wfn.org | Women of the ELCA recommends 'Radical Welcome'

[<NEWS@ELCA.ORG>]

>ELCA News Blog

>January 27, 2009  

Women of the ELCA recommends 'Radical Welcome'

>by Frank Imhoff, ELCA News Service

Hospitality is key to growing any organization, but Women
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is
looking beyond hospitality to providing a "Radical Welcome."
Women of the ELCA participants are discussing through May
online and in person "Radical Welcome: Embracing God, The
Other and the Spirit of Transformation" by the Rev. Stephanie
Spellers.  The online discussion includes live chats and a
blog that are supported by downloadable resources.

Spellers is an Episcopal priest and lead organizer for the
Crossing -- an emerging worship community in Boston -- while
she's the minister for radical welcome for the Episcopal
Cathedral Church of St. Paul.  She describes a radical welcome
as "one that recognizes every person as a bearer of Christ
and seriously tries to welcome each person's gifts, presence
and power -- regardless of the structures of oppression in
the wider church and society" in an article she wrote for the
January/February issue of Lutheran Woman Today, the magazine
of Women of the ELCA.

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Information about the online discussion is at http://tinyurl.com/dbwwxx 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