Saturday September 10, 2022 was a long and eventful #milesandmiles day in NT-NL Synod, ELCA. Our synod council and conference deans met Briarwood Leadership Center from 8am-2pm along with the board of our Mission Endowment Fund. It was a productive and fruitful time of conversation focusing on our future as a synod.

Particularly thinking about how we steward the abundance God has put before us faithfully given the ever changing world in which we live. We opened the meeting with prayer and conversation. I asked the council, “if someone said 30 years ago. What decade immediately comes to mind.” While some said “The 90s, we also heard the 80s and 70s. It was a good exercise to be honest that our memories of how time moves are not always accurate.

And time moves on and new things happen. That afternoon I had the honor of joining together with many of our leaders in ordaining the Rev. Veronika Czutor to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. She will serve Central Lutheran Church in Dallas. Her internship congregation, Christ Lutheran Church and Preschool was well represented also as her supervisor the Rev. Ben Dueholm preached a good word for the day. What a joy to be present together.

I didn’t stay for the after-party but headed back to Fort Worth to participate in that most American of liturgies, college football. Got to cheer on our hometown TCU Horned Frogs to victory. I did so with a package of Tanzanian coffee and hot sauce brought back to me by the Rev. Nicholaus Chove of Community of Hope-Fort Worth and Umoja-Fort Worth from his recent visit home. A good day to do the work of the every changing church. Trusting that our God is ever faithful and that our labor is not in vain. #NTNL #InMissionTogether