The Crux of the Matter - From the Executive Chair

The Bi-Monthly Newsletter of the Augsburg Lutheran District

Vol. 2, No. 3 (January 2003)

In This Issue:

Top Story:
Hope Lutheran Installs Rev. Cher Clay

District News

From the
District Pastor

From the Executive Chair

Viewpoint

Main Page

Return to ALD Home Page

from the executive chair ...

Lenae Rasmussen

We are focused! Our mission is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt . 28:19). This isn't just a nice Bible verse, or a theory about how to be relevant to 21st century man. Our mission is to reach out to God's creatures–real people–and it takes a very concrete form in our focus on helping mission starts and confessional pastors in need, as well in serving the congregational ministries of our established church members. Our focus is on delivering the good news, God's Promise for you: "Your sins are forgiven for Christ's sake."

At our convention in Springfield, we adopted concrete objectives in our consensus building sessions to help us carry out our mission. We agreed on resources to support our new mission churches and ministry standards so new people could join our List of Clergy. While we certainly do a lot of things that are important, our primary focus as a young fellowship of churches is to support our mission churches and provide a pool of confessional pastors for our member churches.

This focus on mission continued at the Joint Council meeting in Elk Horn, Iowa, on January 5-6, 2003. The Joint Council affirmed the colloquy process proposed by the Augsburg Ministry Committee, Rev. Doug Vaughan, and further refined its processes for obtaining mission partners and funding for our mission churches. At the next convention in Audubon, July 20-22, 2003, we will be planning a mission trip for adults and youth to our mission churches.

One of the largest challenges churches face today is the shortage of available confessional pastors to call. Last summer we voted to work on a House of Studies because we realize that we must educate and train an ongoing supply pastors for the future. We cannot grow and evangelize beyond our supply-line of preachers! Although the House of Studies may be a dream, it is linked to our call and hope to provide churches where our children and grandchildren will hear the unfettered proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Another challenge we face is funding. Most of the member churches of the Augsburg Lutheran District are new mission starts. Several started as house churches and still struggle with basic problems, like having enough money to call a pastor and worship weekly on Sunday morning. While our members have indeed carried out the motto, "We start churches!" we must continue to seek new established church members to carry out our mission. Evangelism, thus, takes on two forms: "outreach" for new members who don't attend a church, and "reaching in" with our message to existing congregations with the radical gospel message.