Brief Sabbatical Report - Call to Action

The following was shared with Grace Lutheran’s Church Council and included in the August, 2010 newsletter:

The experience:
• Please hear and understand my abundant thanks for your support for my Sabbatical! The planning, farewell, welcome home, support of Pastor Rebecca, and the interest in what I did – have all been outstanding!

• This sabbatical worked! We all were blessed – Pastor Rebecca, Grace, and I! I can fully claim for myself that the three months of sabbatical time were immensely beneficial for me! I thought, prayed, wrestled, read, experienced, and renewed, relaxed, and refreshed! But I believe that the planning, timing, and experience were also very good for Grace and Pastor Rebecca, as well. Please, let us hold on to the procedures for how we did this sabbatical – using Clergy Renewal: The Alban Guide to Sabbatical Planning, by A. Richard Bullock and Richard J. Bruesehoff, an Alban Institute Publication, 2000 – and especially the planning, participation, support for the remaining pastor and the challenging experience of the sabbatical pastor.

• Please also understand my depth of trauma and challenge As Claudia witnessed (and anyone else at CWA on April 5), never have I been so emotionally distraught and filled with fear and regret as when my plane’s departure time was announced and I had to board that plane. That is representative of the nature of this experience, i.e. it was a great challenge but also extraordinary! The conversations and experiences there, coupled with time to read and reflect, made this sabbatical a significant time for me to review and reflect on my ministry, vision for Grace, and the state of the church, the world, and followers of Jesus today.

Passion & Vision:
The above three realities lead me to deepened passion and vision for ministry:
• I am not saying anything new! With deeper passion &understanding I agree with such diverse people & organizations as:

o Dr. David Daubert www.arenewalenterprise.com

o Dr. David Anderson www.youthandfamilyinstitute.org

o Dr. David Starks www.changingchurch.org/strategicplanning.html

o Pastor Neal Bose www.nealboese.com

o Author Reggie McNeal http://missionalchurchnetwork.com/reggie-mcneal-videos

o The Parish Paper www.TheParishPaper.com or www.ecsw.org especially March & April, 2010

o Research www.americanrelilgionsurvey-aris.org and www.pewforum.org – “Faith in Flux”

o Pastor Rick Warren www.pastors.com

o Bill Easum www.churchconsultations.com

o The Alban Institute www.alban.org including the quarterly Congregations magazine

o Natural Church Development www.churchsmart.com or www.ncd-international.org

o Leadership Network www.leadnet.org

o Page 17 of the Spring 2010, Congregations (Alban publication) talks about the “rapidly growing numbers of the religiously unaffiliated in the United States, the so called Nones,” who “believe in God, yet are skeptical about organized religion.” This group of “young adults born in the 1980s and 1990s, approximately 72 million people, want to make an impact and are socially-conscious yet do not relate to traditional institutional structures.”

o The March, 2010 The Parish Paper asked, “Do we recognize that the following sequence is the new normal? People (a) participate, (b) join, and then (c) believe.”

• My experience concurs with what all the above are saying:
o The institutional church is declining while Christianity is thriving! No matter how we feel and want, the reality is that increasingly people do not have loyalty to the institutional church, most do not often attend worship, many will not enter a church building on their own, and yet the vast majority is very “spiritual”.

o Nones (those claiming they are religiously unaffiliated) or SBNR (spiritual but not religous) will respond when people/church has a compelling ministry, outside the walls of the church, and that makes a difference in the world. They are willing to participate and then join and then believe.

o The relationship with Lekubu is such a compelling ministry, outside the walls of the church, and which makes a powerfully recognizable difference in the world.

• Call to Action: My urging supported by the Grace Lutheran Church Council is to reclaim and use this relationship with Lekubu as a means of inviting people into a compelling ministry:

o Open it up to all of Tomahawk and to everyone in the villages of Lekubu and

o Center this relationship on “accompaniment” – equal commitment and sacrifice with different gifts; focused on worship & prayer to God; and open and willing to respond to the opportunities that God puts before us

o Act now while people may be more willing

o Invite people to join this “Companion” relationship with Lekubu being very attentive to the need for:

1. orientation-reflection-debriefing,

2. strong connections with ELCSA-Western Diocese-Madikwe Circuit-ELCA Global Mission,

3. keeping this outside Grace’s budget and inviting others to participate by emphasizing and educating people on the compelling need and blessing of this relationship

o consider several specific ways of inviting/involving people in Tomahawk:

1. Adopting orphan/vulnerable children, youth & adults similar to Compassionate International

2. Participating in regular communication

3. Consider specific projects with each of the three congregations that make up the Lekubu Parish:
i. Special Offering for a roof for the church in Nyetse
ii. A work group to address the great needs of the four Early Learning Centers in Lekubu perhaps in 2012
iii. Pastor Mark inviting Calvary, Merrill to activate a "Companion" relationship with Mosweu
iv. Also students at the seminary (LTI) in South Africa are interested to have young adults lead a “Bible Camp” with them in 2011
v. Madikwe Circuit is planning a visit to our Conference in 2012

PARTICIPATE– invite a friend and come and see! Grace has a task force that is exploring how this “Companion” relationship with Lekubu may deepen personal faith and relationships; involve and include people not involved in church; and directly involve us with the life and faith of people in the villages of Lekubu, Nyetse and Mosweu.

• I will post more thoughts/learning’s from my Sabbatical on this website [Forums] which will include my discovery, the Gospel of John, and my "Sabbatical Seven":
1. Human Beings: the importance of each person and every encounter
2. Scripture: not just go & love, but the necessity of hearing & receiving Jesus’ prayer for us
3. Culture: I do have an accent and a culture
4. Reformation: the institutional church is dying, Christianity is thriving
5. Orientation & Connections: we are not alone
6. Community: my thoughts on the here & now at Grace
7. Action: why, how, and what shall we do