Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Thanks to the generosity of our congregations we received mission support of $1,978,921 in fiscal year 2013 (our fiscal year ends on Jan. 31st).

This was less than we had built our mission plan (budget) on. We know many factors such as our hard winter impacted worship attendance in two or three Sundays for many of our congregations. The last six weeks of the year's income did not follow normal patterns. Rather than try to figure out what all the factors are, we are grateful that due to careful management we believe we have still had a year where our expenses were below our income. We are still waiting for our audited numbers to return to us. Then we will know for sure.

What will our synod's leaders, congregations, mission, ministry and staff look like in three to five years? In ten years? In twenty years? We are called to watch the horizon so that we can serve the present and future mission of Christ.

Your synod's long range planning team will meet on Friday to engage in holy stewing about our future. The demographic experts have their theories of what will happen. But they cannot anticipate all the disruptive technologies and global events that will unfold in that time which will affect positively and/or negatively the web of our communities and context. We don't know how our culture will move even though we notice developing patterns.
We do know our God who creates and continues to create will be with us working in our midst. Our Lord who continues to heal and redeem us will have plenty of work. God's Spirit will continue to blow where it wants to blow.

As we look forward our synod is planning a mission start in Montrose on our eastern border with the Minneapolis Area Synod. Our application is in. We are thankful we have collaboration in both synods about this project. We have begun to wonder about other places in this border zone between our two synods. We continue to watch for places where we might plant new congregations and redevelop congregations to serve new mission fields. On April 12th we will host a gathering of area parishes in our synod to learn from one another and imagine going forward. Click here for more information.

Our Synod's Management and Mission Committee will be meeting in the coming days to build our budget for 2015. We know that the way that money is moving in our church is changing. Congregations are passing on to the synod and churchwide system a smaller and smaller percentage of their income. I remember when the expectation was 15% for mission support. Then early in my service as bishop we passed a resolution asking for 10% of income for mission support. Mission support for synods and churchwide is continuing to trend downward (that is before figuring in the impact of inflation). Inflation over the 25 years of our church body's life means that it now takes almost two dollars to accomplish the same thing as a dollar did at the formation of our synod and church body.

We believe we will need to find ways to add to the financial energy coming from congregational offerings. I will write more about that later. I am thankful for the work that has and will be done to bring our mission plan in line with our...read more.

Ron Bervig Retirement

National Child Protection Training Center, Winona State University
Registration ends March 25.
Chaplains for Children is designed for clergy, chaplains, youth ministers, faith leaders, counselors and other members of a faith community who may work with children or families impacted by child abuse. The course prepares students to recognize and respond to cases of sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect. The course discusses in detail the impact of child abuse on a victim's sense of spirituality and offers concrete suggestions for working with medical and mental health professionals to assist a child in coping with maltreatment. The course also discusses ideal child protection policies for a faith based institution, including handling a situation in which a convicted sex offender seeks to join a congregation. The course includes a review of various child abuse case scenarios and a discussion on appropriate and inappropriate responses.

175 East Bridge St. PO Box 499

 507-637-3904