Dear Partners in Ministry:

Our DEM the Rev. Irma Banales is a strong partner for us in NT-NL with our ELCA Churchwide office. While she technically is deployed staff from the Churchwide office she works here in NT-NL and for our congregations. But her connections to our wider church allow us to offer opportunities for congregations to learn and grow together. In particular four congregations in NT-NL have recently completed the Congregations Lead Initiative led by ELCA staff (Community of Hope-Fort Worth; St. Matthews-Fort Worth, Central-Dallas, Emanuel-Granbury). In this experience they were encouraged to create experiments, connect with their communities, and then report back to share experiences. To enhance their work they also received coaching from the ELCA Coach network for their leadership.

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Saturday August 10th they gathered for the final time to share their learnings and outcomes. The report from Rebecca Payne, the director of the CLI program was very positive…”

“Over the course of the day, participants shared their experiment and learnings with cohort members and created presentations to take back to their congregations (photos attached); evaluated their experiments through a retrospective exercise; brainstormed possible experiment iterations; experienced an in-person coaching session. Here are a few quotes and notes that I took during the day, and if you want to hear from leaders directly,

• Participating in CLI shook up our linear thinking and got us unstuck.
• Coaching partners were critical to success!
• I see our team handing this final project off to a group that would run it, and then we can focus on trying the next new thing.
• It’s not a question of if we will keep going and using design thinking. The biggest success is that we’ll try again and instill curiosity in our council and congregation.
• We realized that we could be the church anywhere because God is everywhere!
• 100% of participants are confident in their ability to conduct future ministry experiments after CLI ends.”

I am encouraged by this partnership. If your congregation is interested in learning more about these resources please contact DEM Banales. We are…

#Juntosenmision,

Bishop Gronberg