Synod’s New Mailing Address

In case you missed Bishop Gronberg’s letter that we included in the Leader News for April, please update your files. Starting May 1, please send mail to our new address:

NT-NL Synod, ELCA
c/o Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
2620 W Grauwyler Rd
Irving TX, 75061

Our phone numbers and email addresses will remain the same.

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ELCA Launches Truth and Healing Movement

The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), has announced the launch of the ELCA’s Truth and Healing Movement. The focus of the initiative is to increase the church’s understanding of the impacts of colonization on Indigenous people in past generations and in the present.

“We must be in better, right, and healthy relationships with the Indigenous people of Turtle Island,” said Eaton. “As we know, the truth and our knowing and embracing it, is the first step toward healing for all of us.” 

In 2016, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly adopted the Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery. Following this action, Eaton commissioned a task force to lead the work outlined in the repudiation. The task force also developed “A Declaration of the ELCA to American Indian and Alaska Native People,” which confessed the church’s complicity in the oppression and genocide of Indigenous people and recommitted the ELCA to the work of Repudiation.

The ELCA’s Truth & Healing Movement will enlist and empower members to become involved in the areas of focus started by the task force: development of appropriate settler narrative from a Lutheran perspective; encouraging the ritual practice of land acknowledgement; understanding Lutheran participation in Indian Boarding Schools; and support for communities impacted by murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls. The movement will also offer ways to participate in the national Truth and Healing Movement.

Since the 1960s Lutherans have supported the American Indian Movement, working towards justice for and with Indigenous People. (See video below.) The ELCA’s Truth & Healing Movement commits this church to building and strengthening right relationships with our Indigenous neighbors.

Religion News Service article: Lutherans launch initiative joining Indigenous-led Truth and Healing Movement

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Liberating People and the Planet: Christian Responses at the Intersection of Economics, Ecology, and Religion

If you attended our 2022 NT-NL Synod Assembly, you will remember our Bible Study leader, Dr. Terra Schwerin Rowe, Asst. Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas, challenged and encouraged us with three presentations about Crossing Boundaries: Creation and Redemption. You can find those recordings here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE1z_uxSxKHaZ9KveCd_L6R6y2nIkXiMl. Want to hear more from her and to learn more? She’s included as one of the presenters in this FREE webinar series by Vanderbilt Divinity School | Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice:

Liberating People and the Planet: Christian Responses at the Intersection of Economics, Ecology, and Religion

In the search for solutions to the growing ecological, economic, and religious challenges of our age, what happens if we put all of them in conversation? How are ecology and economics linked? Are there connections between what exploits the planet and what exploits people? And how does Christianity figure in? Is it condemned to condoning the exploitation of people and planet, as is often suspected? Or does it have something to offer in the search for more sustainable life on the planet that is supported by alternative economic relationships that benefit the many rather than the few?

Religion and economics have been put in conversation for some time, as have religion and ecology. Rarely have all three been engaged together. Yet if what exploits the planet is what exploits people, using religion for its own purposes in the process, the time has come to push these conversations to the next levels.

This webinar series will be investigating matters from various perspectives and is interested not only in fresh analyses but also in fresh solutions: what agency and what solidarity emerges between exploited people, ecologies, and religion? As one prominent observer noted, labor is the father and nature the mother of wealth—let’s call it planetary flourishing—and perhaps religion can take on more productive functions as well.

Join a group of scholars and activists from around the globe and contribute to a different future.

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. Given the rise of breakthrough infections and in order to protect those gathered, the synod staff will choose to wear masks as is deemed appropriate unless preaching or presiding and sufficient social distancing can be provided.

Bishop Gronberg:

Apr. 21-22: Lutheran Men in Mission Annual Meeting
Apr. 23: 100^th Anniversary Celebration, First United, Dallas
Apr. 28-29: NT-NL Synod Assembly, Shreveport, LA
Apr. 30: Holy Trinity, Shreveport, LA
May 7: 175th Anniversary, Four Mile, Mabank

Pastor Totzke:

Apr. 20: Youth Leaders lunch, Rejoice, Coppell
Apr. 22: WELCA retreat, St. Luke’s, Richardson
Apr. 25: First Call Pastors check-in, Zoom
Apr. 28-29: NT-NL Synod Assembly, Shreveport, LA
Apr. 30: St. Stephen, Shreveport, LA
May 4: Transitional / Interim pastors monthly meeting and Region 4 consultation meeting, both via Zoom
May 5-9: Vacation
May 14: Immanuel, Killeen
May 18: Youth Leaders lunch, Rejoice, Coppell
May 20: Candidacy committee meeting
May 23: First Call Pastors check-in, Zoom

Pastora Bañales:

Apr. 18: ELCA Latino Strategy Team
Apr. 19: New Latinx Young Adult exploration ministry
Apr. 20: Meeting with NT-NL pastor, then SSTE Summit with Region 4 Bishops
Apr. 21-22: Christian Education Workshop with Puppets, Latina Conference
Apr. 24: DEMs of Color meeting, then NT-NL Renewal Team meeting
Apr. 25: Stewardship Preaching, ULS Gettysburg Campus Livestream
Apr. 28-29: NT-NL Synod Assembly, Shreveport, LA