ELCA Coaching
Watch this interview between The Rev. Erik K. J. Gronberg, PhD, NT-NL Synod Bishop, and Jill Beverlin, ELCA National Coordinator of Coaching:
Open Doors Grants
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, you have served your communities with compassion and creativity, even as physical distancing changed the way we worship and meet. With vaccinations becoming available to more of the population, we look forward to gathering with our congregations in physical spaces again soon. What might the Spirit have in store?
Your congregation is invited to apply for an Open Doors grant to support your ministries as we resume in-person worship and gatherings.
- How can we meet new people, especially as we crave community following a time of unprecedented isolation?
- How might we stay connected with people who have not visited our church buildings but joined us online?
- As we adjust to post-pandemic life, how can we create new ideas to meet the changing needs of our communities?
Have an idea? Grant applications opened on April 21 at ELCA.org/OpenDoors.
Any ELCA congregation can apply for grant funding with a specific and actionable idea for how its ministry might enable members to meet new people while regathering in community as COVID-19 considerations allow.
As we resume in-person gatherings, we are not simply reclaiming our physical worship space. We are being reclaimed by God and one another in the Spirit as we return to physical community. As people freed by the gift of God’s love and grace, how might we share that gift with others who might need it, too?
Open doors invite us in to gather, and open doors send us out to meet our neighbors.
Lutheran World Relief Adult Forum
Lutheran World Relief (LWR) invites your congregation to go on a world tour with a virtual adult forum. Through videos and stories, the team at Lutheran World Relief is ready to take your congregation around the world and show you how your love is at work through rooftop farming in India, quilt and kit distributions in Lebanon, keeping our neighbors safe from COVID-19 in Africa, and much more. Staff are available to visit via live Zoom or prerecorded video. Click here to let LWR know your congregation is interested.
Interested in learning how your congregation’s love can make a difference for our neighbors in Central America? Click here to read the latest LWR congregational newsletter.
Featured Resources for April
ELCA World Hunger Domestic Grants
Registration Open Through May 5
NOTE: Applicants must be registered in ELCA GrantMaker to access the application. Allow up to two weeks for registration approval. If you have not registered by May 5, you will not be able to start a new application. If you have already registered in ELCA GrantMaker, you do not need to register again. Starting April 19, 2021, you can log in directly at elca.fluxx.io using the Google Chrome browser to start your application.
Application Open April 19 – May 21
Full details can be found here: https://www.elca.org/Our-Work/Relief-and-Development/ELCA-World-Hunger/Get-Involved/Domestic-Hunger-Grants
Save the Date
White Supremacy & Racism: Facing Reality, Taking Responsibility
Every other Tuesday, May 11 – October 19
A Study Group Co-Sponsored by Briarwood Leadership Center and the Public Witness Team of NT-NL
American forms of racism shape our life together in ELCA congregations. White supremacy distorts our proclamation of the Gospel, limiting the possibilities of evangelism. Lay and rostered congregational leaders interested in facing these realities are invited to join this study group co-organized by Briarwood Leadership Center and the Public Witness Team of NT-NL.
With an eye toward taking meaningful action, we will work through some of the most incisive analytical studies of racism. We will focus on structural realities rather than individual attitudes or personal experience. Equipped by this intensive study, the group will decide what actions they will take in their own congregations and which actions will be recommended to the NT-NL Synod as a whole.
Led by Emma Rodgers (St. John, Dallas) and Robert Smith (Briarwood Leadership Center), the course will feature several outside guest speakers with expertise in the topics and particular authors. The proposed agenda can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/bwtxracism. All readings will be provided in electronic format, with encouragement toward additional resources.
Sessions are on Tuesday evenings, biweekly, 7-8:30pm. Pre-registration is required in order to receive the Zoom link. All participants are strongly encouraged to complete the assigned reading prior to participating in a session.
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMldeqsrDwqGtFW1il2hIwTrdcxku5B-zn0. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Recent Blog Posts
Bishop Gronberg:
(https://www.ntnl.org/growing-young-resources/ – published Apr. 20)
Where in the world is?
Across a context as wide and different as NT-NL, the reality of Covid-19 is very different. As such, NT-NL synod staff are doing more in-person Sunday visits for worship and occasional meetings. However, as good stewards of time and travel dollars, we will be utilizing online meeting formats into our new hybrid future. Until we can assure everyone in attendance at a meeting are vaccinated, in order to protect those gathered, the synod staff will continue to wear masks unless preaching or presiding and sufficient social distancing can be provided.
Pastor Totzke: May 2 – Grace, Abilene
Upcoming Events
With the ever-changing guidelines and recommendations in our world right now, as we maintain physical distance in social solidarity, please keep in mind these events may be moved online, postponed, or cancelled:
- Apr. 28: Weekly Online Gathering for ELCA Leaders – Ending Well and Dreaming Forward with Jill Beverlin & Jason O’Neill, Zoom
- Apr. 29: Weekly NT-NL Leadership Prayer, Check-in, Zoom
- May 6: Weekly NT-NL Leadership Prayer, Check-in, Zoom
- May 6: Transitional (Interim) Pastors monthly meeting, Zoom
- May 8: Public Witness Team meeting, Zoom
- May 13: Weekly NT-NL Leadership Prayer, Check-in, Zoom
- May 15: Parish Lay Ministry Academy, Spring 2021, Course 3, Online
- May 20: Weekly NT-NL Leadership Prayer, Check-in, Zoom
Access our full online Calendar here. Updates made regularly.
Do you have news or announcements to share? Please submit to Jason (jason@ntnl.org) for consideration for upcoming NT-NL News.