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.
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
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:
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.
Featured Resources for April
Climate Action for Tired People: A Toolkit and Quiz for Parents and Others
Do you want to “do something about climate change” but not know where to start, or where the time and energy to start would come from?
Shannon Brescher Shea and Kate Schapira wrote this because you’re tired, busy, stressed, lonely, distracted, ashamed and/or overwhelmed. Between us, we know what it’s like to face the morning with a newborn in the house who won’t sleep, juggle school and homework and chores and a job, stare around at a messy room or house that you don’t have it in you to clean, and worry late into the night about your future and how you’ll live.
We also know what it’s like to both give and receive community support, and participate in public actions and campaigns in a variety of ways (including some that you might not think of at all when you think of “climate action”), and take care of our neighborhoods and our neighbors, also in a variety of ways. We know what it’s like to succeed, to fail, to learn and regroup, and to relish the pleasures and satisfactions of working toward a better world together.
This toolkit focuses on organizing to improve climate and environmental policy and regulation, but many of the methods within it and the relationships you’ll strengthen through it, you can also apply to other forms of climate action and activism, from disaster preparedness and response to nonviolent direct action.
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. 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: 100th 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
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. 19: Courageous Leadership – Kelly McGonigal – How to Harness Stress to Benefit You – Zoom
- Apr. 22: Women’s Retreat, Richardson, TX
- Apr. 25: First Call Pastors Check-in, Zoom
- Apr. 26: Courageous Leadership – Jamie Bruesehoff – Raising Kids Beyond the Binary: Celebrating God’s Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children – Zoom
- Apr. 27: Cultivating Compassion Session 4: Think Again, Online
- Apr. 28-29: 2023 NT-NL Synod Assembly, Shreveport, LA
- May 3: Courageous Leadership – Coaching – Choose Your Own Adventure (breakout rooms by topic) – Zoom
- May 4: Transitional Pastors monthly meeting, Zoom
- May 10: Courageous Leadership – Mark Molter – Enneagram – Zoom
- May 13: Parish Lay Ministry Academy, Spring 1, Course 3, Hybrid
- May 13: Public Witness Team meeting, Hybrid
- May 17: Courageous Leadership – Justin Grimm – Resiliency in Leadership – Zoom
- May 23: First Call Pastors Check-in, Zoom
- May 24: Courageous Leadership – Anna Gordy – Neurodivergent Spectrum – Zoom
- May 25: Cultivating Compassion Session 5: The Righteous Mind, Online
- May 31: Courageous Leadership – Jill Beverlin & Jason O’Neill – Stories from the Veil – 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 editions of our weekly news.