and Black, Arab and Middle Eastern, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latino, and American Indian and Alaska Native communities have teams of leaders focused on the development of new starts."
"Today we see so many opportunities across the United States and Caribbean to work 'en conjunto,' (which is Spanish for) 'in community.' The ELCA is positioning itself to be a good steward of its gifts. The church has plenty to allow itself to be in tune with society and present in places where people are struggling to break the cycles of poverty and injustice, where new ethnic communities are trying to build a future in the church and where young, emerging generations are demonstrating how God is active in their lives. Starting new ministries can only happen when we work together in community," said Duran. - - -
Information about starting new congregations is available at http://www.ELCA.org/congregations.html on the ELCA Web site.
For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org http://www.elca.org/news ELCA News Blog: http://www.elca.org/news/blog